by Kara Lennox
No! He was not going to leave her helpless in this dark trunk again. Her nose was bleeding; she could barely breathe. She had to do something. She had to stop Griffin from trying to rescue her.
Raleigh made one more effort to use her feet. Her left foot still wore a black pump. Not as useful as a stiletto heel might have been, but it had a hard sole. She brought her knee up as high as it would go, then aimed carefully for Paul’s midsection and kicked as hard as she could.
This time she made contact. With an audible oof he let go of her hands and backed away. She swung her legs over the lip of the trunk and levered her self out.
Paul made a grab for her and got a handful of her hair.
She screamed and kicked backward, connecting with something hard. His grip loosened just enough that she could pull away, and she started running.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PAUL STRATTON CURSED, but he let her go because he knew she couldn’t get far. Running blindly, she’d headed farther into the alley. Soon she would discover there was no way out—no way but up. He’d pulled the fire escape stairs down, easily within her reach, anticipating just this scenario, although without the blow to his stomach.
Once she went up, she would be trapped.
He slammed the trunk lid, jumped into his car and backed wildly out of the alley. He had no way of knowing how far away Benedict was, but he needed to get ready for the confrontation. A six-foot-plus male would be a bit more of a challenge than a lady lawyer in one shoe, though she’d shown more strength—and backbone—than he’d expected. His ribs would be bruised for a week.
He parked his car at the first available spot on the street, yanked off the fake mustache, glasses and hat, then jumped out of the car and ducked back into the alley. No sign of Raleigh. She was either hiding somewhere, in some weeds or behind a Dumpster, or she’d gone up. Either way, she was still trapped.
He watched the street, waiting for Benedict’s Mustang to come tearing toward him. He couldn’t wait to get the guy alone. Benedict’s huge ego would be his undoing. He had a reputation for going anywhere and doing anything for a story.
This was one story he wouldn’t write—unless he could write from the grave.
Gradually, Paul became aware of a police siren. Not unusual in this urban area. But it got louder. And louder. Then he saw the flashing lights, heading this way.
Crap. Had Benedict actually alerted the police? Or had someone realized Raleigh was missing?
No, the cops wouldn’t come blazing in here just because no one had seen the lawyer for a few minutes.
Benedict had caved. He’d been unselfish, for once in his life. Amazing.
Paul held out one final hope that the cops were heading somewhere else. But the black-and-white pulled right up to the Project Justice building.
Heart pounding, he knew he had just one chance to get this right. He ran up to the police cruiser as two uniforms climbed out.
“Thank goodness. He took her. He just grabbed her and stuffed her into the trunk!” Paul did his best to sound hysterical. He’d minored in theater while in college; he could play this role easy enough. Dancing back and forth from foot to foot, he pointed frantically down the street.
“Calm down, sir,” the patronizing officer said. “What did you see?”
Paul made as if to calm himself, breathing deeply, one hand holding his chest. “A man with a hat and a big mustache. He was walking with a woman—she had on jeans and a shirt—no, a sweater—and they were walking down the sidewalk. He stopped and opened the trunk of his car—”
“What kind of car?”
“A…it was black, I think. A sedan. I…I don’t remember. But it had Oklahoma plates, I remember that! He grabbed the woman and stuffed her in the trunk, and then he drove off!”
“Which way did he go?” one cop asked.
“When did this happen?” the other one asked.
They couldn’t have done a better Mutt and Jeff routine if they’d tried. “It just happened. Two or three minutes ago. He went that way and turned right at the light.”
One officer relayed the information into a radio; the other continued to pepper Paul with questions.
“What are you doing here? Can I get some ID?” a young, beefy cop asked.
Another slug living under a rock who didn’t recognize him. “Yes, of course. I was on my way home. I work in that building—” He pointed vaguely up the street. “I was headed to my car. I still can’t believe it!”
He showed the cop a bogus driver’s license he kept around for just such an occasion. “Please.” Paul injected as much desperation into his voice as he could. “Please, you have to help that woman.”
