Deadlock

by Cherrie Lynn

  “We’re still eight million shy. My calculations tell me that we won’t reach our total amount owed in sixty-five—actually, sixty-three minutes.”

  “But you’ll get it. It’s just taking longer than I thought it would, which I explained to you.”

  “Tell me you didn’t do what they wanted,” Lena groaned, still wrestling her captor as he wrangled her closer.

  “I had to,” Lindsey said softly, only to her. “I’m sorry.”

  “They’re going to kill us anyway.” And Lena would rather die on her own terms, rather than let herself be manipulated into doing their dirty work before she went. Lindsey got that. But first, she’d rather try to live.

  Maybe it had been hopeless from the start. Maybe all they could hope for now was a more merciful death. Lindsey looked at the man who had been in the room with her all this time, whose face was perpetually half in shadow, and wondered again if this was Rhys, wondered if he had authority here and if there were any vestiges of sympathy lurking in some dark corner of him that she could reach.

  Lena’s masked captor paused with her a few feet away. Lindsey looked deep into her sister’s eyes, trying to read something there, hoping for some shared twin insight or plan—but saw nothing. She couldn’t be resigned to this. That wasn’t like her at all.

  Lindsey wasn’t bound in any way. She couldn’t have gotten herself out of her chair, much less walk. After all these hours, even if she didn’t have the fractured bones, her butt was asleep, and so were the backs of her legs. She would fall as soon as she stood. No chance to fight.

  She was pondering the impossible odds when Lena turned a scathing look on the man beside her and said, “At least have the sac to show me your face, asshole.”

  He stared back at her, the deep black eye holes of his plain white mask sending a chill through Lindsey’s blood. Just when she expected he wasn’t going to make a move or comment, he lifted his hands and pushed the mask back, taking his hood with it.

  Griffin, Lena’s partner, the liar who’d shown so much concern over her and now held her in chains. Lindsey found her heart could break just a little more from the pain that filled her twin’s eyes.

  Not surprise. Her sister had known who held her before she challenged him, but Lindsey could tell her knowledge didn’t make the revelation any easier.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  If she was putting her feelings out on the table, he was taking his away, his face as flat and expressionless as that mask had been. There was no remorse, no apology there that Lindsey could see.

  “Well, then, fuck you,” Lena said, spitting the words at him. “You’re going to get yours. And when you do, I hope my face is the last thing you think of before you choke on your own blood.”

  Lindsey expelled a shuddering breath. She wanted to lash out at him, too, but the words she was reaching for weren’t there. Her mind had shut down, a cold numbness suffusing her. Is that what it was like to know you were facing the end? She could hardly spare a thought for the people she was leaving behind. They didn’t exist in this place, and she wanted to keep it that way. Jace and everything he’d made her feel; her parents and all the love they’d given her throughout her life—this was a dark place, and their light didn’t belong here.

  But she still had her sister. “Let us be together, at least,” she asked the man who stood back in the shadows, quietly watching. She figured his word was law, whoever he was. “I can’t go anywhere. Let me hold my sister.”

  “Take these fucking cuffs off me, Sharpe,” Lena demanded, glaring back at the man who’d told Lindsey to call him Griffin. “Congratulations, you’ve won. I won’t fight. But after everything we’ve been through and everything you’ve done, I don’t deserve to die this way. You know it.”

  He glanced to his superior for guidance. Lindsey didn’t see the gesture, but it must have been given, because Sharpe moved up behind Lena and began removing her handcuffs.

  “Agent Morris, I trust you realize the consequences of any foolish actions on your part.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lena muttered while Lindsey bit her lip and winced from forgetting it was split. Her sister stood docile while her cuffs were removed, but Lindsey feared the worst. If Lena knew they had nothing to lose at this point, what might she do? As soon as she was free, though, she only ran forward and dropped to Lindsey’s side, gently wrapping her arms around her and dropping her head to her lap. Lindsey lowered her face as best she could into her sister’s messy hair and breathed her in, wrapping her good arm around her.

