by Katee Robert
And in the center of the room, hanging from the roughened wood chandelier by a rope tied to her wrists, was Clarke.
Dante took two steps forward before he caught himself. They had no backup, no knowledge of what they were walking into, and with Clarke obviously set up like the lure in a trap, Berkley had to be counting on them to react first and worry about the rest later.
Which was exactly what he’d been about to do.
He touched Lei’s back and jerked his chin toward the trees. They needed a plan, but more important, they needed to convey their location to Tucker and Britton. Once they were safely out of sight of the house, he shifted close enough that she could hear him while he spoke barely above a whisper. “I got turned around back there. Where are we in relation to your house?” He was used to navigating cities and occasionally small towns. Everything looked the same in the forest, and the forest at night? Forget about it.
“Um . . .” She closed her eyes, obviously retracing their steps. “The property to the east. Maybe northeast. We were close to the highway at one point, but then we looped south, and so directly east is the best bet.”
He slipped his phone from his pocket and sent a group text to both Britton and Tucker. He only had one lonely bar of service, but after considering it, the texts went through. He replaced the phone before Britton sent an order demanding they stand down and wait for reinforcements.
Clarke’s location was most definitely a trap, but Dante couldn’t leave her hanging there while he waited for the safe route. She wouldn’t hesitate if their positions were reversed, and Lei sure as fuck wasn’t going to stop now that the end was in sight.
He clasped her hand, squeezing it to get her to focus on him. “First Clarke. Once she’s secure, we’ll search the house and find Emma.”
She hesitated, but nodded. “Okay.”
“This time, you stay behind me.”
Another hesitation, shorter this time. “Let’s go.” She murmured a command to Saul that had him taking a position six inches to her right, his stance alert.
Dante drew his gun and waited for Lei to do the same. Then they worked their way across the open ground, avoiding the large pools of light. Just because they were walking straight into this trap didn’t mean they had to be idiots about it. He constantly scanned the area, but the light made him night-blind. Berkley could be standing in a pool of shadows, and because of the damn lights in the living room, Dante wouldn’t see him until it was too late.
He aimed for the back door that seemed to lead directly into the living room. On the first try, it opened in his hand. Definitely a trap. He might as well have laid out a welcome mat for us. Dante’s phone buzzed, but he ignored it as he eased open the door and slipped into the house, pausing to give his eyes a moment to adjust. From his position, it looked like Clarke’s chest was moving in slow exhales and inhales, but he couldn’t be sure.
Lei joined him in the house and motioned to Saul to sit. She closed the door and locked it. Smart. Ensuring Berkley can’t approach from that direction. She motioned for him to head to Clarke while she covered him, and Dante didn’t hesitate.
He crossed the room with a handful of long strides and lifted Clarke from the hook that had been hung from the bottom of the chandelier made of reclaimed wood. She was slight in his arms, a vivid reminder of exactly how human she was. Her skin was a rainbow of bruises, and she’d rubbed her wrists raw against the rope binding her. Always fighting, no matter how long the odds.
She stirred, her head lolling against his arm. Clarke blinked blue eyes at him, confusion warring with relief. “Dante?”
“I’m here. You’re safe now.”
“Trap,” she breathed.
“I know.”
The lights went out.
A thud had him spinning to where Lei had stood, but he couldn’t see anything except starbursts of light as his eyes tried to adjust. Saul yelped, and then terrifying silence descended. Dante rushed to the back door, only to find it hanging open.
Lei was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lei fought against the arms that pinned her against a solid chest. Travis’s chest. He dragged her out of the house and around the corner toward the front. “Stop fighting or I go back in there and shoot your fucking dog,” he growled against her neck. “And I’ll carve up your boyfriend while I’m at it.”
She’d lost her one gun in the shuffle, and he used her moment of surprise to grab the other from her holster and fling it into the darkness. “Now, Lei-Lei, are you going to play nice?”
“Where’s Emma?”
