by Claire Kent
The man who approached—one Julia didn’t recognize—had a gun. And Julia froze in absolute shock.
The man shot Mike, the sound reverberating more painfully than the crash of the door had.
Julia screamed again as Mike fell.
Then the man turned the gun on Julia.
“Let’s not get carried away,” a cultured voice came from the smashed doorway.
A British accent. A lilting timbre she knew.
“The girl isn’t resisting. Put the gun away.”
Alexander Darrington stepped into the cabin and walked toward the bed, where Julia was huddled into a ball. Vaguely, she thought she really should be defending herself, but the sight of Mike’s bloody body on the floor took away every instinct to fight.
“Mike,” she said weakly, staring down at his unmoving form.
Alexander stood next to the bed, shaking his head as he looked down on her. “I know you cared for him, my dear, but he was hopelessly in the way.”
Twelve
Reality finally slammed into Julia, and she jumped off the bed and hurled herself at Alexander, ready to attack and fight for her life if necessary. She took him by surprise and managed to get in a good blow at his face. She’d followed it up with a kick to the groin when she felt brutal hands clamp down around her from behind.
Despite the fact that she was outnumbered two to one and both of them were stronger than her, she struggled against the man who held her. Desperately. Violently. Until she vaguely felt a sharp prick on the side of her neck.
At first, she didn’t register the sensation—since her mind was on overload. But soon, her arms and legs felt sluggish. So sluggish she drooped in the man’s arms.
Her vision glazed over until Alexander’s face in front of her blurred into a swirl of color and texture.
Then the room and the men and Mike’s body on the floor faded into safe, blissful darkness.
***
When Julia woke up, her head was pounding. She opened her eyes reluctantly, noticing first that it was mostly dark in the room and then that she was staring up at a blank ceiling.
She closed her eyes again, still disoriented and unable to figure out the time or place. The dim light in the room was flickering, the way it did when Drayton lit his candles before he turned off the bedside lamp and got into bed with her.
Shifting a little, Julia realized that both of her shoulders were sore, hurting almost as much as did her head. Automatically, she started to move her arms, to relieve some of the strain on her shoulders.
Her arms wouldn’t move.
With a gasp, she managed to lift her head enough to look over at her right hand. Her wrist was bound with some sort of cord. When she turned her head to the other side, she saw her left hand was bound too.
She’d been tied spread eagle to an old four-poster bed.
Instinctively, she fought against the restraints. The cords were soft—made of some kind of fabric—but far too strong for her to snap. She kept wriggling them, hoping for some slack in the ties.
Panic rose up in her throat, threatening to choke her, as she tried to bend her knees to get some leverage for pulling against the bindings.
Her legs wouldn’t move either. Her ankles were bound as well.
Almost forgetting her pounding head in her increasing fear and horror, Julia gurgled at the back of her throat as she writhed frantically against the cords. She couldn’t move, except to arch her back and squirm her hips. Her skin chafed uncomfortably against the bedding beneath her as she thrashed.
And the chafing of her skin told her something else—something she hadn’t registered before.
She was just wearing her shirt. No pants. No underwear. Of course, her panties had been thoroughly ripped by Mike so maybe that explained it. Either way, she felt mostly naked. Tied up and exposed on this bed like an experiment being studied by a scientist.
For a moment, her fear was so strong her vision blacked out. She was bombarded with nightmare visions of rape, torture, sadistic serial killers. She sometimes watched documentaries on predators on television—fascinated in a macabre way by the idea.
But there was nothing fascinating about this. She was exposed, powerless, completely vulnerable. And she couldn’t move. Couldn’t even begin to save herself.
Fighting against the panic, she remembered what had happened before she’d blacked out. She must have been drugged in the cabin before they brought her here.
Alexander and that other man—who was probably hired muscle or something. They were criminals, but Alexander seemed to deal mostly in stolen goods. They weren’t rapists or serial-killers.
At least, as far as she knew.
Her mouth was so dry it ached, and when she tried to make a sound, nothing but a croak came out. She cleared her throat and tried to moisten her tongue before she tried again. “Hey! Hey!”
Her voice wasn’t as loud as she’d intended, but it was the best she could manage. She had to find out what was happening here before she lost her mind from fear and confusion. She was in a bedroom, and she started to recognize it was a bedroom in Drayton’s house.
But she was sure—she was sure—Drayton wasn’t involved in her abduction.
A click to her right caused her to turn her head abruptly. Her vision had cleared some and she saw a door to the room had opened.
Alexander Darrington entered, looking every bit as polished and urbane as he had the last times she’d seen him. He was even smiling. An almost…welcoming smile.
“You fucking bastard,” she gritted out, completely forsaking strategy or wisdom in her absolute disgust. “What’s going on here? Why am I tied up? Where is Mike?”
The last question spilled out automatically, and for the first time she acknowledged what she’d seen before she’d been drugged.
Mike had been shot. She’d seen him lying on the floor of his cousin’s cabin. He was probably dead.
Mike was dead.
