Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “They’ll hurt her.”

  Betty looked up at Shay. Henry could tell Shay didn’t like that answer and he hunched even more toward Gramps. Angry eyes. He recognized those all too well. They happened before the yelling. Dad always had angry eyes. And always yelled.

  Henry wasn’t sorry he was dead, like some people told him he was. Everything was better since Dad had been gone. No more angry eyes.

  Reece was never angry. Sometimes he even looked kind of sad. But Shay looked very angry right now. Still, she didn’t shout like Dad.

  She didn’t grab him like his father had that one time.

  Your mother will die if you breathe a word of this to anyone ever. Do you understand me?

  “Honey, I need you to tell me everything you know about what’s going on.” Betty smoothed a hand over his hair, just like Mom did when he had a nightmare. “Anything about your dad. I know you’re afraid. But you know we’re doing everything in our power to protect your mom, and this will help.”

  Reece was with Mom. And Sabrina and Holden. He trusted Reece the most, but Sabrina was pretty cool. And Holden looked strong. They’d all been nice, and they helped.

  Betty was nice. Betty was kind, and she wanted to help him. Dad was dead. Maybe...maybe he could tell.

  “Dad worked for a bad man named Gene Handler.” Henry didn’t know what to make of the way the adults reacted to that. They all got really, really still.

  Henry huddled deeper into himself. “They were selling guns to bad guys. Dad got jobs with good organizations, stole guns, then gave them to Gene.”

  “Henry,” Betty breathed. “How do you know this?”

  “I accidentally heard it.” He looked up at all the adults in the room. They didn’t look angry anymore. So he figured he could keep going. “I couldn’t sleep one night and I went to sneak some candy from the pantry. I had my flashlight and I went inside the pantry. I closed the door and got my candy and started to eat it there. But then I heard Dad. He was talking to someone.”

  Henry remembered how scared he’d been he was going to get in trouble. Then how scared at what Dad had been saying to a man named Gene.

  “They argued, and Dad said he’d handle everything. Dad called him Gene once and then Handler once, so I figured that was the guy’s name. They talked about guns. At first I thought they were maybe talking about Mature video games, but then I knocked a box off the pantry shelf.”

  Gramps’s arm tightened around him, and Betty smoothed down his hair again, so Henry kept going.

  “Dad jerked open the door. The bad man was gone, but Dad was mad. He...” Henry was telling the truth, but maybe he didn’t need to tell the whole truth.

  “He hurt you?” Betty said, and it didn’t feel like a question. It felt like Betty knew. So Henry nodded.

  “He picked me up by my shirt. He shook me. He said if I ever said anything to anyone, Mom would die. I didn’t think they were talking about video games anymore.”

  The entire room was silent. The air felt heavy. Henry wanted to cry, but he blinked back the tears. Be strong like Reece.

  Shay turned and walked out of the room. Henry felt his whole body tremble.

  “Am I in trouble?” he managed to ask, even though his throat felt too tight.

  “No, baby. No,” Betty said. “You just... You are very, very brave and I am so proud of you.” Betty smiled at him, but her eyes were bright. “Shay and Elsie are going to work really hard to bring your mom back. Today.”

  “And Reece?”

  Betty drew him into a fierce hug. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lianna still held the gun up, but she had her eyes squeezed shut. Which was so incredibly dangerous. She’d shot the gun and nothing on her hurt except her hand and her ears.

  Which meant she had to have hit him. Which meant she had to open her eyes and figure out what to do.

  It took considerable time to talk herself up to it. To get over the panic and the fear and what she supposed must be shock, as a weird, foggy numbness settled over her.

  But this wasn’t over. Even if she didn’t want to see what damage she’d done to another human being, there were still men Reece was fighting. She still had to get home and safe to Henry.

  She managed to open her eyes. Her breath came in short, panicked bursts no matter how well she knew she needed to calm down.

