by Anna Blakely
Her uncle turned back around, his fist slamming into her gut again. Mac gagged. Coughing against the pain, she spit the saliva filling her mouth onto the floor by the asshole’s feet.
“Fuck the signal. Is anyone else hearin’ this shit?” Derek yelled into the coms. “He’s gonna kill her, for fuck’s sake!”
Mac could tell Trevor’s next words were for Jake. “D’s right, man. If we don’t do somethin’ now, he’s gonna end up killing them both.”
“Mac’s the one in there,” Jake pointed out. “We need to trust her judgement on this.”
Thank you, Jake!
“Stop!” She shouted, her voice echoing off the room’s paneled walls.
The order was meant for everyone involved. Her team outside, Tony…Coop. She couldn’t think with so many voices rolling around in her head.
“You want me to stop?” Tony stared her down. Pulling a pistol from his waistband, he raised his arm, stopping when the barrel was lined up perfectly with her forehead. “I can end this right now.”
“No!” Coop screamed again. “Ah, God. Please don’t.”
Mac didn’t look over at him. If she did, she’d lose what was left of her inner strength. She needed her head to stay clear so she could think of a way to get them both out of this alive.
“Why are you doing this?” She tried to keep her uncle talking. “Why leave me your estate if all you want to do is torture and kill me?”
Her uncle shrugged. “The will was a backup plan. In case you decided not to heed the threat to your boyfriend and attend the funeral.”
“You made me your beneficiary so I would be accessible,” Mac surmised what she’d already suspected. “I still don’t understand. I left years ago. Yeah, I took the money, but you have that back now. You can take it and go. Run off to some beach somewhere and live out the rest of your days a free man. No one will ever know you’re still alive.”
“That’s what I tried to tell him, but you know how much of a stubborn bastard your uncle can be.” Another man entered the room from behind her. The fourth heat signal Derek had picked up on earlier.
Shit. Between her fear for Coop and the shock from seeing her uncle again, she’d completely forgotten about the other person in the building. A perfect example of why emotions have no place on the battlefield.
Mac turned her head to the look at the newest addition to the party. “I thought you were in jail.”
Henry Doyle shrugged as he came into her vantage point. “You don’t spend decades as one of the most successful mob lawyers without learning a few tricks.” To Tony, he scowled. “Put the gun down, Anthony. You know your shooting her wasn’t part of the plan.”
With a snarl, her crazed uncle actually lowered his weapon, keeping it loose at his side.
“How’d you get out?” Mac asked Henry. “Bribe the cops so they’d let you go?”
“For starters.” He stopped a few feet from Tony, hands casually placed in the loose pockets of his khaki dress pants. “It helps that I’ve collected a multitude of favors owed to me over the years. Many within the fine law enforcement community serving Jersey City.”
“And they let you walk right out the front doors even with the evidence stacked against you?”
He shrugged again. “All circumstantial, at best.”
“You were still in Jersey less than three hours ago. How the hell did you get here so fast?”
“Oh, Mac.” Henry shook his head. “I walked straight into that police department, put on a show for all the good cops to see, and got escorted right out the back door and onto a private plane. I’ve been in Dallas half a day. Plenty of time to find this place and get everything set up. With my nephew’s help, of course.” He gave the man still holding her a grateful grin.
“Jesus Christ.” Jake’s growling voice tickled her ear.
“Any ideas on how to unfuck this, Boss?”
Derek’s question would’ve made her smile if she thought there was actually a way to unfuck it.
“Keep them talking, Mac,” Jake ordered.
What do you think I’ve been trying to do?
As it stood, she and Coop were being held by three tangos with no feasible way for the team to get in or out besides the front door. Even if they found an accessible window somewhere, they ran the risk of spooking the men holding them captive. As far as hostage situations went, this one was an HRT nightmare.
Ignoring the team’s murmurs in her ear, Mac continued talking to Henry. “You’re obviously in bed with my uncle, so what’s the plan? Kill us and split the money?”
“Sounds about right,” her uncle answered for him.
“Actually.” Henry looked at Tony. “There’s been a change in plans.”
Her uncle’s head whipped around. “What change?”
“This one.”
Before anyone knew what was happening, Henry pulled a gun from his pocket and aimed it at his long-time friend and client.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Her uncle seethed.
“The same thing you were planning to do to me.”
“You’re outta your goddamn mind.”
“Am I?” Henry took a step closer. “You forget, I know you, Tony. I know how you think. I know how you feel. And I know you despise having to share what’s yours.”
“You’re wrong.” The man who’d once ruled a mafia empire shook his head. “I was going to share the money. With you. That was the deal.”
“Well I’m changing the deal.”
“You son of a bitch!” Tony took a step forward, stopping when Henry’s finger slid to the trigger. “After all I’ve done for you!”
“All you’ve done for me? What about all I’ve done for you? I put my ass on the line, day after day for thirty fucking years. And what do I get in return? A knife in my goddamn back!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Luca told me everything!” Henry yelled. His face reddened with anger, a fine sheen of sweat covering his balding head. “You offered him money to take me out.”
