“No,” Brett was howling. “This is wrong. Wrong!” He flung his arms and fists backward, trying to land a shot on Tate.
“Lyla,” Tate warned. “Come on, sweetheart.”
The endearment seemed to enrage Brett, who redoubled his efforts to get free with a croaky bellow. Crouched beside the sofa, Lyla got her hands on her phone and tapped the screen alive right as her stalker broke free of Tate.
He made a move for her, but the unmistakable click of a cocking gun froze him in place.
“Go ahead and touch her again, you crazy fuck,” Tate said. “I’ve been dying for a chance to shoot your ass for weeks.”
Brett stared into Lyla’s eyes and wavered, moaning with indecision and frustration.
“Do it,” Tate muttered.
Lyla was afraid to move a muscle. If Tate missed Brett by even a millimeter, that bullet would head straight for her.
As she contemplated that outcome, Brett burst into sudden motion, feinting sideways to get around her sofa and barreling toward her front door. Somehow, he managed to get the locks free before Tate reached him, and in seconds the two men were stumbling into the hallway, then racing full-tilt down the hall.
Lyla scrambled off the floor and ducked out the door just in time to see Tate hit the stairwell at the end, in hot pursuit of Brett despite the fact that he was only wearing a t-shirt, a loose pair of gym shorts and had bare feet.
Tate had said he wasn’t supposed to do any vigorous exercise yet, Lyla thought. Between fighting a man as big as Brett, then chasing him down, though…oh, God. This was bad.
She fumbled the phone clutched in her hand a couple of times, her shaking fingers refusing to cooperate for excruciatingly long moments before she was able to place the emergency call.
And then Lyla grabbed her keys and locked her door behind her.
No way was she going to wait in there alone like some sitting duck. If she could find the men downstairs, she could try to help Tate—or at least give directions to the cops.
Lyla took off running and prayed she’d be in time.
THIRTY-THREE
BRETT JONES MUST have been a pretty decent ballplayer back in the day, Tate thought, as he charged down the hall after him. Even now, the fucker still had some legs on him.
He booked it down three flights of stairs to the ground floor and across the small lobby of Lyla’s building, then hit the street with a stupid burst of speed that could only have been fueled by total mania—or three seconds left on the championship clock.
Tate barreled after him and felt every single second of his four-month recuperation in the burning of his thigh muscles and the ragged breaths sawing in and out of his lungs.
He kept up with the bastard, though, because fuck that. If Tate let Brett get away now, he’d never be able to look at Lyla—or in the mirror—ever again. Every day after this one would suck worse than the one before, knowing that he’d failed her.
Luckily, there weren’t a ton of people on the street at this hour, so even though Brett did his level best to lose him, Tate had no trouble hitting a sprint and following along.
He’d run for a few touchdowns himself, once upon a time.
The difficulty now was that, once the other man decided to bang a hard right down a dark alley, Tate was reasonably confident that no one in Lyla’s quiet Upper West Side neighborhood would be sticking around to see what happened next.
Tate slowed to a stop at the mouth of the narrow gap between two brick residential buildings, then quickly peeked around the corner to determine if it was a dead-end or not.
Small mercy—it was. About a block deep, at most, and dark as an abyss at its far end. No one short of Spiderman was getting out of there any way but the way they’d gone in.
That meant that if Tate wanted to get his hands on the asshole who’d been tormenting Lyla for the last several months, he was going to have to go in there, too.
He shook off the wave of dizziness that washed over him, resolving then and there to step up his workouts, no matter what the doctors said. This being out-of-shape thing was for the birds.
Tate took a deep breath and edged around the corner. As his eyes adjusted, it became clear there were only so many places Jones could be hiding.
Only two, in fact—dumpster A, or dumpster B.
Tate backed out and looked around, spotting a couple of kids hunched into their hoodies and trying to hustle by on the sidewalk. He pointed at them.
“Hey, you guys have phones?” There was no telling whether Lyla had managed to make that call or not, and Tate didn’t want to take any chances.