  The man she’d shot lay on the ground right where he’d been crouching. She didn’t see where he’d been shot, and she could see the rise and fall of his chest. So he wasn’t dead.

  A new fear filtered through the shock, but still she sat on the wet earth with the gun clutched in her hand, pointing it at someone who wasn’t upright anymore.

  He had to have been shot if he was lying there. He’d been right in front of her, so she couldn’t have missed.

  Run, her mind screamed. Find Reece. Get out of here.

  The gunshot was still echoing in her head, and she wavered. Should she shoot him again? This unknown man. He’d threatened Henry, but could she...kill?

  Just run away.

  She managed to get to her feet, though her vision blurred and her balance was off. Shock. Panic. She had to shake them all away and focus on the fact she was fine.

  Not that she’d probably killed a man.

  She took a deep breath and looked around the woods. Which way had she come from? Which way did she need to go? Everything looked the same, and all those landmarks she usually kept track of on a walk were jumbled in her head.

  It didn’t matter which way she went, as long as she went. Whether she got back to the inn or walked through the woods until she got to the road, it was better than staying here when the man was still breathing.

  Still breathing, and he had a gun. She needed to take it—not just to protect herself, but to protect everyone in these woods. He wasn’t holding it anymore, but he was half lying on it. It was possible if she pulled it out from under him he’d wake up. She didn’t know how gunshot wounds worked, but she doubted it would knock him out unless it was bad. Unless he was dying.

  She should just grab the gun and run. That was what she had to do. She inched closer to the man. She held her own gun pointed at him so that if he moved, she could shoot. She could protect herself.

  She grabbed the end of the gun that wasn’t hidden under the man’s torso and pulled. At first she tried to be gentle. Tried not to disturb whatever unconsciousness he was in, but as the gun refused to budge, she focused more on pulling harder and getting it out than being careful about it.

  There was the sound of movement. Then a hand closed around her ankle. Lianna tried to jerk away, but the hand merely pulled as she tried to take off, sending her sprawling forward. She landed hard, a nasty face-plant that had her grip on the gun loosening and her teeth cracking against each other.

  A heavy weight fell on top of her. The man. Pinning her to the ground. She struggled, but it was no use. “Did you think it’d be that easy?” he growled into her ear.

  Lianna closed her eyes, reaching as hard as she could for the gun that she could still touch but wasn’t close enough to wrap her fingers around.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” He reached over her head, with much longer arms than hers, and plucked the gun out of her grasp. She continued to struggle against his heavy weight. She kicked and wriggled and tried to push herself up out of the dirt.

  The man wrenched her arm behind her back, and she howled at the shock of pain that went through her shoulder at the uncomfortable angle he had her arm at.

  “Just wait.”

  Reece. Reece’s voice. Calm and authoritative over the sound of her struggle and own harsh breathing. She didn’t look up. She was too afraid one move would get her killed before Reece could save her.

  Then the man jerked her up out of the mud by her shirt, practically choking her in the pro
cess. But that thought was secondary to the fact there was now cold steel pressed to her temple.

  “On your feet,” the man seethed at her, still twisting one arm behind her back. She slid in the mud but managed to get unsteadily to her feet.

  She looked at Reece now. He stood a few yards from them. His lip was bleeding, and she could tell there were places on his face that were already swelling and bruising. Still, he stood tall. He held a gun and looked like...

  Her savior.

  “We have the kid,” Reece said, not making eye contact with her. “She wouldn’t be able to get to him if she wanted to. You want the kid, it’s me you’re after.”

  “So I can kill her?” the man said, digging the gun harder against her temple.

  Reece shrugged negligently. So nonchalantly Lianna didn’t know how to believe he was acting. They had Henry. Was that what he’d wanted all along? Fool you twice...

  “I mean, I don’t know why you’d want that kind of cleanup,” Reece said. “But that’s your business.” His voice was flippant, and Lianna...