“Come on, let’s go,” the beefy cop’s partner said. “We have a sighting of the car.”
Really? A car Paul had just made up? That was fortunate. How many black sedans with Oklahoma plates were trolling the Houston streets?
Moments later, the police cruiser sped off in the direction the mythical car had taken.
That had been remarkably easy. Amazing how people liked and trusted him on sight. That, plus some damn good acting, had sent the police on a wild-goose chase.
Now, to find out what his prey was up to.
SHE’D GOTTEN AWAY! A surge of triumph coursed through Raleigh’s veins as she kicked off her remaining shoe and ran in bare feet down the dark alley.
But her elation was short-lived when she realized there was no way out. The alley ended at a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
Why wasn’t Paul following her? Had she hurt him that badly?
If she turned around and went back the way she’d come, she would run right into him. And he had the advantage of good eyesight: hers was rapidly failing in the twilight. She could make out general shapes, but the details were lost. She had to hide or find another way out.
She’d heard a siren a few moments ago and hope had sprung into her being. But shortly after, the siren had started up again, then moved farther away. She wasn’t going to be rescued by the police.
Climbing the fence was no good. She wasn’t an action hero; that razor wire would slash her to ribbons before she could clear it. She eyed the hulking shape of a Dumpster, then the zigzag shape of a fire escape. If she could get inside one of the upper floors of this building…the Project Justice building, she realized, and her heart sank. No way could she get inside. Security was too tight. Probably no way to alert anyone inside the building. The windows were all dark at this end.
“Raleigh? Where are you?” The question came in a singsong voice, drifting down the dark alley, and her blood went cold.
She had to act now. Dumpster, or fire escape?
The fire escape won. It was a few feet off the ground, but reachable. She pulled herself up onto the metal stairs, her adrenaline giving her the strength of an Olympic gymnast. Then she climbed, as quickly and quietly as she could. Three flights, and she was as high as she could go. She chanced a look down and saw Paul—or something—moving up the alley toward her at a leisurely pace, as if he had nothing to worry about.
If he looked up, he would see her, and she would be an easy target. If there was something to hide behind…
That was when she saw the ladder that went to the roof. That was her only choice—farther up.
Her hands were slippery with sweat. She wiped them on her jeans then started the climb, expecting a bullet to slam into her body at any time. But luck was with her. She climbed onto the gravel-and-tar roof of the building. The gravel bit through her bare feet, but the pain hardly registered.
She couldn’t go anywhere from here—the fire escape was the one route down. But she had places to hide—big air-conditioning units, some ancient chimneys from an era when the residents of this old building had burned coal to stay warm.
Or, she could signal someone.
Unfortunately, it seemed everyone who worked on this entire block had gone home on time today. She peeked over the low wall toward the parking lot behind the build
ing: deserted. She ran toward the street side, always keeping an eye toward the fire escape ladder, expecting to see Paul appear there any second.
So far, it seemed he hadn’t figured out where she’d gone.
She peeked over the low wall to the street. Empty. Not a single inhabited car, as if it were the middle of the night instead of a normal weekday evening.
There, she saw headlights at the end of the block. But would the driver see her?
She jumped up and down and waved her arms as the car approached, resisting the urge to scream out for help, because that would alert Paul to her whereabouts.
The car…it was slowing down. Yesss! Then she realized it wasn’t just any car. It was a black Mustang. Her hopes plummeted.
“No, Griffin,” she whispered. What was he doing? Of course, he didn’t yet know he was as much a target as she was. Maybe he thought he was coming to her aid, or maybe Paul had brought him here with some other ruse. Either way, Griffin had no idea his life was at risk.
The Mustang pulled in front of Project Justice and stopped, but Griffin didn’t turn off the engine or get out. He was waiting for something. Anytime he wanted, Paul could shoot him through the windshield. Griffin was a sitting duck. She had to warn him.
