“Yeah,” Eli said as well, coming up beside him. “Motherfucking yeah.” He gripped my shoulder hard. “Did you hear that, Levi? Abby is alive!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I felt like I’d been kicked in the head. Or maybe the heart. Abby was alive. Not dead, not blown into a million pieces by an inferno I had no possibility of stopping.
Alive.
My mind hit turbo speed in sixty seconds flat.
“She’ll be with Redding.” And apparently doing her own kind of damage, if what we’d overheard was true. I narrowed my eyes at Remi. “Plan B is in place, isn’t it?”
He glared at me like that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard, but I ignored him. Right now I needed to think aloud, and he’d just have to deal. “Of course it is.”
We needed to get as many of those men out of the third floor and out of our way as possible. Without Abby, we could take our time, comb the floor, take the men out one at a time. Not now. We were bypassing half our plan in favor of getting Abby to safety with all possible speed. “Come with me.”
We retreated into the second-floor office space and holed up in the first room with a door we could close. “Ready?” I asked Remi.
He raised a detonator for the rest of us to see. “Am I ever not ready?”
The bomb he’d planted wasn’t all that big. There would likely be minimal structural damage, but we’d placed it at the back of the first floor in the mail room, looking to get the most flammable material in one place as possible. A fire meant Rathlin’s men couldn’t ignore it; they had to deal, and that gave us time with them out of the way.
When Remi pressed the button, a muffled roar and hard shimmy reached us. Shouts in the stairwell barely traveled through the wall, and as I thought about all those men running for safety, concerned for their lives, my calm blew to bits just like the mail room had. The cool assassin was nowhere to be found right now, no matter how much I needed him. Rage was in control, all the anger that had boiled inside me at Abby’s “death,” the fury burning at the knowledge that Abby had been through a kidnapping, had suffered pain, fear, worry.
Fuck cool and emotionless—I had a flesh-and-blood target in my reach, and he’d pay for the hell he’d put me through. But he’d die for the hell he’d put Abby through.
By the time we sneaked back into the hallway, I’d channeled that rage into the hunt. Sticking to the outer edge of the staircase, we made our way silently up to the fourth floor. I caught sight of the guard stationed at the fourth-floor door mere seconds before he saw me, but that was all I needed to get a dart off. We could just as easily use regular weapons, but I’d rather not deal with the aftermath of thirty dead men and a clear motive attached to my now-public name. No, we’d stick to non-lethal—and reserve the special stuff for Redding and his cohort.
The guard dropped. Remi and I dragged him to one side while Eli set his position at the top of the stairs. “No one comes up,” I told him, though he already knew. “No one. If you need to, drop more than just a flash bang.” Eli had shut down the elevators before we came up, and in the enclosed stairwell, a flash bang might as well be an actual grenade going off. Any men attempting to reach the fourth floor via the stairs were about to have a very bad day.
He looped ear protection around his neck. “No worries. Go.”
With Remi at my back, I approached the door. On the count of three, we rushed it.
We were at the back entry of the apartment, facing a long hallway. At the opposite end, a guard stood. I darted him before he could get his gun up. His cry brought another guard and Rathlin around the corner.
Remi took the second guard. Rathlin managed to retreat, leaving my second dart to hit the wall behind him instead of his arm, damn it. As I advanced, I could hear the guards from beyond the living area at the end of the hall rushing into the room. No female that I could detect. I didn’t want Abby subjected to what I was about to do, but if it got her out of here… I prayed she was being kept in the bedroom.
With steady fingers I pulled the pin on a flash bang and tossed it around the corner into the crowd that was forming.
Even with my eyes closed, hands over my ears, and the protection of the wall, everything sheeted white. Sound died. I knew men must be stumbling around, disoriented, surprised, eardrums tortured, but I couldn’t hear them. That didn’t stop me or Remi from moving into the room. Amid the chaos, we darted three more guards.
