by Shayla Black
He might always need this woman. God help him, it made zero sense, but he might be in love with her.
She held a hand up, beckoning him to join her. He leaned in to do just that when, over the music from the gramophone, he heard what sounded like a door shutting, followed by footsteps on the floor above.
His adrenaline started to flow.
They weren’t alone anymore.
NINE
Everly sat up as Gabriel crept across the room, switched the gramophone off, then eased toward the little hall that led to the secret door. “What’s wrong?”
Suddenly tense and alert, he pressed a finger to his lips to silence her and nodded at the ceiling. Something was going on above them. She wasn’t sure what, but she’d been too lost in the moment to hear. Though she prayed he was mistaken or being overly cautious, she went on high alert.
Following Gabriel, Everly rose on shaky feet and tiptoed across the hardwood floor, praying it didn’t creak.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the secret door¸ which was still slightly ajar, as he whispered into her ear. “Someone’s upstairs.”
The words had barely cleared his lips when she heard it, too. A door slammed. Footfalls clomped.
“Didn’t you set the alarm when we came in?” she asked.
“Yeah. Whoever sneaked in apparently knew the alarm code and turned it off.”
She breathed a little sigh of relief. “Then it’s probably the housekeeper or Dax.”
“Dax would have texted first to warn me he was coming.” He held his phone, and she watched him text Dax and Connor at once to tell them trouble had arrived.
“What if the housekeeper forgot something?”
“Then she’s about to get the scare of her life.” Gabriel looked down at her. “You stay here. I’m going out there to grab a few items from Mad’s desk.”
She shook her head and gripped his hand. “We’re safer in here.”
But he’d already slipped free from her hold and was easing back into the library. Everly tried to see out¸ but the view from behind the hidden door was limited.
More loud footsteps resounded through the otherwise deserted house. Something else—a drawer, maybe—opened and closed. The sound repeated a multitude of times from the direction of the kitchen. Then she heard what sounded like furniture being overturned. Glass shattered.
“What the fuck?” a man from somewhere above cursed. “This was supposed to be easy.”
Closer. The voices were getting closer. That last squeak had been above her head. They were on the stairway and it only led to one place. Right here. Her heart pounded in her chest. It was probably kids looking for money or drugs, or the reporters had been quicker than Gabriel had given them credit for.
But they wouldn’t know the alarm code. Dread pooled inside her because there was another explanation.
Whoever had killed Maddox had come back to find or cover up something. Whoever was on those stairs wouldn’t be swayed or run from the idea that they’d called the police. Someone had gone to great pains to kill Maddox and he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her and Gabriel, too.
She pushed the door open a little farther and peeked out in an attempt to warn Gabe that they had incoming. He stood at the desk, opening the drawer with quiet precision, then extracted something.
Frowning, Everly peered, trying to discern what he thought was important enough to risk his life. The glint of metal gave him away. A gun. And he didn’t fumble with it at all as he checked the clip and flicked off the safety. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“Lighten up. It’s easy. Focus.” Another stranger’s voice floated through the lower level.
“Nothing in this part of town is easy. Did you get the money up front like I told you?”
Based on their deep voices, the two men drifted ever closer. Gabriel lifted his head to the sound. He was trapped on the other side of the room. He zipped his gaze at her and motioned her to shut the door.
She wasn’t about to leave him out there. The door to this secret room didn’t open easily. If he had to trip the switch to release it again so he could hide in this adjoining space with her, it could cost him critical moments.
“I got half up front. Cash,” the first one said.
“Do you smell that?” the second asked, sounding as if he had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs.
“What?”
The floorboard creaked as they reached the library. They were coming too fast. In seconds, they would round the corner of the room and see Gabriel.
Fear gripped her, and she looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. She spotted the fireplace tools outside the secret doorway. A poker leaned against the marble surround. She snatched it up and gripped the thin but sturdy column of metal.
Gabriel glared at her from across the room. It wasn’t hard to read his lips as he mouthed a warning to her. Don’t you dare.
She wasn’t about to cower and hide when she could help. She’d been raised by one tough cop and still trained with the security guards who stood sentry around Crawford’s building.
“This dude has been dead for days, but it smells like someone was cooking recently,” said one of the men as he rounded the corner into the library. “If we’re not alone, we need to get this shit done fast. There can’t be any witnesses.”
Gabe crouched under the desk and hit the screen on his phone three times. 911. Within seconds, he began whispering to the dispatcher.
