by Davis, Jo
Jesus, he was chilled. Not good. He needed to get to an emergency room, which wasn’t happening in the foreseeable future.
Maybe not until it was too late.
He blocked thoughts of bleeding to death internally and redoubled his efforts. Patterns and combinations. Nothing to it, just like a mouse running through a maze to get to the cheese.
Another level. Lionel swore again, impressed.
You think that was cool, fuckhead? Wait for it.
So close. He had to concentrate not to pass out. What he’d give to lie down on the floor and sleep forever. His fingers flew, the numbers flashing across the screen in a blur.
And then he was in. For a few seconds he sat staring at the screen, almost unable to comprehend.
“Sonofabitch,” Lionel breathed. “You did it.”
Cori pushed to her feet, laid a hand on Zack’s left shoulder, the chain attached to her wrist jingling.
“Yeah,” Zack replied, wiping sweat from his eyes. His hands shook. “I need your account number and password.”
The man slid a scrap of paper onto the desk next to his right arm. Here we go.
Pretending to read the information Lionel provided, he began to type in a series of letters and numbers. Fast. One line, then the other. Praying as he’d never done before that the bastard didn’t note the discrepancy.
His fingers hovered over the Enter key.
A king’s ransom, one keystroke from cyber oblivion.
He depressed the key, and sat back in the chair. Transaction Complete.
Lionel whooped, shooting from his seat. Danced around the living room, spiked an imaginary football.
Zack stared at the screen, exhausted. Cori squeezed his shoulder, lending her support even if she wasn’t quite sure what he’d done or how they’d get out of this alive.
Zack’s lips curved into a wicked smile. “Hide-and-seek,” he rasped, breath rattling in his chest.
“Oh, my God,” Cori said, stunned.
Lionel’s victory dance came to an abrupt halt. “What’d you say?” Spinning, he grabbed the knife and stalked to Zack, hauled him out of the chair by his arm.
Fine by him. He’d just as soon be standing for what came next. “Hide-and-seek, the extreme version. I just hid fifty million dollars somewhere in cyberspace, and I’m the only one who knows where.” He laughed at the man’s poleaxed expression, coughed up more blood. Zack almost felt sorry for the poor fuck.
Almost.
He couldn’t resist the coup de grâce. “If you live to be a hundred, you’ll never find the money. Never fuck with a geek, asshole.”
A roar of rage erupted from Lionel and he launched himself at Zack, swinging the knife. Out for blood.
“Look out!” Cori yelled.
Zack grabbed his arm, but the other man had the advantage and they bounced off the desk, crashed to the floor. They rolled, each delivering kicks and punches, each struggling to gain control of the knife. A glint of metal shone on the floor nearby, and he realized his nemesis had lost the gun. Probably fell from the waistband of his pants.
The weapon wouldn’t do Zack any good lying several feet away. He had to wrest the knife from Lionel.
The front door splintered, louder than a shotgun blast, banging against the inside wall. Rolling with Lionel, punching the man in the gut with his free hand, he glanced up to see three dark-haired men rush into the house, guns drawn.
Cori’s brothers.
And then she was screaming because, God help them, the third brother had the one in the lead dead in his sights. Preparing to gun down his own brother.
“Joaquin, behind you! Rafael, noo!” Cori clasped her hands over her ears.
Joaquin spun as Rafael’s bullet took him in the shoulder. He went down shooting, his handsome face a grimace of anguish.
Christ! Zack’s attention strayed to Cori’s wide, beautiful eyes. Her grief was a mirror of Joaquin’s as she twisted in her cuff, desperate to be free.
It was the split second of distraction that cost Zack.
Lionel wrenched his wrist from Zack’s hold and plunged the blade between his ribs. “That’s right. Die,” he gloated. “Go to hell thinking about your bitch’s legs open for me.”
Pain washed over him. Tired. Oh, God.
Then he saw Cori straining to get to him, fighting off her remaining brother, even though he was trying to unlock her cuff. Tears streamed down her face.
She’d endured too much. Lost too much.
