by Julie James
With his hand frozen at his harness, Jack looked over his shoulder. He took in the man standing in the doorway, aiming a gun right at his head.
“Lombard,” Jack growled.
“You almost had it there, Pallas. Almost,” Lombard said. “Now take the shoulder harness off. Slowly.”
The first thing Jack noticed was that Lombard didn’t have a silencer on his gun. Which meant that Cameron was still alive downstairs. Lombard had come after him first.
“I said take the shoulder harness off. Now,” Lombard said quietly.
Jack read the look on Lombard’s face and knew he wasn’t bluffing. He unhooked the harness and set it on the floor. He’d be no good to Cameron if Lombard blew his brains all over the office wall right then and there.
“Kick it over here,” Lombard said.
Jack complied. His eyes remained trained on the trigger of Lombard’s gun. One twitch and he’d be out of that chair. Dive to the floor, pull the desk over, and use it as a shield. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was something.
Then Lombard changed the game.
“Cameron Lynde,” he called out loudly, his voice reverberating through the top floor. “I have a gun pointed at your boyfriend’s head. If you’re not on the landing in three seconds, I will kill him.”
Jack forced himself to sound calm and controlled. “Get out of the house now, Cameron. Let me handle this.”
Lombard didn’t so much as blink. “Three seconds, Cameron. One, Two—”
“Don’t.”
The single, shaky word came from the landing a half a floor below them.
“Good girl, Cameron,” Lombard said.
The three of them remained in a holding pattern. Lombard in the doorway, pointing his gun at Jack, Cameron out of view on his other side, halfway down the stairs.
“If I hear a gunshot, I’ll run,” she called up. “And I know it’s me you really want.”
“Neither of you has to get hurt—I know a way we can work this out,” Lombard said.
“Don’t listen to a fucking word he says, Cameron. Get out of the house now,” Jack ordered her.
“I want to make a deal,” Lombard said, talking over him. “That’s all. You’re a prosecutor, Cameron—you can make it happen. And this gun in my hand gives you one hell of an incentive to do just that. I know things—like the name of the person who told me about you. There’s a mole—a big one. I can help you nail him. But we need to talk about this face-to-face. How do I know you’re not standing there with a phone in your hand, calling the police right now? So come up the stairs slowly, with your hands in front of you. Do it now, Cameron. Or Jack dies.”
It almost sounded convincing. Jack prayed she wouldn’t fall for Lombard’s speech. “It’s a setup, Cameron. You come up those stairs, and we’re both dead.”
There was a pause. Cameron remained strangely silent. Debating her options, presumably.
Jack knew the time to act was now. In his mind, there was only one option, and that was getting her as far away from Lombard as possible. No matter what it took.
She’d said she would run if she heard a gun shot. He had to count on that. He would draw Lombard’s fire and give Cameron a chance to escape. He wouldn’t stop until he reached Lombard, no matter what hit him.
Other men had tried to kill him before. For Cameron’s sake, he was willing to see if this asshole’s luck was any better than the others.
Jack got ready to make his move.
Beads of sweat formed at Lombard’s brow. He called down again, and his voice was strained and anxious. “You’ve got two fucking seconds, Cameron, so either get your ass up here or say good-bye to Jack.”
“Okay! I’m coming,” Cameron shouted up urgently.
But she wasn’t on the landing anymore. There was the faint sound of a door opening—it came from the hallway on the floor beneath them. A hinge squeaked. Something metal rattled.
“She’s getting a goddamn gun,” Lombard hissed.
Fortunately, Jack knew the layout of the house a lot better than Lombard. Not a gun, he thought, realizing precisely what Cameron was up to.
She was fucking brilliant.
The door she had opened, the one closest to the stairs, was her linen closet. And while there wasn’t a gun stashed in there—at least not one that Jack knew about—there was something else that could help them.
The circuit breaker.
