He finally broke the kiss and pulled back.
“You’re an ass,” Isabella said.
He grinned. “Yeah, I am.”
She shoved him back. “Promise me you won’t do anything to Marcus? That you’ll just get your earrings and come back.”
He shook his head. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything. I don’t know what I’ll run into.”
Isabella fixed her dark eyes on him. “How much would it break you if Cort died?”
He felt his jaw harden. They’d called the hospital upon arrival in Boston, and there was still no change. The jury was still out on the man who’d somehow become Luke’s best friend over the last eight years, despite his efforts to stay aloof.
Isabella’s face softened with empathy. “That’s how I’ll feel if something happens to Marcus. You fear the guilt if I die, but if you take Marcus and that life from me, my soul will die, just as yours will if Cort dies.”
Luke heard the torment in her voice and he knew she spoke the truth.
It haunted him all the way to the house that he had once called his own.
Isabella stood at the hotel window and watched Luke stride toward the black pickup truck he’d bought with cash two hours ago. It was registered to Luke Webber, but the hotel room was under a fake name, again paid for in cash.
She braced her hands on the rough wood of the sill. His shoulders were so wide, his body strong and lithe as he headed toward his truck. He was wearing jeans and hiking books, the same clothes he wore in Alaska. He was all Alaska, but at the same time, he was a fit for Boston as well.
She’d seen him look around with wonder and surprise when they’d passed a landmark from his youth. She’d seen the way his hands had clenched the wheel when they’d driven past his old house.
His pain was deep, and she understood that. She knew what pain was. Regret. Loss.
She got it.
But she couldn’t let him destroy what was most dear to her—and to him as well, if he could simply admit it.
He’d gotten her this far, and now she was taking over.
Luke got in the truck, and the engine roared to life.
Isabella opened her phone and scrolled down.
Luke didn’t pull the truck out, and for a moment, Isabella waited. Hoping. Then he put the truck into reverse and backed out of the spot.
Isabella sighed, and hit send.
“Black and White Cab Company,” a friendly voice said. “May I help you?”
“Yes.” Isabella watched Luke pull out onto the main road and head toward the highway. “I need a cab.” She gave the gal her address and then hung up.
Her heart was racing, and she had no idea if her plan would work.
But she was going to try.
Luke parked the car two blocks down from his old house, then walked into the garage of a small gray Cape at the end of the road.
He unlocked the door and stepped into the dim interior. Parked inside was the same old Chevy. It even had the same mud splatters that had been there eight years ago. The same half-used can of gasoline sat on the shelf, with a pile of dirt and a couple of flowerpots, as if someone were in the middle of potting some new plants.
Same pots had been there for eight years.
This was his spot. Even Marcus hadn’t known about it, and he knew Isabella couldn’t have.
Isabella.
He couldn’t shake the look of betrayal on her face when he’d walked out the door. He’d wanted to promise he wouldn’t hurt Marcus, but he couldn’t. Tonight was about going in and out and setting up his plan.
But if shots were fired, he was doing whatever it took.
No more holding back.
Too many people had died because Luke hadn’t stood up for what he believed in, and he wasn’t making that mistake again. As much as he wanted to alleviate Isabella’s stress, he wouldn’t lie to her. He believed Marcus had been lying to her all this time, and she deserved the truth. He would never insult her with empty promises.
Luke punched the seventeen-digit alarm code on the door between the garage and the house. The steel door opened easily beneath his touch. It was faced in decrepit wood, but beneath that was solid steel.
He stepped into the small archway between the house and the garage, but instead of going into the house, he crouched and felt through the layers of dust to a small chink in the corner of the cement floor. He pressed the cement in specific spots, in an order long memorized. Then the entire floor began to slide back. No trapdoor to see, because the whole floor moved.
He swung down the ladder the minute the door began to slide. The opening was so tight his shirt caught on the cement, but the moment he was through, it snapped shut over his head. Open for less than three seconds, then gone.
Motion-sensitive lights gave the tunnel an eerie glow, and Luke landed quietly in the dirt. He flipped the switch he’d rigged on the wall. The security cameras inside Marcus’s house would start looping tape now. They’d be on the fritz for twenty-seven minutes.
Then he turned to the lock box on the wall that contained all his weapons. He unlocked it and swung the door open. “Jesus.”
It was the arsenal of an assassin.
He ran his hand over several of the guns. Tested the blades of the knives. Sharp as hell.
He’d forgotten.
He took down one of the knives. It felt natural and right in his hands. Not so different from the knives he always kept in his planes, except those were for nasty furry creatures and sawing through frozen rope. Not for people.
