by Lisa Childs
Woodrow reached for the handle and found the door locked.
Inside that locked room, the woman screamed again. Woodrow stepped back then rushed forward, slamming his shoulder and hip against the door. Wood splintered as the frame cracked and the door sprang open.
“Nikki?” he called out for her. She had to be the one inside the room. Gage had hidden Megan away. No harm could have come to her.
Penny’s daughter was the one in danger—because of him, because he’d agreed to let her sacrifice her safety to protect Megan. If something had happened to her, Penny would never forgive him.
And he would never forgive himself.
Nikki wasn’t one of his agents. She wasn’t even a real bodyguard. She’d had no business taking on such a dangerous assignment.
“Nikki!” he called out again.
But his only reply was the rapid retort of more gunfire. It flashed and banged, so close that he felt the burn and vibration of it. Then he realized why he’d physically felt the gunfire; he’d been hit.
Most of Woodrow’s fifty-five years had been spent as an FBI field agent—some before that, like so many of his best agents, as a Marine. Despite all the dangerous missions and assignments he’d carried out, he had never been shot before. Maybe he was wrong, though. Since he had never been shot before, he couldn’t be certain that he had been now. Maybe he was just experiencing shock, like the numbness the agents felt after taking a bullet in their vest. But Woodrow wasn’t wearing a vest beneath his tuxedo.
He hadn’t thought he would need one for his daughter’s wedding. He should have known better. He should have known that bad things could happen anywhere, even in Penny Payne’s beautiful little wedding chapel.
Heat radiated across his chest. Was it his blood? Or was he having a heart attack as well? He reached up and clutched his chest. And blood oozed between his fingers.
His knees began to shake, threatening to fold beneath him. He stepped back—out of the doorway—so that he wouldn’t be hit again.
It might not have mattered. He knew sometimes that all it took was one shot. One shot to kill...
* * *
Locked away behind the bookcase, trapped beside the glass cabinet, Megan shouldn’t have been able to hear the gunfire. For some reason it was louder inside her confined space, as if the weapons were being fired directly over her. The chapel was above the other area—the dead end of the hallway where she could have escaped through the secret passage. Or she could have run right into the arms of her captors.
That was why Gage had locked her up, for her safety. But she didn’t feel safe. Each shot had her flinching as she expected the bullet to penetrate her flesh. She was safe, thanks to Gage. It was everyone else who was in danger.
Gage.
Her father.
The Paynes.
Richard? Was he in danger? Or was he the danger? She stared down at her dress. How had she not noticed? Because she hadn’t paid that much attention to the dress.
She had wanted to wear her mother’s dress, but Richard—who didn’t care any more about fashion than she did—had insisted on designing her wedding gown. She’d been surprised, but if—as he’d claimed—he’d wanted everything to be perfect, she wasn’t going to argue with him.
Of course she’d known nothing was perfect, because she’d thought Gage was dead. He hadn’t been then. She had no idea about now.
He’d vowed to protect her, and that would probably prove his most dangerous mission ever. She wasn’t the one everyone wanted, but she had what they wanted.
Why had Richard done it? She needed to get out and warn Gage and her dad and Nikki—if it wasn’t already too late. Richard wasn’t who any of them had thought he was.
They might already know that. Another gunshot drew her attention up, and she noticed the speaker above her. Mrs. Payne, who thought of everything, must have had a sound system installed so that she could stay apprised of what was happening even when she was down in her office.
While Megan could hear the shots, she couldn’t hear anything else. No voices. She didn’t know if someone had been shot. Or killed...
She could only imagine the worst.
The worst was Gage, his beautiful green eyes open but unseeing, lying lifeless inside the church. Gage dying without ever knowing how much she had loved him. Without knowing that she would always love him...
She couldn’t lose him.
Not again...
She struggled again against the zip tie then remembered that she’d broken the case. Finding the jagged edge of glass of the cabinet, she ground the plastic against it. The glass scratched her wrists. But she ignored the pain, and in seconds, the zip tie snapped free.
She uttered a ragged breath of relief that echoed inside the small room. She could get out now. But there was no handle inside the cabinet, no way to get that bookcase to slide open again.
Maybe if she just pushed on it...
As she pushed, someone else pulled. Someone had found her. She had no time to turn and reach for a weapon before the bookcase slid open. She had no time to protect herself from the danger that awaited her.
She was the one who had what everyone wanted, the reason people were willing to risk prison and death.
And they would have no qualms about killing her to get what they wanted. She had no time to grab a gun from the case and load it. So she did the only thing she could—she propelled herself at the person who’d found her, intent on defending herself. But she wasn’t fighting for her life. She was fighting so that she could help the others.
She was fighting for Gage.
Chapter 21
Fists pummeled his chest and shoulders. Feet kicked his shins and knees. Gage grasped the struggling bundle of lace and brocade and rhinestones, clutching Megan close.
“Hey, hey, calm down,” he told her. He’d had no idea how angry she could get. This was even worse than when she’d broken up with him. Then she hadn’t been angry so much as cold. “I shut you in there for your protection.”
And for his, too. If he’d thought she was in any danger, he would have been distracted, so distracted that D might have killed him instead of the other way around.