“I never—”
“You know as well as I do Luca was a shitty fucking liar. That’s how I knew he was telling me the truth about you. He knew you were a has-been. Washed up and wanted by the feds. So he and I made a side-deal. Help you fake your death, get this money from your niece, kill you, and split it between the two of us.”
“If that’s true, why did you kill Luca?” Mac had to know. She needed to get as many pieces to this puzzle of insanity as she could.
Henry looked back over at her and smiled. “Turns out your uncle and I have a lot more in common than he thought.”
“Yeah?” Tony glared at the other man. “What’s that?”
With a cold, emotionless expression, Henry met Tony’s gaze. “I don’t like to share.” He pulled the trigger.
Jake and the others filled Mac’s ear at once, each of them demanding to know what happened and if she was okay. She was too busy watching her uncle fall to the floor to answer.
Landing on his back in front of her, Anthony Moretti lay dead at her feet. A thin rivulet of blood seeping from the newly formed hole in the middle of his forehead.
For what felt like an eternity—but was really only a few seconds, if that—Mac’s mind raced through the events leading up to this moment.
From when she’d first received the pictures and threat against Coop, to her uncle’s staged death, and Luca’s real murder…to now.
It had all been part of his plan.
“What the fuck?” Coop’s stunned voice broke the macabre spell.
Mac’s eyes shot to his before sliding to Henry’s. “You set this whole thing up from the beginning, didn’t you?”
Henry turned the gun on her. “Tony always did have a habit of underestimating me.”
“But he was your friend.”
“He was a murdering SOB who didn’t give two shits about me or anyone else. He was never going to let me walk away with half the money. I knew that even before Luca brought
me in on the plan.”
“Is this because of the debt?”
His eyes answered the question before he’d even begun to talk. “I trusted the wrong people. Dug a hole with some bad investments, and then tried to gamble my way out. When the feds began closing in on Tony, he came up with the idea to fake his own death. Told me about the two million you’d taken from him and said if I helped him, we could split it.”
“How did he know?” Mac hadn’t had the chance to ask her uncle that yet. Now she never would.
“About you?” Henry’s shoulders shook. “You disappeared the same time as the cash. Didn’t take a genius to figure that part out. However, it did take him a while to track you down. With Luca’s help and a lot of exchanged money and favors, he finally figured out where you’d been hiding all these years.”
“Why didn’t he come after me as soon as he knew?”
“Your uncle may have been stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid.” Henry looked down at Tony’s body and back up to her. “Well, he had his moments, I guess. Anyway, he sat on it for a while. Said he was saving you for a rainy day.”
“The FBI investigation?”
Henry nodded. “When I gave him the bad news, that even I couldn’t see a way out of him going to prison this time, he looked me square in the eye and said, ‘Looks like it’s gonna start raining’. Can you believe that?” He chuckled. “Crazy bastard.”
“That’s when he came up with the plan to stage his death, and you came up with the plan to kill him and take the money for yourself.”
“Seemed like a good idea to me. Everyone already thought he was dead.” The guy shrugged. “Now he is.”
Mac shook her head, struggling to process what she was hearing. It was as if the entire world as she knew it had gone mad while she wasn’t looking.
Tears pricked the corners of her eyes knowing what would come next. “What are you going to do to us, Henry?”
“I always liked you. You were a sweet kid who got a raw deal.”
Liked, as in past tense.
With resignation in her voice, Mac prayed Henry would grant her one, final request.
“I liked you, too, Henry.” She didn’t have to fake the tear trailing down her face. “Before you kill us…” Her voice broke, and she had to clear her throat before continuing on. “Can I please take a second to say goodbye?” Mac glanced at Coop, the tears she saw there nearly breaking her. “Please.”
“Well”—Henry considered her request—“you’ve been searched and he’s certainly no threat. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give you a moment together.”
“Thank you.”
To Paul, he said, “Let her go, but keep your gun on her.” Speaking to Mac again, Henry told her, “We’ll both be right by your side. You try anything funny, we’ll shoot your boyfriend first while you watch.”
With a tip of his head, Henry signaled the other man to loosen his hold. His arms dropped away, and Mac let out a breath as she made her way across the room.
Schooling her expression, she kept her eyes locked on Coop’s the entire way, stopping inches from where he sat.
“I must look a mess.” She ran a hand over her hair, smoothing the top of her head before trailing down the length of her ponytail. “Kind of sucks knowing this is the last image of me you’ll see.”
Coop gave her a watery smile. “You look beautiful.”
Nodding, it took a moment before she could speak past the painful lump lodged in the back of her throat. “So do you.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” He shook his head slowly, more tears falling when he blinked. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yes, I do.” Coop’s heart-stricken eyes locked with hers. “I promised you our story was just beginning. I lied.” His voice cracked.
Mac’s chin began to quiver, but she forged on. “It wasn’t a lie. We had a beautiful story. For a while, at least.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the fairytale ending you deserved.”
“I never wanted a fairytale,” she told him truthfully. “I only wanted you.”
