by Dale Mayer
“Doesn’t mean you’ve got a choice in it,” he said.
She frowned. “But I should have a choice.”
His phone buzzed then. He pulled it out, checked it, and said, “Gavin had one of the Coronado guys check the sniper’s location and another to check on the cops in that building. No shooter was found in the apartment building on the far side of the street. The two cops are fine. They didn’t see anyone.”
“So this guy got into the apartments on the other side of the road, and the cops never saw him?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, so that’s not good.”
He shrugged.
When a knock came at her front door, she frowned and looked at him.
He said, “Don’t answer it.”
“But we need to,” she said. The knock came again. And she hesitated. “What if I let him in?”
Lennox pulled a handgun from his back waistband and said, “Let me answer it.” He walked up to the door and said, “Hello?”
“It’s Gavin. Let me in.”
Lennox opened the door and stepped back, and Gavin walked in with a couple bags of food.
“Believe it or not, I was just picking up lunch,” he said, “when the shooting happened.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “I was hungry. There’s glass everywhere though, so watch where you walk.”
Gavin took a look at the glass doors, nodded, carried the bags to the kitchen table, and then looked around. “Are you guys okay? What’s going on here?”
“We’re packing me up,” she announced. “I need the boxes from the storage room though.”
He nodded. “I can go down and take a look. Where are they? Where’s your storage locker?” Helena gave him instructions and the combination to the lock. “I’ll be back in five,” Gavin said, and he left again.
She looked at Lennox. “What’s that look on your face for?”
He shrugged and walked over to the table.
She loved the smell of noodles. She quickly pulled out the containers, laughing because Gavin brought so much. “Did he expect to feed the whole apartment building? Only three of us are here.”
“Actually,” Gavin said, “I thought you’d be hungry.”
He was back awfully quick, and he had an odd tone to his voice. Lennox turned and swore. Because Stefano held a gun to Gavin’s head.
“Move back,” Stefano said, and he stepped in and closed the door behind him.
Lennox stood and stared at him. “So you took that pot shot at me through the living room window just now?”
Stefano nodded.
“I already told you that I had nothing to do with your sister.”
Stefano nodded. “So you say. But I want proof.”
“What kind of proof?” Lennox asked, swearing at the sudden turn of events.
“You need to tell me what happened to my sister.”
At that, the tumblers clicked into place. “I can tell you,” Lennox said, “but you won’t like it.” And he told him how he’d caught Rob with the girl in a hotel room. Lennox and Rob had been in town at the hotel’s bar. Lennox rarely drank to the excess, but Rob had been on a weird bender lately, and he wanted to go out and get completely smashed. But halfway through the evening, he disappeared, taking an elevator up into the hotel itself. When Lennox had noticed, he’d gone looking for him, asking the hotel employees for any disturbance reports from the other guests in the hotel, and finally found Rob in a hotel room with a young girl. And he had already beaten her up badly. Lennox stopped him going any further.
“I spoke to my sister,” Stefano said. “She says she doesn’t know what he looked like, as he had a mask on.”
“And it was dark, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “But now,” he said, “now I can’t tell whether it’s you or Rob. Rob is one who told me it was you, and now you tell me it’s Rob. I wanted to kill you earlier with my sniper round, but then realized I couldn’t without knowing the answers.”
“Of course Rob told you it was me,” Lennox said, hearing the confirmation from Stefano. “Rob hates me and would do anything to punish me.”
“So I have an answer to this problem,” the kidnapper answered.
“I’m scared to ask, but what is your answer?”
The kidnapper grinned. “I will kill both of you. Immediately.”
Chapter 16
Helena couldn’t wrap her mind around the kidnapper’s words. “How could you possibly think that Lennox would have anything to do with a rape?” she cried out.
Lennox tried to keep her back and out of the way, but the kidnapper looked at her almost dispassionately. “He hurt my sister,” he said. “How can you think I wouldn’t want revenge?”
She opened her mouth and then slammed it shut because she knew precisely what Lennox had done to the two men who had beaten up her and his sister. “I understand that,” she said quietly, “but what if you have the wrong man?”
He just glared at her, then shrugged. “That’s why I must kill them both.”
“And did you talk to your sister? Did you ask her for details?”
“How can I possibly do that?” he cried out in frustration. “It’s not like I’ll have her dredge all that up again. It hurts her.”
“Of course it does, and I would hate to even imagine what that would be like,” she said. “But I do understand what it’s like to be beaten up, and I do understand what it’s like to be afraid of a man. What about his voice? Could she say anything about that? Why was she in the hotel?”
His glare grew.
“Was she just traveling? Was she a tourist? What was she doing?”
“She was visiting my brother, who was teaching English there. She woke up to Lennox here in the room with her.”
“And how do you know it was Lennox?”
“She said it was Lennox.”
“Meaning, the guy said his name was Lennox?”
Stefano nodded.
“So a rapist went into a young woman’s room, used her badly, left her beaten, and then told her what his name was?”
