by Susan Stoker
Looking up and down the street, Lexie didn’t spot anyone. It was still fairly early, so that wasn’t surprising. She turned and waved at Midas, knowing she’d see him soon. He waited until she was inside before pulling away from the curb.
Lexie turned on the lights and headed for the kitchen toward the back of the building. A few minutes later, she was filling one of the coffee carafes with water when she heard the front door open. She figured it was Stephen. It was a bit early for him to be there yet, but it couldn’t be anyone looking for food, since she’d locked the door behind her when she’d entered.
Despite that…after everything that had happened lately, she reached for a knife from the block near her and placed it within easy reach on the counter. She felt stupid being so paranoid, but better safe than sorry.
A second later, a noise at the door to the kitchen caught her attention. She looked up expecting to see Stephen, and instead saw Magnus standing there. He was once again wearing a long-sleeve white shirt, which looked like it had just been ironed, and a neck tie. His brown pants also had creases down the front. She’d tried to get him to loosen up in the last couple days, but he was obviously comfortable in his formal attire.
She turned back to the sink to fill a second carafe, mentally berating herself for being paranoid. “Morning, Magnus. You’re here early,” Lexie said easily.
“Wanted to get a head start on the audit today. Thought I would take your advice and head to the beach later.”
“That’s great!” Lexie said enthusiastically. “If you want suggestions, I’m happy to ask Midas for you. I’m not really a beach person, but I bet he knows all the good spots that won’t be too crowded.”
Magnus walked closer until he was standing right next to her. “You okay?” he asked, nodding toward the knife.
Lexie smiled self-consciously. “Yeah. Just being cautious, I guess.” She turned her attention back to the water.
She was concentrating on not overfilling the carafe when the first blow hit her face.
She dropped the glass container with a grunt, hearing it shatter as it fell into the sink. Before she could get her bearings and figure out what the hell happened, Magnus had spun her around to face him—and had his hands around her throat.
Lexie was shocked beyond belief.
More than that, she immediately knew she was in deep trouble. Magnus wasn’t fooling around. He was squeezing her throat so tightly, she couldn’t get even the smallest breath of air.
Immediately, her hands flew up, clawing at the fingers around her throat.
And she realized with horror that he was wearing gloves.
He hadn’t been wearing them when he’d walked into the kitchen. She would’ve noticed. He must’ve put them on while her attention was on the coffee pot.
He’d planned this.
“You fucking bitch,” Magnus growled in a guttural tone she’d never heard from him before. “It should’ve been you. You should’ve died out there in that desert. Not my brother! Dagmar was worth ten of you. A hundred!”
Lexie opened her mouth to beg him to stop, but nothing came out.
“That’s right,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “From the second I heard those assholes had doubled their price and wouldn’t let Dagmar go, I swore you’d pay. All your emails. Those goddamn phone calls. Even this fucking job. All a means to an end. Your end.”
For some reason, something she’d seen while watching one of those crime shows on TV suddenly popped into her mind. A father was mourning the murder of his daughter…and the fact that it took seven and a half minutes for her to die by strangulation. He’d said he couldn’t believe how long seven and a half minutes actually were.
For Lexie, right this moment? It seemed too short. Way too short.
Her mind instantly switched to Midas. How happy they’d been…
She wasn’t ready to die.
She fought for her life, clawing her fingernails down his face. When that didn’t make him loosen his hands, Lexie jerked her knee as hard as she could into his groin.
She didn’t get a direct hit on his balls, but she must’ve at least glanced off them because Magnus grunted and his hands loosened for a fraction of a second. It was enough for Lexie to get a bit of oxygen into her lungs—but not enough for him to let go of her throat.
Magnus shifted and practically threw Lexie to the floor, tightening his hold around her neck as he followed her down.
She felt her head bounce off the floor, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing did.
“Bitch,” he snarled as he straddled her chest, putting all his weight on her.
Lexie’s feet scrambled against the tile floor, trying to get some traction, without luck. She tried to buck Magnus off but he was too heavy. Too strong.
She tried to move a hand between them to grab and twist his dick, but she couldn’t quite reach. She was quickly running out of options.
“Just fucking die already!” Magnus shouted, panting now as he squeezed her throat. “It’s all planned. Theo’s dead already. I invited him in when I arrived and stabbed him in the back. And when you die, I’m gonna drag your body out and put you under him. I’ll tell the authorities I found him strangling you. I had to stab him to get him to stop…but it was too late. I’ll tell them all about him following you…about the fact he’s fucking batshit crazy. Everyone will back me up! And I’ll be free to head home, knowing I’ve avenged Dagmar.”
Blackness began to creep in from the sides of Lexie’s eyes. The shit thing was, his plan had a pretty damn good chance of succeeding.
And she’d had no inkling he’d hated her so much.
“Die, bitch!” growled the man she’d come to think of as a friend, even as he leaned forward, putting yet more pressure on her neck.
Lexie had no idea how much time had passed. Three minutes? Four? She desperately tried one more time to kick her legs, to dislodge him, but it was no use. He was bigger and heavier, and he had rage on his side.