“Damn. We should have waited to light up the top floor. This place looks ripe for the picking.” They crossed the library floor with all the subtlety of elephants.
Everly shrank back. Two men. All in black. The tallest glanced around the room, looking under the sofa, tossing books from the shelves onto the floor, then heading for the desk, holding a bag in one hand and a bottle in the other.
“There’s no time for that. We need this place to go up fast. One more room, then we get out of here.”
Gasoline. She could smell it faintly but every second seemed to bring it closer. Oh, god. They’d torched the top floor. While she and Gabriel had been dancing, these men had set the house on fire.
The intruder stopped in front of the desk, lifting papers and nosing around before leaning over to sort through the drawers. With a curse, he shoved everything on the floor. What the hell were they looking for? Everly didn’t get to think much about it before the tall one pounded a fist on the desk, then ignited his lighter and held it to the rag poking out of the bottle’s neck.
Molotov cocktail.
From up above she heard the shriek of fire alarms.
Gabriel stood up from under the desk, pointing the gun with confidence. “Stop right now. The cops are already on their way.”
The man with the bottle cursed and immediately threw it at Gabriel.
As he ducked behind the desk again, Everly bit back a scream. The curtains behind Gabriel immediately went ablaze.
The sound of gunfire ricocheted through the room. Everly’s heart chugged with fear, especially when the second man pulled a gun from a holster at his side and started creeping toward Gabriel.
“Leave it, man. Let’s go. Bastard’s as good as dead.” The first man darted up the stairs once more.
“Les . . .” the man called to no avail.
Chaos seemed to take over. The library was on fire. The sound of glass breaking cracked through the space, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. And the second man hadn’t been as eager to leave as the first.
A dark figure moved past her, stalking Gabriel.
She couldn’t see him, couldn’t tell if Gabriel had been hurt. She had one shot at saving him.
She slipped out from behind the secret door and immediately felt the heat. Flames licked the wall as smoke filled her every sense. Biting back the need to cough, she moved in behind Gabriel’s attacker.
Everly didn’t think twice. Hesitation killed. Her father had taught her that. Don’t ever raise a weapon you’re not w
illing to use, baby girl.
She raised the poker and whipped it down on the man’s head as hard as she could. A dull thud rose above the crackling, hissing sound of the spreading flames. Their assailant stumbled forward, falling to a heap on the floor. His gun clattered out of his limp hand.
Gabriel popped up over the desk, pointing that gun right where the thug had stood. Unfortunately, Everly was rooted there now, frozen, poker still in hand. Her fingers shook and went numb. She let the poker fall to the floor.
Gabriel’s face flushed as he lowered the gun. “What are you doing? I could have killed you.”
“Are you hurt?” Her hands were shaking, but she was pleased her voice was still solid.
He scowled. “I’m fine.”
Heat began pouring off the curtains. The smoke burned her lungs. “We have to get the fire out.”
Gabriel shook his head. “It’s too late for that. They must have left themselves a path out. We need to find it.”
“Shit,” a deep voice said. Les stood in the middle of the library, his eyes on his fallen friend.
Gabriel raised the gun again and aimed. “Don’t move.”
But the man dropped the bottle he’d been holding and ran. A crashing sound split the air and the area rug under his feet burst into flames.
There was no way out now.
Everly looked down at the man on the floor. He wasn’t moving at all. Gabriel picked up the arsonist’s gun and pocketed it. He grabbed the file folder he’d been organizing.
“Is he dead?” It was a stupid question because the man’s eyes were open and unseeing.
Gabriel shook her lightly, bringing her back to the moment. “You did what you had to do. But we’re going to join him if we don’t get moving and find a way out of here.”
Everly stood, jittery yet numb. What was his name? Did he have a family who would miss him? What had he come to Maddox’s house searching for before he set the place on fire?
“C’mon,” Gabriel shouted over the crackling din of the growing fire. “I’ll try to find a blanket or something to cover us. We need to protect our skin from the flames. Grab that box we found in the secret room.”
When she looked around, the blaze had grown to something fast approaching a conflagration. Fear slammed into her. It helped her focus on escaping . . . but only to a point. She had to decide that she wanted to survive. And that took bravery. Her father’s voice played in Everly’s head. Make the decision, Eve. Always choose to live. Shaking away her shock and terror, she nodded. If she made it out of here alive, she’d have time to sort through everything else later.
