Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

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Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021 Page 48

by Anna J. Stewart


  Hang on, baby. I’m coming for you.

  “Wes?” Jessica’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “I’m here. Keep talking to me.”

  “’Fraid.”

  He’d never known Jess to be scared of anything, and she sounded terrified right now. If he’d had any doubt about the seriousness of her predicament, that one word had just erased it. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise.”

  She had a thing about promises. She hated them because she said people always broke them. He prayed he wouldn’t end up breaking this one to her.

  “Sleepy...”

  “I know you are. Fight it, baby. You’re the strongest woman I know. You can do this.”

  “Dec...deca...dec...”

  He frowned, listening intently, trying and failing to decipher what she was trying to say. She was clearly fading. Clearly losing all ability to form words. But she was fighting like crazy to say something.

  “Deca...dence,” she finally got out. A note of triumph sounded in her voice.

  The line went dead.

  Sonofabitch.

  He alternated between panic and...well, more panic...as he drove like a maniac around the Beltway toward the north side of town.

  What the hell did she mean by that? Decadence?

  Jessica hadn’t been talking about herself, had she? She was a known drama queen, spoiled rotten and a bona fide pain in the ass at times. She was decadently beautiful and, God knew, she’d blown his mind in bed with her decadence there. But why would she say something like that with such urgency just before she passed out?

  He made it to the Continental in record time and miraculously managed not to encounter any police as he destroyed every speed limit between the Pentagon and the hotel. He pulled into the circle drive in front of the hotel and looked around frantically. A pop-up nightclub would need a large, open space. Easy access. Plenty of parking. There. Across the street. A tall, ugly office building with a huge banner hanging across its front declaring the space for lease.

  He sprinted across the street, eyeing the building. There. A flash of blue and then red out of a top-floor window. That looked like disco lighting. That had to be it.

  A chain hung unlocked on one of the front doors. He stepped into a deserted lobby lit only by the dim glow of exit signs. God. If he didn’t know Jessica was upstairs somewhere, he would never guess anyone at all was here. He jammed the elevator button and waited impatiently for it. The only reason he wasn’t running up the stairs was this would be faster. Plus, if Jessica was passed out and being carried from the building, the douchebag who’d drugged her would inevitably drag her into the elevator and not try to carry her down a dozen flights of stairs.

  Girding himself for he knew not what, he watched the elevator door slide open.

  Empty.

  He jumped inside and mashed the button for the top floor. It was the longest elevator ride of his life. Every second was agony. Was someone dragging Jess into a bathroom or coatroom right now? Taking advantage of her? Doing unthinkable things to her?

  He forced the grisly images from his mind, along with the red haze of rage accompanying them. It had been less than ten minutes since she’d mumbled that last word to him. That wasn’t long enough for anything bad to happen to her, right?

  Cripes. It was a lifetime.

  C’mon, c’mon. He exhorted the elevator to go faster.

  Finally, at long last, the doors began to slide open ponderously. He slipped sideways through the opening as soon as it was wide enough to accommodate his muscular chest. He gathered himself to take off running, but spied a man standing at the end of a short hallway. Wes checked himself and strode toward the guy.

  On full combat alert, Wes took note of details instantly—Asian. Late twenties. Same height as Wes—six feet on the nose. Ripped like a bodybuilder.

  As Wes approached, the dude said woodenly, “Password?”

  Password? What the hell? Clearly this was some sort of private pop-up party. Which meant drugs, booze and girls were likely involved. What on earth had Jessica gotten herself mixed up in?

  Thinking fast, he slurred his words a little. “Crap. I forgot it. My friend said the best action in DC was here. I’ve got cash...” He dug for his wallet, praying that he had enough bills in it to look like more than a few bucks.

  “No password. No entry.”

  Dammit. Then inspiration struck. “Wait. I’ve got it. Decadence.” And if that didn’t work, Wes was clocking this guy and taking him out.