The kids were smarter than they looked, not answering him and picking up their pace—probably thinking Tate was trying to jack them, or some shit.
Come to think of it, he did happen to have a weapon in his hand. He felt a little bad pointing it at them.
“You heard me,” he said.
“We don’t want any trouble.”
“Me, either. Just call 911 and get them here fast. That’s all I want.”
“Can’t do no cops, man,” they told him, shifting around in their sneakers. Out for a late-night weed run, no doubt.
“Make the call.” Tate shrugged, “Then take off if you want. Makes no difference to me.”
They looked at each other, and then at Tate’s weapon. And then, painfully slowly, one of them pulled a phone out of his front pocket and tapped the screen.
Tate didn’t really listen to what the kid said, but he did hope the little shit had a better sense of where they were than he did at the moment. He’d kind of lost track of which block Jones had headed down once they’d exited Lyla’s building.
And now, he was getting the oddest feeling that his mind was somehow detaching from his body—as if one was standing on the sidewalk, and the other was kicking back on a window ledge up high, waiting to see how stuff would shake out.
Even weirder? Tate smelled flowers, and there wasn’t a single planter around here anywhere.
The kid ended his call, grabbed his buddy’s arm, and slowly backed away. Tate nodded and turned to the task at hand, raising his pistol from his thigh and rounding the corner into the alley once more.
If he’d been worried about being able to find Brett in all that darkness, he didn’t have long to dwell on it. Three steps into the gloom and the fucker was on him like a cheap suit, lunging out of nowhere in a flurry of grappling hands and wicked fury.
“Wrong move, wrong move,” Jones growled, going for Tate’s throat.
They tussled sloppily, crashing into the stinking metal trash bins and the jagged brick walls—but try as Tate might, he couldn’t seem to herd the dude out of the alley and back onto the sidewalk, where the light was better and other people might be inclined to lend a hand.
Tate was going to have to raise a ruckus in here if he expected the cops to find them. He suspected Brett might’ve realized that as well, given the way the man was trying to either strangle Tate or smother him with his bare hands.
It was a smarter play than Tate had expected of him, frankly. And damn if the bastard wasn’t strong—Tate was doing a hell of a lot of feinting and blocking, and not nearly enough offensive attacking.
There just wasn’t a lot of space to neutralize the guy in the close quarters of the alley, and it was hard to catch his breath when Jones kept coming at him like some kind of ferocious, grasping octopus. Brett was relentless, and Tate was feeling troublingly…fuzzy. Not like himself, at all.
When he could work his arm free, Tate didn’t bother trying to get a shot off—he just cracked Brett on the side of the skull as hard as he could and hoped it would do the job.
The blow would’ve dropped most men in their tracks, but Jones only groaned and stumbled against the wall of the alley. Bad luck.
Tate thought he heard running feet, and maybe a far-off siren—but who was kidding who, here? Those sounds could mean just about anything in the city at this time of night. It seemed ambitious to hope they signaled rei
nforcements for him.
Tate growled and bit back at the fog that wanted to settle over him, and refused to wonder if he really was out of his depth here. He reapplied himself to backing Jones out toward the street, where hopefully…where…
Shit. Lyla was there, standing in the weak glow of the streetlight. Why the hell was Lyla there? She should be safe at home, not in spitting distance of her deranged stalker again.
Only…she hadn’t been safe at home, not even with Tate there to guard her. And now she had her phone to her ear, talking fast and looking from side to side, too agitated for Tate to catch her eye amidst the chaos.
Brett seized on Tate’s distraction immediately, of course, finding an opening to knee Tate in the balls and lunge for his gun, somehow knocking it clear out of his sweating hand and across the ground.
Tate stopped and tilted his head, choking back on the wave of pain and nausea trying to take hold. The fucker wanted to play dirty, did he? Tate could do that, too.