Her thoughts once again turned to Midas. How upset he was going to be that he hadn’t protected her. And the thought of Magnus playing the part of the grieving coworker, and everyone believing he was a hero, was absolutely repulsive.
The last thing Lexie saw before she lost consciousness was a pair of evil blue eyes glaring down at her.
Midas was irritated. When he pulled into the coffee shop parking lot, the line at the drive-through was eight cars deep. It would take forever to get Lex’s coffee, return to Food For All, and then get back on the road. At this time of the morning, there were usually only one or two cars ahead of him. He hated not to get Lexie her treat, but he didn’t want to be late for PT.
So he turned around without the coffee, already thinking of ways to make it up to her as he headed back downtown.
There was a parking space not too far from the front of Food For All, which he took as a sign to stop, coffee or no coffee. It was silly to come back so soon after dropping her off, but it had become a small tradition between them, and besides, he loved being around her. Even if it was only for an additional five minutes each morning.
Midas strode toward the building, his thoughts going to the night before. He and Lexie were extremely well-matched, in bed and out. He’d never enjoyed sex as much as he did with Lex, but more than that, he loved sleeping with her. Loved how she draped herself over him and used his shoulder as a pillow. It reminded him of when they’d done just that for hours in Galkayo. Of course, now they were much more comfortable, and no one was trying to hunt them down.
Smiling at the memory of her grumbling as he shifted too much under her this morning, Midas reached for the door to Food For All, preparing to knock…
But the knob moved easily under his hand. The door was unlocked.
Frowning, he entered—and immediately, all loving thoughts fled from his mind.
A bloody trail led from the middle of the floor toward the small hallway leading to the kitchen.
Midas reached for his KBAR knife, and swore when h
e remembered he was in his PT uniform of a T-shirt and shorts. He had no weapons other than his hands.
He didn’t immediately see the source of the bloody trail on the floor, and he moved silently toward the hall, praying harder than he’d ever prayed in his life that it wasn’t Lexie’s blood.
As he turned a corner, Midas saw a man attempting to drag himself toward the kitchen, and immediately recognized him. Theo.
Midas knew he had a habit of coming in first thing in the mornings. Even though it made him leery, Lexie had reassured him that she was never alone with him, that if something did happen, one of her coworkers would be there to help her.
But something had definitely happened, and clearly Theo wasn’t the aggressor. The man hadn’t stabbed himself in the back, and Midas was one hundred percent sure that Lexie hadn’t done it. She didn’t have it in her.
That meant someone else was there.
Midas stopped long enough to put a hand on Theo’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said in a toneless whisper. But Theo heard it. He looked up, and Midas could see blood coming from his mouth. Whoever had stabbed him had most likely hit a lung. He was lucky they hadn’t hit his heart, which Midas guessed had been the plan.
“Lexie!” Theo whispered in a tortured tone.
“I’m gonna get her. Hang on.”
Theo didn’t respond, just collapsed on the floor with a long sigh.
Midas crept on the balls of his feet toward the kitchen and peered around the door. He didn’t immediately see anyone, but he heard a deep voice, indicating someone was inside.
Knowing the element of surprise would definitely work in his favor, Midas moved quickly. He stalked around the edge of the counter—and even before his brain could process what he was seeing, he was moving.
His training kicked in and Midas leapt toward the man straddling Lexie.
He wrapped his arm around the man’s throat and wrenched him away from his woman. He had surprise on his side, and the man let out a startled cry as Midas hauled him backward.
He had a single moment to register the fact that bruises were already forming around Lexie’s throat, and she was utterly still, before the man in his arms began to struggle.
“I was trying to help her!” he yelled. “Let me go!”
Magnus.
Midas might not know what was going on, but he knew with one hundred percent certainty Magnus had not been trying to help Lexie.
The two men wrestled, but Midas had fear for the love of his life on his side. Both men struggled to their feet, though Midas hadn’t loosened his grip. Magnus flailed and tried to buck Midas off his back.
Midas could barely contain him. The man might be in his fifties, but he possessed the kind of strength only a fucking insane person could have. He fought hard, not making it easy for Midas to subdue him or knock him out, so he could get to Lexie.
The fight was strangely quiet, both men concentrating on trying to get the upper hand. Magnus grunted and growled while Midas fought in silence as he’d been trained. After what seemed like ages but was likely just a few minutes, Midas’s military hand-to-hand combat training began to win out over the other man’s desperate struggles.
Then Magnus suddenly sagged, making Midas stumble backward as he instinctively tried to hold up the man’s dead weight.
Magnus used the opportunity to grab a knife that was sitting on the counter by the sink. He wildly threw his arm back, aiming for any part of Midas’s body he could reach. He swiveled, and Magnus missed, immediately swinging blindly once more.
Knowing it was only a matter of time before the man got in a lucky strike, Midas struggled to keep hold of Magnus while trying to disarm him at the same time.
Magnus suddenly found his voice. “Fucking bitch should’ve died in that desert! They should’ve let my brother go and kept her! Let me go so I can fucking finish this! Dagmar deserves justice!”
Midas couldn’t even guess why Magnus had suddenly snapped and tried to kill Lexie, but with the man’s frantic, impassioned words, it all made sense.