Exhaustion was swept aside in a red haze of rage. Strength born of vengeance flooded every cell in his body. Lionel drew back his arm to deliver another strike with the knife.
The sonofabitch never got the chance. Heaving with his lower body, Zack flipped and rolled them both. Caught Lionel’s wrist and slammed it to the floor until he heard bone crack. The man howled and the knife fell useless to the floor.
Zack knocked it aside and something inside him snapped. Broke, like a dry twig. Poison flooded his soul and he poured all his hatred into his fists.
Done. He was done being the fucking whipping boy. The victim. Nobody would mess with him or his woman again. Ever.
He was a machine. The satisfying crunch of bone met his fist. Over and over. He existed to deliver justice for every wrong he’d suffered. For every time he’d had to scrape himself off the floor. For every person a dirtbag like this one had beaten down.
“You thought you’d take Cori’s money?”
No more.
“Zack!”
“Her life?” he shouted.
Never again.
“Honey, no!”
Die, motherfucker.
Hands caught his arm, pulled him backward. Totally consumed, he lunged for the fallen man.
“Zack, stop! You’re killing him! You’re killing him!” Arms wrapped around him, and her sweet voice reached him through the rage. “If you kill this man, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Don’t do this. You’re not like him.”
Not like him.
Zack blinked. Looked around him. Joaquin was on his cell phone, barking into it for help, one hand pressed to the wound at his shoulder. Rafael lay nearby, unmoving. Dead? The third brother crouched next to Lionel, mouth in a grim line.
“Honey, it’s going to be okay,” Cori soothed, holding him close, stroking his hair. “You’re going to be okay.”
Would he?
Dazed, he finally turned his stare to Lionel, who lay unmoving in front of him. The man’s face was unrecognizable. A mask of blood and gore.
Zack lifted his shaking hands, held them up. They were covered in blood—and it wasn’t all his own. “My God . . . what have I done? Cori?”
“Shh, it’s okay.”
You’re not like him.
But he was. He’d killed a man.
And nothing would be okay. Ever.
A buzzing sensation filled his head. Adrenaline and madness spent, he was hollow. Just a shell of nothing.
He felt himself toppling over. Cori eased him to the floor, on his back. He tried to focus on her face, but couldn’t. Three forms hovered over him. They became a blur as his vision went white, then gray.
“He’s in bad shape, Joaquin,” the third brother said. “How long for the paramedics?”
“At least thirty minutes. They can’t get a chopper in here. Fuck.”
Christ, he didn’t have half an hour.
Cori took his cold hand, held it to her cheek. “Talk to me, handsome. Stay with me.”
“I love . . . you.”
But he no longer had the right. He’d lost everything that mattered when he’d become the type of man he hated.
A black veil covered his eyes, Cori’s musical voice receding down a long, dark tunnel.
Until it disappeared altogether.
Blood. Everywhere.
All over Zack, saturating his jeans and torn shirt.
Her brother Manny handed her a thick towel. Peeling aside the flap of Zack’s torn shirt, she pressed the tow
el hard into the knife wound on his side. For all the good it did. They were too far out of town, help too many minutes away.
“Stay with me,” she repeated. “I can’t lose you now. Not after all we’ve been through.”
“You won’t, Sis.” Joaquin squeezed her shoulder. “We’re going to drive Knight out of here, meet the paramedics at the highway. Save some time.”
“You’re hurt, too.” She sniffed. The tears kept coming.
“I’ll keep.”
“What about—about . . . ?”
His voice hardened to ice. “Rafael’s dead, the traitorous snake. I should’ve known something was up with our dear half brother. His accomplice is hanging on, barely. With any luck, he’ll follow his partner to hell.”
Cori shook her head, unable to take her eyes off Zack’s white face. “Lionel can’t die. Zack will never forgive himself.”
She’d never forget the look on Zack’s face when he gazed at Lionel’s unconscious body, realized what he’d done. The light in his blue eyes was extinguished, her kind, gentle lover replaced by a stranger.
