by Cynthia Eden
“You…you fell for a killer, too, didn’t you?” Elizabeth sniffed. “One day, you think your man is perfect. A real-life prince charming. You have this idea that your life will be great. Then you find out the truth.”
“Dex isn’t a killer!”
“Yes, he is! Jonathan told me he was! You fell for a killer. I fell for one. But we can’t change them. No matter how hard we try, you can’t touch the darkness inside of them.”
Lacey turned slowly toward Elizabeth.
Elizabeth didn’t lower her gun. When Lacey turned, the gun pressed right in the middle of her chest. Okay, not the best position. “When did you realize that Jonathan was dangerous?”
“I…I…” Then she shook her head. “Where do you think he gets the money? You really believe after all these years there was any family money left? The business and estate are a joke. A front. He’s been trading secrets that he got from the House of Lords, working deals with people who terrify me. But once you’re in, there is no getting out.”
“I can help you get out. I have connections. Dex. Eric Wilde. I can—”
The gun jabbed into her. “You don’t understand! I don’t want to leave him!”
“You’re hurting me. Why don’t you put down the g-gun…” Okay, the cold was starting to get to her. “So we can talk?”
“I like you.” Elizabeth nodded. “I do. You’re my friend.”
Friends don’t put guns to the chests of other friends. It should be understood. A given.
“But I love Jonathan. He told me that he needs for you to be a lesson.”
She had to make her move. Lacey glanced over Elizabeth’s shoulder. Focused in the spot to the right. “Is that what I am, Jonathan?” Lacey called out. “A lesson? Some sort of warning to Dex? Or maybe even to my brother Roman?”
“Jonathan?” Elizabeth turned her head and looked to the right. “You’re going to have to kill her because I—” She moved the gun, just a bit, as she realized that Jonathan wasn’t actually there.
That small movement was all that Lacey needed. She grabbed Elizabeth’s wrist and shoved hard to the left, forcing the gun away from her body in one fast move.
The gun blasted.
But the bullet missed her.
Elizabeth screamed and tried to bring the gun back around. Not happening. I am way stronger and better trained. Lacey twisted Elizabeth’s wrist, and the gun fell from Elizabeth’s hand. Then Lacey head-butted the other woman, sending Elizabeth stumbling back. Elizabeth slipped in the snow and crashed down onto her ass.
Lacey dove for the gun. Grabbed it and came up with it pointed at Elizabeth. “What was in the syringe that you gave Cornell?”
Elizabeth shoved hair out of her face. Her gaze locked on Lacey, and she did not look away as she said, “A sedative. I don’t know what exactly. Jonathan gave it to me.”
“Let me guess…were you supposed to use the sedative on me? Were you going to knock me out when I came up to your suite with you? Only I didn’t come alone. I brought Cornell with me, so you had to—”
“Yes,” a deep voice rang out from behind Lacey.
Dammit. Her shoulders stiffened.
“My beautiful bride was supposed to use the syringe on you, but it looks like we had a change of plans.”
Lacey stared down at Elizabeth. “Nice job keeping your eyes focused on me. Bet it was hard not to glance his way when you saw him closing in.”
Elizabeth scrambled to her feet. “He has a gun pointed at you.”
“And I have a gun pointed at you.” Lacey licked her lips. “So that puts us in a stand-off, doesn’t it, Jonathan?” Lacey shouted to Jonathan. “But of course, I have an advantage here.”
She could hear the crunch of his footsteps on the snow. “What advantage might that be?”
“My fiancé is coming for me. He’ll be bursting onto this roof any moment. Then he’ll kick your ass.” Yes, she said the last part a little smugly, but she had faith in Dex.
I have faith in Dex. Wow. The full implications of that hit her just as—
Jonathan laughed. “There’s no way he can burst onto the roof. Sorry. I took the liberty of securing the door. Putting a little trap in place while you and Elizabeth were having your chat. He tries, and he’ll get his ass blown to hell. A small device, but necessary.”
Lacey whirled toward him. Her gun pointed at him. His pointed at her. “If you put a bomb on the door,” Lacey said, “you won’t be able to get off this roof, either.”
“Sure, I will.” He smiled at her. “I have another means of transport coming.”
