by Liliana Hart
“You won’t get away with what you did to Shane. To Jones. You’re a sick woman. Beyond anyone’s help. Which means hell is too good for you. So I’ll do whatever I have to do,” Rachel swore. “As long as it means you’re dead.”
Carrie’s smile froze in place at the look Rachel gave her. Both women were determined not to back down, but there was fear inside Carrie that hadn’t been there a moment ago. An elevator pinged in the distance and footsteps echoed on the concrete floors. Rachel took a moment to look at her surroundings and try to figure out where she was.
She was surrounded by windows. And from the view she knew she was fairly high up. The lights from the hotels and other businesses shone through the windows and lit the floor she was occupying. Stacks of lumber and buckets of paint were scattered around the room, and the metal folding chair she was sitting in seemed to be the only furniture.
The sight of her Uncle Angelo walking into the room was her worst nightmare come true. He looked so much like her father it brought a pang to her heart, but looks was where the similarities ended. Angelo had a cruelty to him that her father had never possessed. Even with the position of power over the mob Dom had obtained over the years, he’d never resorted to cruelty to get what he wanted. And for a time the other mob families had respected that and followed the same guidelines he’d set.
Angelo clucked his tongue at the sight of her. “Well, niece, I’ve certainly seen you looking better. The swelling on your face might make it harder for the authorities to identify your body. But don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll figure it out sooner or later. The FBI has ways of finding such things out. Isn’t that right Agent Layne?” he asked Carrie.
Rachel could only handle one threat at a time so didn’t bother looking at her Uncle Angelo. She’d yet to take her eyes off Carrie. If she was going to die, she wanted the other woman to know she’d meant every word she’d said about her fate.
Carrie was doing everything possible to ignore Rachel. There were undercurrents in the room that Rachel didn’t understand. Carrie was watching the two men who stood at Angelo’s back and trying to relay some unspoken communication to them. They looked like exactly what they were. Hired thugs. Their suits were boxy and their minds empty except for whatever orders were tossed their way, and Carrie’s frustration was growing palpable.
Angelo didn’t like being ignored. “Now, tell me niece, who did this to your pretty face?”
Rachel didn’t answer. She just kept her glare on Carrie.
“Ahh,” Angelo said. “I believe I can connect the dots.” He turned around and faced Carrie, and she stood defiantly in front of him.
“Has the money been transferred?” she asked.
“Yes. And I even added the extra hundred thousand you demanded to bring me Rachel alive. Though it wasn’t in good form to mark her like this. She won’t last nearly as long now.”
“I did what I had to do,” she said shrugging. She pulled out the envelope from the inside of her jacket and handed it over to Angelo. “And here’s the list as requested. For no extra charge.”
Angelo pulled out the list and scanned it before folding it and putting it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I assume your travelling companions have been taken care of as well?”
“Yes. You could say they had an unfortunate accident,” Carrie said, smirking in Rachel’s direction. “Now, if you’ll give me a minute to call and make sure the funds have been transferred into my account, I’ll be on my way. Not that I don’t believe you about the money,” she said. “But I make it a point to never trust anyone.”
Carrie walked over to the two guards as if she were going to tell them something, but the words never made it out of her mouth. Angelo moved with a speed not many people knew him capable of. The buck knife he habitually carried in a sheath at the small of his back was in his hand in a matter of seconds, and the lights from the hotel across the street flashed across the six inch silver blade.
Angelo grabbed Carrie by the hair and held the knife to her throat. Her hand automatically went to the holster at her side, but Angelo pressed harder with the blade until Rachel could see the thin line of blood dripping from the tip of the knife. Carrie dropped her hands.
“Do something, you fools,” she called out to the two guards. “Kill him.”
The men stood still and looked straight ahead, ignoring her pleas.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t know about you bribing my men to turn against me?” Angelo asked. “You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” he demanded.
“Y-y-yes,” Carrie stuttered.
“You know nothing of inspiring loyalty. Money is not the only motivator a person has. Do you think those men are more afraid of you than they are of me?” he whispered, running the blade of the knife down the side of her cheek.
Carrie’s eyes were wide with fear and with the knowledge she’d gone too far.
“P-p-please,” she begged. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I’d enjoy torturing you, but I just can’t waste the time,” Angelo said. He jerked back hard on her hair and sliced the knife across her throat. A spray of blood arced through the air and Angelo stepped back to avoid the sticky substance from getting on his clothes. He let Carrie fall to the ground and stepped over her body. He held the knife up in front of Rachel—the knife still coated with the blood of a woman she’d promised would die.
Rachel felt no sorrow in the death of Carrie. But she felt fear as her own death stared her in the face.
***
There was a pool on the roof of the Hancock Hotel. The way it glowed an eerie bluish green would be one of the things that would stay in his mind forever.
Shane didn’t have a problem gaining access to the roof in the middle of the night. It had actually been rather simple. He’d showered the dust and blood from his face and body and changed into clothes that hadn’t looked like they’d just been in an explosion. Cutter had made sure he was outfitted with a change of clothes and the weapon of his choice—plus any other materials he might need. They’d all been concealed easily inside a suitcase.