He felt a flash of regret, not so much that the man had died but that he’d died with his secrets. Gage still had no idea why he’d taken the wedding hostage.
Megan stilled—finally—the fight leaving her body. And she gasped his name on a breath that whispered across his throat.
So when she’d been struggling with him, she hadn’t known it was him at all. She’d thought he was someone else, someone who might have hurt her. And she’d fought him. She’d fought him for her life.
He moved his hands to her face. Cupping it in his palms, he tipped it up to him. Tears glistened in her brown eyes. She must have been so afraid. He leaned down and brushed a kiss across her lips. “It’s okay...it’s just me.”
Her breath shuddered out against his mouth, and she deepened the kiss. Her arms slid around his neck, and she clutched him closely. “You’re okay!”
And he realized she hadn’t been afraid for herself at all. She’d been afraid for him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
But she pulled back and ran her hands over him, as if she didn’t believe him, as if she had to check for herself. If he’d been shot, he hadn’t realized it. He felt no pain, or he hadn’t until she touched him. But he felt a different kind of pain, the kind from desire overwhelming him. He wanted her. He needed her.
But he needed more to make certain that she was safe. D’s words rang in his head. You have no idea who the real danger is...
“You’re not hurt,” she said.
But she was. He gently grasped her hands and lifted them. Blood smeared her skin and trailed down her wrists to saturate the cuffs of the lace sleeves of her gown.
She must have struggled so hard to break the zip tie that she’d hurt herself. Guilt and regret gripped him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have tied you up.”
&nb
sp; He hadn’t known how determined she would be to escape—so determined that she would hurt herself.
She shook her head. “I did this on the broken glass.”
He glanced behind her at the cabinet. She’d struggled even harder than he’d realized. “Why would you fight so hard to get free?”
“I wanted to help,” she said.
“Help...”
“I heard all the shots—” her voice cracked with fear “—and I thought you were hurt.”
He shook his head. “None hit me.” He’d fired more than he’d dodged. But the gunfire hadn’t stopped. It rang out now, echoing inside Penny’s office.
“What about my dad? Or the Paynes...”
He waited for her to ask about Richard, but she didn’t. And relief eased the tightness on his chest. He hadn’t looked for Richard. He didn’t know if her groom had been shot. Or worse.
Once he’d stopped D, he hadn’t cared about the others, especially after hearing the dying man’s warning. He’d cared only about her—about making sure she was safe.
“We have to get out of here,” he said. “It’s still too dangerous.”
More of the men from the outside must have come into the church. It was only a matter of time before they searched the basement.
He could shoot at them like he had earlier. But he didn’t want her getting caught in the cross fire. When he slid his arm around her, she tensed against him.
“No,” she said. “We can’t leave.”
“We have to—”
And she began to struggle again. Now that she knew it was him, she didn’t kick or hit. But she wriggled, pushing her hips against his groin and her breasts against his chest. He groaned as his body tensed—with desire.
“Megan,” he warned her. “Be still...”
“I’m not leaving,” she said. “Not until I know my dad is all right.”
“Your dad told me to get you out of here,” Gage said.
“You don’t work for him anymore,” she reminded him. “You don’t have to listen to him.”
“Your dad isn’t the reason I want to make sure you’re safe,” he said.
Her face flushed, maybe from her struggle, maybe from embarrassment. “That’s right. You’re a bodyguard now. And protecting the bride is your assignment.”
Protecting her wasn’t a job to him; it was a necessity—such a necessity that he ignored her struggles and lifted her. Slinging her over his shoulder fireman style, he carried her from the office and down the hall toward that secret passage. While he kept his hand locked around hers, he had to let her down to get inside the narrow tunnel. He couldn’t carry her through it. He couldn’t even stand upright himself. He had to hunch over, but still his shoulders and back scraped the stone walls.
Going through it reminded him of his escape from captivity. The confined space, with its musty dankness, cut off his breath. He also knew that if anyone caught them—on either end—they just had to shoot into the tunnel to kill them both. They were more vulnerable here than they’d been anywhere else.
He’d gripped her hand to tug her along behind him. And it gave him some comfort, having the warmth and softness. This time he wasn’t alone. But he’d rather be alone than risking her life with his.
“Gage,” she murmured. “Are you all right?” She must have heard his erratic breathing or maybe even the crazy fast pounding of his heart. It beat so hard that his body shook with it—trembled. Or maybe he’d been gripping her hand too tightly. She was already injured. He forced himself to ease his grasp.
She squeezed his hand, offering a reassurance he hadn’t had those six months. A comfort he’d been denied. God, how he’d needed her then.
Even more than he needed her now. But he was glad he’d been alone, glad he’d endured those atrocities by himself. He never wanted her to experience the pain that he had. He didn’t even want her to know about it.
It was too late for the fear. She was afraid. Even though she offered assurance, her hand trembled in his. She was scared, too. She must have realized what he had.
That they weren’t safe.
He’d been right to question the wisdom of escaping this way. Because there was no light at the end of this tunnel, only the dark shadow of the man who waited for them, his gun barrel trained on them. At least Gage was first. The bullets would hit him before they hit her.
