by Julie Miller
“I had them killed.” His bright white teeth nearly spat the words in her face. The coolly suave senator had disappeared behind a frightening temper. He spun around and dragged her through the door after him. “But until I have verification from my men, I can’t announce a damn thing. Neither can you.”
“Jordan has the car out front.” Warren made the announcement as a matter of course without showing any reaction, concerned or otherwise, about his boss physically abusing one of his guests. “We’ll move you to a safe house until Chilton is located.”
Warren shrugged into his coat and opened the front door.
A neat bullet between the eyes crumpled him to the floor.
Dimitri Chilton pushed aside the man with the smoking pistol and smiled in the open doorway.
“How rude to leave your guests unattended. Why don’t we all go back inside and rejoin them.”
Chapter Twelve
Weston’s hand locked on her arm as Chilton and his men stepped over Warren Burke’s body and forced them back into the study. There were screams and startled curses and curt commands as everyone was herded to the sofas and chairs in the middle of the room. A blow to the head rendered one guard unconscious. Alysia the maid had the other on his knees with a gun to his temple.
“Not yet.” Whitney whispered the urgent request into her microphone. Right now, Ross Weston was just a bully and a hostage himself. She needed time to prove he’d been working with Dimitri Chilton from the start.
But fraying tempers and hidden agendas left her with very little time to spare.
Perched on the edge of a sofa, practically in Weston’s lap, Whitney jabbed him in the ribs. His surprised oof and a sharp twist of her arm were enough to free herself from his grasp.
She let her father’s Irish temper color her cheeks. “Let me guess. Your plan’s not working out the way you hoped.”
“Shut up.”
Whitney shook her finger at him. “Oh no, no, no, I’ll tell Daddy.”
Weston shoved her away and stood. “Don’t you have any brains, woman?”
Oh, so he really thought she was a flake, did he? He wanted her body and her last name, and to hell with the person she was inside. “Enough to know who has the real power in this room.”
Before he could sputter an answer to that one, Chilton was there with his gun. He jammed the barrel into Weston’s stomach and grinned with heartless satisfaction. “Shall I let your constituents tear you to pieces? Or should I take that pleasure all for myself?”
Foolish and bold, Ross batted the gun away. “I gave you everything you asked for.”
Glenn Hunt, who shielded his wife behind him on the sofa, spoke up. “You two know each other?”
Chilton ignored the question. “You tried to kill me yesterday. Was that part of the agreement?”
“What agreement is that, Ross?”
Weston gathered his wits and leveled his glare at Whitney. “This is none of your business.”
“If I’m going to die for it, it sure as hell is.” Whitney glanced around the room. Maybe she could feed other pertinent information to Vincent and Daniel. “I see three rifles in this room, four handguns, and—” she pointed at Chilton’s leg, to the leather sheath she knew he carried inside his boot “—I know this guy carries a big knife because he’s used it on me before.”
Margery muttered something like a swooning sound and collapsed against the sofa. She wasn’t out for the count yet, though. “Ross?” Her voice was weak and trembly. “What’s going on?”
“Shut up, Margery. I can get us out of this.”
Chilton threw his head back and laughed out loud at that one. When he was done, he had his gun pointed right at Margery’s forehead. “And just how will you do that?”
Weston flashed his bright white teeth. “Go ahead. With her out of the way, I’ll be free to marry Whitney and earn her father’s endorsement.”
“Excuse me?” Whitney’s protest went unnoticed.
“Think of the sympathy vote.” Ross’s smile was a cold, conscienceless smirk.
“You bastard!” Margery’s curse earned a silencing slap across the face from Chilton. She huddled into Glenn Hunt’s shoulder and whimpered with fear.
“I am tired of playing games with you.” Chilton grabbed Weston by the shoulder and forced him to his knees.
But even with a gun at his temple, Ross never blinked. “You can’t kill me. You’ll have an international incident on your hands. You’ll never get out of this country alive.”
Time!
Don’t be a martyr.
Whitney heard Vincent’s warning inside her head. But it was too soon! She couldn’t call for help until she had her proof.
Her pulse pounded in her ears. Think, Whitney! Think!
“I have no intention of ending your life. You’re too valuable to me.” Chilton nodded to his men. “Line them up.
“I want you to see the kind of destruction you are responsible for. I want you to understand what I will be holding over you each time you think about saying no to me. Each time you think of sending your men after me with guns instead of money.”
Margery screamed. Someone grabbed Whitney by the arm, dragged her over to the desk and forced her down onto her knees next to the others.
“Ross, if you can stop this, you have to.” She pleaded on deaf ears. “If you reneged on the deal, make it right.”
“What do you know about the deal?”
The temperature rose as tempers frayed. Whitney took a deep breath. Now she was down to winging it. “Two years ago you went on a goodwill mission to the Emirate of Agar. You hired the Black Order to come to the U.S.”
“You bitch.” Weston tried to stand.
Chilton shoved him back to his knees and swung his gun around on Whitney. “What do you know about that?”
“It’s the oldest con in the book. You hire someone to cause trouble. Then you clean up the mess and you’re branded a hero. People shower you with gifts, money. Votes.”