He stopped, shaking his head. “I don’t know how it came out,” he said, “but she found out that was his name.”
“That’s the name he used,” she said. “That doesn’t mean it was his name.”
He glared at her silently.
“She didn’t say anything about his hair, about the size of his hands, his scars?”
“I didn’t ask,” he said. “She was adamant. It was Lennox who had beaten her up.”
“Okay,” she said, “you got your sister’s number on your phone?”
“I’m not calling her,” he said calmly. “I’ll just take them both out, and then I’ll know for sure I got the right one.”
“And how would your sister feel if you killed a completely innocent man?”
“She won’t know.”
“Maybe not,” Helena said. “Maybe I’ll contact her after this and let her know what you did.”
Immediately the gun turned in her direction.
“So it’s not about revenge,” she said. “It’s just about being another one of the assholes responsible for getting your sister raped.”
Fury lit his face.
She nodded. “You’re not here because of what somebody did to your sister. You’re here because you couldn’t protect your sister.”
The shock from her verbal blow was a direct hit.
She nodded again. “I get that,” she said, “but, if you were protecting your sister back then, you wouldn’t now be looking to face down the man who physically hurt her,” she said quietly. “This is not that man.”
“So, because you love him, you defend him.”
“Of course I love him. And, yes, I defend him,” she said. “But I can tell you that he’s not the rapist. I spent two years at the hands of a man who beat me up. I know the difference.”
And, for the first time, she saw Stefano waver.
“I understand the feeling of violation,” she said
. “I understand the feeling of betrayal. But I don’t understand why you would think it was Lennox, just because the man who raped her says it was Lennox.” She nodded, motioning at Stefano’s neck. “What do all the scars on your face have to do with this?”
“That’s why I know it was Lennox,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I was there too, and she called me, screaming, and I chased him down. This is from a bullet,” he said, reaching for his cheek. “And the burns are from when he brought a shed down on top of me.”
“And what about him? Did he get any injuries from all that?”
He nodded. “I shot him.” And he glanced at Lennox.
“Where did you shoot him?” Helena asked quietly, having seen all of Lennox in his beautiful naked glory the night before.
“In his side,” he said.
“So then, if I show you Lennox’s side, and you see no bullet wound, will you believe that it’s not him?”
Again the gun wavered.
She walked over to Lennox and said, “Sorry, sweetie,” as she lifted his T-shirt to the middle of his chest. Then she showed Stefano. “No bullet wound. On either side of Lennox.”
The man stared at Lennox, stared all along his waist, and then back up at his face. But obviously Stefano was confused. “You’re a different shape,” he said, but everyone in the room could tell that Stefano was still trying to fit what he wanted to believe into his hypothesis.
“It wasn’t Lennox,” she said. “And I understand that you’re angry and that you’re upset and that you desperately want to take down the man who hurt your sister, but it wasn’t Lennox.”
Stefano gave a harsh sigh and slowly lowered his gun and gave Gavin a hard shove, pushing him farther into the apartment. “Then who was it? Rob?”
“Yes,” Lennox said. “Rob raped your sister. I’m the one who turned him into the military police. He went to jail because of me. And now we’re after him because he’s after my girlfriend,” Lennox said quietly.
The kidnapper looked at Helena.
She nodded. “Thanks to you, three others and I were kidnapped and carted off to Poland,” she snapped. “Held in a damn cage for a couple days. Terrorized and, at the same time, found out that Rob was the one behind all of it, and he’s still trying to kill Lennox to get his hands on me. All as payback to Lennox.”
Stefano frowned.
“You’ve been used,” she said. “What I’m trying to say is that, Rob is trying to get you to take out Lennox so that it leaves the field clear for Rob to get me.”
“Why would he want that?”
She gave a half laugh. “That’s what I keep telling people. I don’t know why. I’m not some femme fatale.”
Stefano just waved it off. “But why would he want somebody else to do his killing?”
“Because he’s not a killer,” Lennox said. “When the circumstances demanded that, while we both were in the navy, he would step up to the plate and do it, but he’s not a cold-blooded killer, and we were friends once,” he said. “We were friends until I took him to court over what he did to your sister.”
The man’s eyes widened in shock. “You’re the one who had him punished? You’re the one who sent him to jail?”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s why he hates me. That’s why he told you and somehow convinced you that I’m the one who hurt your sister. And how did you hear that?”
“In jail,” he said. “Our younger brother was there. With him—with Rob, who was unfairly accused. But I never saw Rob’s face.”
“No, he wasn’t unfairly accused,” Helena said calmly. “He was justly accused.”
“And that’s why you also said it wasn’t me in this apartment earlier,” Lennox said, as if finally understanding. “Because you already had a battle with Rob, and you knew his body and where your shot hit him, but you still didn’t know his face, but then you couldn’t fit my body type in with your memories.”
Slowly Stefano nodded. “I don’t like being used.”
“Do you think your brother had anything to do with it?”
He frowned. “There’s a reason my brother was in jail.”
“Right,” she said, “because he’s not trustworthy.”
