by Debra Webb
"Is he with you?"
Him. The man. She recognized him instantly.
"Yes."
"Good."
His response caused a hitch in the breath she finally released.
"What am I supposed to do?" Sound eager. Was that eager enough? God, she didn't know.
"Is he listening?"
She nodded then caught herself. "Yes. He's right here."
The sinister rasp of a ruthless chuckle vibrated across the line. "Excellent. Tell him to take you to Lincoln Park at dawn. I'll be waiting."
"What about my aunt?" Please, please, let my aunt be safe, she prayed.
"I'll release her as soon as Cole Danes is dead."
Angel squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. She wanted to cry…wanted to demand that this bastard let her aunt go. None of this was Mildred's fault. She had caused all of this. She was the guilty one.
"Take me," she murmured. "You can have me instead. Please. Just let her go. And stay away from my daughter."
"Oh, but I need you right where you are, Angel," he cajoled hatefully. "You see, I want Cole Danes dead and you're going to help me make that happen."
She started to shake with something besides fear and anticipation. Rage blazed through her. "There's nothing I can do! Don't you see that?"
"The only thing I need to see is you and Danes at dawn."
He disconnected.
She wanted to scream.
Danes took the phone from her hand and turned it off.
"What're you doing?" She vaulted off the bed to put herself on more even ground with him. "He might try to call back." Was he out of his mind? She needed that connection!
"He won't. He's given you your instructions."
"Leave it on just in case." Why risk it? She reached for her phone but he held it away.
"That call established a link," he told her. "If we leave on the phone he can track our location."
Defeat sagged at her shoulders. "Why would he do that? He wants us to meet him at Lincoln Park at dawn. Why bother setting up a location if he planned to come after us now?"
"Insurance," he insisted calmly, too damn calmly.
"He would prefer to track our movements. That's why we're going to stay one step ahead of him."
She sliced her arms through the air, sick of his persistent calm. "This is crazy. The two of you are playing games and my aunt is in danger." An epiphany flashed in her brain, the possibility so disarming she trembled at the idea. "Do you know more than you're telling me?"
"Give me the rest of what he said and then get some sleep otherwise you'll be useless come dawn."
She grabbed his arm in an attempt to make him understand that she needed to know. The hard muscle beneath her fingers brutally drove home the point she did not want to face. How was she supposed to contend with this kind of strength and determination? But she had to try.
"What is it you're not telling me? You know something." She was operating in the dark here. Didn't he know that? If he had more information, he needed to share it with her. Surely he wouldn't stand back and risk her aunt's life…surely he didn't know the worst already…. Had he said something to that effect?
"What else did he say to you?"
She let go of him and pressed her fingertips to her temples. She felt confused…afraid. She didn't know what to do. The gun had been her only means of fighting back. She had nothing. She looked straight at Cole Danes. Only this man. A man void of emotion. Defeat settled heavily onto her shoulders.
"Start at the beginning."
Well, he was her only chance. She had no choice but to work with him.
"He wanted to know if you were here," she told him wearily. "I said yes. Then he wanted to know if you were listening. I said yes again. He wants you to take me to Lincoln Park at dawn."
"What did he tell you about Mildred Parker? What was his response to your offer of trading yourself for your aunt?"
She glared up at him. "He wouldn't tell me any thing. Said he needed me here, that I was going to help him kill you and that my aunt wouldn't be re leased until you were dead." She flung the words at him like missiles intended to wound, but his emotions were impenetrable.
Danes inclined his head. "Interesting."
His reaction made her more certain than ever. "There's something more going on here. What is it you're not telling me?"
A new kind of tension thickened between them, the silence wholly unnerving, his unwavering gaze adding yet another layer of relentless strain.
"I know these men," he confessed though clearly he didn't want to tell her anything. "They're the final two members of the death squad Errol Leberman and Howard Stephens created. Both will die before this is over. If you get in my way, you'll die, too."
5:15 a.m.
29 hours remaining
COLE WATCHED the woman sleep. She'd tossed and turned for most of the night, but she'd finally surrendered to her body's need to shut down at 2:00 a.m.
He'd taken a few minutes of rest here and there, never indulging in more than that at any one time.
Dawn would arrive within the hour. It was time to wake her. Yet he hesitated. Preferred not to bother her, she slept so peacefully now. Even in the uncharitable glow of the cheap bedside lamp, she looked agonizingly young. And innocent, he admitted. Leberman and Stephens had used her. She'd been afraid and had acted accordingly.
But her innocence or guilt were of no consequence. His mission could not be accomplished with out her and for that reason it was necessary to keep her unbalanced, fearful. She was determined, he had to give her that. Her aunt's safety, as well as that of her child, appeared to be primary. Another unforeseen turn. He'd expected the child to hold precedence but not the aunt. Whether Angel fully realized it or not, her aunt's survival of this ordeal was not likely. Yet she would not give up on finding her un harmed. He had not anticipated that level of selflessness in one so young and seemingly focused on her own life.
Cole dismissed the surge of respect he experienced on the heels of those deductions. However selfless Angel Parker might be, she had brought this war down on herself. He had to bear that in mind. She was not completely innocent.