Her eyes were blinded momentarily until she brutally forced the idea out of her conscious mind. She couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t even conceive of it. Not here. Not like this.
Alexander gave an elegant shrug, a gesture whose complete nonchalance was like a slap in the face. “As I said before, he was in the way.”
Rather than acknowledge the heartbreak, Julia focused on a concern that was more immanent at the moment. Struggling against her restraints, she demanded, “Let me go! This is kidnapping! You’ll be arrested and then I’ll sue your pretentious ass off.”
“I can see what Drayton sees in you,” he said with another leisurely smile. “You’re beautiful and still have fire in you, even though you’re so scared.”
“What the fuck do you expect me to be? Of course, I’m scared. What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m not going to rape you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I don’t take women who are unwilling.”
The appalling irony of this statement wasn’t lost on Julia. She sputtered a moment before she asked, “Then what do you call this? Why am I here? Where’s Drayton?”
“That’s the fundamental question, isn’t it? We had no choice, I’m afraid. There’s a particular job Gia and I want to take. If we’re successful, it will be the prize of a lifetime. We need Drayton, and he refuses to cooperate. He’s grown too comfortable with his domestic situation and didn’t want to take the risk. So we were forced to claim more leverage.”
“Leverage? Is that what I am?” She was confused, but she also was aware of a deep sense of foreboding. It wasn’t the slow heaviness of suppressed knowledge she’d been feeling for the last couple of months. Instead, it was a sudden, crippling weight of impending fear.
Darrington looked at her almost kindly, no trace of a smile on his face. “I’m sure you’re more than that, but for our purposes, yes, that’s what you are. Drayton cares about you. Our attempts to persuade him before weren’t effective, so he needs to know the threat we pose to what he cares about is real. As I said, the prize is w
orth it.”
“So you’re not going to kill me?” she rasped, somehow knowing the answer even before he told her.
“Not if I can help it. I don’t like killing any more than Drayton does. But the threat to you has to be real, which is why I have to make sure you look just right for Drayton, when he arrives.”
“And what’s happening to Mike?”
“Oh, he’s been shot.”
She almost whimpered at the words, at the realization of what they meant.
If Mike was lost, then everything was lost. It was simply the way things were.
Alexander turned his back on her then and walked away, leaving her alone in the silent room and flickering light of six candles, which must have been lit for Drayton’s benefit as well—as a kind of mockery of his lingering ties to his father.
She wondered—in an irrelevant, passing thought—why the candles had been displayed in the antique shop. Maybe it was some sort of code that Drayton did business there.
Not that any of it really mattered at the moment
Julia only had to wait about five minutes—at least, that was about what it felt to her disoriented state of mind. She used those minutes to try to work out some kind of strategy for handling Drayton when he arrived.
There was no way she could break out of her bonds, so she’d have to get free some other way.
Maybe Mike wasn’t dead yet.
When the door across the room opened, Julia took a deep breath. She had to get herself together. She had to think clearly. This was as much of a crisis as she’d ever faced, and she alone was responsible for saving her life.
Maybe other people were able to come up with clever plans at moments like these, but she had absolutely no idea what to do.
Drayton walked in then, wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in earlier that day. His hair was neat and his shirt tucked in smoothly, but she could see lines of fatigue around his eyes.
“Drayton,” she said, meeting and holding his eyes, “Drayton, get me out of here.” She wriggled her hands to emphasize her plea and was surprise to discover there was the slightest amount of give on the tether on her right wrist.
His lips parted with a sigh she could hear, even halfway across the room. “I want to. I would. But Alexander and Gia aren’t fools. You would be dead before I could get you away from here. They’re not lying about that.”
“I thought you said you’d handled this.”
“I thought I had. I’m afraid I was wrong. I honestly didn’t expect them to stoop to this…this melodrama.”
She made a weird, breathy sound and kept working at the slight slack in her bindings, discreetly so it wouldn’t draw Drayton’s attention. “It doesn’t feel like melodrama to me. Just do the job. Whatever it is they want you to do. Just do it. How hard can it be?”
“It is hard. It’s bigger than anything my father ever did, and part of me is tempted to try. The problem is, if I give in to them now, then I’ll always be under their thumb. They’ll know I have a weakness, and they’ll always be able to exploit it. They’ll turn me into their puppet. The only way out of this is for me to call their bluff.”
Her eyes widened. “So you’re just going to let them kill me?”
“Alexander isn’t going to kill you unless he has to, unless I try to get you out of here. I’ve known him a long time. He likes money and shiny things. Death is too ugly for him—especially the death of an innocent woman. It’s a bluff, Julia. He’s not going to kill you unless I force him into it.” He sounded perfectly controlled, perfectly confident, but a chill ran up her spine just the same.
“You’re willing to take that risk? My life? Just because you don’t want someone else to have any sort of claim on your life.”
He met her eyes evenly. “I told you before. You don’t live this life, you aren’t the person I am, unless you’re willing to give everything up and walk away. But I’m telling you, Julia, this whole thing is an empty threat. You’re not going to be killed.”