Raleigh looked all around for some means to signal Griffin without also calling Paul’s attention to her. Then she saw—or rather, felt—the answer. She stooped down and grabbed a handful of gravel.
With a silent apology to the mirror finish on Griffin’s beautiful car, she lobbed her handful of gravel at it. The small rocks showered the car with a satisfying rattle.
The driver’s door opened immediately and Griffin jumped out, looking up. He had a gun in his hand.
“Griffin. You have to get out of here.”
“Raleigh? Thank God—”
She was grabbed from behind, and pulled away from the edge of the rooftop. A strong hand clamped over her mouth as Paul put a gun to her head.
“Come get her, Benedict,” he called out in a husky, gritty voice that wasn’t quite his own, then laughed softly.
GRIFFIN’S HEART nearly forced itself into his mouth. Raleigh, her face covered in blood, and a man. Griffin had seen him, in shadow, for only a few seconds. But something about him was familiar. The stance, the silhouette of a full head of hair…and that voice. It rubbed against him like sandpaper, like—
Suddenly the answer came to him with sickening clarity. Raleigh was not, and never had been, the target. Raleigh had been a means to an end.
Griffin himself was the one Paul Stratton had wanted to hurt—first by trying to lure him into publishing a bogus story that would hurt his reputation. Then, when that didn’t work, by outright killing him. The bullet that had come within inches of his heart had never been meant for Raleigh.
“Don’t hurt her, Paul,” Griffin warned. “This is between you and me.” What had been a professional rivalry had become a life-and-death struggle, as if they were two gladiators in an arena, the loser to be eaten by lions.
“Come get her,” Paul challenged again, now speaking in his normal voice. He was well back from the edge of the roof, where Griffin couldn’t see him. “If I see anyone but you coming up that fire escape, you can kiss Raleigh goodbye.”
Griffin looked around frantically. Where were the cops? Where were the Project Justice people?
His phone rang, and he answered it as he made his way to the alley.
“Benedict here.”
“Raleigh’s been taken hostage.” It was Daniel. “The police have a witness who saw her taken—”
“She’s right here, Daniel,” Griffin interrupted. “She’s on the roof of your own goddamn building. The kidnapper is Paul Stratton. I’m going in.”
“Wait, Griffin—”
He couldn’t wait for reinforcements. Every second Raleigh was in the hands of this crazed man was another second of mortal danger. Stratton was insane—surely he didn’t think he could get away with his mad plan now.
Unless he killed both Raleigh and Griffin. Made it look like a lover’s quarrel gone deadly…yes, that had to be what he had in mind. Even their deaths wouldn’t stop the freight train of Stratton’s downfall, but he was obviously too unbalanced to see that.
Stratton expected him to go up the fire escape. The moment his head cleared the roof, Stratton would shoot it off. There had to be another way.
Quickly he reversed his steps and rang the night bell at the Project Justice front door.
“Who is it?” came Celeste’s voice.
“Griffin Benedict. Celeste, Raleigh is being held hostage—”
The door buzzed and Griffin burst in. Celeste was already on her feet and, God help them all, she was holding the biggest handgun he’d ever seen—had to be a .50 caliber.
“I knew that fake cop was up to no good!” she declared.
“They’re on the roof,” Griffin said urgently. “How can we get up there besides the fire escape?”
Suddenly Celeste was all steely efficiency. “Down the hall, up the stairs.” She tossed him some keys. “The brass one with the round head opens the hatch to the roof.” She turned and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?”
“Gonna create a diversion.” She grabbed one of the Mylar balloons tied to her chair, then took off toward the front door. The woman had to be in her seventies, but she could run like a gazelle even in her high-heeled boots. The flowers on her ridiculous hat bounced with every step.
Griffin didn’t have time to try to stop her. A diversion? What the hell did she meant to do? God forgive him for endangering an elderly lady, even if she was, by all accounts, a competent ex-cop and tough as a sledgehammer.
He barreled down the hallway and up the stairs two at a time. Three flights, and he reached the hatch. Brass key. Round head. The lock turned.