He refused to acknowledge the other nagging instinct. Something he hadn't felt for a very long time—ten years actually. A foolish part of him wanted to protect her from further damage. He stood, shook it off.
Hadn't he learned long ago that those with whom he dealt rarely deserved such a costly commodity?
The urge to protect, like compassion, served only one purpose: to make you weak. To steal crucial attention and energy.
He never made mistakes. He would not make one now.
Time to go. No more dwelling on a subject best left alone.
He moved to the bed where she lay and shook her, none too gently. "Wake up. It's time to go."
She sat up instantly, her heavy, long-lashed lids fluttering open. Her breath caught when memory identified him and reminded her of time and place.
She climbed out of bed without responding. Her hair was tousled, her clothes rumpled, but she didn't appear to care. She went directly to the bathroom and closed the door. Two minutes later she exited, her hair finger combed and her clothes straightened some what. "I'm ready."
One look in her eyes told the truth of the matter. She wasn't ready, but she would do what she had to in an effort to help her aunt. To rid their lives of this curse once and for all.
He sent a pointed look at her bare feet.
"Oh." Her cheeks flushed. "I forgot." She quickly tugged on her sneakers without bothering to untie them.
"The jacket, too." He indicated the jacket lying on the end of the bed.
Angel shouldered into her well-worn denim jacket and let go a grave breath. Now or never.
"Get your purse," Danes said. "We won't becoming back here." He picked up her overnight bag and slung it over one broad shoulder.
She nodded and snagged her purse. "Can I turn on my cell p
hone now?"
"No."
She muttered an unflattering adjective under her breath.
He walked out the door ahead of her, surveyed the parking lot then motioned for her to follow. For a man who seemed to care about no one she couldn't help wondering why he bothered. Maybe he wasn't quite so ruthless as he wanted her to believe.
Streaks of gold-and-purple light had started to cut through the night, lending an ominous ambience to the cold, wet morning. She shivered as the frigid air penetrated her thin jacket.
Pull it together. Stay alert, she ordered. Wet from the rain that had fallen sometime during the night while she slept like the dead, the pavement looked inky black. A perfect morning for this sort of excursion, she supposed. Cold and ugly. Threatening.
Glass shattered next to her.
It took several seconds for Angel to realize the car window on her right, less than two feet back had burst as she passed it.
Suddenly she slammed downward…onto the damp pavement. The impact knocked the air out of her lungs.
Danes was on top of her, firing his weapon rap idly, the sounds exploding in the air, deafening her.
"Get under the car."
She tried to comprehend his barked order but somehow she couldn't.
He shoved her toward the vehicle on her left. "Get under there now!"
She scooted on her belly. Didn't stop until she'd reached the middle. Her breath came in ragged spurts. The smell of oil and gasoline caused her to gag.
The loud thunder of Danes's gun echoed, the explosions followed by odd pings and more shattering glass. She saw a clip hit the ground near where he crouched. It looked much like the ones she'd purchased with her gun…only bigger.
Why was he shooting?
Her mind suddenly wrapped around the other strange sounds and the broken glass.
Silencers. Whoever was shooting at them had sound suppressors on their weapons.
Who would be shooting at them?
One step ahead. Danes had said they were one step ahead. He didn't want them to know this location. He'd been wrong. Who else could this be? They had to know. It had to be them.
Tires squealed.
Three, four, five more shots from Danes's weapon.
Silence.
She forced her thoughts to slow. Tried to gulp in a deep breath to steady her respiration.
Silence.
She could see Danes's leather shoes where he still crouched. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment just to be sure the shadow of the image wasn't some how burned on her retinas.
She looked again.
He was gone.
She jolted into action, sliding quickly from under the car. Sirens wailed in the distance. Faces peered from between the narrow gaps in drapes. No one moved between the parked vehicles. Broken glass. A car alarm throbbing.
Where was Danes?
She saw the man on the ground and was moving in that direction before the identity of the other man bent over him registered.
"Don't you die on me just yet, you son of a bitch," Danes snarled. He'd torn the man's shirt open. Blood seeped between his fingers where he attempted to stanch the flow from midtorso.
"We need an ambulance," Angel shouted back at the faces in the windows. Her purse…cell phone. The sirens. Someone had already called. She dropped to her knees on the other side of the man and checked his respiration and heart rate. Still breathing. Pulse thready. Damn.
"Tell me what I want to know," Danes growled.
The man tried to talk, his words too choked to understand.
"Don't try to talk," Angel told him before shooting Danes a glare. She surveyed the man again. "The ambulance is here," she told the man on the ground. "Hang on." Thank God someone had asked for an ambulance as well as the police. She could only assume that the call was made as soon as shots were fired for this kind of rapid response. The man's pulse rate was dropping.
Angel tried to assess the damage based on what she saw. She only knew that it was critical. Massive hemorrhaging. She couldn't do any more than Danes was already doing for that. Had the bullet exited? Turning him over was too risky.