  Stop, she ordered herself. Think.

  His gaze was steady on the man holding her. Steady and cold. His grip on the gun was tight. His entire posture was rigid, no matter how he shrugged. He’d fought off men with guns to get here. He was injured.

  And he didn’t look at her. Not because she didn’t matter, but because she did. And what would a man like Reece do if she became collateral damage? He certainly wouldn’t go back to his group and keep working. He wouldn’t make sure Henry was okay. He’d simply...give up.

  Which meant she had to help herself get out of this mess as much as she had to trust Reece to do the same.

  * * *

  REECE HAD LEARNED from a young age how to deal with terror. He’d grown so used to it, this terror was almost new. He didn’t know how he’d survive it if Lianna’s blood ended up on his hands.

  “I didn’t kill your guys. Just left them incapacitated for a bit.”

  “I don’t care about those idiots,” the man said. He held the gun to Lianna’s temple, but Reece couldn’t let himself look at her. If he made eye contact, he’d simply...break.

  At this point, what he needed to do was keep the man’s attention on him. Once Holden found Sabrina, they would be able to get here and take this guy out without hurting Lianna.

  And if Holden disappears like Sabrina seems to have?

  Only time would tell. He had to work this through one step at a time. “You want proof I got the kid?”

  The man looked at him with narrowed eyes. Reece memorized his face. Square jaw, crooked nose. Blond hair, blue eyes, six-three give or take, and a very solid two-forty. He was built like a linebacker. But there was a trickle of blood running down his face.

  Elsie hadn’t been able to connect Dr. Winston to any groups, so they were still working blind on who they were fighting. But Reece would commit this man to memory and spend the rest of his damn life bringing him to justice if he had to.

  If he got out of this alive. Because he’d do anything—including die—to get Lianna safe.

  “You got proof?” the man said suspiciously.

  “You let me get my phone out of my pocket, yeah, I got proof.”

  “Drop the gun.”

  “You can’t honestly expect me to drop my gun. I gotta protect myself, man. I’m not here to hurt you. In fact, I’d be willing to take some kind of buyout. If whoever you’re working for can afford me.”

  The man paused at that. Didn’t seem to have anything to say. He wasn’t wearing a headpiece like the men Reece had fought earlier had been. It could mean he was the leader, but Reece had a bad feeling he was dealing with another underling.

  “I’ll hold up my gun, pull out the phone, get the kid on a video call. You just want confirmation or you want what he knows?”

  Again, the man holding Lianna was silent, so Reece just kept moving forward. Waiting would give him too much time to think, to despair, to make a mistake where he put his need to get Lianna away from the gun over the reality that he wouldn’t reach her in time.

  He held up his gun, barrel up, palm toward the man. He pulled out his phone with his other hand and used his secure line to connect with Elsie.

  When she appeared on his screen, Reece forced himself to curve his mouth into a smile. As if he was talking to a small boy. “Heya, Hank.”

  He heard Lianna sob and he had to push the sound away. Freeze it out. He looked at Elsie’s face on his screen. She was scrambling with how to respond, clearly. Where was Shay?

  “Hi, Reece,” Elsie said in some horrible approximation of a child’s voice. Reece didn’t outwardly react. He doubted the man holding Lianna knew Henry from Adam. Hopefully he’d never met a seven-year-old boy before, either.

  “I got a friend I need you to talk to,” Reece said, sounding downright jovial.

  Reece looked up at the man holding Lianna. The man looked suspicious, but he still stayed yards away from Reece, not reacting. Which was when Reece noticed the man’s shirt was wet. It wasn’t mud.

  Blood. The shirt was a little torn. He’d heard two gunshots go off earlier. “You okay, buddy?” Reece said, nodding to the man’s side. It was the side closest to Lianna.

  For the first time, he dared look at her. She was pale, streaked with mud from her head to her toes. Her hair was a mess and there was terror in her blue eyes. But not just terror.