  As Wes’s fist balled tight, the bodybuilder nodded. Stepped back. Opened the solid wood door.

  Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes. Wes stepped into a large open space with exposed vents and conduit overhead. Concrete floor. Exposed concrete columns broke up the expanse. Four big guys lounged just inside the door, obviously to keep the riffraff out—or throw the riffraff out as the case might be.

  The music was deafening, and a dozen young women lolled at a bar built of cases of beer. Beyond the bar a crowd gyrated to the music in a near orgy on the dance floor. As far as he could see, people were standing, sitting and—holy crap—lying down in various stages of undress and orgy.

  How in the hell was he ever going to find Jessica in this morass of bodies, booze and sex? Stone-cold terror washed through his gut. He wasn’t going to get to her in time. Someone was going to assault her, and she was utterly defenseless. He’d been in killer firefights in hot combat zones that scared him less than this.

  Jessica, what in the hell have you done?

  “Yo, brah,” one of the thug/bouncers said, coming forward to greet him. “You look uptight as hell, man. Can I get you something to drink? Snort? Shoot? You know, get you in the mood?”

  He was in the mood to hurt someone. “No. I’m good,” he bit out.

  He moved into the crowd, bypassing the dance floor on the assumption that she was currently unconscious. He had to step over and around people shooting drugs, engaged in near sex acts or simply passed out. Class in a glass, man.

  He gazed around in search of Jessica’s wavy golden hair but didn’t spy her. Last he’d talked with her, she’d been looking out a window. He didn’t see any windows on this side of the building. Damn. He was going to have to cross the dance floor. Taking a deep breath, he plunged into the writhing mass of sweaty, gyrating bodies and flailing limbs.

  Instantly, hands were on him, pulling at him and blatantly groping him. He batted away the grabs at his crotch as best he could. But breasts and bellies and asses rubbed up against him suggestively in spite of his best efforts to slip through the crowd. Women shouted in his ear, but he ignored them, focusing his efforts on finding a path through the human maze.

  All at once, he popped out the back side of the mosh pit. It was dark on this side of the floor, and the debauchery was even more pronounced as he picked his way through the partyers.

  A new and improved layer of fear exploded inside his skull. He had to find Jessica, and soon. She was wild, but her brand of wild didn’t extend to this. He skirted around a guy snorting lines of cocaine off a girl’s bare stomach, and spied a flash of pale, golden blond against the far wall over the shoulder of a guy in a suit.

  Wes charged forward, grabbing the guy by the shoulder a spinning him around.

  “Get your own piece of ass,” the guy growled as Wes saw the girl’s face.

  Not Jessica.

  Wes spun away, moving quickly along the long wall containing a half-dozen floor-to-ceiling glass windows. He was almost on top of another couple—a huge, muscular man totally hiding the girl he had smashed up against the wall—before Wes caught a glimpse of a tear-streaked cheek.

  He would know the classic elegance of that cheek anywhere.

  A strand of wavy blond hair fell forward as she turned her head weakly from side to side. She was tall, but her head barel
y reached the shoulder of the guy pinning her to the wall.

  “Hey!” Wes said sharply, grabbing the guy’s shoulder and yanking him back from her.

  “What the—” the big man growled.

  Jessica’s dress was pushed down around her waist, exposing her black lace bra and a whole lot of creamy, satin flesh that even now looked touchable as hell. Wes spied the hemline of her dress, and it was bunched up nearly to her waist, exposing Jessica’s long, slender legs and a scrap of black lace that passed for a thong. The bastard had been well on his way to molesting her, obviously. Wes appeared to have gotten to her in the nick of time.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the lady,” Wes ground out, barely hanging on to his cool.

  “And I’m going to have to ask you to take off, asshole.”

  “She has been drugged,” Wes retorted. “You need to leave her alone and let me take her home.”

  “Of course, she’s drugged. Bitch blew me off when I asked her nice. So I slipped her a little something to change her mind.”