“What about Mike! Mike was shot.” She fought her restraints instinctively, but felt a sliver of hope when the right restraint was even looser from the way she’d been working at it.
“I’m sure he wasn’t killed either. It’s all for show, Julia. They’ve always underestimated me. I can’t let this ridiculous scheme work.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to walk away.”
The words hung in the air with a cold resonance, and Julia didn’t for a moment doubt they were true. This was Drayton. The man she’s always known. Cool and controlled and sharply intelligent and driven to make the world exactly what he wanted it to be.
Refusing to be anything but free.
Mike had been right that he didn’t really love her, and Helen had been right when she’d said that, given a choice between his needs and someone else’s, Drayton would always choose himself.
Drayton might be right, and she was in no real danger. But Mike would never willingly walk away from her, if danger was anywhere in sight.
She could never live with Drayton now. Not knowing what she knew about him. Not even if all of this drama disappeared and things returned to normal. Loyalty and care could only take her so far.
So it was with a chilly sense of fate that she watched Drayton walk toward the door. “I’ll understand that you can’t forgive me for this, Julia,” he said, turning back toward her one more time. “But it’s the only choice I can make. I told you before. Life isn’t about perfect happy endings. They’re impossible in this world. Life is about choosing. And then about giving up what we don’t choose.”
Those were the final words. She knew it. And something was grieving inside her as she watched him close the door behind him, not quite drowned out by the fear.
Almost immediately, though, she started twisting and pulling at the binding on her wrist, working them until there was enough slack for her to pull her hand through.
It was so tight that she winced as the taut fabric scraped at her skin and caught on her knuckles, but she managed to squeeze out her hand.
Quickly, she untied her left hand too and then sat up to untie her feet. She jumped up and almost fell as her knees buckled from lack of circulation.
Straightening up, she stumbled toward the door.
She didn’t know how she would get home, given that she was without clothes, transportation, or purse. But she was definitely getting out of this house.
Maybe Drayton was pretty sure that Alexander and his cronies weren’t going to hurt her, but she wasn’t about to trust in his judgment.
Plus, Mike was still shot somewhere.
She opened the door and glanced out, but no one was in sight. So she tiptoed down the hall toward the stairs.
She saw Drayton coming back up them, and they both froze, staring at each other.
She didn’t know what he was doing here, but he’d been coming back up.
Maybe she would have said something. She had no idea what it would be. She didn’t have the chance, though.
She heard violent noises from downstairs, near the back of the house. Then a roar that was inarguably familiar.
Then Mike appeared at the foot of the stairs, pale and disheveled and with a bandage on one shoulder.
The sight of him was the dearest thing she’d ever seen in her life, but she didn’t have long to process the reaction.
Mike held a gun in his hand—the hand belonging to his good arm. He now aimed it right at Drayton.
Never had she seen Mike look so deadly.
For just a moment, she was afraid.
Thirteen
Julia felt the same kind of panicked horror she’d felt when Drayton had gone to get his gun from his car the other day. The shock of seeing Mike now aiming the weapon at Drayton froze her in place with a cold rush of feeling.
“You always were a little slow on the uptake,” Drayton drawled, sounding more like himself than he had since he’d walked into the room earlier. “Arriving
just on the cusp of too late.”
If possible, Mike’s expression hardened even more, but he didn’t speak to Drayton. Slanting his eyes quickly over to Julia, he demanded, “Are you all right? Did he hurt you? Where are the rest of your clothes?”
The characteristic incongruity of his last question helped to startle Julia out of her stupor. “I’m fine. It’s okay, Mike. Really.”
“Because of him, I was shot, and you were kidnapped you.” Mike cut cold eyes back to Drayton. “There’s no way that’s okay.”
Nothing in Drayton’s voice hinted at weakness. “You might as well put down the gun.”
“I might as well not do something so stupid,” Mike admitted, his hand tightening on the weapon, “I just pulled a bookcase down on top of Alexander and that other guy. I am not in the mood for games.”
“Mike, I said I’m ok—”
“Tell me what is going on,” Mike gritted out, finally taking the time to look around, his eyes lingering longest on Julia’s half-naked body. “What did Drayton do to you?”
“It wasn’t Drayton. Let’s get out of here, Mike,” Julia tried, knowing it was useless. Everything hadn’t been resolved yet, and some of the things that needed resolution had nothing to do with her.
Drayton and Mike’s relationship went back farther than hers did with either man. And they both had finally reached the edge of their restraint, the bitter truth of it surging forward at last.
“Yes, run along, why don’t you,” Drayton said in a mocking tone. “Mike has had his little boy fun, playing the self-righteous cowboy. And I’ve had my fun, of course, seeing you bound and helpless beneath me, naked, begging me to take you, even as—”
Julia made a burst of enraged, frustrated sound, realizing exactly what Drayton was trying to do.
It worked. Mike wasn’t stupid, but he was acting purely on anger and instinct now. And he wasn’t controlled enough to put up with Drayton’s vulgar taunting.
Mike threw himself at Drayton bodily with a roar of rage, and they both fell to the floor in an animalistic tangle of limbs and grunts.