He launched himself at the other man’s burly frame, just like his old football coaches had taught him. If Jones wanted to get to Lyla, he was going to have to do it over Tate’s cold, dead body.
They tumbled to the filthy ground of the alley in a tangle of limbs, each one of them frustrated and determined to get the upper hand.
Tate heard Lyla scream, “Over here!” and then she was creeping forward, into the alley. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and not paying the slightest attention to Brett.
“Lyla, stay back,” Tate barked.
Through clenched teeth, Brett grunted, “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” His eyes were fixed on Lyla, not Tate—which was probably why Tate didn’t see his next move coming.
Jones reared back and cracked his forehead against Tate’s.
The world swam sickeningly around, but all Tate could think of was how much it had to have hurt when Brett had done it to Lyla. This punk come too close to getting his hands on her tonight.
And he was still too close.
With everything in him, Tate fought to keep the other man on the ground and to stop the guy’s arms from flailing everywhere. Inches away, Brett’s jaws were snapping like he’d like to bite Tate’s face off—but somehow, he managed to roll on top of the fucker and pin him with his body.
Jones really hated that. He writhed and bucked, and Tate knew he couldn’t chance taking a hand off the guy or he’d lose his tenuous advantage.
The truth was, he had one tool left to end this fight now—and it was the one part of his body that Tate was supposed to protect come hell or high water.
His head. Brett’s signature move, as it were.
Tate winced, dreading the impact, but it had to be done.
He steeled himself, then smashed his skull against the face of Lyla’s stalker, once, twice…three times. Until the other man went slack underneath him and wasn’t moving anymore.
Tate collapsed on top of him, letting himself rest for a long minute. The alley was getting darker, instead of brighter, and the sounds of the street were growing as garbled as if they were being filtered through a fish tank.
Much as he’d like to believe he was only having an out-of-body experience—brought on by what a beast he clearly was—this was something more. Something bad.
WHEN BRETT CAME to, he groaned like a goddamn animal and rolled to the side, pushing Tate away so he could get to his knees, and then his feet.
The sudden change in position jarred Tate’s eyes open, but that appeared to be the extent of what he was capable of.
He sprawled there on the filthy concrete, disoriented but willing himself to stand up, too—except his limbs weren’t getting the message. They lay still and unresponsive, ignoring the frantic commands he was sending them like useless lumps of clay, or the arms and legs of a mannequin. Pretty, but not accomplishing much.
Tate swiveled his eyeballs around wildly, finding Lyla standing nearby—holding her ground despite the fact that Brett was advancing on her step by lumbering step.
She had Tate’s gun trained on her stalker with shaking hands. So that’s what she’d been looking at. Tate was preposterously proud of her for her bravery and quick thinking, but also terrified. She needed to get the hell out of here—to get as far away from Jones as possible.
Why wasn’t she running?
For that matter, why wasn’t Tate? He had the weirdest feeling that he’d lost a few minutes somewhere in there, and though he couldn’t he make himself move, his concern about it felt…remote. Like something he was reading about, rather than experiencing directly.
Tate’s heart skittered around in his chest like a panicked rat, but it stopped completely when Brett lunged for Lyla, and the gun went off with a sudden, deafening crack that echoed around the alley.
Jones fell down with an inhuman shriek, but as best as Tate could tell, Lyla had only managed to shoot him in the leg. At least she’d hit the fucker, though. That was good.
A flash of motion in his peripheral vision caught Tate’s attention. A beat cop out on the street seemed to have heard the gunshot and come running, because she had her gun out, and was talking fast into the walkie-talkie clipped to her vest.
Tate blinked and looked for Lyla again, but the strange darkness was creeping back, squeezing in from the edges of his sight like the ending of his own personal cartoon episode.
“TATE? TATE CAN you hear me?” Lyla was bending over him now, her face a mask of worry.
Tate wanted to squeeze her hand, to reassure her, but he had that same disconnect between his brain and his fingers again.
