Hard & Lethal: A Bad Boy Romance

by Jade Allen

  “I don’t know how my sister does it,” I’d told her one of the times she’d come out to grab a coffee from down the hall.

  “It looks pretty rough, but most women make it through childbirth just fine,” she’d replied.

  “Not that part. I mean the new human part. Hope’s going to have three now, and hell, I can’t picture myself taking care of one other living being,” I’d confessed, baffled by the pull some have toward childrearing. “I even have someone else take care of my houseplants,” I whispered in mock-horror, and she smiled, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

  Sarah had been preoccupied with Hope after that, but she’d emerged from the delivery room about an hour ago with my nephew in her arms. I peeked at the waterlogged-looking little human with a hint of interest, but when she’d held out her arms for me to take him, I’d declined. I hadn’t been kidding—I knew absolutely nothing about babies and I was completely comfortable with that.

  Once Hope and my nephew were able to rest, we decided to head back to Sarah’s place. As we climbed the steps to her front porch, she stopped and began to fidget with the keys in her hand.

  “Look Declan, I’ve had a really great time the past few weeks, but we knew at the beginning this wasn’t supposed to last. I think it’s time you got back to your life in the big city…or wherever it is you’ve been all these years.”

  She was giving me the brush-off? I should have been relieved, but I didn’t want to go just yet; I still had a job to do, of course. “I don’t think there’s any reason for it to end so soon. We’re good together, Sarah.”

  “Yes, we have been. But we’ve practically been playing house the past few weeks, and that isn’t what either of us wants, is it? You made it perfectly clear it wasn’t what you wanted, so, I think it’s best if we cool it now.”

  “That’s what you really want?” I couldn’t help but feel that something was off. Maybe it was just my ego talking, but something was telling me there wasn’t anything genuine in that speech, aside from the dull ache I could see in her eyes.

  Nevertheless, there was nothing more I could say. She was the first woman I’d spent more than a few hours with, and she’d had enough. But regardless of who ended it—her or me—it had to end eventually. It would have been better if it could have lasted until I’d managed to eliminate Cane, but it was possible for me to keep watch from a distance.

  And so, it was settled. I nodded and leaned in to kiss her one last time, feeling something very unlike ‘goodbye’ in her kiss, and then I turned and left. I ignored the way my chest suddenly felt like a band had been wrapped around me and the woman on the porch, and how the further I walked, the more it tried to pull me back.

  Once on my bike, I drove around for a while with no particular destination in mind. I needed to put some distance between the two of us but I also knew the time for that was limited. I’d have to be back at her house before long, sitting at watch from thirty yards away. It wasn’t much of a distance, but I felt better when I was right there with her, knowing I’d let nothing get to her.

  Like this, there were no absolute guarantees; there were windows I couldn’t see from my position, and the back door was impossible to watch from anywhere. And since she’d closed all the windows and curtains, there was no way for me to know what was going on inside the house with absolute certainty. While everything was always a gamble in my line of work, suddenly, with Sarah, any gamble was too big.

  This wasn’t going to work. There was only one other solution: I was going to have to tell her the truth. She needed to understand why I had to be there; that it was the only way I could keep her safe. She would hate me, no doubt, when she discovered all I’d been keeping from her, but if that was the price I had to pay to keep her alive, then so be it.

  Chapter Nine

  Sarah

  I’d paced back and forth across my room the entire day trying to make sense of the mess I’d gotten myself into. It wasn’t until I’d come face to face with Hope, seeing her rounded belly, that it hit me. I wasn’t sick; I wasn’t coming down with the flu.

  I was pregnant.

  But I’d recognized Hope’s symptoms seconds later and the doctor in me had taken over, focusing on Hope to the exclusion of everything else.

  I hadn’t had a spare moment to think about it again until I’d stopped in the waiting room on my way for coffee. And then, before I’d even had time to process my own feelings, Declan had made his clear.

  He wasn’t cut out for parenting, and never intended to be.

  After that, the decision had been simple, even if it wasn’t an easy one. Hell, it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But I wouldn’t be the woman who trapped Declan in a life he’d never wanted, and since the only alternative was to send him packing long before he could find out, that’s what I did.

  He hadn’t put up much of a fight, which confirmed it had been the right thing to do, but damn, I’d wished he had. And not just because I was suddenly facing motherhood all on my own, but because I’d fallen so much harder for him than I’d ever thought possible.

  I’d darted out for a pregnancy test shortly after Declan had left—which only served to confirm my suspicions—so it was time to move on. I tried, thrusting Declan to the back of my mind as much as I could when I started my shift at the hospital the next morning, focusing on one patient after another and not letting my thoughts wander astray.

  “Are you Dr. Sarah Wells?” a man asked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere to the left of me. I mentally ran through the list of patients I’d cared for that day, trying to place who he might be inquiring after. He looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t think of any familial resemblance to any of my patients. I knew I’d seen the man before, but where?

  The well-dressed gentleman from the parking lot—that’s who he was. But then, what did he want with me, and why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end?

  “I am,” I answered belatedly.

