by Lora Leigh
She was caught, and just as Craig ordered, the two men behind her fought to gag her. And they had to fight until Beauregard strode quickly across the room, caught her and jerked her arms behind her.
The cries, the hatred, and the fury that spilled from Journey’s lips struck at Tehya’s heart. The sound of the other girl’s sobs was excruciating to hear.
Tehya forced herself to watch as, strangely gently, Beauregard bound her hands, then placed a wide strip of gray tape over her lips.
She was silenced, but she still cried.
Journey kicked out, striking Beauregard’s leg with her shoe, though there was no reaction from him to even give Journey the satisfaction that she’d at least brought him discomfort.
“Now that we’ve taken care of that.” Stephen sighed as he turned back to her. “Did you understand the rules to her continued safety? Or do you have questions?” His gaze sharpened. “Or do you want to be as stupid as your mother?” He spoke to her as though she were a moron, the superiority he obviously felt leaking through every pore in his body.
Would Beauregard Grant really allow Journey’s family to kill her? He had stepped in to keep Ascarti’s gorillas from hurting her. He’d bound and gagged her with gentleness despite her attempts to fight him.
“Were you behind my mother’s kidnapping?”
Stephen rolled his eyes and shook his head as though amused by her question. “Let’s get this out of the way, then, dear. I kidnapped your mother for Sorrel, but he didn’t keep his end of the bargaine once he got what I wanted. He swore she was unaware of what I wanted when he was only attempting to steal it for himself.
“You worked with Sorrel?”
His smile was filled with pride. “I did. Though, now I will command as I should have been doing all along.” He shot his granddaughter an irritated look. Now, does Journey live or die?
He wouldn’t allow Journey to live. Beauregard might believe Stephen Taite would keep his word, but he wouldn’t. Tehya could see it in his face. Journey would be lucky if she lived to see the next week out.
“What do you want?” She was at least curious why her mother had died.
“She gave you an account number,” he stated. “A code of sorts. I want it.”
Why hadn’t she guessed? Why hadn’t her mother guessed?
Perhaps the fact that her mother had never suspected her family was behind her kidnapping and the deaths of everyone who tried to help her, Tehya hadn’t suspected either.
The shock was horrible. It lanced through her system, it destroyed parts of her she feared would never heal, and left her soul bleeding in agony.
Tremors raced through her, sobs catching in her throat, searing her chest.
“Money,” she rasped. “This is all about money?”
“A rather large amount of money,” Craig answered smugly. “To my calculations, minus the four hundred thousand your mother stole, it should now be close to three point two billion dollars in gold, cash, bonds, and yearly shares in Taite Industries. A legacy Bernard refused to turn over to the family until Francine’s body was found. A legacy that was amassed over nearly a century of the Taites’ superb business sense.”
“As well as nearly a century of laundering the funds my father, his father, and his father before him made in the careful sale, trade, and trafficking of women Sorrel’s clients preferred. And Bernard never knew; that legacy should have never been his. Should have never been given into his safekeeping at our father’s death,” Stephen finished, his voice becoming progressively furious until he was glaring at her in malevolent rage. “Taites and Fitzhughs have always worked together, but we were smart enough to keep from being caught.”
All for money.
He had murdered everyone who had ever tried to help her mother. He had murdered everyone her mother had cared for, and everyone Tehya had cared for.
“Sorrel thought he could convince your mother to give him the set of numbers that would allow him to take possession of the accounts,” Craig continued. “He promised your mother she’d have her freedom.” He smiled. “She didn’t trust him, I gather.”
No, Francine hadn’t trusted the man who had kidnapped her, imprisoned her, and raped her repeatedly for years. And Tehya had trusted him even less.
Stephen straightened from the desk. “Now, do you die alone?” He glanced back at Journey. “Or do you go with company?”
Tehya turned and stared not at Journey, but at Beauregard Grant instead. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze flat and hard as he stared back at her.
Once again she wondered if he would really allow Stephen and Craig to kill her and Journey. There was something about him that wasn’t ringing true. She hadn’t been looking closely enough at him, she admitted. She hadn’t paid enough attention because he also wasn’t aligned with Sorrel. He hadn’t been around before Sorrel’s death. He hadn’t shown up on her background checks on Sorrel.
Who was he?
Her gaze slid to Journey. It wasn’t fear in her eyes now, it was rage and pain. Tears washed down her face, but Tehya recognized the agonized demand in the other girl’s eyes. A demand that Tehya give her father and grandfather nothing.
It was all for money, and the money wasn’t worth protecting. Tehya had known about the legacy her grandfather had ensured her mother knew how to access since she was a child. She knew the set of numbers that would open a vault in a Swiss bank and give the bearer a fortune unimagined.
It wasn’t worth dying for, but neither would she, could she, give them the satisfaction of ever acquiring it.
She turned back to the cousin and the great-uncle whose family she had once dreamed of being a part of. Ached to be a part of with a hunger that nearly had destroyed her.
“I never knew the key to the account,” she whispered, and it was nothing less than the truth. “I couldn’t remember it.”