“Then he won’t die.” That was Joaquin. All the world black-and-white. Never any gray, no give-and-take. No mercy.
Well, he’d see the shades of gray soon enough.
“You and I will talk,” she promised, tone as uncompromising as his. “Or rather, I’ll talk and you’ll listen.”
Expression unyielding, he nodded. With Manny’s help, he carefully lifted Zack and carried him out to the Mer cedes they’d probably rented at the airport. Laid him in the backseat.
“Manny, stay here and deal with the sheriff’s department,” he said to his younger brother. “I’ll call when we get to the hospital.”
“Tell them to call Detective Bernie with the Sugarland PD. He can fill them in,” Cori added.
Concern clouded his face. “No worries. Dealing with cops is what I do best.” He glanced at Zack bleeding all over the leather seat. “Better hurry.”
Cori held out her hand for the keys. “I’ll drive. We won’t get there if you pass out at the wheel.”
They met the county ambulance about a mile out on the highway, cutting precious minutes off the drive to Sugarland. The trip would still take too damned long, but there was no help for it. The nearest clinic out here wasn’t equipped for major trauma, the paramedics said.
The worst part was having to watch them speed away with Zack, and not knowing what would happen. If he—
No. He had to survive. He would.
If he didn’t, she’d want to die, too. But she’d have to go on, somehow. She’d have no choice.
He’d left her with one very good reason to live.
Cori was curled up in a corner of the ER’s waiting room when Joaquin emerged from inside, his release papers in hand. He hadn’t wanted her inside with him, stubborn, arrogant jerk. Bandages were visible under his loosely buttoned white dress shirt, his suit jacket draped over the injured shoulder without his arm in the sleeve. She’d known they wouldn’t be able to keep him overnight. What the great Joaquin Delacruz wanted, he got.
Well, not always.
He might have gotten himself shot playing the hero, but that act alone in no way made up for his ruining Zack.
The man she loved, who was fighting for his life.
The father of their child.
Joaquin came to stand before her, proud and arrogant as ever, though a hint of sorrow shone in his dark eyes before he masked the emotion. “You’re going to make me grovel, aren’t you?”
“Not to me. Zack is the one you’ll apologize to, if he’ll listen.” If he can.
“The debt was legal, Corrine. Darius Knight owed me three quarters of a million dollars. If I let everyone who owes me slide—”
“I don’t care,” she said coldly. “Threats are beneath you, brother mine, no matter how veiled. And especially when you insinuate you’ll hurt a helpless old man in a nursing home who’s little more than an infant. That makes you a monster, same as Rafael and Lionel. Same as Alex.”
Unconsciously, he rubbed a hand over his heart. He stared at her a long moment. “What do you want me to do?”
“Make this right with Zack. Wipe out the debt, and restore his finances. Or we’re done. You’ll never hold your niece or nephew in your arms, and that would be a shame.”
Not exactly the joyous announcement she’d envisioned.
“I’ll be damned.” This time, the flicker of pain was real, and he didn’t bother to hide it. “You remind me of Mother more and more every day,” he said softly. “You’ve grown a backbone of steel, Corrine Shannon Delacruz.”
“I learned from the best.”
Admiration shone in his eyes. “Consider it done.”
“I never thought otherwise.”
Heaving a tired sigh, he lowered himself to the seat beside her. “Any news about Knight?”
“He’s in surgery. Two broken ribs, some internal bleeding. He’s lost a lot of blood.” Her voice broke on the last.
Never one to stand for tears, Joaquin draped his good arm around her in an awkward attempt at comforting his sister. “He’ll be fine. Only a weak or stupid man would leave behind a woman such as you.”
In spite of herself, she gave a watery laugh. “Always black-and-white.”
“Does he know the truth about Alex?”
“No, but I guess he’ll have to now, won’t he?” she whispered.
“Not if you don’t want him to. Though knowing might help him to deal with what’s happened,” he said, surprising her with a rare moment of concern for someone outside the family.
She nodded, moving the subject along. She didn’t want to talk about the night of Alex’s death. “So, Rafael contacted Lionel and they schemed together.”