  Wes could’ve reasoned with the guy. Could’ve threatened the guy with legal action for taking advantage of a defenseless woman. Could’ve accused him of drugging Jessica and assaulting her and called the police.

  But it was a hundred times more satisfying to punch the guy in the nose with all of his considerable strength.

  “Sonofa—” the guy roared, holding his bloody face. The guy came up swinging, and Wes danced back from the larger man, who was faster than he looked and not nearly as drunk as Wes had hoped he might be. “I’ll kill you,” the big man growled. “She’s mine, and you can’t have her.”

  For some reason, the assertion that Jessica belonged to this jackass infuriated Wes beyond all reason.

  The guy charged Wes, coming shoulder first like a football player. Crap. This guy was going to be fully as strong as his bulk suggested.

  But Wes had both righteous fury and a burning need to protect Jessica on his side. His rage transformed in a blink of the eye, becoming an icy calm that focused his senses and distilled his purpose into a single pinpoint to make this man pay for what he’d intended to do—hell, had nearly done—to Jessica.

  The fight was brutal and one-sided. Despite the other man having easily fifty pounds on him, Wes was a combat-trained and battle-hardened Marine. And he was pissed.

  By the time the bouncers heard the commotion, made their way past the mosh pit and finally pulled Wes off the guy, Jessica’s assailant looked more like hamburger than human.

  Wes, still in the grips of adrenaline-enhanced strength, pulled away from the bouncers who had him by the arms and rushed over to kneel in front of Jessica where she’d slid down the wall and was now huddled on the concrete floor, hugging her knees.

  “Jess?” he murmured. “Are you okay?”

  She looked up, mascara streaking her porcelain skin. She launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck with a sob of relief. He stood, taking her with him, and her slender body plastered against his, trembling. Her head lolled against his shoulder and renewed fury coursed through him.

  He held her close, doing his damnedest to make her feel safe and protected. Her legs gave out, but he supported her weight easily with an arm around her waist. Lord, he’d forgotten how good she felt in his arms. She tended more toward lean and angular than round and lush, but her body was soft in comparison to his, and she had all the curves he needed.

  “You...came,” she mumbled against his neck. He felt wetness through his shirt. She was crying.

  Holy Mother of God. Jessica Blankenship, force of nature and formidable femme fatale, was crying?

  “I’ve got you, babe,” he murmured, comforting her as best as he could.

  Hands grabbed at him, tugging him away from her. He fought as hard as he could, but there were a lot of hands, and they were collectively stronger than him. People were shouting about police coming, patrons ran in every direction and the chaos was incredible. In the middle of it, a pair of bouncers pulled him away from Jessica.

  Wes locked stares with her, and she looked at him in fearful entreaty as the bouncers dragged him, still struggling violently, away from her.

  He reached out for her, and her hands came up to reach for him. Then something cracked him painfully across the skull, and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 2

  Wes tugged his black dress uniform down, adjusting the white belt at his waist carefully. This hearing was just a formality, but the Marines followed the rules obsessively. He’d assaulted a civilian and was subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice for doing so. Of course, he’d been rescuing an innocent woman from assault or worse, and everyone knew he would walk away today with a slap on the wrist and an unofficial attaboy for saving Jessica.

  He walked into the pale wood military courtroom and nodded at his boss, General Blankenship, who was seated beside his daughter and her lawyer. Oddly, the Old Man didn’t nod back. In fact, he was scowling rather thunderously at Wes.

  He passed Jessica, who was staring down at her twined fingers in her lap, and took his place at the defendant’s table beside his own lawyer, murmuring a quick greeting, then asking, “Any reason why the general’s looking so annoyed?”

  His lawyer opened his mouth, but the judge entered the courtroom just then, and the bailiff intoned in a rolling baritone, “All rise.”

  Legalese passed back and forth between the government’s lawyer and Wes’s lawyer for a minute or so, and then the other lawyer stood up. “In the matter of conduct unbecoming an officer, we call Jessica Blankenship to the stand.”