Anger flashed in Stephen’s face. “Don’t lie to me, bitch,” he snarled, his fists clenching now as though the urge to strangle her was barely held in restraint. “She would never have let that fortune go.”
“Because you wouldn’t?” she whispered. “Her safety and mine was more important or she would have come home. She would have taken what she thought was hers and she would have hired enough bodyguards to ensure no one touched her again.”
So why hadn’t she done it?
Tehya didn’t have the key. What she did have was the safe deposit box where her mother had hidden the paper she had placed the key on. She made Tehya swear she wouldn’t attempt to access the money until she knew that not just herself, but also the family would be safe.
Bernard Taite’s death had terrified Francine and she had believed that the rest of the family could be in danger. She’d had no idea the family was in on it.
Stephen sighed before his fist clenched and he came closer.
Just that quickly Beauregard stepped in front of her.
“Journey’s mine,” he told the other man harshly. “I won’t have what I want from her affected by your treatment of this one.”
Amazement filled Stephen’s face as Tehya tensed, preparing for a confrontation and, hopefully, a chance to escape.
Just as she thought she would have it, a heavy knock sounded on the door, jerking her attention behind the two men.
“What do you want?” Stephen barked.
The door opened and two male figures stumbled into the room and collapsed to the floor.
Tehya stared at them in amazement, blood clotting at the side of Rory Malone’s face and at the back of Turk Gillespie’s head.
“Who the hell is this?” Craig Taite stood almost frozen, amazement filling his voice as it filled Tehya’s mind. “What’s going on here?”
Stephen turned back to Tehya, and before Beauregard could stop him, before Tehya could guess his intent, he struck her hard across the face, throwing her back against the couch as hell seemed to explode around her.
The lights went out as flash explosions
took out the far wall and lit up the darkness outside. Shouted orders began to echo around her as she jumped across the couch and threw Journey to the floor seconds before she felt the bullets whiz past them.
Stephen was screaming at Craig and Beauregard, demanding they get him out of there. As Tehya’s eyes opened, though, she knew her cousin wouldn’t be going anywhere.
He stared back at her from his position on the floor as she felt Rory and Turk suddenly moving.
Journey was lifted from the floor along with Tehya and ran for the door.
“No! No, you won’t,” Stephen was screaming in outrage as Ascarti suddenly stumbled in front of them, the handgun he carried slapping against Tehya’s head as Rory came to a hard stop, his arms holding her tight around her waist as Tehya clutched the derringer she had managed to slip from the garter holster she had worn.
“Not her,” Ascarti rasped, a crazed smile at his lips as Tehya lifted the derringer to his chest and fired.
She wouldn’t see another die. She wouldn’t hear of it. She wouldn’t know of it. She wouldn’t allow it.
It ended here.
She watched as a look of amazement came over his face. Shock.
Rory knocked the gun from his hand and Tehya watched as he fell, sinking to the floor as Rory and Turk rushed them out.
Behind her, Jordan and his men and only God knew who else were swarming into the office and kicking ass.
He had sworn he would protect her, and he had.
He had promised her it would end here, and as Rory pushed her into the back of an Elite Ops med-van, she knew, it was definitely ending here.
She watched as, a black-masked, medical operative cut the bindings from Journey’s wrists and pulled the tape gently from her lips.
Their gazes met.
Journey was shell-shocked. Silent.
Her gaze dropped to her fingers as they twined together and Tehya watched the tears begin to fall again.
Tears she couldn’t seem to shed. A raging pain she couldn’t free.
And the fear that nothing would ever make sense again.
* * *
Jordan left the warehouse behind the federal operatives who were pulling a screeching Stephen Taite from the melee that had erupted inside.
He’d had men outside the warehouse before Jordan had called for the advance. Nearly a dozen hard-core mercenary soldiers had been taken down within minutes by Killian Reece and his team.
After the years of manipulating everyone around him in order to see to their safety and their happiness, Jordan had finally been on the receiving end of it.
One of Killian’s operatives had leaked the fact that Tehya wasn’t dead to a known Sorrel associate. An associate suspected of being linked to a shadowy figure rumored to call himself The Marquis, a name French authorities had found in a single file belonging to Sorrel. The single reference had hinted at Sorrel’s fear that the Marquis would find Francine or Tehya before he did.
That someone else, according to the file, was determined to find Francine and Tehya. Just as Joseph Fitzhugh had been determined to keep him from gaining the “key” Francine Taite held.
The information Killian’s team had been working on since the death of Killian’s wife stretched back more than a decade. Killian had refused to let the investigation go, and Jordan hadn’t known about it.
Until the other man had walked into the Senator’s house just minutes after they’d realized Tehya had been taken.
“Jordan, wait up.” Killian turned Stephen Taite over to one of the authorities before moving quickly to his side.
“We don’t have anything to say, Killian,” he snapped. “Get the fuck out of my face.”
Killian’s expression registered surprise, but only for a second. His gaze darkened and then his lips quirked with somber knowledge. “I knew you loved her. I told you that when I came to base last year, didn’t I?”
Jordan jerked back. There was a part of his mind that watched, completely unsurprised as he grabbed Killian by the front of his mission shirt and slammed him against the metal shipping crate.