  Now she was ready to face whatever they might dish out.

  “I’ll revisit you when we are fully compensated. Ms. Morris, Agent Morris.” The man said their names politely in farewell, and Lindsey heard his departing footsteps, but a glance upward showed Griffin—Sharpe—still with them. He retreated to a distant corner and sat in a chair she hadn’t noticed before. She had no doubt he was fully armed, should either of them try anything.

  She’d tried to take stock of her surroundings while she’d been working. It seemed they were being kept in a warehouse of some sort. But who knew where or how far from home? She had no idea how long she’d been out or how far she had been moved when they drugged her.

  Lindsey turned her head back to the computer screen and watched the account numbers slowly rise. Fractions of pennies. Sand in their hourglass.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was a trap they were setting. So, fair enough. Jace walked right the fuck into it, head up, guns ready to blaze. His team had always accused him of being too reckless. He couldn’t very well not live up to the label when so much was at stake. He was alone, but they were still with him. Helix was in his earpiece right now, giving direction, taking commands.

  The address where they were holding Lindsey traced back to the Libra Cooperative, so Rhys had apparently found a new home for his talents. But even as Jace stalked through their compound, SIG in hand, they wouldn’t catch him on their security cameras. Helix was disabling them as he went. But that alone would bring guards running. Blindly into his bullets.

  He’d been coding for almost ten hours straight, and he hadn’t had sleep since Lindsey fucked him to exhaustion, so he was running on pure adrenaline. She couldn’t have much time left. Cap was bringing on Lena’s colleagues at the CIA, but he couldn’t wait for them to get their asses in gear.

  When he had finally zeroed in on the source of the deposits, in addition to the time it had taken him to trace them, the flight to Salt Lake City had been almost two hours, then yet another hour to get to the warehouse the money was originating from. He had no time for fucking delicacy here, no time for surgical precision. This could only be a full-on raid, and his one blazing hope was that Rhys wanted to make this personal. That the asshole wanted a showdown and would keep Lindsey alive until he got it. Jace would gladly grant his wish, and this time he’d finish what he’d started years ago.

  Three bodies in his wake. Now four. Dark hallways. Doors. He swept every room he found, taking note of the stock of weapons and drugs. They were running guns and who knew what else.

  Panic surged with every room he cleared with no sight of Lindsey, his heart tripping in his chest, but he fought back the bright sickness churning in his gut. If she wasn’t here—Jesus Christ, he didn’t know what he would do.

  If he had just listened to her, she might not be in this situation, her blood might not have been on the ground in his parking garage. His team thought he had lost it, that he was on a suicide mission—he didn’t care.

  In the back of one of the cluttered ground-floor offices—one that looked to be mostly used for storage—he found a descending staircase behind what he’d initially assumed was a closet door. Dark, cold, and echoing. He swept his light around, his blood rushing in his ears. The stairs made a turn on a landing below. Beyond that he could see nothing.

  He made his way down
and down again, the darkness swallowing his light only a few yards in front of him. He didn’t trust the silence. It meant something was waiting. He much preferred chaos—he’d rather see the threat screaming in his face, where it could be neutralized. He could only handle what he could see and hear.

  Gun drawn, he followed the tunnel until it met another flight of stairs. These went up. He took them two or three at a time, following twists and turns. “Helix, I don’t know where the fuck I am,” he muttered into his mouthpiece. This was some deep level of dark hell.

  “Keep going until you do,” his brother advised.

  Thanks, asshole. He thought he was on ground level again when two guys jumped him in a hallway. One of them he knocked out within seconds. The other he slammed against the wall, the barrel of his gun pressing hard enough into the bastard’s chin to leave a permanent impression. “Where is she.”