Weston pounded his fist in his hand. “I am known for my antiterrorism stand.”
“So why did you bring them into the country?”
Weston fell for the second oldest con in the book. He admitted his guilt. “To become President of the United States!”
Whitney’s heart pounded over the pall of silence in the room. She stared into the black steel void of the gun barrel pointed at her face. Then she looked up into the darker void of her kidnapper’s eyes. “So, Dimitri, you agree to murder people for a couple of years and then leave the country when this guy tells you to?”
Chilton’s throaty chuckle was the voice of evil itself. “You’re half-right. But why surrender a good thing? If extracting information from a senator is beneficial, think of what I can ‘negotiate’ from the president himself.”
Weston turned his blotchy red face up toward Chilton. “You’re the one who reneged on the deal. You asked for information and I delivered. I gave you Dr. Birch and that FBI agent. I got you into the Quinlan Research Institute, so you could get your hands on their biological weapons.
“I asked for two things in return. Whitney MacNair, and a speedy departure before election time.”
Triumph surged through Whitney, renewing her strength. She was about to nail the last plank into Weston’s coffin.
“It was your idea to have Chilton kidnap me?”
“Yes.” Dimitri answered the question for her. He shifted his attention back to Weston. “But you called in someone to rescue her.”
Even Ross had the good sense to watch his mouth when Chilton pressed the gun to his head. “Her father did that behind my back. I tried to stop it. I told you everything I could find out.”
He didn’t even bother to deny the accusation. Whitney squeezed her eyes shut and sent up a prayer of thanks for that bit of good news. Her father hadn’t abandoned her entirely. He’d sent Vincent to her.
“Did you?” Chilton paused to note Whitney’s reaction. “Are you sure you weren’t hoping
that agent would kill me?”
“You were supposed to bring her to me so I could hand her over to her father. You’re the one who screwed up.”
Chilton raised his fist and backhanded Weston across the face, knocking him to the floor. Whitney caught her breath and sat back on her heels, jarred by the force of the blow. Chilton leaned over Weston, who nursed his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand. “I do not screw up. That is an American phrase. It is an American excuse.”
Chilton grabbed Whitney by the front of her shirt and yanked her to her feet. Thrown off balance, Whitney clung to Chilton’s fist for an instant in time and prayed Frank Connolly had recorded every word. Dimitri pulled her face up to his, forcing Whitney to breathe in his sweaty stench. “Where is your boyfriend now, Miss MacNair?”
“You mean Vincent?” When it’s serious, say my name. He’d made the request in the throes of passion. She prayed he understood her secret cry for help now. She pointed to the door. Honesty always was the best answer. “Just outside?”
Chilton muttered some foreign obscenity and slung her to the floor. Whitney’s head glanced off the edge of the desk. A shower of pain exploded behind her temple and her world spun into a nauseating swirl of bright lights and floating animal heads.
She staggered to her elbows and knees and clutched at the pain. Her vision cleared long enough to see the blood in her cupped hand.
And the tiny steel microphone that had slid several feet across the hardwood floor.
Whitney’s gaze collided with Chilton’s hateful black glare.
He crushed the mike and all her hopes beneath the heel of his boot.
“Kill them!”
And then came the fury of crashing glass and splintering wood. Tiny explosions of thunder erupted all around her. Black storm clouds streamed into the room. That damn moose was struck by lightning and crashed down to earth. Whitney covered her ears and sank to the floor, sucked helplessly toward oblivion.
“Get up!”
Whitney screamed her way back to consciousness as a jolt of electricity ripped across her scalp. Chilton had her by the hair, jerking her onto her feet. He snaked his arm around her waist and buried his gun into her ribs, half carrying, half dragging her toward the open door.
“Whitney!”
She squinted through the chaos, focusing her eyes on the raspy call.
A shadow walked straight toward her. Tall. Dark. Deadly.
“Fight him,” it said.
She obeyed the command the way she would obey her own heart.
Whitney fisted her hand and rammed her elbow back.
Chilton’s grip slackened. Whitney stumbled. A thunder-clap exploded, loud, in her ears.
Dimitri Chilton slumped to the floor. A dead man.
Whitney fell, but she never hit the floor. Strong arms caught her and swept her against a wall of safety and warmth.
“I’ve got you, Whit.” She turned her face to the comforting smells of leather and wool and let the blackness take her away from the pain. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
WHITNEY CAME TO in a bright white room. Pain sheared through her head as she opened her eyes to the light. She quickly closed them and tried to move away from the brightness, but her head felt like a squared-off bowling ball and wouldn’t budge.
“Hi.”
She pinched one eye open and saw Daniel Austin standing beside her bed with a grim expression of fatherly concern. The poor man needed a shave. That scruffy, worried look just wasn’t him. He needed to smile. Daniel didn’t smile nearly enough.
“Hospital, right?”
Daniel’s fingers brushed against hers, and she latched onto his easy, comforting grip. “The doctor wanted to keep you overnight for observation. You have a few stitches and a concussion.”
“Did we get the bad guys?”
Daniel squeezed her hand. “We sure did. Chilton and his men are dead. Weston’s in custody.”