Lennox added, “Maybe he had something to do with this. Maybe Rob paid him?”
Stefano frowned, took a step back, and said, “I must think about this.”
“You do that,” Lennox said. “And maybe don’t point that gun at me or mine again, much less shoot at me. I’ve given you a couple passes for waving that gun around. But after that shot across the road into this apartment, I won’t give you another one.”
The two men gazed at each other; their expressions were hard and determined.
Stefano made one clipped nod and disappeared into the hallway. They could hear his footsteps running.
Gavin and Lennox looked at each other. It’s almost as if they made a silent joint decision to not go after Stefano.
Helena spun around and said, “He still kidnapped me. Doesn’t that count?”
Lennox grabbed her, tucked her up close, and said, “Yes, it counts. And how do you feel about punishing him, now that you have more details?”
And she realized what he was saying because it wasn’t just about punishing Stefano for what he was doing. It was about his motivation behind his actions. He had simply wanted justice for his sister.
And that’s precisely what Lennox would have done for both his sister and for Helena. And so, in his mind, he was already saying this Stefano guy did not need to be punished. If she didn’t agree, he needed to know now because it would be part of the elements that built their ongoing relationship. She sagged against him and said, “Well, he’s just damn lucky he didn’t hurt any of us.”
“I know,” he murmured against her hair, holding her close. “What we need to do is find his brother.”
“He is, hopefully, still in jail.”
“Also,” Gavin said, “I managed to get a tracker on Stefano.”
Lennox grinned at him. “Perfect audio?”
Gavin held up his phone, which even now crackled as it began to receive. “We’ve got audio.”
“Any chance we can eat now?” Helena asked. They walked to the table, and she could feel exhaustion hitting her. “How do you deal with all this adrenaline?” she asked, as she served herself up food. Just then a voice came over Gavin’s phone. She didn’t understand the language, but Lennox immediately brought his phone out and recorded it. As soon as the call was finished, he sent the file to somebody. “Are you getting that translated?”
“I am,” he said. “An awful lot of yelling and shouting went on there.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I suspect my kidnapper contacted his brother for clarification.”
“Yes,” Lennox said. “That would be my take on it too.”
She reached for a fork and dug into a large bowl of noodles. “At least we’ve got food.” She beamed at Gavin.
Gavin smiled and said, “You keep your head remarkably well in these situations.”
“So do you,” she said. “I’m not the one who had a gun at my head.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it was pretty intense. How do you get that kind of experience?”
“Sometimes our circumstances when we’re operating overseas are pretty intense too,” she said. “I’m a surgeon, and I do very well under pressure.”
Gavin studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “You’re a good person to have around then.”
“Glad to hear it. What’s next?” She forked up noodles and chewed as she listened to the men.
“Maybe,” he said, “the bottom line is, we make sure that we find Rob. Because, if this Stefano guy finally understands how he’s been taken, he’ll go after Rob too.”
“I’m not against that,” Lennox said. “Saves me from doing the job.”
“In a way, it’s the best of both worlds,” Helena said. �
�Stefano gets his revenge. Rob gets what’s due to him. And we get off scot-free.”
Lennox looked at her and smiled and said, “You really do have that fairy-tale thing going on, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Just think about it. The fairy tales are coming true in so many other ways. Why not this one too?”
Gavin rolled his eyes.
Lennox chuckled. “Poor Gavin. You’ll find yours.”
“My what?” he asked. “Revenge?”
“Partner,” she said.
“Well, I hope I don’t have to wait five years to make a move on her,” he said in disgust.
At that, she burst out laughing. “Good point.” She reached for one of the other cartons and said, “You going to finish that?”
Lennox watched as she dug into the food. “Do you always eat this much?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “I do like my groceries.” And she plowed into a big dish of veggies. As she ate, she looked up at him and said, “Now we can get the boxes from the storage room, and we can finish packing up. What are we expecting to happen from here on in?”
“Rob,” Lennox said. “We still need Rob.”
“He obviously still has a lot of anger for you.”
“I messed up his life.”
“No,” she said, “he messed up his own life. You just made him pay for it.”
“Means the same thing to Rob,” Lennox said.
She shrugged at that. “So what do we do to bring in Rob?”
“Not sure,” Lennox said. “But I don’t suspect we’ll have to wait long to find out.” He got up and piled the empty cartons in the to-go bag and asked, “Where’s the outdoor garbage?”
“Down the hallway,” she said. “A big bin drops down to the Dumpster in the basement.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll take this load out, so we don’t have to worry about it later. And I’ll swing down below and grab the cardboard boxes.”
She nodded.
And he stood, he packed up everything that he could for the garbage, then stepped outside, checked that the hallway was empty, and walked toward the chute. He dumped the trash and then opened the stairwell and ran down to the basement floor. He’d already been in her apartment building and had checked out this level earlier and hadn’t found anything of any value. Only a whole roomful of locked up chain-link-style lockers. So no walls to hide behind but plenty of junk to do the job.