He ignored that. “Answer the fucking question.”
She could try to fight. She might even be able to get away from him long enough to go for the knife in her boot. But as capable as she was, Lei didn’t like her chances against Travis with only a knife between them. Not with Emma’s life in the balance. Not when Dante was at a disadvantage because he had Clarke in his arms. Not with Saul hurt and . . .
Can’t think about any of that. Focus on the now.
It took her two tries to speak past her dry throat. “I’ll play nice.” The words tasted of poison on her tongue, but he had all the advantages in that moment. The only chance she had was waiting for his guard to go down and striking then.
“Good girl.” He hauled her around the side of the house as Dante’s roar cut through the night. “Quite the animal you have there, isn’t he?”
She didn’t dignify that with a response. But when Travis towed her to the front door, she froze. “What are you doing?”
“Inside. Now.” He glanced over her shoulder and shoved her inside. She barely had time to catch herself on the wall before Travis was there, grabbing her upper arm and forcing her up the stairs. Lei could hear Dante yelling her name outside, but without light or Saul, he wouldn’t be able to tell if Travis had taken her back to the woods or somewhere else. He wouldn’t even think to look back inside the house.
Lei sure as hell wouldn’t have.
They kept moving, going down a long hallway and up a third set of stairs. It wasn’t until Travis shoved her and turned to haul the stairs up behind him that she realized he’d brought her to the attic.
Lei didn’t think. She grabbed her knife and went for his back.
He turned just as she brought the knife down and caught her wrist. “Ah ah.” Travis squeezed until the blade went flying and twisted, forcing her around and her arm up between her shoulder blades. “You aren’t the only one who learned a thing or two in the last twelve years.” He steered her deeper into the attic, past furniture covered with white sheets and a mirror that almost reached the ceiling above them.
There, in the back corner, lit by a low lamp, was Emma. She was slumped on her side, her blue eyes closed. “Emma!” Lei started forward, but Travis yanked her back.
“Not yet.” He buried his face in her neck and inhaled, low and deep. “God, I missed you, Lei-Lei.”
Every single hair on her body stood on end. There wasn’t a single way to interpret that move but sexual, and her mind went blank in terror. I can’t, I can’t, I won’t. Get off me. She moved on pure instinct, slamming her heel into his foot and twisting out of his grip when his hands went slack with shock.
Stuck between flight or fight, there wasn’t a real choice at all. No knife. No gun. But I still have me.
She punched him in the throat, and then she did it again as he bent in half. “Choke on that, you fucking monster.” She tried to knee him in the balls, but he turned his hips at the last moment and she only hit his thigh. Lei settled for kicking his legs out from underneath him. He hit the floor and she backed away, frantically searching for something resembling a weapon.
Down below, Dante’s bellows got quieter.
He was moving away from the house.
Travis groaned and rolled to his hands and knees. Lei stared. He wouldn’t stop. She didn’t have a single thing to fight him with, and he was stronger than she was. If he stopped long enough to realize
that all he had to do was threaten Emma, this would be over before she had a chance.
Lei kicked him in the face, flipping him onto his back. She sprinted back toward the stairs, but she could hear Travis cursing behind her. It would take too long to figure out how to get them to descend again.
No, her only hope was the window leading out onto the widow’s walk. If she could get out there, she could signal Dante and lead Travis away from Emma at the same time.
Lei scrambled over a covered chair and unlatched the window. It was new enough that it swung open easily when she pushed it, and she climbed up onto the windowsill. Every instinct demanded she run and hide, but she had to keep Travis chasing her. She forced herself to hold still, to wait until she heard his pounding footsteps and saw his shadow reaching for her to slip out onto the roof.
Her feet slid, and the past slammed into her with the strength of a body slam. Just like that, she was twelve years younger, weaving over the roof of the sorority house, trying to scream for help past her hoarse throat. She’d fallen, whether from vertigo or the concussion Travis had given her.
She wouldn’t fall now.