  “Well, you see, I’m in a bit of a predicament, Dr. Wells.”

  “Oh? How can I help?” I offered, trying to ignore the prickle of unease.

  “I need an attractive, young doctor to follow me out of the hospital,” he said lightly, taking an unobtrusive step closer.

  I laughed uncomfortably, brushing off the unnerving sensation. If I understood him right, the man—a complete stranger—was trying to pick me up right there in the middle of my shift. “I’m flattered, sir, but I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “That’s really too bad. I was hoping to avoid having to kill anyone in your emergency room, Dr. Wells,” he said in the same light tone. He spoke so casually that at first, I thought I must have heard him wrong, but when I met his gaze, the threat in his eyes was clear. Panic welled in my chest. Who was he? What did he want?

  “Do you see that gentleman standing in the corner across the room?” he asked and my gaze darted in that direction.

  There was a man there, dressed in an expensive suit and holding something that glinted like steel, half-concealed in his hand. He wasn’t looking at me, but I followed his line of sight and gasped. The man was staring at the seven-year-old boy laying on a gurney in the treatment area. I’d just set his broken leg not twenty minutes prior.

  “Do you see him, Dr. Wells?” the man next to me asked coolly.

  My throat was suddenly too dry to talk, so I nodded instead.

  “Good. And the other gentleman standing near the triage desk—can you see him?”

  I didn’t want to look, but I did, and I shivered in fear, seeing him standing there in the same kind of expensive suit with the same glint of steel in his hand. Jennifer was sitting at the triage desk with her back to him. She had no idea there was a man with a gun standing right behind her.

  “Yes,” I croaked, forcing the single syllable past my parched throat.

  “Good. I’m sure you understand then that I really must insist you come with me. Once you do, those gentlemen will have no further business
here, I assure you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered, fighting back tears. I wasn’t going to cry. I had no idea what the man wanted, but I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of tears.

  “Don’t worry. You will soon,” he said, and then extended his arm, offering it like some old-fashioned gentleman.

  “How do I know those men will leave if I go with you?”

  “You don’t. But I guarantee that if you refuse to do what you’re told, there will be far fewer people who will require your services today, Doctor.”

  My hands shook, but I took his arm, recoiling at the warmth of him through his suit jacket and the feeling of his skin as he placed his hand on top of mine.

  “We’ll go out the back way. Through here,” he motioned down the hall with his head and started leading me away.

  I tugged on his hold and started to walk faster. It was foolish of me, but I wasn’t going to let this man drag me around. I didn’t know what was going on, but surely it had to be some sort of mistake. Once we got outside and he told his men to leave the hospital, there had to be something I could do. And a moment later, he pushed open the door to the side parking lot.

  Two steps out the door, I put on the brakes. “Now tell those men to leave,” I demanded, pulling against the vicelike grip in which he held my arm.

  “Certainly, Sarah,” he replied in the same disconcertingly calm tone. He reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand and put the phone he withdrew to his ear. “Come join us at the car,” he spoke into the phone before slipping it back into his pocket.

  There. He’d called off his lackeys. All I had to do was get free of his hold on me and I’d scream bloody murder. I waited a second, and then another, trying to focus on what I had to do. And then I did it. I stomped down on the man’s foot with my heel as hard as I could and yanked my arm from him at the same time.

  It worked. I was free. I turned to run as I opened my mouth to scream, but all the air whooshed from my lungs as I ran right into a solid, suit-clad chest. The owner of the chest flung me around, catching me around my ribs with one, steel-like arm. I had no time to try to run, but I knew I had to do something. I jabbed at the solid wall of flesh behind me with my elbows and kicked back at the man’s shins. He didn’t budge, but I felt a cool, sharp edge against my throat seconds later, and I froze. I couldn’t see it, but I didn’t have to. I knew what it was.

  “I thought we had an understanding, Sarah.”

  “I did what you said. I followed you out of the hospital. Now let me go!” I started to struggle, but my own movements pressed the blade harder against my throat. I felt the sting seconds before something warm and wet trickled down my neck.

  My own blood.

  I stopped struggling but pressed my head back against the chest behind me to try to lessen the pressure of the knife while I seethed in frustration and fear.

  “You are so much like your mother,” the man said, drawing my attention as he blotted the blood on my neck. I tried to recoil further, but there was nowhere else to go.

  “You knew my mother?” If this man knew her, why was he doing this?

  “Yes, I knew her. And I killed her.”

  That wasn’t possible. “My mother died in a car accident.”

  “No, my dear. That’s just what your father wanted you to believe. It was easier on you that way. Just like he thought it would be easier on you to keep everything else hidden from you, too.”

  “You’re lying!”

  He smiled coolly and a shiver raced down my spine. Whether this man was spouting lies or not, there was one thing for certain: he wasn’t going to let me go.

  I’d been trying to keep some semblance of calm until that moment, but panic and terror overwhelmed me. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t move; the only thing I could do was scream. And so, I screamed.

  And then the whole world went black.