“Okay.” No matter what happened, she would fight to find a way out. With Gabriel.
She slipped back into the secret room and quickly grabbed the lockbox from the bar. The temperature felt much cooler in this brick room. While the fire was already doing damage to the house around them, she could barely smell the smoke in here. A cool breeze hit her face.
She’d found the way out.
• • •
Gabe forced himself to stay calm. He’d done it through the hour it took them to find their way to the surface. Everly had found the series of tunnels Mad’s great grandfather had used to store and transport his hooch. His secret supply route had become their way to safety.
He’d been perfectly reasonable as he’d called Connor to pick them up after they’d emerged from the tunnels. He was fairly certain he’d shown no outward signs of the rolling tension that had overtaken him the minute he realized someone was coming after them. Even through his second police interview in less than twenty-four hours, he’d maintained a level of sanity he didn’t feel.
“I’m going to get cleaned up.” Everly stood at the bottom of the stairs in Connor’s apartment. “Are you sure I’m not intruding? I can find a hotel.”
“Stay. Your room is through the second door on the left, Everly.” Gabe’s tone was perfectly normal. He wasn’t barking orders and marking his territory the way every primal instinct inside him wanted to. But he knew the adrenaline crash was coming—and fast. “There’s an en suite connected to the room. You can use that shower. In the morning, Dax will find us both some fresh clothes.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, then climbed the stairs, her weariness evident in her slow ascent and slumped shoulders. She stopped halfway up and turned back to him. “For everything, Gabriel. Are you sure we shouldn’t go through the things we saved from Mad’s house tonight?”
“Get cleaned up. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.” The order came out a little harsher than he’d meant it to, but his tone did the trick. She turned and trudged her way up the stairs.
As soon as she disappeared, Dax whistled beside him. “You’re in bad shape, brother.”
Roman shook his head as he closed up his briefcase on the nearby coffee table. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wound so tight. Is this about the cops?”
The police suspected he’d set that fire himself to cover up some clue to Mad’s murder. They were still trying to identify the man’s body inside the brownstone and figure out how he played into the scenario. The other man had apparently escaped. But that wasn’t what upset Gabe. “I’m fine.”
Connor shoved a glass of Scotch in his hand. “Sure you are. You need to calm down before you deal with her. Do you have any idea what those men were looking for?”
Gabe gratefully took the Scotch and knocked it back in one swallow. “None. They left everything of value, as far as I could tell. They seemed more interested in papers and files and books. It doesn’t add up.”
“With one thug dead and the other missing, we can’t get any answers.”
“Exactly. And Everly didn’t see or hear anything I didn’t, so she can’t provide any clues.” He sighed. “I have no idea what to do with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She damn near got herself killed tonight. Once those assholes figured out we were in the house, they tried to kill us. She took one of them out before I could do it. I damn near shot her.”
Connor led him to the sofa and slid into the chair across from him. They were in the apartment he’d bought five years before. Gabe wasn’t exactly sure when or how Connor had come into his money. Sparks had come to Creighton on a lacrosse scholarship. He’d been brought in to captain the ailing team and he’d turned it around fast. His own family had consisted of a single mother who’d spent her life waitressing in a bar. She’d thanked God Connor was athletic and happily shipped him off to boarding school. All too often, she hadn’t picked him up for holidays. The rest of the group had split time taking him home on vacations.
But this place, while understated, bespoke wealth. It was the penthouse of an exclusive building on the Upper West Side. Clearly, his buddy was doing all right for himself.
“She isn’t the type of woman who will hide when she can fight. I’ve been studying her, asking around.” Connor had his own Scotch in hand. “Her employees really like her.”
“She honestly saved your ass tonight?” Roman asked, handling the old bottle of booze they’d saved from Mad’s house, along with the files and the metal box. Thankfully, Connor had turned up before the police so none of what they’d escaped with had been confiscated as evidence. “And this Scotch? She should get a medal for saving this. Let’s open it.”
Gabe moved the bottle of vintage alcohol out of Roman’s reach and passed him the much more reasonable twenty-five-year-old bottle. His buddy was missing the salient point. “Yes, but only after she took a crazy chance that could have ended with me putting a bullet through her heart.”
He still couldn’t get that moment out of his head. He’d crouched behind that desk, every sense he possessed focused on one thing and one thing only: those footsteps creeping closer across the floor.