There were a lot more cops milling around the alley now, along with some paramedics. A few were several feet away, dealing with Brett. And a few were loitering around Tate, taking his vitals and talking too fast for him to make out what the problem was.
He felt like he was sitting on the bottom of a well. Little by little, some feeling was returning to his hands and feet, but unfortunately, it was coming in the form of pain.
His knuckles were throbbing, and his feet were—Tate frowned. His feet were pretty chewed up. Why wasn’t he wearing any shoes?
The EMTs were attempting to shift him onto a stretcher, and Tate tried to wave them off. He didn’t need to take a ride in the ambulance.
He just needed a minute or two to recalibrate himself, and…Tate gagged. A tidal wave of nausea barreled through him, and he curled into himself, unable to push it back.
His ears came back online with a slow but steady ramping up of sound, like someone had found the volume button on the remote and given it a several upward clicks.
One of the EMTs was telling Lyla, “Mount Sinai is closest.”
Next thing Tate knew, though, Lyla was asking them to take him to Weill Cornell, where Luca worked.
Damn it, the last thing Tate needed right now was an overwrought Italian getting all up in his business. It had been bad enough when Tate had been injured, and Luca and Red had flown to Landstuhl with his parents to bring him home.
Whatever was wrong with Tate now was bound to throw his friend into even bigger fits—and if Tate ended up at Luca’s hospital, maybe even under his care, there’s be no reasoning with the man.
He wanted to protest, but his tongue felt like it was three times as big as usual, and he still couldn’t make his stupid mouth work right. So, Tate glared at Lyla for all he was worth, and silently begged her to read his mind.
THIRTY-FOUR
LYLA KEPT TATE’S gun trained on Brett’s head, even though the weapon was heavier than she’d expected, and her arms and legs were trembling with fear.
The two men laid still in the alley for a long time, though—long enough for her to wonder if Tate had knocked himself out, along with Brett.
But then Brett began pinwheeling his limbs, wriggling to get free. Before long, he had pushed Tate aside and gotten unsteadily to his feet. He wobbled a bit, and Lyla tried to keep her aim—but she was distracted by what could be wrong with Tate.
He was just lying the
re in an ungainly heap, staring at Lyla like he’d blacked out with his eyes open. And then, as she watched, Tate started shuddering, his limbs jerking in bizarre, uncoordinated movements, his head tossing around on the dirty concrete.
“Tate? Tate!” Lyla yelled, horrified by what she was seeing.
He’d fought Brett off like a man possessed but was clearly paying the price now. Lyla looked from him to Brett and back again, paralyzed with indecision. What was she supposed to do?
Could someone hurt themselves during a seizure? What if the cops didn’t get to them fast enough? What if she couldn’t remember how to work Tate’s gun?
In front of her, Brett was inching closer, feinting right and left and beginning to grin like a ghoulish boxer, looking for her weak spot. Lyla felt for the safety on the pistol, but it was already off.
Brett told her, “You got it wrong again, my, my, my Delilah. I’m still the one on top. Not you. Never, ever you.”
And then Brett charged, arms out, right for her.
Lyla pulled the trigger, and he dropped in his tracks with an otherworldly wail. Tate had gone quiet again.
Everything happened fast after that. Police officers swarmed the alley, stomping around the scene and shouting to each other and into their radios.
The street near the alley flooded with flashing lights and emergency vehicles.
An officer got up in her face, demanding, “Drop the gun.”
Oh. Lyla hadn’t even realized she was still white-knuckling Tate’s handgun, but she uncurled her fingers and let it fall to the ground with a heavy crack.
Then she collapsed, too, landing on her knees like a puppet with its strings cut. Some of the cops dragged Brett aside, but he fought and cursed so much, they had to cuff him and hold him down so they could check out his leg.
Lyla only wanted to help Tate—to pull his head into her lap so it wouldn’t loll on the concrete like it was—but an EMT was already kneeling next to him, taking his pulse while her partner set up a stretcher nearby.
The Hero Was Handsome (Triple Threat Book 3) Page 30