  ****

  I don’t know how long I’d been unconscious, but when I came to, I knew I was no longer standing in the hospital’s side parking lot. I kept my eyes closed, trying to figure out what was going on around me without alerting anyone there to my state of consciousness. The floor beneath me vibrated gently; I was in a vehicle of some sort, but I wasn’t laying on a seat. The ground beneath my cheek was fabric, but it was scratchy, like the carpeted floor of a van.

  I listened, but aside from the quiet hum of the engine, I could hear nothing else. No sounds of traffic, no voices. Nothing. Maybe they’d thought I’d be unconscious longer and had tossed me in the back of a van. It was possible I was all alone there and no one would notice if I slipped out the back while the vehicle was still moving. Yes, it was possible!

  I tried to test my limbs, making sure they were ready, but my hopes for escape plummeted quickly when I realized my hands were bound behind my back. Was it even possible to get up onto my feet without my arms? Yes, it was. If I could roll onto my back, I could push myself upward, and from a sitting position, I could easily stand…open the doors with my bound hands…turn around and make a jump for it.

  Hopefully the vehicle wasn’t moving too quickly. If it was, I could try to hold off until it slowed, but that was risky. It wouldn’t give me much time before they noticed I was gone. Then again, if I broke my legs or hit my head jumping out of a fast-moving vehicle with my hands bound behind my back, I wasn’t going to get any farther.

  First things first—get up and get the door open. Then I’d worry about the next step. But as I opened my eyes, my breath caught in my throat. A man was sitting not three feet away, the same man who’d held a knife to my throat. His leering smile turned my spine to ice.

  “It’s nice of you to join us,” the same calm voice spoke from somewhere outside my line of vision. “I do apologize for this, but you understand I couldn’t have you causing a scene at the hospital, don’t you?”

  “Why are you doing this? I didn’t do anything to you.”

  The leering man scoffed at the same time the eerily calm man moved into my view. There was a striking resemblance between the two men, the calm man—obviously the ringleader—looked at least two decades older than the other. Father and son? Great, I had multiple generations of psychos wanting to kill me, and I still had no idea why.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah, it’s true you didn’t do anything,” he spoke as if he regretted what he was about to do, but there was no sincerity in his tone. “But I’m afraid when your father took away everything that was valuable in my life, I vowed to return the favor.”

  How could my father have possibly done anything so horrid as what the man was suggesting? The only possibility that came to mind… “Are you…are you my real father?”

  “You think that I would kill my own flesh and blood? Well, perhaps that is not so far from the truth. But I assure you I am no such thing to you, my dear. I eliminated that vile traitor who was your ‘real father’ many years ago.”

  “I don’t understand.” I really didn’t. But inch by inch, the cloud of panic that had settled over me at the hospital was beginning to recede, and in its place was the terrifying certainty that I was going to die.

  This man was going to kill me. And yet, I couldn’t make the smallest sliver of sense of what he was saying.

  “They really have kept you in the dark all these years, haven’t they?”

  “Who is ‘they’? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand any of this. You must be mistaken.”

  He heaved a heavy sigh. “I suppose it’s only fair, isn’t it?”

  Fair? This man wanted to talk about fair? What was fair about this?

  “Your father was not the man you believed him to be, Sarah. All that time he spent away on ‘business’? Your father was not a businessman; more like a man who couldn’t keep his nose out of other people’s business. He killed my brothers…my cousins…and the family of mine he did not kill, he had taken away.”

  “No! You’re lying.”

  “It’s difficult to
accept, I know. And the man you think so fondly of now, Declan Ross…”

  What did he know about Declan? Nothing! The man was a liar.

  “Just shut up. You don’t know a goddamned…” The sting of the younger man’s hand across my cheek cut off my words, causing the tears that had been brimming in my eyes to flow over.

  “You’ll have to forgive my son, Sarah. He’s grown rather…fond of you.”

  The van came to a halt then, and I couldn’t stop my body from rolling hard against the leering man’s legs. I skittered away as quickly as I could, feeling like a wriggling worm, using my hips and shoulders to move myself.

  “Ah! We’re here. Bring her along, Vincent,” the older man called back as the door opened and he stepped outside.

  In that moment, my body shook so hard my cheek vibrated off the van’s floor. I tried to kick out at the younger man as he reached down to pick me up, but it was no use. He lifted me up and tossed me over his shoulder, one hand on my ass and the other subduing my legs. He leapt down from the van and I was forced to squint against the bright light. For some reason, I thought it would be dark. Murder happened in the dark…in shadows and alleys…not in the light of day.

  He didn’t put me down right away, and I craned my neck to look around, trying to get my bearings, as if that could somehow help me. I recognized my surroundings right away. We hadn’t traveled far, which meant I hadn’t been unconscious for very long at all. We were just outside of town in a remote area of a nearby state park. That time of year, with the leaves already beginning to morph from their vivid greens to mottled hues of yellow, orange and red, there weren’t many visitors around, unfortunately.

  The man holding me suddenly slid me to the ground and swung me around, pressing me against his chest. Before I could kick back at him, he’d shoved a thigh between my legs, hampering my efforts and making every attempt I made futile.