Lombard snapped, having had enough. “Fuck you both.” His eyes narrowed in on Jack. Everything happened at once. He pulled the trigger as Jack dove for the ground, knowing what was coming. There was a loud CLICK! from downstairs and—
All the lights in the house went out.
The gun fired in the dark, and the bullet whizzed over Jack’s head. Not wasting a moment, he leapt up and ran for Lombard. Lombard reacted more quickly to the surprise of the darkness than Jack had hoped; he took off into the hallway. Lombard fired wildly behind him, and bullets hit the walls beside Jack. He kept going. Gaining on Lombard right before the stairwell, Jack saw his chance—he dove and tackled Lombard full-force. Grabbing for Lombard’s gun, Jack pushed him backward at the same time, using all his strength to hurtle them toward the wooden banister. Jack braced himself—this was going to hurt—as they slammed against the banister and broke through with a loud crack.
Tangled together, both men plummeted thirty-five feet down the open staircase.
They landed hard on the first-floor foyer. Jack heard the sickening sound of breaking bone as he crashed on top of Lombard, who screamed out in pain.
Jack instinctively lunged for Lombard’s gun, gritting his teeth at the flash of pain in his chest—he must have broken a few ribs. Fighting off a wave of dizziness from the shock of the fall, he pushed away from Lombard, stood up, and pointed the gun at him.
Jack caught his breath and wiped blood off his forehead with his sleeve. One of the bullets had hit the wall so close to his head he’d been cut by a flying piece of plaster.
“Almost had it there, Lombard,” he panted. “Almost.”
Jack heard footsteps above him. He looked up and saw Cameron running down the stairs. Seeing him, she stopped on the landing between the first and second floors and sank against the wall in relief. Jack realized then that he and Lombard must’ve fallen through the stairwell right past her.
With a look of shock, Cameron peered up at the third floor, all thirty-five feet up, then back at him. “My God, Jack.”
She caught sight of Lombard through the moonlight and swallowed. He lay on the floor before Jack with his right leg bent at a grotesque angle beneath him. Breathing heavily, he clutched his right arm to his chest and watched Jack warily.
With all the action, Jack had lost count of how many times Lombard had fired at him. He popped out the clip of the gun to see if it was still loaded. Three rounds left—more than enough. He slammed the clip back in.
He and Lombard had some unfinished business to discuss.
“Go upstairs to your bedroom, Cameron. Don’t come out until I tell you,” Jack said.
She nodded. “Right. I’ll call for backup and an ambulance.”
“Don’t call anyone. Just go upstairs.”
Her eyes widened. “What are you going to do?”
“You don’t need to know. You’re an assistant U.S. attorney—you can’t be a part of this.”
Lombard’s eyes widened nervously.
Cameron hesitated on the landing, and for a moment Jack thought she wasn’t going to listen to him. “Okay,” she finally said. She left, and a few seconds later Jack heard the door to her bedroom shut.
He turned his attention to Lombard, who was sweating profusely as he lay on the floor at his feet.
“When we were upstairs, you talked about the person who told you about Cameron’s involvement in the Robards case. I want to know who it was.”
Lombard coughed, wheezing in pain. “Fuck you, Pallas.”
“You might want to save that for later. I haven’t even gotte
n started yet.”
“Fuck you anyway.”
Jack squatted down at Lombard’s side. “You’ve been listening to Cameron and me this whole time,” he said quietly.
Lombard tried to laugh, but it came out sounding hollow. “Almost every word. Loved the part where you wouldn’t fuck her after I shot her. You’re as weak as the rest, Pallas. All because of a woman.”
Maybe Lombard saw him as weak because of Cameron, Jack thought.
But tonight she was his greatest strength.
“Since you’ve been listening, you know what she means to me. I would kill anyone who harmed her,” he said with cold simplicity. “Give me a name, and I’ll make an exception.”
Lombard didn’t say anything. But he didn’t look so smug anymore, either.