Suddenly an EMT appeared next to her. She stood and immediately stepped back. This was EMT territory. They had the equipment. The second EMT moved into place next to Danes and initiated the IV while the other assessed the now unconscious patient's condition. She tried not to think about the fact that this man, though not the one who had shown up at her house yesterday, was likely involved in her aunt's kidnapping.
"I need this man alive," Danes said sharply.
The EMTs ignored the comment, conversed quickly about the man's worsening condition, but Angel didn't really absorb their words; she couldn't get past what Danes had said. This couldn't be good. Where was the other man? Why had they shown up here? In her peripheral vision she caught a glimpse of two or three police officers headed their way.
"We have to get him to the hospital," the EMT said. "He needs surgery. Now." The last he directed at Danes.
"Ma'am, can you tell me what happened here?"
The officer's voice tugged her attention from the scene on the ground. "I'm really not sure," she said hesitantly. "We came out of our room and this man—" she gestured to the ground but the EMTs had al ready loaded the patient onto a gurney and had headed to the waiting ambulance "—he…he started shooting at us." Sometime during the hail of bullets sunrise had lightened the sky. It seemed impossible that only moments ago she'd been hiding in the dark beneath that car.
The officer asked something else but Danes's climbing into the ambulance behind the two EMTs distracted her. "I'll be happy to answer your questions," she assured the officer. "Just let me check on…" She gestured to the ambulance.
"Of course, ma'am." Apparently he assumed she meant Danes. "But I'll need a statement from both you and your husband."
Maybe in some remote part of her brain she did need to check on Danes. Had he been injured? She smiled faintly as the officer let her pass. She hurried toward the ambulance.
He thought she and Danes were a couple. The idea almost made her laugh. If her heart hadn't been beating so fast and her stomach hadn't been twisted around her esophagus she might have done just that.
She slowed at the rear doors of the vehicle, stunned somewhat that they hadn't rushed away be fore now. Was the man dead already? Was Danes hurt?
"Here are my credentials." Using one bloody hand Danes thrust the leather case he'd shown her last night in the man's face. He turned to the other EMT. "Now wake him up."
"Look man," the EMT with the credentials said. "I don't know anything about—"
"Who the hell is this guy?" the other one demanded of his partner, clearly not happy with Danes's orders.
His partner shrugged. "NSA."
"You know as well as I do that this man will not make it to the hospital," Danes said quietly, the intensity in the softer tone wholly unnerving. "He's dying. Now wake him up so I can question him."
The first EMT shoved the credentials case at Danes and looked at his partner. "We could try to bring him around with some epinephrine."
"Are you crazy?" his partner demanded. "We gotta roll with this guy."
Danes braced his hands on his hips, pushing the lapels of his jacket out of the way just far enough to display his shoulder holster and gun. "I don't care what you have to do. But do it here and now. Wake him up."
Angel wanted to back away, didn't want to see this, but morbid fascination paralyzed her. She couldn't move…she could only watch as the eppie was ad ministered, giving the man's heart rate and blood pressure a jolt to draw him back to consciousness.
Whatever his sins he was about to pay the ultimate price.
Her gaze settled on Danes.
She'd been wrong.
Cole Danes was far more ruthless than she'd even suspected.
CHAPTER SIX
7:25 a.m.
26 hours, 50 minutes remaining…
"Why are we coming back here?" An
gel demanded as Danes ushered her back into the motel room. "I thought you said—"
He secured the door then surveyed the parking area before pulling the drapes together more tightly. "We'll be safe here as long as those squad cars re main in the lot."
The blood on his hands, on hers, had dried, but the smell still haunted her. She'd never get used to that. Never. Her stomach roiled and she closed her eyes against the images and sounds. The gunfire…the blood. That man had died. What did that mean? A part of her couldn't help regretting the loss of human life, criminal or not.
"Take off your clothes."
She jerked to attention. Blinked twice. "What?"
"Take off all your clothes. Now."
He stared at her with that usual intensity, his words perfectly clear, uttered in that brisk, cold tone, but she still didn't understand.
"Why do you want me to take off my clothes?" The idea seemed ludicrous given the current situation.
"Do it."
He strode into the bathroom and turned on the basin faucet. Dumbfounded, Angel watched as he scrubbed the blood from his hands. The nurse in her mentally ticked off the numerous diseases both of them would need to worry about. She stared at her own hands. They'd had to at least attempt to give the man aid until the ambulance arrived. For the good it had done. There had been so much blood. He most likely would not have survived…Wake him up now. She shuddered at the memory. Danes hadn't appeared to care if the man died, he'd wanted answers.
Had he gotten them? She'd turned away from the scene, hadn't been able to watch. The police officer had eventually wandered over and started his questioning again. Strangely, only minutes after the ambulance had left for the hospital with their patient who would be dead on arrival, the police had given them the go-ahead to leave, as well. Just another thing she didn't understand in any of this.
Who was Cole Danes that he could have a shoot-out in a public place, kill a man—in self-defense admittedly—and walk away with scarcely a comment to local law enforcement?
"I said take off your clothes."
She jumped at the sound of his voice. She had to get a hold of herself here. "Let me wash my hands." Another shudder rocked through her.