He’d checked into the hotel using Cutter’s identification, since they looked the most alike physically, and checking in under Shane’s own name would get him arrested as soon as they entered his information into the computer. He paid cash for the room and requested one of the upper floors. The bored desk clerk barely gave him a second glance as he signed Cutter’s name to the receipt and she handed him the key card.
Shane rode the elevator up to seventeen. When the doors opened, he got off on his floor but walked past his room to the stairs at the end of the long hallway. He climbed the remaining three stories up and used his key card to access the roof level.
The wind and rain was frigid and pelted his face when he opened the door. The door shut behind him, and he took out the cell phone Dixon had given him out of his pocket. Dixon had the phone rigged so that one swipe across the electronic key slot would make the door unusable to anyone else. He’d have the whole rooftop to himself, not that anyone else would be crazy enough to be on the roof in the miserable weather besides him.
In the hotter months of the year, swimming or relaxing on the roof with the cool breeze would probably bring much needed relief to the body, but right now it was pure misery. The wind and other elements were always a factor when setting up for a shot, and he’d have to be careful not to overcompensate. He’d only have one chance.
Shane dropped the suitcase he was carrying onto the ground near the edge of the roof and unzipped it. He pulled a pair of night goggles over his eyes but then immediately tossed them aside. The lights from the hotel were too bright for them to do him any good. He’d have to rely on a pair of high powered binoculars and his scope. It was still a good ways off till dawn, so he didn’t have to worry about that factor.
Shane set up the tripod for his rifle with quick, easy movements. The motions were as familiar to him as putting on his clothes every morning. Maybe more
. He hunkered down on the cold roof and ignored the wet seeping into his clothes. His only concern was the job at hand.
His friends were twenty stories below, waiting on his signal before they infiltrated the building. He knew the four of them would do exactly what they’d set out to and get rid of all the threats that lurked in the building, but Rachel’s safety would rely solely on him.
He used the binoculars and started on the lower floors of the building across the street. Angelo’s goons were scattered around the entrances on the lower levels of the building and near the elevators. These guys were lower level security at best. None of them were very alert at this time of night. He saw a couple of them dozing in straight back chairs or on the floor against the walls. That would just make Alpha Squadron’s job that much easier.
Rachel hadn’t come into his sights yet, but he hadn’t expected her to. According to Dixon’s research, she’d be on one of the top floors. And Dixon was never wrong. Shane moved the binoculars up floor by floor until he came to the top level. If it weren’t for the binoculars he never would have been able to see inside. The glass had already been tinted dark in preparation for the apartment that was being constructed inside.
And what he saw inside the room sickened him. Rachel was bound to a chair and her face was swollen and bloody. He could only see her in profile, but she was looking Angelo straight in the eyes as he talked to her, never backing down. There were two men at Angelo’s back, and Shane could tell by the way the stood that they were much more dangerous than the men positioned on the bottom floors. There was a body on the floor that looked like Carrie, but he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure. At least Angelo had taken that task out of his hands.
Shane used the cell phone Dixon had given him to signal that he’d found Rachel, and that the rest of the team could enter the building when ready. He couldn’t worry about what they were doing or if they were walking into a trap. He could only focus on Rachel and the man who wanted her dead.
Shane breathed slowly through his mouth and slowed his heartbeat before looking through the scope on his rifle and placing his finger on the trigger. Thoughts of what had happened two years ago flooded his brain with the images of horror he saw in his dreams every night, and he cursed as he pulled away from the scope and laid flat on his back on the ground.
He had to get it together. This was a completely different circumstance, and Rachel wasn’t Maggie. The cold rain beat down on his face, but his body temperature was hot. His pulse jumped in his neck and his thoughts were scattered. He closed his eyes and did a few breathing exercises, and then he crawled back into position and looked through the scope once again.
From what he could see, it looked like Angelo’s rage was escalating, and Shane knew he could wait no longer.
For the first time in his life Shane’s finger shook as he placed it on the trigger.
***
“Do you know why I wanted you brought here to me?” Angelo asked Rachel.
“Because you’re insane,” she said. She would have smiled just to piss him off, but the movement would have hurt too much.
“You always did have a smart mouth. Your father didn’t discipline you nearly enough in my opinion.”
“Leave my father out of this. In your wildest dreams you’ll never come close to being half the man he is.”
“Don’t you mean was?” Angelo asked with a Cheshire cat smile. He pulled the handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped down the blade in his hand.
Rachel felt the color drain from her face and she became nauseated. She’d waited all this time and had never known the truth about what had happened to her father. She thought she’d prepared herself for the worst, but she’d sorely miscalculated.
Angelo flipped the knife in his hand and kept his eyes steady on hers. “Come now, Rachel. Don’t disappoint me. Aren’t you going to ask what happened to him? Aren’t you the least bit curious to know how he died?”