Griffin paused long enough to yank off his boots and socks—he would be quieter in bare feet. He opened the hatch two inches and peeked out. He could see them. Stratton still had his hand over Raleigh’s mouth, his gun pointed at her head as he held her against him like a shield and faced the fire escape, watching intently.
There was no way Griffin could get off a safe shot. Stratton left no part of his anatomy exposed for long, not from this angle. Even if Griffin shot him cleanly, Stratton’s hand might jerk and pull his own trigger, killing Raleigh.
Griffin spotted movement in the building across the street. He crossed his fingers that Daniel’s people had arrived. Not that they could stop Stratton if he suddenly tired of the game.
If anyone was going to rescue Raleigh, it had to be Griffin.
Slowly he opened the trapdoor a few more inches, enough that he could crawl through. Recalling his days of battlefield reporting, he moved silently as a cat, mindful that the slightest movement would cause the gravel to crunch.
Raleigh looked over and saw him. Her eyes widened and he froze, gun ready, in case she accidentally alerted Stratton. But the reporter’s attention was firmly on the fire escape.
“Benedict?” Stratton called out. “I’m not gonna wait forever for you to make your move. I’ll give you one more minute. Then your girl is history, and I’m coming after you. Your only chance to save her is to fight with me, one on one—if you’re man enough.”
Griffin didn’t believe it for a second. Stratton didn’t intend for either of his targets to live beyond the next couple of minutes to tell the tale.
Griffin made his way, duckwalking slowly when he wanted to run, the gravel biting into his bare feet. Finally he reached some cover behind an air-conditioning unit. He fell back on his martial arts training, breathing slowly, deeply but quietly, taking in as much oxygen as possible.
That was when he heard a noise on the fire escape. Oh, God. Not Celeste. Please.
Something rose above the roofline—hard to tell what it was in the darkness. It looked like…Celeste’s flowered hat.
Stratton didn’t even wait to see who it was. Obviously assuming the new
arrival was Griffin, he shot.
Raleigh issued a muffled scream.
This was likely to be Griffin’s only chance, and he had to act fast, while Paul still pointed the gun away from Raleigh. In a split second he considered and rejected a number of judo moves, finally opting for a street-fighting all-out body tackle. He launched himself and hit Paul at knee level with the full force of his weight.
Raleigh, who’d been marking Griffin’s every movement, was ready. The moment Paul loosened his grip on her, she lunged for his gun hand. All three of them went rolling. Griffin landed on his injured arm, which sent stabbing pain through his whole body, but he had his gun in his other hand, and it was aimed at Paul’s head.
Griffin was fractional seconds away from pulling the trigger when he realized Raleigh had come up onto her knees, and she had Paul’s gun gripped in her duct-taped hands.
“Everybody freeze. Griffin, don’t shoot. We got him.”
It took all of Griffin’s willpower not to stare at her, but he kept his gaze on their adversary. “Raleigh, are you okay? Where are you hurt?”
During that half moment of distraction, Paul Stratton lunged to his hands and knees, then his feet. He was unarmed now but still dangerous.
“Down on your knees!” Griffin shouted the way he’d heard countless TV cops and a few real ones say. “Hands behind your head.”
Paul smiled a bit wildly and refused to obey. “Uh-uh. You think I’m going to let you humiliate me? Prove everything I wrote about Anthony Simonetti is a lie? That story made me who I am and you—” he pointed at Raleigh “—you were going to take that away from me. And you—” He turned back to Griffin “—you’re just a cocky kid, and yet the folks at CNI thought you were my equal. It shouldn’t have been a contest. I won a Pulitzer! I’m not about to let you take that job from me.”
Even after all that had happened, Griffin felt a grain of sadness for Paul Stratton, who was watching his career bleed away and couldn’t do anything about it.
“It’s over, Paul.”
“It’s not over until I say it’s over.” With that, he turned and ran full tilt to the edge of the building and, without hesitation, hurled himself over.