Jack brought the gun in closer. “You shot her. I watched as you took this very gun and held it under her chin. Like this.” He grabbed Lombard’s jaw and shoved the gun right under his chin. Lombard flinched, breathing heavily through his nose.
Jack pushed the barrel harder, digging into Lombard’s skin. “Give me an excuse to pull this trigger. I want to do it so badly I can taste it.”
“I want a deal,” Lombard blurted out through clenched teeth.
Jack nodded. “I believe you actually mean that this time.” He pressed the gun to Lombard’s forehead. “Here’s the deal: tell me what I want to know, and I won’t have to tell the medical examiner that I shot you between the eyes in self-defense.”
Lombard swallowed hard. He said nothing at first, but Jack saw it in his eyes.
Defeat.
Lombard sagged against the floor and finally gave Jack the answer he’d been waiting for.
“Silas Briggs.”
LESS THAN TEN minutes after Jack called for backup, the house was teaming with people—some in uniforms, some not. He told the paramedics what had happened to Lombard, then spoke briefly to both Wilkins and the cops.
Jack stood side-by-side with Wilkins, watching as the paramedics placed a neck brace onto a handcuffed Lombard and slid a backboard underneath him. He glanced up at Cameron. She’d been sitting on the steps of the landing ever since the cops and FBI had arrived. He sensed she hadn’t wanted to get too close to Lombard as he lay on the floor at the bottom of the staircase. He hoped she wasn’t trying to avoid him as well.
“I’d like a minute alone with Cameron,” Jack said to Wilkins. “Could you see to that?”
Wilkins nodded. “Of course. I’ll make sure everyone stays down here.”
Jack grabbed a blanket the paramedics had brought in, slipped past Lombard on the stairs, and headed up. He knelt down and wrapped the blanket around Cameron’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Jack noticed she was trembling. He helped her to a standing position, then led her up the stairs and into her bedroom. He closed the door behind them, took her by the hand, and sat her down on the bed.
“Say something, Cameron. Anything.”
She sounded distant when she answered. “When he called down from upstairs, I was standing right here by this bed.” She frowned. “I was trying to decide what underwear I was going to wear to bed that night, wondering if you liked black or red better.” Her voice cracked. “Then this strange voice shouted down that he had a gun pointed at your head and that you had three seconds to live.”
Jack knelt at the floor in front of her. “You did so great. Cutting off the power was the smartest thing anyone could’ve done in that situation.”
She wiped her eyes. “Right, I’m such a hero. You dove off a thirty-five-foot staircase. I turned off a light switch.”
“It . . . was a very key light switch.”
She sniffed. Her nose was red and her mascara was smudged underneath her eyes. Jack thought he had never seen anyone look so beautiful. When he thought about what could’ve happened . . . how close he’d come to losing her . . .
“You’re doing the serious face again.” Cameron touched his cheek, looking him over with concern. “Are you hurt? You have to be, after that fall.”
“I might’ve broken a few ribs,” Jack said.
“What? We need to get one of the paramedics to check you out. You could have internal bleeding or something.”
“It’s fine. I’ll have someone take a look later, when I’m finished with all this.”
She shook her head. “Not later, Jack. Now. You’re not invincible, you know.”
“Shh . . . I’ve been trying to keep that under wraps for years.”
That finally got a slight smile out of her. Jack got up and sat next to her on the bed.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I didn’t go into my room, you know. I stayed in the upstairs hallway to listen.”
“I figured as much.”
Cameron turned her head to look at him. “Those things you said to Lombard . . . were you bluffing?”
Jack thought about his response to this. He’d said a lot of things to Lombard. But right or wrong, the man she’d heard down there was him. “Does it matter?” he asked her.
She paused for a moment before shaking her head.
“No.”
Twenty-nine
“THERE’S SOMEONE HERE to see you, Cameron.”
Cameron glanced at the clock on her desk computer. It was after two o’clock, which surprised her. She’d been so caught up taking notes on the case files she’d been reading, she’d worked straight through lunch.
