by Alison Kent
The thug at his back bound Tripp’s hands together with a zip tie that came close to cutting off his circulation. He bit down hard on his anger and turned around, maintaining as passive an expression as his temper allowed while the kid’s henchman patted him down.
Once the third man was gone, Tripp asked, “Now what?”
“Now you tell me your name.”
Unless undercover or disguised, all the Smithson operatives existed in the private sector as the engineering project consultants they were. “Shaughnessey.”
The kid nodded. “My name is Danh Vuong. I find negotiations so much more effective when personalized. Does that make sense to you Mr. Shaughnessey? Miss Brighton?”
Tripp nodded without agreement, wishing Julian Samms were here. Julian could read people as if they were printed on paper. Tripp had only his instincts to work from.
And those instincts were screaming at him to put this kid down. The way he was pacing and circling Glory. The way his forehead beneath his shock of black hair had beaded with sweat. He was on his way to careening out of control.
Tripp needed to draw the other man’s attention away from Glory and onto himself without blowing his civilian cover. “It’s tough to negotiate anything when we don’t know what it is you want.”
“What I want is something Miss Brighton is going to help me get.” Vuong looked from Tripp to Glory. Or, more precisely, he looked at Glory’s breasts where her chest rose and fell beneath the ribbed knit of her tank top.
The fabric was a pale pink and it hugged her body the way any man liked to see a tight tank top do. Zippers that matched those on her skirt decorated both shoulder straps.
With Tripp looking on, Vuong flipped one of the zipper pulls up and down using his gun barrel’s tip.
Glory literally threatened to shake out of her shoes.
“Dude, hey. Would you get the gun out of the lady’s face?” Tripp surged forward, purposefully awkward—only to have the Beretta shoved against his Adam’s apple until he choked.
He continued to cough and gag as Vuong backed him into the wall. “You, Mr. Shaughnessey, are on the verge of becoming my biggest liability to date. Don’t move. Don’t speak unless you are spoken to. I would hate to mar this operation by killing you, but I won’t hesitate if you give me reason.”
Giving the kid reason would mean endangering Glory further. Tripp had yet to meet a killer who had qualms about removing all human roadblocks to his goal.
Once Vuong released him, Tripp dipped his head, working to clear what felt like a permanent constriction in his throat. He watched the kid return to Glory and this time run the gun barrel underneath the curves of both her breasts.
Her nipples tightened, a response to the stimulation that was all about the same fear widening her eyes.
“Very nice.” Vuong moved the gun barrel higher, circling one of the taut peaks now pressing through both bra and tank top. “Very nice. Tell me, Mr. Shaughnessey. Does she respond this nicely to your touch? Or is she only turned on by the idea of losing her life?”
Fucking bastard. Talking about Glory as if she didn’t exist. Still, Tripp didn’t say a word. He’d been spoken to, asked a direct question. It didn’t matter. His voice was stuck in his damaged throat, his words battling in his head to be heard.
Vuong turned his gaze in Tripp’s direction. “Feel free to answer, Mr. Shaughnessey. In fact, I insist.”
Tripp cleared his throat with a grunting sort of cough. “That’s fear, man. Not arousal.”
Vuong nodded thoughtfully, his eyes waking from the dead. “Our bodies are so complicated, yes? Yours, for example, is as tight as a winched cable unloading cargo from a ship. While mine is...what do you think, Miss Brighton?”
“About what?” she asked softly, her voice steadier than Tripp would have thought.
But that was probably because he was back on the strange idea of a cable unloading a cargo ship. A background piece he filed away.
“About my body language. What emotion am I broadcasting?”
When Glory raised a brow uncertainly, he nodded once. Whatever the intent of the other man’s question, Tripp wanted to see Vuong’s reaction to Glory’s response.
“Uh, I think you might be a bit nervous or upset since things haven’t gone the way you were expecting.”
Vuong silently considered her words before stepping close enough to drag the gun barrel along the waistband of her skirt. She gasped, trembled. Tripp seethed, steam bellowing from his nostrils, but he stayed where he was.
He needed to get to the knife he’d left with the security equipment after cutting into the coaxial cable. To do that, he needed the bastard out of the room.
But launching himself forward and driving his shoulder into Vuong’s gut wasn’t the way to get it done.
“She is right, you know, Mr. Shaughnessey.” Vuong had obviously sensed Tripp’s barely controlled fury since he swung the gun toward him in warning. “At least about me being upset. But then, who wouldn’t be after having a plan foiled by an unforeseen circumstance.”
“What circumstance?” Glory whispered.
Vuong glanced back at her face before dropping his gaze the length of her body and nuzzling the gun along the zippered fly of her skirt.
“One of your customers. An off-duty police officer managed to dial 9-1-1 on his cell phone and leave the connection open as we were seeing to his safety. Had he simply left well enough alone, we would’ve been long on our way.”
Glory nodded. Tripp waited. Vuong pressed his body into Glory’s side and slipped his gun hand beneath her skirt.
“I hate John Waynes,” he said as tears rolled silently down her cheeks.