“I’m sorry, love. I never dreamed he’d turn against family.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” She knew he’d never believe that. Joaquin was as tough on himself as he was on everyone in his midst.
“Does Knight know about the baby?” he asked suddenly.
“No. I was going to tell him this morning. He had a surprise to show me, something he’s been working on, and I was going to tell him. . . .”
Her throat constricted to the size of a pinhole. Burned and ached. She refused to cry anymore because Zack would live.
Hours crept by. Detective Bernie came, peppered her and her brother with questions. After imparting the news that Lionel Gunter would survive to stand trial, he left.
Just before noon, Dr. Chu appeared, looking tired, but pleased. “Cori, Zack is stable. He gave us quite a scare, but he’s going to be all right.”
She buried her face in her hands. Drew a shuddering breath and raised her gaze to Chu’s. “Thank God. When can I see him?”
“Won’t be long. He’s being settled into ICU. Someone will come to get you.”
Unable to put it off any longer, she located Eve’s number in a phone book she borrowed from the receptionist and called her from a hospital courtesy phone. Despite her assurances, Zack’s best friend was beside herself with worry. Eve promised to call the others, and after thanking her, Cori hung up.
Manny finally showed, and how he got to the hospital, Cori was too frazzled to ask. She was merely grateful for her brothers’ presence, even Joaquin’s, their hard-ass attitudes welcome comfort to her battered soul.
A nurse arrived and offered to take her to Zack. She leapt to her feet, anxious to see for herself that he’d survive. At the door to his cubicle, the nurse gave her an encouraging smile and disappeared.
Cori tiptoed in, unsure why she was being quiet. He was lying like a wax figure, face pale, lashes fanned against his cheeks. God, he looked dead.
She pulled up a chair and parked by his side, curling her fingers around his. “I’m here,” she said, hoping he heard her on some level. “I’m not going anywhere. Just rest, okay? I love you.”
He didn’t move, not so much as a flicker behind his lids. But she was a patient woman. He’d be all
right.
Their lives would soon be normal. Their own, free of trouble. They’d be happy.
As soon as he was better.
Cori strode to the ICU, eager to see Zack. A call at home from Dr. Chu early this morning gave her the wonderful news she’d been waiting for: Zack was awake. He’d had a restful night, dosed on drugs as he was, and now he was sitting up a bit.
Damn, she’d wanted to be there when he awoke, but she’d had to go home. Get a few hours’ sleep, shower, and change clothes. Manny had flown home in the private jet last night to hold the fort in Atlantic City while Joaquin stayed on, using the guest bedroom Zack had abandoned shortly after arrival. He planned to honor her wishes and talk to Zack, today if possible.
Approaching his cube in ICU, she felt guilty relief that his team was on shift today. She’d quickly come to adore them, but being around them en masse when they were out of their minds with terror was draining. Dealing with her own fear had been taxing enough.
Fixing a cheerful smile on her face, she gave a light knock, then walked inside. “Hey, handsome. You know, if you keep coming back, the hospital might have to assign you a mailbox. I was telling Dr. Chu . . .”
Cautiously, she approached his bed. His face was turned away from her and he was staring at the wall. His blank, hollow expression frightened her as much as his bleeding half to death on the way here.
“Are you okay?” he asked, voice barely audible.
Sitting next to him, she squeezed his hand. “I’m just fine. And so are you, honey. We made it. We’re both okay.”
“Are we?”
Two simple words. They sent a chill down her spine, and her heart kicked painfully in her chest. “Of course we are. Rafael is dead,” she said quietly. “He was conspiring with Lionel, who’s going to recover. He’s in police custody and he’ll go to prison as soon as he’s released.”
Zack closed his eyes. “No thanks to me.”
Oh, God. This was what she’d been afraid of. “Honey, you can’t blame yourself. Anybody would’ve reacted—”
“Don’t. Please.”
Silence. A hard, tight nugget formed in her chest.
“Don’t shut me out, Zack. We can work through this.”