“Baby…”
“Can I give him a hug?” she begged Henry. “Please.”
His hardened eyes actually appeared to have softened some. Almost as if he regretted what he planned to do.
“One hug.”
Mac rushed to Coop, hugging him so tightly she nearly knocked him over. With her hands wrapped around his restrained arms, she prayed for a miracle. She prayed for him to be spared.
“The team’s outside,” she whispered low enough only he could hear. “Limited access and too big a risk to come in like this. I’ll do what I can. I’m so sorry, Sean.” Then because it might be her last chance to ever say it, she whispered, “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“God, Mac.” Coop leaned into her embrace. “I love you, too.”
Their blood and tears mixed together as Mac held her cheek against his. She closed her eyes, ignoring the tears pouring down her face as she took in every last second they had together.
“I want to hold you so fucking bad right now.” He jerked against the unyielding cuffs.
Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, Mac pulled away. With a soul-deep stare, she looked into the eyes of the man she loved.
“You are holding me, Sean.” She patted her chest above her heart. “Right here.”
His handsome face started to crumble, but he regained control and nodded. “Always.”
17
Coop gritted his teeth as Henry Doyle—the fucker—wrapped his meaty hand around Mac’s arm. Using the bobby pin she’d slipped him during that heart-wrenching hug, he tried to work the cuffs loose without the other two men noticing.
He understood she’d set up the whole farewell scene as a distraction from her real goal—to hand off the hair pin without suspicion. Even so, it fucking gut-punched him when she’d told him she loved him.
For years, Coop had wanted to hear those words fall from her lips. His dreams had been filled with that moment when she finally looked him in the eye and gave him her heart.
Christ, he hoped she meant it, because every damn word he’d said was the truth. This wasn’t how their story was going to end. Not even fucking close.
It’s not over, baby. We’re not over.
He’d screwed things up with her before, but if by some miracle he got out of this mess, he planned to do whatever it took to keep her by his side. In the field and in his bed.
“Let’s go.” Henry pulled on Mac’s arm.
She frowned. “Where are we going?”
“Outside. I may be a lawyer, but I’m not completely heartless. Even I can’t kill you two in front of each other after witnessing that tearjerker of a scene.” He looked at his nephew. “Wait a couple of minutes after we leave. I’ll take her outside, in the trees.” Glancing at Coop, the bastard added, “Don’t worry. I’ll make it quick for her.”
“Don’t do this, man,” Coop begged. “Please, just take the money and walk.”
“Sorry, son. I don’t have a choice.” Doyle started leading Mac out of the room, his gun pushed snuggly against her side.
“Please! Just take the goddamn money and fucking walk!” Coop pulled against the cuffs and the ropes at his ankles again.
“Tell you what.” Doyle stopped to look at him again. “Paul will bring you out to her when he’s done with you. That way, at least the two of you will be lying next to each other when it’s all over.”
Mac swung her frightened gaze back to Coop’s. “Sean.”
“It’s okay, baby.” He locked his eyes with hers, praying she could see the truth behind his words. “We’ll be together again, soon.”
With a tearful nod, she let herself be led away.
Coop waited until they were gone before looking at the fucker in front of him. “Don’t supposed I could talk you into letting me go?”
Paul laughed. “Don’t supposed you could.”
“C
an you at least do me one favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Will you shoot me close-up? You know, put the gun to my head before you pull the trigger?”
“Why the hell would you want me to do that?” The other man looked at Coop as if he’d lost his damn mind.
“Seriously?” Coop returned the same look. “Have you not seen those shows about people who get shot in the head and survive? Most of the time, they’re nothing more than fucking vegetables afterward. Sipping baby food from a straw and needing someone else to wipe their ass. If this is going to happen, and it seems pretty clear that it is, I don’t want to take any chances of ending up like that. We do this, we do it right, yeah?”
Paul stared at him a moment before his large shoulders bounced with laughter. “Whatever, man. It’s your funeral.” He snorted. “Literally.” He started toward Coop.
Come on, asshole.
“Thanks.” Coop sighed. “I know this probably sounds weird, but I appreciate it.”
Shaking his head, Paul was only a few feet away now. “Sounds really fucking weird.”
That’s it. Just a little closer.
“Anything you want to say before we do this?” The man stopped inches from where Coop sat. “Deathbed confession or anything?”
“Actually”—Coop nodded—"there is one thing you should probably know.”
“What’s that?”
The corner of Coop’s lips curved into a smug smirk. “My partner’s a fucking genius.”
Paul’s black brows were still turning inward when Coop brought his freed hands around and grabbed the gun. Coop pushed the barrel away from him.
Eyes wide with surprise, Paul tried maintaining control of the weapon, but he was too late. Coop pulled the trigger, sending the bullet meant for him into the other man’s gut.
Paul grunted, a flash of pain crossing his face as he stumbled back. Looking down, the injured man pressed his hands against the wound to try to stop the bleeding.
“You…bastard.”
Coop kept the gun trained on the asshole while bending down to free his ankles from the ropes. When he got the last of the rope loose, he shot to his feet.