* * *
Megan blinked against the brightness of the afternoon sunshine. She’d only been in that tunnel a few minutes, but it had been so dark.
She focused and turned to Gage, who knelt on the bricks of the little courtyard. He gasped, gulping in air like they’d been in that tunnel for days instead of minutes. His skin was pale, too. And she realized this tunnel had only affected him because of whatever memories it had conjured up of the nightmare he’d already endured.
“Oxygen! Someone bring some damn oxygen,” a dark-haired man called out. She recognized Nicholas Rus. Fortunately, so had Gage before he’d fired his weapon at him.
Someone ran toward them, but it wasn’t an EMT. Slender arms circled Megan, clasping her close. “Thank God you’re all right,” Ellen said. “I was so worried...”
Ellen always worried about her, like a mother hen. But this was the first time Megan had actually given her cause to worry.
“I’m fine,” she assured her. But she wasn’t so sure about Gage. She pulled away from her sister to stand next to him. “Are you all right?”
Drawing in a deep breath, he nodded. Then he regained his feet and his strength, his shoulders squared and his chin lifted with pride. He’d visibly shaken off the vestiges of the nightmare.
“I’m fine,” he said. Then he turned to his best friend and remarked, “No thanks to you. Where the hell was the cavalry when we needed them?”
“I couldn’t reach him,” Ellen said. “His phone kept going to voice mail.” Tears brightened her eyes. “And you’d told me not to call 911, to trust only Nick.”
What had Gage gone through that he trusted no one but his best friend? Was it what he’d endured when he’d been captured? Or was it because of her? Because he’d trusted her and she’d broken his heart?
She realized now what she’d done when she’d doubted him, when she’d believed other people over him. But she’d had no idea then that she shouldn’t have trusted Richard. She still couldn’t believe—she had to be wrong...
“That was a mistake,” Gage said. “But I didn’t think he’d be irresponsible enough to shut off his damn phone—”
“I had no choice,” Nick said. “Your sister would have killed me had I been taking calls while she was in labor.”
“What?” Gage asked, his eyes wide with shock. “Annalise had the baby? Is she okay?”
Nick nodded. “She’s just furious at you for not answering your phone, though.”
“There’s a cell jammer—”
“I know,” Nick assured him. “Even before I listened to Ellen’s voice mails, I knew something was wrong. Penny would have been at the hospital, too, if she’d been able to leave the chapel.”
“They’re still inside,” Gage said. “She and Nikki”
“And Dad,” Megan said.
Tears glistened in Ellen’s eyes again. They were blue, like their dad’s. Their mom had had blue eyes Megan recalled from the photos she’d seen of her. Only Megan had dark eyes and dark hair. She’d figured out in science class what that likely meant, but she’d never had the guts to ask anyone for confirmation. She hadn’t wanted to know.
It didn’t matter if Woodrow Lynch wasn’t biologically her father like he obviously was Ellen’s. He was the only parent she had ever known. She couldn’t lose him. But what if it was too late?
Her heart pounding with fear as she recalled all those shots, she started toward the little white church.
Gage caught her, holding her back. “We just got you to safety. You are damn well not going back inside.”
“But—”
“It’s too dangerous,” he
insisted.
That was why she wanted to go back inside. “It’s too dangerous for Dad, then.” And he was alone, because he and Gage had insisted on protecting her. He had to know that she wasn’t his, but he’d never loved her any less because of it. Maybe he’d even loved her a little more.
Nicholas Rus chuckled. “Nothing’s too dangerous for your dad,” he said. “He’s the toughest guy I know.”
Gage nodded in agreement. These men—warriors in their own right—respected her father immensely. She expelled a slight breath of relief.
“He’s safer than you are,” Gage said. “The guy—D—”
“Derek Nielsen,” Nick finished for him. “He escaped from prison just a few days ago.”
Gage turned to him. “How do you know?”
“One of the guys we caught out here told us who was running the show.”
Gage shook his head. “I don’t think it was him.”
“It’s his wife,” Nick said. “Andrea Nielsen.”
Megan shivered as she remembered the dangerous woman.
Gage shook his head. “Just before he died, Derek told me and Woodrow that we didn’t know who the real danger was.”
“He died?” Nick asked but then answered his own question with a nod. He knew how Derek had died—at Gage’s hand. “What did he mean?”
“That we can’t trust anyone,” Gage said. “I need to get Megan out of here.”
“No,” she protested. “I’m not leaving until I know that Dad is okay.”
“If anything happens to you,” Ellen said, “he won’t be. It’ll destroy him.” She knew. She had to. As an RN, she’d taken many science classes. She understood genetics and that Megan likely shared no DNA with Woodrow Lynch. But they shared love and an incredible bond. He’d always tried so hard to protect her. That was probably why he’d never told her the truth. Hell, maybe he hadn’t wanted to face it himself.
“You know that,” Ellen said. “And you know that he would trust Gage to protect you.” She turned to him. “I trust you,” she said, but she gave him a hard stare. “Don’t let anything happen to my baby sister.”
“I won’t,” he assured her.