“You told me she would fucking kill me,” he snarled. “You didn’t trust her, Killian. You didn’t give her a safe haven. You fucking turned your back!”
Killian’s eyes widened for a second before he sighed wearily. “She always had safe harbor,” he finally said softly. “I always knew where she was, and my men were always watching her.” For a second, agony flashed in his eyes. “I lost the woman that owned my soul, Jordan. You’re the only fucking friend I ever had; did you think I would let this world take what means the most to you?”
He’d known Killian for far too many years. He’d known the other man’s demons, he’d known his rage, and when he was telling the truth.
He was telling the truth.
Jordan released him slowly.
“I had to let her think I hated her,” Killian sighed, still facing him. “I had to let you think it. If even once, she’d turned those haunted eyes on me in friendship, I’d have never been able to do what I knew Elite Command was going to have me do.”
“You could have told me,” Jordan raged.
Killian shook his head. “If anyone came to me and told me they were going to use Catherine in that way, I would have killed them before I allowed it. You would have never let it happen.”
No, he wouldn’t have.
Jordan was smart enough to admit that to himself. He would have run with her. He would have hidden with her. He would have never allowed her past to touch her in this way if he had been forewarned.
“I could kill you for not coming to me, Killian,” he rasped as he pushed closer, feeling that need for violence ripping through him. “And I wouldn’t feel any guilt. I wouldn’t feel a moment’s fucking regret. Do you know that?”
“Jordan…” Killian spoke softly, warningly.
“My fucking woman,” he snarled, the fury snapping through his mind. “She was mine and you knew she was mine.”
Killian’s brow arched, some gleam of unholy amusement in them searing the fury only growing inside Jordan now.
“You weren’t claiming her,” Killian reminded him. “You let her go. Maybe, if she was your woman, you should have given a man a clue so he’d know how to proceed.”
“I told you and every other man that came around her to stay the fuck away. I warned, I threatened, and when I had to I intimidated, so don’t fucking tell me I didn’t claim her.”
“You never said you loved her,” Killian pointed out.
Jordan’s lips parted, the stunned at the accusation that came from Killian’s lips.
God, he did love her, he realized. There was no fucking illusion, there were no attempts to deny it any longer. He’d stopped denying it the second his brain had processed the information that Tehya had been taken.
“I shouldn’t have had to say shit,” Jordan snapped. “By God, you should have known.”
“And perhaps you should have said something.”
Jordan froze.
His gaze jerked to Killian’s and found smug satisfaction quirking at his lips. An amusement tinged with a haunted pain, a memory of what he himself had lost.
He turned slowly.
The shoulder of her dress was ripped. It was dirty, streaked with dirt and smoke, tattered at the edges. She was barefoot, her stockings shredded, and her hair was in disarray around her shoulders.
And still, she was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever laid his eyes on.
“Perhaps someone should have enlightened me when I started making a fool of myself denying it,” he told her softly.
Her face was tear-stained, pale, and her gaze was still bright with unshed tears and pain.
Moving to her, he reached up, his thumb smoothing across the tears only to find others taking their place.
“Jordan,” she whispered, her lips trembling as he slowly pulled her into his arms, a wave of agony sweeping over him at the thought he could have lost her.
“I hav
e you, baby.” His arms tightened around her. “Right here, I have you.”
“It hurts.” Her breathing hitched as her hands suddenly clutched at his back. “Don’t let me go. Please. Please don’t let me go.”
Let her go? He’d tear his own heart out of his chest before he even considered such a villainous act.
“Come on, baby.” He picked her up and carried her to the waiting car that Nik had driven in. “Let’s go home.”
Where he could hold her. Where he could hopefully help ease just a small part of the horror she was feeling.
As he passed the medi-van, in the shadows close to the opened doors at the front of the vehicle, he caught a figure moving.
The form wore the familiar dark mask, and rather than a tuxedo, he was pulling on the utility belt that went with the mission clothes he had obviously changed into.
He hadn’t known who or what Beauregard Grant was until Killian had met him at the warehouse. He’d had no idea Beau had been doing the same thing Jordan had done more than fifteen years before.
He was creating a background, an identity, and a history that would put him in place where the Elite Ops needed him most.
He was a dead man walking. But if the way he was staring at the young woman sitting on the van’s gurney with her back to him, her eyes closed, tears still whispering down her cheeks, then he was a haunted man.
Jordan could hear Stephen still screaming at Journey from the car he’d been placed in. Furious, filthy curses and accusations as the young woman appeared deaf to the words.
But he knew she wouldn’t be.
Placing Tehya in the car, he turned to Noah as he loped over and nodded to Stephen’s granddaughter. “Get her out of here. Send her to Ireland until this blows over. Let her stay in the castle. She’s going to need time.”
“Where are you heading?” Noah tilted his head to stare at Tehya sitting silently in the back.
“Home,” Jordan breathed out, suddenly feeling the tension easing inside him. “I’m going home, Noah.”
* * *
As they drove away with Nik at the wheel, Jordan sat in the back, his woman cradled in his arms, thanking God for her safety.