Lei forced herself to keep moving, to put a little distance between her and the window. The roof incline was steep enough that she had to crawl to reach the peak, but she managed. She twisted, searching for movement below, but there was nothing. “Dante! Dante, I’m here!”
A hand closed around her ankle. “He’s not coming for you, you dumb bitch.” Travis yanked her off her feet, and it was only his hold on her that kept her from falling headfirst down the slope of the roof. Lei scrambled against the shingles, trying to get a hold even as she kicked at his face. Her foot made contact with his shoulder, and he released her, sending her sliding down the side of the roof.
She caught herself on a gable halfway between the window and the thirty-foot fall, but Travis was too quick. He flipped her onto her back and forced her arms above her head. “I had plans for you, but I guess this will do. I’ll let Emma know that every cut she receives is because you weren’t good enough to stand in her place. She’ll curse your name before she’s dead.” He shifted his grip on her wrists to one hand and pulled out her knife with the other, raising it over his head. “Good-bye, Lei-Lei.”
A gunshot rang out through the night, and Travis jerked. His blue eyes went wide as another shot hit him, and he slumped to the side, caught in the angle between the gable and the main roof. Lei snatched the knife from his limp grip and scrambled back out of reach. Her hands shook, but she forced herself to hold still and watch as the light bled out of his eyes. Even then, she could barely trust that Travis was, in fact, dead.
He’s dead. It’s over.
Oh, God, it’s finally over.
“Lei!”
Dante.
She slid back a foot and then another, until she was at the edge of the roof. Still keeping one eye on Travis—Travis’s body—she leaned over to see him standing in the middle of the lawn. Clarke was at his feet, and he had a gun braced in both hands as if he couldn’t quite believe the threat had passed, either. “Dante.” She didn’t yell, but he heard her all the same.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” She swallowed hard. “But I’m alive.”
He nodded. “Watch him. I’m coming up.”
Things happened quickly after that. Dante left Clarke in the living room with Saul and a gun—the dog was injured, but alive—and made his way into the attic. He found Emma still unconscious on the ground, but she seemed relatively uninjured.
By the time he made it to the roof and Lei, sirens screamed through the night. Britton with reinforcements. Dante checked Berkley’s pulse, but he already knew the man was dead. He’d shot to kill. They’d leave the body there for the medical examiner to deal with. It was the survivors who mattered.
He helped Lei to her feet and then over to the window. “Did he hurt you?”
“A little.” She said it like it didn’t matter, and maybe it didn’t. She lived. Emma lived. Clarke lived. Beyond that, any injuries could heal. She knelt next to Emma. “Em, honey, talk to me.”
The blonde moaned a little, and her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake. Dante crouched next to her. “Drugged, I bet. I’ve got her.” He scooped her up, stood, and waited for Lei to precede him down the stairs.
Dante followed her down to where he’d left Clarke. She took one look at them and gave a weak grin. “Dante, the savior.”
“Not this time.” He might have shot Berkley, but he couldn’t take credit for saving the day. If Lei hadn’t managed to yell his name, he might have blundered right into the fucking woods and left her at Berkley’s mercy. By the time he’d figured out his mistake, it would have been too late.
He set Emma next to Clarke and checked her pulse again. “Steady,” he said to Lei.
And then she was in his arms. He squeezed her as tightly as he dared, letting the feeling of his body wrapped around hers calm his racing heart. It had been so fucking close. If he hadn’t heard her. If he’d been on the wrong side of the house when Berkley had gone after her with the knife. If, if, if.
We’re here. We’re alive. We made it.
The front door burst open beneath a boot, and then FBI streamed into the house. Dante recognized Vic Sutherland and his wife, Maggie, and a few others, but it was Britton he looked for. He met his boss’s gaze. “He’s on the roof.”
Britton nodded and started issuing orders. Two agents were dispatched to watch over the body until the medical examiner arrived. Two more were to search the house, and the remaining two were to set up a perimeter. Only then did he approach.
