by Lisa Childs
She kept that stare on him, unblinking. She looked so different—with the dark hair and contacts. But yet she was so familiar, too. “You haven’t asked me why...”
“Rus told me,” he said, “about the shooting.” About her and their son nearly being killed in their own home.
“You haven’t asked me why I didn’t go to you after the shooting happened.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t need to ask you why. I knew...” He had already let her down.
But she told him anyway. “I didn’t think you’d care...”
He flinched. But she wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was only stating what he’d made her believe. That he didn’t care about her or their son.
“So why did you come here with Agent Rus?” she asked.
They were just on the outskirts of the little town where Nick Rus had helped her hide. Rus had gone back into town to talk to the authorities, who were no doubt trying to figure out just what the hell had happened on her block. A traffic accident or a drive-by shooting.
Both.
Things like that happened all the time in River City. He suspected that wasn’t the case in this scenic little town. Why had it happened here? Why did someone want Amber dead?
“He told me you and Michael were alive.”
“So?” she asked. “You didn’t want to see me all the years before I died. Why did you want to see me now?”
He wanted to tell her how her death had affected him—how it had devastated him. How he’d realized when he’d lost her and their son that he had lost his reason for living. But after how he’d treated her, how he’d rejected her and Michael, he had no right to those feelings.
He peered through the slider, making certain their son slept soundly, so he wouldn’t overhear their conversation—even with the door only partially open. He didn’t want to traumatize him any more than that afternoon probably had. “Someone dug up your graves.”
She shuddered.
“He opened the caskets,” he said.
She expelled a shaky breath. “He knows they’re empty, then.”
“I suspect he already knew,” he said. “He just had to confirm.” And once the hired killer had confirmed it, he’d come after her—after them.
She uttered a very unladylike curse.
Milek drew out his cell phone and held up the screen showing the call log. “He’s not the only one who knows.” He hadn’t had to play his messages to confirm that. He knew his family well.
Ever since Amber’s accident a year ago, they’d been watching him closely. They had noticed the difference in him after Rus had shared the truth with him. Garek had made his suspicions clear that he thought Milek was working for the FBI agent. With his new wife’s help, he would have kept digging. But it wasn’t just Garek and Candace who’d been calling him. The entire Payne family had called.
“They all know...”
She let out a soft gasp. “Stacy?”
He glanced at the call log again and nodded. She’d called too many times to just be checking on him. She knew.
“She’s going to hate me.”
“She’s going to be happy you’re alive.”
“For how long?” Amber asked. “The shooter knows I’m alive. And he wants me dead.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” Milek assured her.
She shook her head. “You won’t be able to stop him.”
“I stopped him today.” He wasn’t sure if it had been his shots or Rus’s that had come close enough to either injure or scare off the killer.
“You can’t be with me every minute,” she said. “I need to wake up Michael and get out of here.” She reached for the handle of the slider.
He covered her hand with his and stopped her from opening the door. Her skin was cold and silky to his touch. He tightened his grasp. “You can’t hide.”
He couldn’t lose them again.
“I can,” she said. “I just won’t make the mistake of trusting Agent Rus again.”
“Rus didn’t betray you,” he said. “If someone hadn’t dug up your graves, I’m not sure he would have ever told me where you were.”
“Then why did he tell you that Michael and I were alive?”
Because he had been suffering. But he doubted she would believe him. Since she was already having trouble trusting, he wasn’t going to push his luck. Not when he had another proposal to make.
“It doesn’t matter why,” Milek said. “But now that he told me, now that I know you’re both alive and in danger, I intend to keep you and Michael safe.”
She stared up at him and asked, “And how do you intend to do that?”
“By bringing you home.”
She shuddered. “To River City?”
“To my place,” he clarified. “I want you and Michael to move in with me.” Of course, doing that might actually put her in more danger—from him.
* * *
He hunched down in the driver’s seat and stared up at the hotel room where, moments ago, two people had stood on the balcony.
They hadn’t seen him following them from the crime scene. But then, he was the Ghost. Nobody ever saw him—until it was too late. Until today...
Frank lifted his fingers to his forehead and flinched. A bullet had grazed him. He hadn’t had a call that close in a long while. It had shaken him.
He didn’t want to actually become a ghost. But he had to make some more. He glanced down at the screen of his phone where a news broadcast played. It was out now.
Their graves found empty, Amber Talsma was believed to have faked the deaths of herself and her young son. There was speculation about all the reasons why.
Only Frank knew the truth—the whole truth. He was a professional, though, so nobody else would ever know. And because he was a professional it was time he finished the job. He could have tried when they’d been on the balcony, but he hadn’t had a clear shot. So he would wait. He was a patient man.
But he didn’t have to wait long before his targets walked out. The man had the boy clasped in one arm and his other arm wrapped protectively around the woman. But he wasn’t actually offering them much protection. He wouldn’t be able to draw his weapon this time. He wouldn’t be able to return fire when Frank started shooting.