“Thanks, Elaine. Does this someone have a name?” She checked her calendar—she didn’t have any appointments written down for that afternoon.
Through the speakerphone, the front desk receptionist’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”
After everything she’d been through recently, Cameron wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. She picked up the phone. “Do I at least know this person?”
“Yes. Definitely,” Elaine said.
“Then why can’t I know who he or she is?”
“I don’t know—he just said I should ask you to come out here. Oh, he’s looking over. I gotta go.” Elaine quickly hung up.
Cameron set the phone back in its cradle. She considered the possibilities.
Jack or Collin?
Whichever of the two it was, he was taking her to lunch, she decided. She was starving.
She got up from her desk and headed out into the hallway, wondering what all the mystery was about. Her instincts told her it was Jack. He had dropped by her office frequently over the last couple of weeks, for both professional and personal reasons.
Thinking about him never failed to put a smile on her face. Since Lombard’s arrest, Jack had spent nearly every night at her house—the only exceptions being the few nights she’d spent at his loft. They were busy during the week, each of them having been thrust back into work after the night of the attack, but they made up for it in the evenings and on weekends. Jack had decided to take on the job of repairing the stairwell banister, along with a few other renovations to her house, and Cameron had decided to assist him—which meant that she sat in the corner drinking wine and reading one of the hundreds of books from his collection that slowly seemed to be trickling into her house. She’d poke her head up every once in awhile and chime in with her two cents, and then somewhere around her second glass she’d start noticing all the ways in which Jack’s muscles flexed under his T-shirt while he worked, and how delicious he looked getting sweaty and mussed, and uh-oh, suddenly they’d be on the floor getting sweaty and mussed in ways that didn’t require a hammer and nails.
Best of all, though, she loved the way they talked—whether it was coming out of the movie theater, at a restaurant over dinner, or lying on the couch with her head against Jack’s chest as he told about his former cases and she shared memories of her dad.
Luckily, the media attention surrounding them finally seemed to be dying down—something they both were looking forward to. The biggest story in the pr
ess for the last two weeks had been the indictment and subsequent resignation of the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. All things considered, Cameron supposed, Silas’s arrest had gone smoothly enough. The Monday morning after Lombard’s attack, she had “happened” to be out in the reception area when Jack and Wilkins had arrived with their arrest warrant. There’d been a lot of yelling and swearing on Silas’s part, particularly as Jack put the handcuffs on him. Standing off to the side with a few of the other assistant prosecutors, Cameron had watched as Jack remained calm and professional. He’d said something in a low voice only Silas could hear, and Silas nodded mutely, his lower lip quivering. Strangely, after that he’d been fully cooperative.
Closely following the scandal involving Silas had been the one with Grant Lombard—it wasn’t every day, after all, that a U.S. senator’s private bodyguard was arrested for murdering a call girl in one of Chicago’s most luxurious hotels. This arrest, unfortunately, had put Cameron and Jack directly in the spotlight: after the attacks it became impossible to keep secret the fact that she had been a witness (sort of) to the murder. The media quickly linked her and Jack together from the apparently never-to-be-forgotten “head up her ass” comment of three years ago. Although the rehashing of Jack’s remarks usually brought on another glowering session on his part, Cameron personally found it amusing to watch. She’d even slipped once—while he was trying to wrestle the remote control out of her hands to turn off the ten o’clock news, she’d teasingly said they should share the footage with their kids someday as evidence of their love at first sight. When Jack hadn’t immediately scrambled off the couch to head for the hills, and instead had gotten quite amorous after her comment, she took it as a sign that she hadn’t completely freaked him out.
Now, looking forward to Jack’s unexpected visit, Cameron picked up her stride and turned the corner into the main reception area of the office.
He wasn’t there. The entire waiting area was empty, in fact.
Over at the reception desk, Elaine held up her hands. “He told me he didn’t want to wait out here—said he wanted to speak to you someplace private. I put him in Silas’s old office since no one is using it right now.”