He knelt in front of Clarke and touched her knee. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“You know me. Can’t get me down.” She didn’t have quite the same brazen tone that Dante had come to expect from her. Whatever Berkley had done to her had left its mark beyond the bruises marring her face. He wanted to ask, but Britton was better equipped to deal with it. At least for now.
Britton nodded as if she’d said more than she had. “Humor me by accepting an ambulance ride so the hospital can look you over.”
“Okay.”
That, more than anything else, confirmed that she was more injured than she looked. Dante met her gaze over Lei’s head, but she glanced away before he could divine her thoughts. Britton turned to him. “Emma?”
The woman in question stirred but didn’t wake. “Unconscious. Maybe drugged.” It was the only way to explain why she hadn’t woken yet.
“He would have had to in order to get her out of the house.” Lei lifted her head. “We found Isaac’s car. Is he . . . ?”
“He was stabbed and left in the trees just off the road from where his cruiser was. He’s in critical condition, but he’s alive.” Britton narrowed his eyes. “Are you injured, Lei?”
“No.” When Dante gave her a little squeeze, she amended, “Not seriously enough to need a hospital. He only had me for a handful of minutes when all was said and done.”
It hadn’t felt like a handful of minutes. It had been a small eternity as he rushed out of that house and into the darkness, Clarke’s labored breathing in his ear, finding no sign of Lei and knowing Berkley had her. Realizing he might never see her again. That if he didn’t move fast enough, she would be reliving her worst nightmare, and this time she might not make it out the other side. Seeing her on that roof, watching Berkley jerk her legs out from under her, that frantic slide down the incline . . . Dante held Lei closer, not caring that they had an audience, not giving a damn about anything but the fact that she was whole and safe in his arms. “You’re okay. It’s okay.”
“I know.” She shivered. “Or my brain knows. It’s taking my body a little bit to catch up.”
Her dog gave a soft woof, and Lei slipped out of Dante’s arms. “Saul.” She knelt next to the dog and smiled when his tail slapped the ground. He lay on his side, his breathing a little funky. Lei touched his side and cursed. “He’s bleeding. I think
Travis kicked him.”
“We’ll get him in the ambulance, too.”
If anyone thought the paramedics might have a problem with Britton’s pronouncement, no one argued. As if on cue, the front door opened again, and more people poured into the house. In a matter of minutes, both Clarke and Emma were strapped to stretchers and removed from the building, quickly followed by a lone paramedic carrying Saul. Next came the Seattle PD, along with Dr. Franco.
Detective Smith stopped next to them, not looking any happier now than he had the first time Dante met him. “It’s over, then.”
Dante nodded. “It is.”
“Thank Christ.”
He kept his arm around Lei. She leaned on him more and more as time went on, her shivers becoming more pronounced until he leaned down and spoke softly in her ear. “Why don’t we leave before your legs give out and Britton calls the paramedics back to haul you into the hospital?”
“Good plan.”
He let go of her long enough to pull his boss aside. “I’m taking Lei to a hotel. Questioning can wait until tomorrow.”
Britton’s eyebrows inched up. “It seems cut-and-dried enough, but we’ll have to take statements in the morning so that it’s all on record. Go take care of her.”
It took an hour to find a suitable hotel, and Lei didn’t let go of Dante’s hand through the entire check-in process. If he had missed how affected she was by what happened tonight, that would have been a huge clue. He let her set the pace up to the room, and he threw the dead bolt as soon as the door shut. “Come here.”
“God, Dante. Just . . . God.” She clung to him, letting him walk them back to sit on the bed. That’s when the shakes started. “I was so scared.”
“Me, too.” He gathered her up into his lap and held her close. “I’m here. You’re here. We made it. We saved Clarke and Emma.” Maybe if he said it enough times, the truth would sink in. He closed his eyes, and the image of Lei sliding headfirst down the roof slammed into him. “We’re here.”