Tripp’s gut knotted with the furious boiling of his blood.
He twisted his wrists this way and that, shifted a step to the side and fingered the shelving, looking for an edge or protruding bolt sharp enough to saw through his bonds.
“I came to this country when I was ten years old,” Vuong was saying. “I naively thought cowboys still roamed the land and rescued innocent victims. I expected justice. But the world is not about justice, is it Miss Brighton?”
Glory looked at Tripp for help, her expression transmitting everything she felt. That if she said anything wrong, the gun beneath her skirt would explode.
He hadn’t been spoken to, so not speaking seemed the wisest move. It also seemed like a cowardly one, when everything inside him screamed that he should roar like a lion and deal with the fallout that came.
And so he mouthed the only thing he thought might help. The only words that he knew she’d be able to read from his lips: I love you.
The shaky smile at the corner of her mouth bloomed in her eyes. He doubted she believed him, but at least he’d given her hope.
“Justice, Miss Brighton?”
“It should be,” she said tentatively. “But, you’re right. Too often it’s not.”
Vuong moved around behind her then and her sigh of relief filled Tripp’s lungs. He wasn’t even aware he’d forgotten to breathe.
“You’re wrong, Miss Brighton. The world is as it should be. It’s all about loyalty. Loyalty and suffering.”
Glory shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Tripp didn’t understand either. That didn’t stop him from tuning in with his antennae zinging. Or from slowly continuing to rub the zip tie along the edge of the shelving unit that had already drawn his wrist’s blood.
“Your customer was loyal to his profession. I admire that. But because of that, he will suffer. I, too, must be loyal to my employer.” He stood behind her now and wrapped his arm around her waist.
The arm with the hand still holding the gun. “Even if my loyalty causes suffering as well.”
And then he slipped his free hand beneath Glory’s skirt and reached between her legs.
Glory froze. She wanted to bolt, to scream, to spin around and knock the shit out of the man at her back. But he held her too tightly, he had a gun, and Tripp had to
ld her he loved her.
So she froze.
Tripp didn’t really love her. What he was doing was keeping her spirits up. Distracting her from the fact that the gangster holding her shop under siege was now feeling up her ass.
Violation was a term she’d never thought of in personal terms. It was more about library fines, ignoring an expiration date when the milk still tasted good. It was about crossing the street on red. About pulling tags off of mattresses.
Now she understood the difference. And she wanted to curl into a fetal position and die.
Only the look on Tripp’s face kept her upright. A look that told her this other man’s touch wasn’t about sex but about control, about power. A brow daring her to defy his certainty that she could handle anything. A set of jaws that ordered her to hold on, to be strong.
She lifted her chin. He nodded his approval. And then she did the unthinkable. She issued her own challenge to the man at her back by spreading her legs.
He released her almost immediately, walked around her as if considering whether to shoot her or slap her down. Before he could do either, the police bullhorn sounded. The shop’s phone began to ring. A second later, one of his men called out.
A break in the impasse. She wanted to weep with joy.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Miss Brighton. It seems I have business to take care of.”
Glory didn’t even nod. She simply closed her eyes while he secured her hands behind her as Tripp’s were secured. When Danh walked out of the storeroom, he even had the courtesy to close the door.
It wasn’t like they could keep him from coming back, considering he’d shot the lock off.
Silence descended. She’d never before realized how nearly soundproof this room really was. All she could hear was her heart beating out you’re alive, you’re alive.
She opened her eyes then and met Tripp’s bright gaze, starting forward, wanting to throw her arms around him more than she wanted to breathe.
But all she could do was lean into his body as he leaned into the wall, tuck her face into the cradle of his shoulder, and swear to get her hands on him at the earliest possibility.
“What the hell is happening? Oh, God, I thought I was going to be sick.” Even now she feared hyperventilation. “Who is this freak?”
Tripp nuzzled his chin to the top of her head. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. He’s a pro, whoever he is.”
“This is insane. What could he possibly be looking for here?” She listened to the slight scratch of his midday beard against her hair, to the drumbeat of his heart beneath her cheek.
“I don’t think it’s about the shop. I think it’s about him wanting something someone out there has.”
“One of the customers? The cop?” Who had she seen after she’d rang up Wes’s order and before she’d come in here to count olives?
The two secretaries from the investment firm on the next block who took a late lunch every day. The professor writing his memoir who always sat near the front window. The off-duty cop she didn’t know. The driver for the Post who usually came in on Thursdays.
Tripp shook his head. “No. Not the cop.”
And how would he know...? She stepped back far enough to look him straight in the eye. “You know who it is, don’t you?”
When he didn’t respond either to confirm or deny, she pressed harder. “You know who it is the same way you knew someone would see the SOS you tapped out on that cable.”
Again with the blankly uncommitted look.
“Dammit, Shaughnessey. You’d better start talking and now.”
“You’re safer not knowing.”
“Safer?” Was he crazy? “Are you out of your mind? I’ve had a gun to my head, to my chest, and up my skirt. You call that safer?”