Of course. The roof. A helicopter had to be on the way.
“The snow fall isn’t hard enough to stop my pilot,” he assured her. “Hell, with the money I’m paying him, nothing will stop my guy.”
Her breath sawed in and out. She didn’t even feel the cold any longer. Dex would be coming after her. She knew it. Dex would be rushing up those stairs. Frantic, her gaze flew to the left. I have to stop him. Lacey sprang for the door.
And she heard the sound of an explosion.
“Dex!” In that instant, he was the only thing she could think about. She hurtled toward him as—
“Got you!” Elizabeth cried out. She grabbed Lacey and drove something sharp into the side of her neck.
Another needle? That…bitch…
Lacey tried to bring up her gun so she could hit Elizabeth in the face but instead of rising, the gun fell from her fingers.
Elizabeth let her go. She yanked the needle and syringe away from Lacey. Tossed them onto the roof.
As she sank to her knees, Lacey stared at the needle. Snowflakes landed on top of it.
“There wasn’t a lot in that dosage,” Elizabeth was explaining to Jonathan. Her voice sounded distant. Far away. “It was the back-up. Had to use the other dose on some agent with her. But this will knock her out for a few minutes. I couldn’t risk her shooting you!’
“You did a great job, Liz. Brilliant.”
Brilliant, my ass. You turned the woman into a killer!
Her body slumped onto the roof. She could hear something. A thumping sound. Lacey struggled to keep her eyes open. It was so freaking hard.
Elizabeth’s face appeared in front of her. “I’m really sorry things are ending like this for you. At least this way, it won’t hurt so much when we kill you.” Her hand curled around the gun Lacey had dropped.
Inside, Lacey was screaming. Over and over again, she was calling out Dex’s name. But on the outside…
She didn’t make a sound.
***
“I thought you were disarming the damn thing!” Roman roared as he swatted the flames on his shirt.
“I did. I bought us five seconds before the explosion so that we could get our asses away from the door. You’re the one who didn’t move fast enough when I ordered, ‘Haul ass!’ Antony didn’t get so much as a sputter of a flame on him because he moved.” The explosion had been designed to kill the person who opened the door to the roof. Controlled impact. Brutal death.
Dex had seen a device like it more than a time or two, and he’d known that waiting for bomb techs to arrive wasn’t an option. So he’d decided to trigger the blast.
Only now, there was shit in his way. Sputtering flames. Chunks of the wall and the door that were burning. He kicked those pieces out of the way even as he heard the distant beat of—
“A helicopter,” Dex breathed.
When he’d realized that Lacey must be on the roof, Dex had figured Jonathan would be trying to escape via a chopper.
The hell you are.
Dex glared at the flames, then he dove through the wreckage. He barely felt the bite of the fire on his skin as he leapt through the remains of the doorway. He surged forward. “Lacey!”
The chopper was closing in. The wind from its blades sent the snow hurtling toward Dex. He could see Elizabeth and Jonathan—they were standing near the right edge of the roof. And Jonathan…
He’s holding Lacey.
A Lacey who wasn’t moving. Her head slumped back, and her body hung limply in his arms.
“Let her go!” Dex bellowed.
The chopper was growing closer and closer. Soon it would start to descend.
Jonathan laughed and then the twisted fuck jumped onto the edge of the roof. With Lacey still in his arms. “Got through the bomb, did you? Guess someone was feeling motivated.”
The chopper sent snowflakes swirling around them. The whir of the blades was so loud.
“Get your ass off the roof, Dex,” Jonathan commanded. “You, Roman, and whoever that other prick is—get off now or I will drop Lacey to the ground right in front of you.”
Roman and Antony had closed in on either side of Dex.
“I will give you whatever you want!” Roman shouted. “Just let her go. Let her go!”
Elizabeth was holding a gun. A gun she kept swinging between Roman and Dex. She was shaking, and Dex figured that gun would go off at any moment. “Antony,” he said curtly.
“On it,” Antony murmured back. He slipped away.