  Furious dark eyes bored into his. He didn’t recognize the face. A flunky trying to be the hero of his own story. But he could plainly see the guy wasn’t up to spilling any information. “It’s your lucky day, man. I’ve left a trail of your buddies behind me, and one more won’t make a fuck of a difference. I suggest you start talking if you want to make it out of here alive.”

  With his eyes alone, he indicated Jace’s right, where the hallway ended in a doorway, and since he hadn’t rushed Jace with a gun, he did him the courtesy of merely cracking his head against the wall instead of killing him. The guard crumpled to the floor at Jace’s feet.

  Libra was definitely expanding, if they had so many guys on hand.

  That grim knowledge was with him as he surged through the indicated door into a vast, dim room with a ceiling so high and shadows so deep that anything could be lurking. But he only saw one thing, sitting in one pool of light in the far corner.

  Lindsey.

  Clearly, he could not always handle what he could see. Because even from this distance, he could see her beaten face, the blood caking her sweet mouth and her bright hair.

  “No,” she cried softly when her eyes found him.

  Only then did he notice that someone was crouched beside her, a woman with her head in her lap. She turned to present an identical face, and after all this time, all these years, all this trouble, he tried not to fucking recoil, but it was difficult. Lena.

  Lindsey looked only at him, but Lena’s eyes immediately darted off to the side. “Look out!” she cried, and immediately a shot rang out. One of the women screamed—probably Lindsey. Jace felt a searing pain slice his right biceps, an impact that nearly turned him in a full circle. Luckily, he was left-handed and returned fire as soon as he got his feet back under him. Whether it was the pain or the weakness from the hit he’d taken, he missed. The man stalked forward, his gun leveled at Jace’s head. As he was contemplating another shot, to his absolute horror, the guy swung his aim over to the ladies, the barrel glinting in the dim lights. The sound Lindsey made would forever haunt his nightmares. Lena merely stared back at her assailant with an icy defiance he could almost admire.

  “You put that right back on me,” Jace bit out, knowing he needed to get pressure on his wound. He was losing blood fast. It pumped down his arm in hot rivulets.

  “I don’t think I will.” As the guy strolled closer, Jace recognized him. He’d seem him when he was watching N-Tech with Lindsey. This was Griffin. “Toss down your headset.”

  He did, severing his connection with the team, Helix still yelling in his ear.

  “Now put down your piece. Nice and easy.”

  “Man, you know, I just really hate putting my gun down. Because you should know that if I get this shot off, you’re dead. Only you. Maybe you can fire before the bullet enters your skull, but most likely you won’t. You’ll swing wide with the impact, and if the gun goes off because your finger twitches, well, the bullet will only hit the wall or the ceiling.”

  “Except you’re wounded, and I just saw you miss.”

  “I won’t miss this time, motherfucker.”

  “Stop.” The voice came from behind them, cold, dead, familiar. He didn’t have to turn his head; somehow, he knew without looking when a gun was pointed at him. The chill was always the same, icy and precise on the back of his neck.

  “Turn around.”

  Lindsey whimpered in the distance. Jace met her eyes for a heartbeat before slowly stepping around to face the one who had spoken.

  Rhys.

  All Jace wanted was to charge across the room and beat the bastard to the brink of death again. No, beyond. This time, he would go beyond that brink. He wanted him to suffer; he wanted him to die with Jace’s hands locked around his throat. Maybe, just before Rhys succumbed to unconsciousness, Jace would let him draw a breath or two, then do it all again. Torture him.

  He steadied his galloping heart. “It’s been a long time.”

  His old teammate had always had a sinister gleam in his eyes. Hell, they all did—it was practically a requirement. The years had done nothing but define Rhys’s gleam until it was as lethal and merciless as a blade’s edge. He stood dressed all in black, his gun leveled at Jace’s head. He didn’t speak, only stared, as if grappling with the need to pull that trigger.

  Knowing when he was beat, Jace presented his palms in a brief surrender, then knelt to gently place his weapon on the concrete at his feet before stepping back several paces. In these situations, not having his gun was like not having his hand. But it freed him up to clasp his bleeding gunshot wound, trying to stanch the flow.