Without conscious thought I took in the rest of the room. Abby and Redding were nowhere to be found. Rathlin had obviously used the couch for protection and now crouched behind it, at the farthest side of the room away from us, letting his men become cannon fodder. Chadwick, hands over his ears, ran for the executive office to the right of the living area. Remi followed, but I kept my attention on Rathlin.
He smirked at the dart gun in my right hand as he finally advanced. “Surely the big bad Levi didn’t bring a dart gun to a gunfight.” He had already pulled a GLOCK from the holster strapped to his thigh.
The man’s voice sounded tinny in my ears. “Of course not.” I waved my dart gun to get his attention, using the split second to pull a gun from behind my back. I might not be left-handed, but I could damn well shoot with either hand; I’d made sure of it. “I brought both.”
“You won’t need them.”
Redding’s voice came from my left, from the doorway to the bedroom contained in the apartment. Before I even looked, I knew what I was going to see, and I had to steel myself against it. I needed my eyes on Abby like I needed my next breath, needed to see that she was okay, that she was in one piece, but I couldn’t let it overwhelm me, not now. No, the animal needed to hunt; the man would have to wait till later to care for his mate.
“Put the guns down,” Redding said.
I looked; I had to. I took in the gun at Abby’s temple, the mess of her hair, the tears in her eyes, the fierce determination that told me she’d fight till her last breath. The rough shape of her clothes and the bruises on her arms. And then I met Redding’s triumphant gaze. “You’re going to die, I promise you.”
“I don’t think so.” He shoved the barrel harder against Abby’s head, so hard it pushed her ear nearly to her shoulder. “Put them down. Now.”
I eased toward the floor, carefully setting both guns on the carpet. Then stood.
“Kick them to me,” Rathlin said.
I did.
He came toward me. I held Redding’s gaze, not flinching, not wondering about Remi or Eli, even when a muffled roar and shouts came from the direction of the stairwell. I stared at Redding and I waited.
Rathlin had a long black zip tie in his hand now, presumably to cuff me. When he grabbed one arm, I stiffened it, using the resistance to swing my body around and come up behind him. The cry he gave as my fist connected with one of his kidneys said he’d be pissing blood for a day or two, but it didn’t stop him. The fight was rough and dirty—and it hurt. I made sure to keep Rathlin between me and Redding, though the older man made no attempt to stop us. Probably thinking I didn’t have a chance against his hired thug. When I dropped to the floor, swept Rathlin’s feet out from under him, and punched him in the side of the head, knocking him out, I don’t know who was more surprised, Rathlin or Redding.
I got to my feet, picking up Rathlin’s gun on the way.
Redding scoffed, the sound not as steady as he’d probably like. “Go ahead, put a bullet in him. I don’t care. He’s as useless to me as that sniveling Chadwick.”
I was pretty sure that sniveling Chadwick was currently tied up in the outer office. Remi would’ve stationed himself there to ensure no one rappelled up the elevator cables, giving me all the privacy I needed.
I took a step toward Redding. “I made you a promise.” Another step. “Let her go and I might reconsider.”
“She’s my ticket out of here,” Redding said, sidling in a wide arc around me toward the office door. “Besides, who will the police believe, a contract killer with a bloody
past or an esteemed businessman who’s put millions into his community?”
“Doesn’t matter what they believe. You’re not getting out of here alive.”
He sneered, but I could see the sweat forming on his forehead. He continued to inch toward the door, and I continued to pivot, keeping him in my sights.
“With my money, I’ll go somewhere no one can find me. And maybe I’ll take your little prize here with me.”
Remi chose that moment to step into the doorway Redding was headed for, gun at the ready. “I don’t think so, motherfucker.”
“Make your choice, Redding,” I said.
He pointed the gun at me, his finger on the trigger. His hand was shaking. “I’ll—”
Abby dropped her weight, bringing both arms up to break his hold. On the way down she bumped Redding so that he stumbled. Planting her foot on the inside of Redding’s knee, she rode it all the way to the floor, putting her full weight on it. The sound of his knee disintegrating crackled through the air.