“You’re still here, Dex!” Jonathan twisted his body and shoved his arms out—so that Lacey was now beyond the edge. He was holding her over the side of the building. “I don’t know how good my grip is.” He had to shout over the noise from the approaching helicopter. “You know, what with the helicopter blowing so much wind and snow at me, I might just drop her accidentally. So you’d better get the hell out of here.”
“The helicopter is a problem,” Dex agreed. He lifted his left hand. Tapped his comm link. “Get the chopper out of here.”
The chopper immediately started to rise. To angle back to the left. Away from the lodge.
Jonathan yanked Lacey closer. “What?” His shoes slid over the icy ledge on the roof. “What the fuck?”
The chopper was higher now. Definitely going left.
Elizabeth watched it even as she edged back a few, careful steps.
“Sorry,” Dex said, and he wasn’t, not even a little bit. “Did you think that was your guy piloting the chopper? It wasn’t. Mine. Plan B for me. This lodge is pretty remote, so I figured anyone here who wanted to make a quick getaway would try using a chopper. That meant I reached out to every pilot service within a three-hundred-mile radius. Let it be known that I would pay triple to take control of any bird that went in the sky and was directed to fly to this location.” He still had his weapon aimed at Jonathan even though there was no shot. No shot at all because if he hit Jonathan, the bastard would drop Lacey.
Why is she so limp? Why isn’t she moving?
“I was told about this chopper on my way to the roof. One of my agents gave me his comm link so I could talk to my team. So I could get shit done…” Antony had been that agent. Sneaky Antony—he’d almost made his way to Elizabeth’s side, and she hadn’t even noticed him. She was too intent on gaping as her means of escape vanished. “Antony even managed to get my team to patch me through to the pilot, and all while I was taking care of that piece of shit bomb you left for me.”
“You think you’re so fucking smart!” Jonathan screamed. “But I outsmarted you! I found her first! Me. I was the one!”
Dex nodded. “That’s why you hired her from Wilde, wasn’t it? Because you’d tracked her down. You wanted to see if she was the real deal.”
“I knew Roman had a sister. His mother approached my father once, begging for him to help her. I was there. Watching from the shadows. She was crying and pleading. She wanted Roman to come and live with her and his sister.”
“She wanted what?” Roman’s voice choked out.
“But why the hell would my father help her? He had such a good thing going with Gideon Valentino.”
Antony attacked. He sprang forward and grabbed Elizabeth. She screamed and fired, but the bullet just shot off into the dark.
“Let her go!” Jonathan demanded.
Dex bounded forward. “No. No, you bastard, you aren’t giving any orders, you hear me? Your chopper is gone. That means your escape route is gone. Your wife is in custody. Antony, get her off the roof, now.”
Elizabeth was twisting and fighting, but Antony picked her up and carried her away.
“Elizabeth!” Jonathan almost followed her. Almost.
“You want her?” Dex taunted. “Climb your ass down. Give me Lacey. Then you can go after Elizabeth. The two of you can be together forever in a nice cell, I’ll make sure of it. Who wants to separate love birds?”
“I’m not going into a cell!”
Lacey’s head moved a little, as if she was starting to stir. He didn’t see any blood on her.
“You think I did all of this…to wind up in a cell?” Jonathan shouted.
“I have no fucking clue why you did all of this. I just know you made the worst mistake of your life when you came after her.”
Roman shuffled forward. “He did it because of me. Same reason you went after Lacey.”
First, I didn’t go after her. I damn well fell in love with her.
Lacey’s arm had hung loosely a moment before, but it sure looked as if the fingers on her left hand were flexing. She’s waking up.
“You knew I was a double agent, didn’t you, Jonathan? And you were worried that, since you’d done business with my father, I’d have intel I could use against you. You thought I’d screw up your precious world, so you grabbed Lacey. You were going to kill her as what, some warning? Some message for me to keep my mouth shut?”
“Originally, yes, but then I changed my mind. Decided to kill you both. That would send a real message to every bastard out there who thought I could be controlled.” Jonathan’s head was covered with snowflakes. “Heather was supposed to shoot Lacey, then you. But she wouldn’t kill you. I helped Heather drag your body up to the cabin. I helped her set the scene. I knew Dex would bring Lacey with him out there, it was the perfect chance to attack her. But Heather screwed things to hell!”