Everything had been a ruse. The messages, the phone calls…befriending Lexie. The decision to take up where his brother had left off with Food For All.
He’d done it all to get to Lexie.
And if this wasn’t finished here and now, he’d try again. Midas could hear it in the other man’s voice. He wasn’t going to stop.
Theo hadn’t been the threat. All along, it had been Magnus.
“Put down the knife,” he ordered in a low, harsh tone, trying to get through to Magnus.
“Fuck you!”
Midas’s eyes went to Lexie. She hadn’t moved since he’d pulled Magnus off her. Every second he spent trying to subdue Magnus was one second she might not have. He needed to end this and get to his woman…
So Midas did what he’d been trained to do. He eliminated the threat.
It wasn’t easy to kill someone by snapping their neck. In fact, it was damn near impossible. But that didn’t mean Midas couldn’t do a hell of a lot of damage. Taking a deep breath, tuning out Magnus’s shouts, Midas forced the man’s chin up, then jerked his neck as hard as he could to one side, letting go of his body at the same time.
Predictably, Magnus’s body flew sideways, landing face first on the floor.
Midas staggered toward him. He’d pound the other man’s head on the floor to knock him out, or get an arm around his neck and cut off his air, making him lose consciousness. If he’d already paralyzed Magnus in the process of wrenching his neck, so be it. At least then he wouldn’t be able to hurt Lexie.
But Midas had forgotten about the knife the other man had been swinging wildly. When Magnus fell, he’d landed on his own hand.
And the knife.
Blood immediately began to pool under his body. Magnus twitched a few times, and gurgled, but he didn’t get up or come after Midas again.
Sparing two more precious seconds to make sure the man was no longer a threat, Midas rolled Magnus. The knife was sticking out of his chest. It was obvious from the vacant stare on his face that the threat was eliminated.
Midas didn’t spare another thought for the man. All his concentration shifted to Lexie.
He dropped to his knees beside her and felt for a pulse. “Come on,” he pleaded as he tried to control his shaking hands enough to see if she needed CPR.
Just when he was about to bend over to administer rescue breaths, her eyes popped open and her hands flew up. She fought. Fought for her life.
Midas tried to catch her wrists, but she was too frantic, clawing at his face, his arms, anything she could reach.
“It’s me, Lex! You’re okay. You’re okay!” he shouted, trying to break through the terror blanketing her features.
It took several moments, but finally her gaze cleared a fraction.
“It’s me, Midas. You’re okay. Take a deep breath, love.”
Her mouth opened, and she took the longest, most heartbreaking breath he’d ever heard someone take in his life. Then she did it again, and again. Until she was almost hyperventilating.
“Slow it down. You’re okay. You can breathe now. All the air you want. Easy, Lexie.”
“Magnus,” she croaked.
“I know. He won’t hurt you anymore.”
She frantically looked around, then picked up her head, wincing as the muscles in her throat protested the movement.
“No, lay back down,” Midas ordered, easing her head back to the floor.
But it was too late. She’d seen Magnus lying near their feet. “Dead?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure. And I hope like hell he is,” Midas told her honestly. “I need to call for help,” he said. And for just a second, her fingers tightened around his biceps, but then she took another deep breath and gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
Fuck, this woman slayed him.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Theo?” she asked.
“He’s hurt,” Midas told her, not wanting to tell her
the truth, that it would be a miracle if the man lived, but respecting her enough to not completely lie.
She pushed at him then, as if urging him to hurry up and call the police.
Midas wanted to smile, but he didn’t have it in him. Of course she’d be more worried about Theo than herself.
He found her cell phone lying on the counter next to a coffee machine and immediately dialed 9-1-1. He informed the dispatcher of what had happened and made sure she knew the urgency of the situation. Midas knew he was supposed to stay on the line, but he couldn’t. He clicked off the connection, put the phone back on the counter, nudged Magnus with his foot—satisfied when the man didn’t move—and knelt on the floor next to Lexie once again.
“They’re comin’,” he told her. He picked up one of her hands and held it tightly within his own. He wanted to lie down next to her. Wanted to make sure she truly was still breathing and her heart was still beating. But all he could do was hold on for dear life.
Three hours later, it was all Midas could do to keep Lexie in her hospital bed.
“I’m fine, Midas,” she insisted.
The huskiness of her voice belied her words. As did the marks on her throat. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that if he’d stayed in line to get her a coffee, he would’ve been too late. Magnus would’ve choked the life out of her.
“Humor me,” he pleaded.
“I want to see Theo,” she said with a pout.
“I know you do, but he just got out of surgery,” Midas told her.
“He was trying to crawl to the kitchen to help me,” she whispered.
Midas pressed his lips together and nodded. He had. He absolutely had. And in doing so, had fucked up Magnus’s plan. If he’d succeeded in killing Lexie, dragging her body back into the other room, it would’ve been hard for Magnus to explain the smear of blood across the floor. But luckily, the asshole hadn’t succeeded. He’d missed hitting Theo’s heart when he’d stabbed him, and Midas had arrived in time to stop him from strangling Lexie.