Chapter 5
She was the one with a new name. New hair. New eye color. New career. Home. Life.
But Milek was the one who had changed. He wasn’t the man she remembered—the one she had loved. She had fallen for his sweet sensitivity. She saw none of that in the man who had pulled her from the wreckage of her van.
So why had she agreed to go home with him? She didn’t even know him. She’d already been scared to return to River City—since that was where it had all begun, where Gregory had been murdered, where she’d nearly been gunned down, as well. And living with Milek? Being with him all the time? That terrified her.
But he’d been insistent that they needed to leave the hotel. Now. Because she’d wanted to be gone before Agent Rus returned, she’d readily agreed.
Now, as she walked with him across the hotel parking lot, she wasn’t certain she’d made the right decision. Milek had proved over five years ago she couldn’t trust him with her heart.
But could she trust him with her life and Michael’s?
He had changed. He was no longer the sensitive artist he’d once been. He was a bodyguard, all steely-eyed and focused.
Even now, as he walked her and Michael from the hotel with an arm around each of them, he wasn’t focused on them. He was focused on everything around them. The parking lot was dark, the light from the hotel faint. She could see nothing.
But she felt the moment he did. His body tensed, and his grip on the gun he held against her side tightened.
; “We’re going to play a game,” he whispered to their son. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek. You and your mother are going to hide. You’re going to hear bangs again but you’re not going to come out until I tell you to.”
There was that sensitivity—just a glimmer of it—when he tried to convince their son that the danger they were in was just a game.
After that brief explanation, he acted fast, though. He passed their son to her and stepped in front of them. “Run back into the hotel,” he told her.
Before she could say anything, shots rang out. She didn’t know who was shooting—Milek or whoever he had seen in the darkness. She couldn’t ask. She couldn’t move. Fear paralyzed her.
“Run!” he yelled.
And finally her legs moved. Michael clasped closely to her chest, she ran straight for the hotel lobby. But the glass doors stopped her, drawing her up short. Was she locked out?
Slowly they began to part. So the automatic opener was just slow. Too slow. She ducked as more shots rang out. Something whizzed past her head. She hoped she imagined it, but then the glass of those slowly parting doors shattered.
She shrieked.
And Michael echoed her scream, his body trembling against hers. She swung him out of her arms and through the narrow opening. As Milek had told her, she told their son, “Run!”
He was smaller—a smaller target. The shooter was after her. Not Milek. Not Michael. But he was putting those she loved in danger. Anger coursed through her—along with the fear. And she thought fleetingly of running back—of trying to negotiate with a killer. Her life for the lives of her son and Milek. But her little boy paused in the middle of the lobby, staring back at her, his eyes wide with fear. He needed her; he needed his mommy.
She squeezed through the metal frames of those shattered doors and caught up with him, swinging him back up into her arms. But she didn’t know where to go. Outside the gunfire continued. And inside all she could hear was screaming. And crying.
But she and Michael had gone silent—probably with shock. The screaming and crying emanated from behind the check-in and concierge desks. She could have carried Michael back there. But the night clerk’s fear would terrify Michael even more.
She needed to take him somewhere safer. She had the key to the room Special Agent Rus had booked for them. But how had the shooter found them? Had Rus told him where they were? Or was it Rus out in the parking lot—shooting at Milek?
She shouldn’t have trusted the FBI agent. She hadn’t been certain she could trust Milek when he’d told her that they needed to leave right away, that he would take them home with him where he would be able to protect her and Michael.
He was protecting her now, putting his own life in danger to save her and their son. Maybe he was the one man she could trust. And she might be losing him...
Panic pressed on her heart, painfully squeezing it. The gunfire grew louder—the shots even closer now. Windows splintered next to the already shattered doors. And vases and pictures broke, exploding into sharp fragments.
Clasping Michael more tightly in her arms, she ran again—through the lobby to the bank of elevators and the stairwell. She couldn’t go back to the room Agent Rus had booked for them. He could be the one shooting at Milek and the hotel, and he had a key to that room. She had to go somewhere, though, somewhere safe from the person so determined to kill her that he didn’t care who got hurt or worse along with her.
Was Milek okay? Would he survive?
Or would he die her hero?
* * *
Glass raining down around him, Milek ducked down between two rows of cars and cursed. He’d thought the hired assassin was called the Ghost because he had eluded the authorities for so long. But maybe he was called the Ghost because he was impossible to stop. No one could kill the already dead.
No one could see them, either. Milek hadn’t sent Amber back to the hotel with their son because he’d seen the assassin or the gun. The darkness complete, there had been no glimpse of the man or glint of his weapon.