Rachel bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from screaming out loud. NO! she wanted to yell. She didn’t want to know what had happened to her father. But the reasonable side of her brain told her she needed the closure. Needed to be able to finally lay her father to rest.
“What did you do to him?” she finally asked.
Angelo smiled at her and continued tossing his knife in the air, end over end, so Rachel was almost hypnotized by the motion.
“I paid Carrie to bring me Dom and the original list that he’d handed over to Agent Culver. She brought me Dom as I’d asked, but unfortunately the list was nowhere to be found. No one seems to know what happened to it, but I have my own theories. Carrie was a greedy young woman, and she probably thought having her own copy might come in useful at some point. I couldn’t blame her really. It’s exactly why I wanted the list for myself. I let the transgression slide because I still had need of her inside the FBI. It’s not as easy to bribe law enforcement as it used to be, and Carrie did have her uses.”
Angelo tossed his knife to the other hand, and Rachel noticed the guards at Angelo’s back were beginning to get antsy. Maybe they weren’t as comfortable with a sociopathic boss as they liked to think.
“I’m on the list, you know,” Angelo said. “Imagine how you’d feel if your own brother was going to turn you in. I couldn’t let it happen, and the other families agreed with me. Everyone was so sad to get rid of Dom,” he spat.
Anger flooded Angelo’s face and he continued to toss the knife, round and round, only he hadn’t noticed how tight he was gripping the blade each time he caught it. Blood dripped steadily down his wrist and onto the floor. “Everyone loved Dom like he was Santa Claus. People aren’t afraid of Santa Claus. He was ruining us all.”
Rachel jerked against the cuffs around her wrists, but found they were cinched tight. Angelo was losing control quickly and she’d already decided she wasn’t going to go down easy. She wouldn’t just sit quietly and wait for him to slice her throat. It just wasn’t in her nature.
“Dom was a pathetic excuse for a man. I brought him to this very building and sat him just as you are now. I didn’t give him the easy way out like I did with your friend here,” he said, pushing Carrie’s body over with the tip of his shoe so her gaping throat was exposed. “He didn’t even have the decency to take it like a man when I started to work on him. He begged and pleaded the whole time, crying like a little girl, for me to stay away from you. I, of course, would have been glad to accommodate a dying man’s last wishes, but then I found out he’d sent you a little surprise in the mail. I can admit I got a little overzealous with your father. He didn’t last nearly as long as I’d have liked him to. Sometimes I forget my own strength and cut a little too deep.”
Angelo looked down at his hand and noticed the blood for the first time. “See what I mean,” he said, holding his palm up for her to see.
The guards at Dom’s back were moving towards the elevator, each of them talking on their headsets, repeating the same command for each station to check in. Angelo didn’t notice. He was in his own world.
Rachel wiggled her ankles and tried desperately to loosen the rope at her feet. She’d stopped watching the flipping knife and her gaze followed the two guards around the room. They pressed the button for the elevator, but it never arrived, so they split up and went to each side of the floor were the emergency exit stairs were located.
A hard slap brought Rachel’s attention back to Angelo, bringing a moan of pain to her lips. He’d hit the same cheek as Carrie had earlier and blood dribbled down her chin. She breathed through her nose to fight the nausea and couldn’t find the strength to groan when Angelo yanked her up by the hair so she was looking him in the face.
“I haven’t finished my story yet,” he said. “You’re being very rude. Now, where was I?”
Rachel didn’t make the mistake of taking her eyes off him again.
“Oh, yes. I had just killed your father. It’s a moment I’ll always remember. And now I have you in exactly the same sp
ot. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“What did you do with him?” Rachel was barely able to get the question out. Her face was swollen to the point where her mouth would only open so far and talking was difficult.
“What did I do with him?” Angelo laughed. “I’m not completely heartless. He was my brother after all. I gave him a decent burial. Last spring I had the most beautiful crop of roses bloom in my gardens. I like to think it’s because Dom is such good fertilizer.”
Tears coursed down Rachel’s cheeks and she could tell her uncle was finished grandstanding. The end had come, and her only thought was that she’d never gotten to tell Shane she loved him. Now it was too late for both of them.
“Are you ready, Rachel?” he asked softly. “I’ll try not to make it over too soon.” The knife was back in his hand in the blink of an eye, but the chaos at the stairwell finally got his attention. Four men dressed in black, with their faces painted to match, burst through the doors. Rachel recognized Jax and the tears started falling faster. The fighting at the stairs was intense, and the guards put up a struggle that would have evened things up considerably if the numbers had been the same.
Angelo didn’t waste time trying to save the lives of his bodyguards. He moved slowly behind Rachel and took her by the hair.
The guards were both face down on the floor and the four men in black were the only ones left standing. They each had their weapons pointed to the ground so as not to put Rachel in the line of fire.
“Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve found me. But I won’t be taken down alone. She’ll die one way or the other.”
The blade of the knife bit into her skin and she held back a whimper of pain. She closed her eyes tightly and thought of Shane—about the last night they’d spent together and the lifetime they’d never get to see.