Had she done her job? She hadn’t failed, had she? She didn’t want Daniel to be disappointed in her.
“I got enough information to put him away?”
“Everything we need is on tape. You did a nice job, Whit.”
One little tear of relief found its way down her cheek and onto the pillow. “Thanks.”
And then she saw his smile. “But you try another stunt like that without telling anyone first, and I’m gonna cut off your catalog supply.”
Whitney laughed, then cringed. The sound reverberated through her skull. She pressed her palm to the gauze pad at her temple to still the vibrations.
Daniel bent down and kissed her cheek. “I’m glad you’re okay. I’ll get out of here so you can rest.”
Whitney nodded and watched him leave. Her line of sight took in a bright array of color. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she focused in on the bouquets of white and yellow daisies, bright pink tulips, roses of all kinds. The cards had been stacked on the table beside her. Frank and C.J. The McMurtys. Kyle Foster’s family. Court Brody and his wife. Her parents. Her brothers.
“A lot of people think you’re something special.”
A shiver cascaded through her at the dark, raspy voice. It was a release of a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
She rolled over and found the tall, broad shadow of a man she’d been searching for. “Romeo?”
He took her right hand between both of his and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. He looked even worse than Daniel. His dark stubble couldn’t mask the deep lines of strain beside his mouth. She reached up to brush her fingers across the dark shadows beneath his eyes.
“You saved my life. You killed Chilton.”
Vincent brushed his fingers through her hair, gently lifting it from her face. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”
The deep-pitched break in his voice touched a hurtful place inside her. This man cared about her pain and suffering. The astonishing depth of his compassion never ceased to amaze her. He’d risk his life, his hurts, for her.
How could she make him see he could risk his heart, too?
Whitney wrapped her hand around his and held on tight. She didn’t want to let him go. But it had to be his choice to stay.
“Thank you for being there for me. It means everything that you believed in me.”
He nodded as if his commitment to her safety was no big deal. Like letting her fight her own battle for once wasn’t a gift beyond measure.
“You got grit, MacNair.”
Whitney nodded. She held tight to his hand and drifted back toward slumber.
Maybe that was the best he could do. It wasn’t a declaration of love, but it spoke of his faith in her. It spoke to her heart, the way she wished Vincent could. Maybe she was hoping for something that just wasn’t there. She and Vincent shared a mutual physical attraction, but maybe he was a man who couldn’t give his heart away anymore. He’d been hurt too often.
A relationship between the two of them was probably doomed to fail, anyway. She’d keep getting into trouble, and her moody giant would eventually get tired of rescuing her.
She loved him, anyway.
VINCENT STUCK two fingers beneath his collar and loosened the tie that was cinched around his neck. If it wasn’t for his boss’s insistence, he’d have never agreed to come to this fancy party. But good PR with the president was nothing to sneeze at, and if attending this damn reception at the White House would earn him a few days off, then he’d do it.
Just like any other mission.
This one did have a few perks, though.
Whitney reached up and straightened his tie. “Either wear it right or take it off.” She smiled in that mischievous way that put him on guard and turned his insides to mush. “You just helped make the world a safer place for democracy. I don’t think the president’s going to care if you take it off.”
He caught her hands and held them against his chest. “I want to fit in.”
“Don’t tell me big bad Vincent Romeo is afraid of a few dignitarie
s and cucumber sandwiches.”
“I am not afraid.”
Her quicksilver eyes that hid nothing from the world narrowed with concern. “You’ve been jumpy all day. Is something going on?”
Vincent breathed in deeply. Yeah. Maybe the biggest mission of his entire life.
She looked so beautiful. With all that red-gold hair tumbling around the shoulders of that elegant blue dress. Tall and fresh and full of life.
He’d nearly lost that life.
That light.
She’d been released from the hospital three days ago, but she still wore a gauze bandage that masked the stitches in the hairline at her temple. Chilton had had her in his hands, using her as a shield while bullets were flying. There’d been so much blood on her. Head wounds did that, he knew, but it was her blood.
He’d nearly lost her.
And all he could think to say was, You got grit, MacNair.
“Romeo?”
She shook him slightly, pulling him from his deep, regretful trance. She could do that for him. So easily. Time and again. She had more guts than any man he’d ever served with. She met what life threw at her head-on—fists flying, mouth running, heart hoping.
He wanted that sunny, golden personality to be a part of his life. He didn’t know how much he needed her sunshine until he’d almost lost it forever.
Melissa had once told him that a relationship with an agent would never work.
He’d make it work. With Whitney.
He just had to tell her how he felt.
And today was the day he planned to do it.
He felt her tender fingers on his face, checking to see if he was all right. “C’mon. You’re looking a little green around the gills. Enough making nice with these people. Let’s say goodbye to my folks and get out of here.”
She led him by the hand to her family’s table. He’d met all the brothers, sized them up, passed inspection himself, he thought. Whitney was a carbon copy of her mother, Rose MacNair, though her personality came from her father, Gerald, Sr.
Brian was monopolizing the conversation with one of the congressmen Vincent had met earlier. “Without Montana Confidential to stop him, Weston would still be trading secrets. My baby sister saved lives.”