“You were the boss she had on the Dark Web,” Dex said. Like he hadn’t already figured that shit out.
“Yes! I was also the guy in the ski mask who helped her haul Roman’s sorry ass. She thought I was some hired muscle. Didn’t know I was her real boss. She’d knocked him out, but I dosed him to be sure he wouldn’t wake up during the transport.”
Dex inched forward a little more. Need to get close enough to grab her. We have to keep the bastard talking. I need to be closer.
“Because Heather screwed up…” Roman had also crept closer to the ledge. He now stood right beside Dex. “You killed her.”
“Well,” Dex said before Jonathan could reply, “not like he could risk having her turn on him.”
“Of course, not,” Roman said. “How foolish.”
Jonathan pulled Lacey closer to him.
Dex risked another small advance. “I don’t see a weapon on you,” Dex noted. “Probably would have been smarter to hold a gun, not an unconscious woman.” He lifted his gun. “From this angle, I can shoot you right between the eyes.”
Once more, Jonathan laughed. “I’ve got the best weapon there is! The only weapon that will hurt you. Thought you were just using her at first, the way you use everyone. So I tested things…and saw what happened when Heather fell right in front of you.”
“Get off the ledge.” Dex could hear the rage burning in his own voice. “Bring Lacey down right now.” He still wasn’t close enough to touch them. Not yet.
Dex took one more step forward.
“You lost it for a moment, didn’t you? The great and deceptive Dex. Yes, I know plenty about you. You’ve been my enemy for years, and you never knew. It’s always hard to spot the enemies hiding in plain sight, isn’t it?”
Yes, those were the hardest bastards to find.
“When you saw the body hurtling over the balcony and crashing into the floor. You thought it was your Lacey. This time, it will be.”
Fuck. Fuck, no. “Why didn’t you kill her sooner?” Dex asked. Have to keep him talking. From the corner of his eye, he
saw Roman slide forward. “You hired Lacey before. Why not kill her then?”
“Because the woman truly saved my life.” He glanced down at her. Frowned. “And Elizabeth’s. I…I thought maybe a different solution to my Roman problem could be found. After all, I knew where Lacey was. I could get her anytime. I looked for another alternative. But there just wasn’t one.”
“Well, aren’t you a fucking saint.” Rage burned ever hotter in Dex. “You thought about not killing her because she saved your ass. You—”
“I’m not going in a cell! I’m not going to lose the life I have! Killing her wasn’t what I wanted, but it doesn’t matter any longer! You think I’ll go from reigning in the House of Lords to pissing in some pot in a ten by eight cell? No, I’m not. That isn’t me. And if I can’t have my wife and my life, I’ll make sure that you don’t get any happy ending, either.”
He was going to jump. The sonofabitch was going to—
“No!” The bellow was torn from Dex’s soul. “I’m putting down the gun.” He immediately slapped it down near his foot. And crept forward. I think I’m close enough. I think I can grab her hand. “I can have your chopper back here in minutes. You let Lacey go, and you fly away. I’ll even have Antony bring Elizabeth back to you.”
Lacey’s fingers fluttered. Did Jonathan see that small movement?
“I can make this work!” Dex yelled. He wanted the bastard’s attention to stay on him.
Jonathan shook his head. “You’ll just hunt me. Because of what I planned to do to her. You won’t ever let anyone go who wants to do something bad to Lacey, will you?”
Yes, you prick. I will hunt you. I will kill you. I will make you scream before I send you to hell. “I will let you go,” he lied. Lies were easy for him. They always had been. “I won’t hunt you. You can disappear. Hell, give me Lacey, and I don’t care where you go or what you do.”
“Dex…” Roman grated. “What are you doing?”
Jonathan’s head jerked toward him. “The same way you didn’t care about the people behind the attack on him?”
Fucking fuck.
“Because while Roman may not know what happened to those men—to those bastards who broke the agreement and didn’t let Roman go even when you traded yourself for him—I know. I know you and your team killed all of the enemies you found on site. Then you tracked down everyone associated to them. You eliminated them all.” Jonathan shook his head. “You will promise me anything for her, but we both know that if I give her back to you, you will not stop until I’m dead.”