  “Jace,” he heard Lindsey whisper, “no.”

  “Do whatever you want with me, but let the twins go.”

  “Touching,” Rhys said. In one fluid motion, he withdrew and re-holstered his weapon, but Jace knew the threat was still there. Rhys was no slouch with a piece. Still, he released the breath that had been held captive in his lungs. “You’re too easy sometimes, Adams.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why Lindsey? What did she ever do to deserve this?”

  Rhys gave an easy shrug, the effortless, disarming charm still about him. It was how he’d kept them all fooled for so long. “We needed her, but as far as her injuries, perhaps the more pertinent question is, what did you do to deserve this?”

  It was all his fault. Every blow Lindsey had taken—she was bruised and broken all over—was in retaliation for the ones he’d dealt out to Rhys that day all those years ago. He’d snapped, and he knew it…but the loss of innocent life weighing on his conscience had broken him. It had broken all of them. But he’d been the only one to let it fester to the point of temporary madness.

  In Rhys’s twisted mind, the best revenge was rendering him powerless—hurting Lindsey, someone he cared about, while he could do nothing to make it better. His eyes burned, and he would have given anything to hold her right then. Every hurt, all her pain, all his fault.

  “I should kill you for this,” he ground out.

  “You should, but you won’t.” Rhys picked at an invisible speck on his black shirt. “One wrong move from you and she and everyone she loves will die.”

  “These women don’t have anything to do with you and me,” Jace said. “Leave them out and take me. Do what you want. Break my bones, torture me, do what you feel like you need to do. I’m here. But she goes free.”

  “That’s tempting. You probably could never even dream of what I’d love to do to you. If I hadn’t already known you would make that offer, I might even jump on it right now. But I dealt with the disappointment of knowing I’d never get that chance a long time ago, and, well, it’s not as fun if you’re offering. I know you, so stoic, you’d take every hit and ask for more even though I think I could come up with some ways to make you scream. So…sorry, Adams. My answer is no.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re far more valuable to Libra alive than dead. Trust me, I’d put a bullet in your head right now if you wer
en’t. It’s inconvenient. But the best way to keep you docile as a mouse is sitting right over there, don’t you think? She isn’t all that valuable to us, not anymore. She did her part. No, she’s pretty expendable to everyone—except you.”

  Rhys’s words were so offensive Jace might have ground his own teeth into dust trying to maintain control. Looking over at Lindsey’s wounds, her soft, pretty face so bruised and bloody, her hair matted and streaked with dried blood, a shaking fury spread out from his chest, but he didn’t have anywhere to direct it. Rhys would kill her. It would be nothing to him to do so. But she was more than a fucking pawn in his game.

  She was everything to him.

  The Griffin bastard still held a gun on her. Whether it would strike her or Lena, he couldn’t quite tell. Maybe both of them. They would die in each other’s arms, reunited at last.

  “However,” Rhys went on, crossing his arms, “what you’re failing to realize is that three is better than one. Why would I release them and keep you when I have you all right here? Think of all the fun I’ll miss out on.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Jace, really? You have to ask? A man of your talents?”

  “If you think I’m leaving the Nest to join up with these Libra fucksticks, you’ve lost your damn mind, Rhys.”

  “Imagine what we could be, what we could achieve. We balance the scales. Corporations run the world, Jace. They make up over half of the richest economic entities on the planet, a planet that should be ours.”

  “And you’re going to take it back. Jesus. Who put all this bullshit in your head?”

  “Someone I really think you should meet.”

  “Not interested.”

  He saw the glance that Rhys exchanged with Griffin and went on full alert, snatching his gaze over to Lindsey and Lena. A ding came from somewhere. “Ah,” Rhys said. “Paid in full. Thank you, Ms. Morris, for your assistance. Your services are no longer required.”