  Determination.

  “Looks nasty, doesn’t it?” he said to her. “Maybe he’ll let you check it out for him?”

  “I don’t need anyone to check it out,” the man said. “Just grazed me. Show me the phone.”

  Reece moved slowly. Carefully. He didn’t want to make any sudden movements, and he had to make sure it didn’t look like he was calculating how to get Lianna out of his clutches even though he was.

  “Stop.”

  Reece stopped on a dime. He held both hands up, though he made sure the phone screen was facing himself.

  “Just toss me the phone.”

  “You’re not going to catch it one-handed, bleeding like that,” Reece assured him. He crouched carefully and placed the gun on the ground. If he got close enough, the guns wouldn’t matter anyway. “Better?”

  The man took his time to consider, which tested the last thread of patience Reece was hanging on to. But the gun was digging into Lianna’s head, and there was nothing Reece could do to make that less of a real, horrible threat.

  It wasn’t right or fair that she should have to suffer through this. He had to make it end. Here. Now.

  Even if it led to his own end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lianna’s mind was moving in a million different directions. The voice that had come out of the phone was assuredly not Henry, but the way Reece had said “Hank” like he usually did had practically cut her in two.

  It was another act. So flippant and fake, as if Reece was ever any of those things. But that only reminded her she could put on an act, too.

  “Please,” she said, letting the fear and a whine into her voice. “Please, let me talk to him. Please. I have to talk to Henry. Please. Please.”

  The gun dug into her skin and Lianna winced.

  “Shut up,” the man said.

  Reece continued to move very slowly toward the man. He’d mentioned the man was bleeding. Lianna couldn’t see it out of her peripheral vision, but she thought if she could figure out where it was, maybe she could hit him there. Would he be able to pull the trigger before she finished trying to hurt him?

  That was the part that kept her completely and utterly still. Reece kept moving toward them, the phone in his hand, the gun left behind.

  Why had he left his gun behind?

  He came to a stop in front of the man. She could have reached out and touched him. But he didn’t look at her. He held out the
phone.

  Lianna inhaled. Now or never. Either she tried to help or she didn’t. He was distracted by reaching out to grab the phone, so she acted.

  Everything happened too quickly to fully place into a sequence of events. She knew she ducked and rammed into the man holding a gun to her head. She knew the gun went off, too close to her ears, but no matter the pain in them or how they rang, she hadn’t been shot.

  She stumbled away, took in the scene. Reece and the man wrestled on the ground, and she knew somewhere in the back of her head that Reece was yelling at her to run. Again.

  She’d run last time and it had led her here. Running wasn’t a good idea. She had to fight somehow.

  Reece and the man rolled and grunted. The man still had his gun and Reece was trying to get out of his grasp. Lianna crept forward, moving for Reece’s gun. She couldn’t shoot the man while he was rolling around with Reece, but maybe she’d get the opportunity. Maybe she could shoot the gun in the air and create a diversion.

  Reece managed to get to his feet, but the man was right behind him. Still, it gave Lianna her chance.

  She pulled the trigger, but the man didn’t go down. His arm jerked, though. Before she could determine if she’d hit him, Reece pushed her back and she stumbled, hitting the ground with a bone-rattling crash as another gunshot went off.

  This time, she held on to the gun, and immediately pointed it at the man again. He was switching guns from one arm to the other, since the hand holding his gun was now a bloody mess. She had shot him there.

  He glared at her. “You’re one terrible—”

  Before he got the rest of the sentence out of his mouth, she pulled the trigger again. This time, the man went down.

  Lianna whirled to find Reece. He was sprawled on the ground, breathing ragged as he seemed to be trying to drag himself toward her. But he couldn’t manage.

  Oh no.

  Lianna dropped to the ground next to him. “Reece.”

  He made a noise, but it was an awful noise. “I’m okay,” he said, but the words were gritted out and thready at best. “It’s okay.”