Milek had felt his presence. When he and Amber and Michael had stepped into the parking lot, Milek had instinctively known they weren’t alone. Maybe it was the year of being a bodyguard that had honed those instincts—instincts instilled in him since childhood when his father had groomed him and his brother to be thieves. Those instincts had also told him it wasn’t another hotel patron hanging out in the lot. It was someone waiting for them.
Waiting to kill them.
He’d barely passed Michael to Amber and sent them into the hotel before the gunfire had opened up. He’d heard the glass break—in the cars around them and in the hotel lobby windows. Had they been hit?
He had heard only one scream. But then Amber wasn’t a screamer. She was too controlled for that—too strong. And she must have passed that strength onto their child, because no screams could be heard from Michael now, either.
Unless...
His heart pounded frantically with fear, but he couldn’t consider such a horrific possibility. They hadn’t been hit. But the shooter was getting closer to the hotel—firing more shots through those windows.
A shriek rang out.
It wasn’t Amber’s. Her voice wasn’t as high-pitched. It wasn’t a child’s cry, either.
Had someone else been hurt? Caught in the cross fire?
Milek cursed again. But he hadn’t fired toward the hotel. He was firing in the direction from which the shots seemed to be coming. There had to be a silencer on the assassin’s gun, because Milek heard only a faint whoosh of air when a bullet left the barrel. But he still couldn’t see the shooter.
So Milek was just wasting ammo now. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his last magazine. He needed to make these shots count. He needed to hit the Ghost this time or he risked becoming one himself.
Because a hired assassin wasn’t about to run out of ammo. The man would have enough bullets left to kill Milek and Amber and Michael if he found them.
He prayed she had listened to him—that she would hide herself and their son where the killer wouldn’t be able to find them. Because he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to protect them.
As evidenced by the shriek, there were other people in the hotel, though. The night clerk and the concierge. Maybe a bellhop. And several other hotel guests. Someone would have called 911 by now.
Help had to be on its way. The Ghost wouldn’t stick around; he wouldn’t risk getting caught. Unless Milek could distract him until the police arrived...
“Frank!” he called out. “Frank Campanelli!”
Movement ceased. There were no more whooshes of air, no more breaking glass. He’d stopped shooting; he was listening.
“Yeah, Frank,” Milek continued. “The police know it’s you who killed the district attorney. They know it’s you who fired the shots into Ms. Talsma’s home. And the FBI agent saw you today.” Apparently Nick Rus could see ghosts. Milek had been so totally focused on Amber and his son that he hadn’t gotten a good look at him. “You’re a wanted man, Frank. You’re not going to get away with this.”
A chuckle came from out in the darkness.
Of course the assassin had no fear of getting caught. No one had come close to apprehending him during his long and infamous career.
“The special agent who’s after you—it’s Nicholas Rus,” he said. As Milek talked, he moved closer to where that chuckle had come from. “He’s the agent who brought down Viktor Chekov. Rus is River City’s version of Eliot Ness.”
Hunched low, Milek slipped between the rows of cars. One of his father’s lessons on how to be a thief had been about moving silently. Like everything they’d been taught, Garek had picked it up more easily—was better at it, even now. But Milek was good.
If he’d been driving to the hotel, he knew Frank would
n’t have been able to follow them the way he must have followed Nicholas Rus. Rus was a good agent, but he wasn’t a bodyguard. He didn’t know all the ways and means of protecting an endangered client.
But Milek had wanted to sit in the backseat—close to his son. He hadn’t been able to stop staring at the little boy and it hadn’t been just to make certain Michael was okay. While he’d had his reasons, Milek regretted never seeing his son, and for the past year he’d thought he had missed the opportunity of ever getting to know his child.
But maybe that car ride to the hotel was all the time he would have—because another rule of being a bodyguard was giving up your own life to protect your subject. And Milek had never been as willing to do that as he was now.
That was why he spoke again. Frank would know where he was, that he was getting closer. But it was a risk Milek had to take, so he could pinpoint the hit man’s exact location and make his remaining bullets count.
“Rus didn’t bring down Chekov alone,” Milek continued. “He had help.”
Frank snorted; Milek was close enough now that he clearly heard it. “Feds never act alone,” Frank said. “A whole bunch of Feds have tried to take me down, and they haven’t succeeded yet.”
“It wasn’t other Feds who helped Rus take down Chekov,” Milek said. “It was me and my brother.”
Frank laughed again but cocked his gun.
Milek heard the telltale click of the bullet sliding into the barrel. He was close.
And Frank knew it, too.
Close enough that neither of them would be able to miss now.
“Not that I care,” Frank said. “But who the hell are you?”
Garek was the cocky one—the one who enjoyed annoying other people. Milek had never understood his brother’s enjoyment of that until now—until he wanted to infuriate the man who had tried and was trying to kill the only woman Milek had ever loved and the child they’d created together.
“I guess you should know the name of the man who’s finally going to bring you down,” he agreed. “I’m Milek Kozminski.”