  Wes didn’t relish hearing the story again of her drugging nor her urgent call to him for a rescue. Still, he pasted the most supportive look he could on his face for her. He was just abjectly grateful he’d reached her before anything worse than some groping and embarrassment had happened to her.

  He hadn’t been allowed to see her since he’d been hauled away in handcuffs that night a month ago. Which annoyed the hell out of him. He’d desperately wanted to hear from her directly that she was okay. That she wasn’t scarred by her near miss with disaster. That he’d kept his promise to her and that no harm had befallen her.

  She looked slightly ill as she raised her hand and swore to tell the truth. Worried, he studied her closely. She was too thin. She was wan and had chosen not to wear any makeup to relieve the purple smudges beneath her eyes. Her hair looked odd, tamed into a conservative twist on the back of her head like that. Its lush, long waves were her pride and joy. And for good reason. He’d spent hours trailing his fingers through the lustrous, silken strands.

  The hairdo showed off her lovely, slender neck, though. A string of lustrous pearls competed with her skin to be paler and more luminescent. Her skin won.

  The prosecution lawyer asked her to relay what had happened to her on the night of his arrest.

  This was the part where she would tell about being roofied and calling him, and how he’d charged to her rescue. If Wes was lucky, she would remember how the guy had admitted to drugging her and had refused to leave her alone.

  Her sultry voice sounded strained as she said, “Captain Morgan approached my...date...and demanded that he leave. Then Captain Morgan insisted that he wanted to take me home, himself. When my date refused, Captain Morgan, uh, assaulted him.”

  Wes stared in utter disbelief. She was lying! Not to mention, he would never force any woman to go home with him, and she damned well knew it.

  “Did you witness this assault by Captain Morgan on your friend?” the lawyer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How would you describe it?”

  “It was violent. One-sided.”

  “Did your friend fight back?”

  “He tried. But Captain Morgan is a lot stronger than him.”

  “Of course he is. He’s a Marine. He�
��s trained in the use of lethal force, isn’t that right?”

  “I guess so,” she answered.

  “Would you say that Captain Morgan intended to harm your date?”

  “I would say Captain Morgan intended to kill him, sir.”

  Wes’s jaw dropped. She wasn’t wrong that an urge to kill the guy had certainly passed through his mind. But the guy had admitted to drugging her with the intent of forcing himself upon her sexually!

  More to the point, he hadn’t killed the bastard, no matter how richly he’d deserved to die. He’d restrained himself, dammit. Wes was fully willing to face the music for beating the crap out of that jerk. But attempted murder? Not so much.

  The prosecution lawyer pressed on. “I’m entering into evidence these photographs of the victim of Captain Morgan’s beating obtained from the emergency room where he was admitted. They are graphic and of a disturbing nature, and in deference to my client, I would like to ask the judge to view the images in chambers and not subject my client to viewing them.”

  The judge nodded his assent to the request and rose to go into his office to look through a stack of photos the lawyer handed over.

  Wes leaned over to his lawyer, whispering, “The guy was huge and said he was going to kill me.”

  “I’ll cross-examine her about it and hope she can corroborate that.”

  The judge came back, the look on his face grim to say the least. And he was refusing to make eye contact with Wes anymore. A sick feeling lodged in the pit of Wes’s stomach. He had pounded the crap out of the bastard, and the list of injuries he’d inflicted had included broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, broken wrist, separated retina and, of course, the broken nose. He expected the guy had copious contusions and bruises to go along with the major injuries, too.

  Wes leaned over and whispered urgently to his lawyer, “Ask her about the phone call. She called me. Begged me to rescue her. Check the damned phone records!”

  His lawyer whispered back, “She didn’t have a cell phone on her at the time of the raid. I can’t prove that she called you. If she won’t testify to it, the existence of a phone and of a call to you becomes a he-said-she-said.”

 

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