“Safer than being dead.”
“Who’s to say that’s not next on our Mr. Vuong’s agenda?”
Tripp’s silence was answer enough.
“Please, Tripp. If I’m going to die, I’d like to know the reason.”
“I’ll feel better about telling you once my hands are free.”
A weird response. At least it wasn’t a no—though once she wiggled her wrists against her own bonds she realized it might as well have been. “Is there a trick to getting out of these things?”
“Yeah.” He nodded toward the storage cabinet. “My knife. If I get it down, you think you can cut through this plastic without slicing off my hands?”
“As long as you return the favor.”
He grinned at that, buzzed her cheek with a kiss as he headed for the storage cabinet, visually measuring the distance to the shelf where he’d left his knife and coming up short.
Or at least short for a man who wasn’t a double-jointed circus act. He only needed another foot at the most...
“Here,” she said, toeing a gallon can of jalapeño peppers off the bottom of the nearest shelf and sliding it across the concrete floor.
Tripp stepped up, stretched up...“Shit. I need another six inches.”
“I wouldn’t be saying that to just any girl if I were you.”
He glared down at her. “Making funnies in the face of death, are we?”
A shiver turned her spine to jelly. “Do you think we’re going to die?”
“No, Glory. We’re going to live to tell our grandkids about this.” He hopped down, glanced around the storeroom.
“Here. Let me try.” She was shorter than he was but knew from watching his attempt that she had a more flexible range of motion.
Unfortunately, she would need five-foot arms to reach. She hopped back down. “Crud. Wait. Shove that crate over.”
The plastic box in the room’s far back corner held napkins and sandwich bags imprinted with her old logo. Tripp shoved and kicked it into place and climbed up.
The extra height was enough. He grabbed around, his hand smacking the shelf, the wiring, the TV screen, and finally the knife.
He jumped down, scooted the crate back into place while she closed the cabinet doors. He then ordered her to, “Back up. I’ll cut you free first.”
She did, reaching for his fingers that were warm and reassuring and then suddenly not there. She looked back over her shoulder. Then turned all the way around. “Tripp?”
He was mentally in another time zone, standing there shaking his head. “I’m not so sure.”
What! She literally stomped her foot. “Dammit, Shaughnessey. What’re you waiting for?”
“For a time when we need the upper hand.”
“We need it now!” she wailed.
He shook his head. He’d turned into this robotic machine.
Thinking, not feeling. “We’ll need it later more than we need it now.”
“Later? I don’t want to be here later. I want to get out of here now.”
The only sound she heard in response was the click as he closed up the knife.
“Tripp,” she whined, begged, entreated. “Don’t do this to me, please?”
But he ignored her and her pleas, his gaze canvassing the room at hip level as he searched for a place to stash the knife. An easily accessible place for the “later” when he expected to need it.
That place turned out to be an open box of Advil packets she provided for her employees. The lip of the box slanted at enough of an angle to hide the contents. The knife disappeared beneath the plastic squares of white and peacock blue.
Now it was her turn to snag his attention. She approached until she stood full in his face, then approached farther, backing him into the wall as she spoke. “If you don’t tell me who the hell you are and what the hell is going on, I’ll use that knife on you myself.”
A grin spread over his mouth, easing the tense lines into which he’d set his jaw. But the tendons in his neck did not relax. And his eyes remained strangely distant.
“You promised,” she goaded when still he didn’t speak.
“I’m not so sure I promised,” he hedged.
“You told me you’d tell me
what you thought was going on here. So I wouldn’t go to my grave wondering.”
“I should’ve let you cut me free.”
“Change of heart?”
“Yeah.” He sighed heavily. “I’d really like to hold you.”
“Oh, Tripp.” The sting of tears threatened to blind her. She pressed herself to him; he was the one solid thing in the room that gave her hope.
“I’m not going to let you go to your grave, Glory.” He paused, she waited, the punch line came. “Not till I’ve gotten mine.”
She shook her head. His chest beneath her cheek vibrated with his chuckle when she stuck out her tongue. “Blackmail works both ways, you know.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Besides, I was lying. I’m not going to let you die whether I get in your pants again or not. I’m not going to let anything happen to either of us.”
The segue was perfect. “You sound pretty confident there for an engineering project consultant.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing. Besides the military background, I have a lot of other, uh, outside training.”
Her ears perked up, as did her intuition, which told her this armed forces thing was something Tripp rarely talked about. That he hesitated telling her even now—and wouldn’t have if not for this anomalous situation in which they found themselves.
“What sort of training?” she prodded when it became obvious he thought he was done. As if she was going to let him off that easily.
“You think we can sit?” he asked, distracting her again.
“Saving your strength along with the knife?”
“Something like that,” he answered and slid down the wall to sit, knees bent and spread.
She settled between, leaning her shoulder into his chest and giving herself the visual advantage of being able to look into his eyes.
She wanted to make sure he didn’t try to pull anything over on her. Like some big fat lie of a story to make her feel better, hoping she’d forget that in the next moment they both might die.