It was followed by a gunshot. A neat red hole appeared in the center of Redding’s forehead, and his eyes went dead with his last breath.
I dropped Rathlin’s gun and opened my arms for Abby.
In the middle of a job, closing your eyes is like writing your own death warrant; you just don’t do it. But Abby’s weight hitting me in the chest—I sucked in an actual fucking sob and closed my eyes and just…God… She was alive. She was alive and in my arms. I could vaguely hear Remi retreating back into the office, but I didn’t care. I didn’t look. Not with Abby against me again.
“Stop hugging your woman and let’s get out of here,” Remi said as he shoved Chadwick into the living room ahead of him. “Eli won’t be holding them off much longer.”
Chadwick stumbled, nearly losing his footing as his gaze landed on Redding. “What did you— What—” A ghastly white sheen took over his skin, everywhere but the swollen red nose that was covered in a bandage. Abby had good aim, as she’d already proven once tonight. “I—”
“This guy doesn’t look so good,” Remi said, pointing out the obvious.
“I couldn’t give a shit,” I said. I noticed Abby didn’t look at the lawyer, just kept her face buried against me, and I wondered for the millionth time what had been done to her. “Set him up.”
Chadwick’s lawyerly physique was no match for Remi’s strength. Forcing the man over to where Redding lay on the ground, he took the gun I passed him—Rathlin’s gun—and pressed it into Chadwick’s trembling hand.
“You can’t— There’ll be fingerprints. You’ll—”
Remi leaned in. “Latex gloves. The only fingerprints will be yours and Rathlin’s. We’ll let the police sort out which of you is guilty.”
“But…but…” Chadwick’s words degenerated into meaningless rubble as Remi took aim at Redding’s heart, his fingers over Chadwick’s on the gun. When Remi “helped” him pull the trigger, Chadwick fainted.
“Made that easy,” Remi said. He glanced at me and Abby, who still hadn’t let go. I hadn’t either. “We’ll have to save the reunion, bro. Gotta split.”
I rubbed a hand down Abby’s back, then used it to urge her toward the stairwell. “Let’s go, little bird.”
“Okay.”
The word was a blend of relief and gratitude. I knew exactly how she felt.
Abby followed Remi down the hall. He knocked twice on the stairwell door, paused, knocked twice again. A flash bang went off farther down the stairs, along with what sounded vaguely like a war cry, maybe a cowboy hollering—either way, it sounded like Eli was having fun. We waited for him to open the door.
“There you are, little sis,” he said, jerking her into a hug. “Let’s get you outta here.”
With Remi bringing up the rear, Eli led our group up to the roof. We made quick work of setting up ropes. I sent everyone else down, but as I prepared to descend, I heard sirens coming from the front of the compound. “Eli?”
I glanced down and saw the panel on his wrist light up. While he assessed, I skimmed my way down the side of the building. Remi clicked a button after I landed, releasing the mechanisms on the roof that held the ropes in place, and he and I gathered the gear. Always take the evidence with you when you can.
“You’ll never guess who’s at the front gate,” Eli said.
“Tell us on the run.” I wrapped an arm around Abby and got her moving.
“Who?” Remi asked.
“Our boy Bryant,” Eli said.
A muffled laugh escaped me, echoed by my brothers. “He’s going to have an interesting night ahead of him, isn’t he?”
“Better him than me,” Remi said as he pulled the fence aside. He bowed from the waist. “After you, Abby.”
She knelt in the grass, then stopped, staring up at us for a moment, and shook her head. “Thank you.”
I leaned over, tipped her chin up, and grazed her mouth with mine. “Thank you, little bird. For being alive. Now go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.
The refrain pounded in my head to the rhythm of my booted feet as we jogged toward the SUV. Abby ran in front of me, and I found myself analyzing her movement—was she as fluid as she should be, had she hesitated when she jumped that fallen limb? Were there injuries she hadn’t told me about, that I couldn’t see?
Of course there were wounds I couldn’t see. She’d been held at gunpoint before—by her own father, no less—but that didn’t mean the experience wouldn’t leave scars.
Why the fuck couldn’t I protect the most important person in my life?
But she’s alive.
With the distraction at the front of the complex, we had no trouble escaping. At the SUV each of my brothers took a turn hugging Abby fiercely before shuffling her into the back seat. I pulled the latex gloves off my hands, passed them to Remi to dispose of along with his and Eli’s, and followed after her, pulling her roughly into my lap.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispered, burrowing against my chest. “I knew.”
There’d been no way to know she was alive, but still I felt like shit for delaying even a day. The fact that she’d waited, worried, endured Lord knew what…
My mind raced as my hands roamed her body, searching for answers to questions I couldn’t ask yet. Registering through touch that she was all right. Here. Real. I needed to feel every inch of her right fucking now.
Abby sat quietly in my arms, her beautiful eyes glittering up at me as if she knew exactly what I was doing and why.
“Bro, wait till we’re home, yeah?” Eli chuckled, breaking the moment. “A little privacy is a great thing.”
Remi punched him in the arm, hard. Eli winced, and in my lap, a little laugh escaped Abby.
“Asshole,” I said, not without affection but with a heavy amount of exasperation.
Abby’s laughter tickled my throat as she buried her face in the crook of my neck. Her weight on my legs, her arms around me, her face tucked against me drew a groan of relief from deep inside. I never thought I’d feel this again. Never thought I’d get a chance to fill my lungs with the scent of vanilla and flowers from her shampoo, absorb the warmth of her skin. My heart still felt ragged, torn apart, as if this wasn’t real, but I had the evidence right here in my arms.
I buried my hands in her hair and lifted her head, needing to see her eyes, her light. “Holy fuck, Abby. I thought I’d lost you. I thought—”
Pain closed off my throat. Abby palmed my cheeks, her heat steadying me. “You couldn’t lose me. I wouldn’t let you.”
“I watched the car blow up with you inside it,” I said, my words more gravel than sound.
Abby’s eyes widened. “You what?”
Remi steered the SUV onto the road, heading for home. “What did you think happened, Abby?”
“I… I don’t know.” She shook her head against my shoulder. “One minute I was about to get in the car. I was… I was angry.”
I p
almed her nape and squeezed. The anger didn’t matter anymore; we’d both been taught that lesson.
“I wasn’t really paying attention. I opened the door. Then there was something over my face”—she wiped a hand over her nose and mouth as a shudder shook her—“and…nothing. I don’t remember anything after that, not till I woke up back there.”
“You were at Hacr Technologies,” Eli supplied.
Abby nodded, but I could tell that all she cared about was that she was no longer there.
“We’ll call Bryant in the morning,” I said above Abby’s head. “He’s the detective assigned to your case since it was tied to the fire at the house. I think he’ll be happy to know you’re alive.”
Bryant also had his hands pretty full tonight. And while the detective probably had a very good idea what had happened back at Hacr, I didn’t think he’d be pushing for too much more than the obvious explanations. Chadwick and Rathlin would take the fall for all of it now that Redding was dead. Odd though it seemed for someone like me to trust law enforcement, Bryant was a good man, and he had more than one reason to want Rathlin behind bars. His partner was still in the hospital, after all.
“Who the hell did they have in the car then?” Eli asked. I’d described to both of them that I’d seen Abby’s hair from behind; it was the only thing that could have convinced me that she was the one in the passenger seat. Rathlin and Redding had really sold that move.
Abby shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Silence settled between us for a moment, filled with regret for the person who’d taken Abby’s place. As glad as I was that she was here with me, I hated to see the innocent die. That wasn’t the code we lived by.
“Are you okay?” I asked, unable to wait any longer. “Did they—”
Abby’s head came up, her finger landing on my lips, cutting off the questions. “I’m okay. I promise.” She stared fiercely into my eyes as if she knew where my nightmares led and was determined to obliterate them. “A few bruises, that’s all.” The slightest smirk tugged at her lips. “Chadwick had worse.”
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