Luke turned the knife over in his hands, then pivoted and hurled it across the tunnel. It pierced the wall with a solid thunk, right between the eyes of the target he’d scrawled a decade ago.
Dark satisfaction pulsed inside him. “Your payback will come for shooting Isabella, Leon.” His voice was cold. Lethal. Emotionless.
A voice he hadn’t heard in eight years.
For a moment, Luke didn’t move.
Then he slammed the locker shut and headed down the tunnel.
He left the knife behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It was almost dark by the time the cab pulled up in front of Isabella’s old apartment building, the one where she’d been living during college when Marcus had found her. The same one she’d lived in with her mother for so long.
The exterior paint was peeling, and the first-floor windows were still covered with metal grills. She stared up at the gray cement building with a sinking heart. Had it been that depressing and decrepit when she’d lived there?
She knew it had.
She just hadn’t been able to let herself see it. But now, after having been out of it for so long…it didn’t make her homesick for her mother as she’d expected. It made her want to get out. And it reinforced her need to save Marcus, the man who had pulled her out of this life.
“You sure you want to get out here?” the cab driver asked.
“Yes.” Isabella handed him some money. “Please wait for me.”
“Yeah, okay.” The cabbie pocketed the cash and pulled out a newspaper.
Isabella pushed the door open and stepped outside. The sidewalk was cracked. Littered with trash. A couple of kids were tossing a basketball in the street. She paused, having a sudden memory of playing ball with her mom the same way.
Her throat tightened, and Isabella hurried up to the front door. Her key still worked, and the rusted door opened slowly.
The stench was of mildew and body odor, the walls yellowed and stained. She hurried up the stairs, her chest tight. The second door on the right. Apartment 21.
Her key ground in with a rough protest, and she held her breath as she pushed the door open. For six years, she’d paid the rent on this apartment, afraid to let go of a safety net. Needing to keep a backup in case her situation with Marcus went south.
She felt an overwhelming sense of depression as she stepped inside. The place was trashed, and the odor told her someone had been using it as a p
lace to sleep. The window was broken, and cardboard was taped over it.
The bed she and her mother had shared was still against the wall, next to the kitchenette, and even the sheets were the same. Faded roses. But it was stained and filthy, the blankets half on the floor.
Tears filled Isabella’s eyes. Had her mother really given her life and her soul to provide this? What an unfair life her mom had had.
Isabelle bit her lip and picked her way across the carnage. She pushed the bed aside, and nearly gagged at the stench. Beneath the bed was the same floorboard she’d taken the screws out of when she was eleven, after seeing someone do the floorboard stash in a movie.
Isabella pulled the board up. In the cavity was a black cell phone. New and shiny. Exactly where Marcus had promised it would be. An untraceable phone, linked to his own emergency phone. Put there for her, just in case. In case she ever had to run.
The night he’d asked her to suggest a place he could stash an emergency phone for her, she hadn’t understood why he wanted to do it.
But after Luke’s story about his mother having to take off in the middle of the night, about not being able to call Marcus…she understood.
Despite what Luke thought, Marcus had learned from that experience. He’d taught Isabella to shoot, he’d taken her to the garage and shown her the SUV for a quick escape, and he’d followed through on his promise that there would always be a phone here for her. He had done what he could to keep her safe.
Tears filled her eyes and she carefully reached past the cobwebs and picked up the phone. “You did it, Marcus,” she whispered. She held the phone to her chest. I won’t let you down.
She tucked the phone into the pocket of her jeans, then reached farther beneath the wood. Inside was a box with a carved lid. She still remembered the street vendor who’d given it to her. An old man, hunched over, smelling faintly of stinky clams. She’d been eight and in awe over the beauty of the flowers engraved on it.
He’d given it to her. No money. No thanks. Just a gift.
Isabella pulled out the box and opened it. She thumbed through the pictures of her and her mother. And then the ring.
She picked up the diamond ring Stan had given her mother. Isabella had found it on the floor the night she’d come back after her mother had died. Thrown there by her mother after Stan had left?
She’d kept it, as a reminder not to count on anyone. Not to give anyone the power to hurt her.
Isabella turned it over in her hand. The diamond was small, and it had a yellowish tint. And yet to her and her mother, it had been the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen. It had represented freedom, a new life, a gift.
And it had been the biggest trap of all. It represented all the vulnerability her mother had exposed herself to by falling in love.
But Isabella didn’t want a life like Luke’s—isolated from everyone, unable to trust. She’d seen inside his soul, and she understood the pain that drove him. She’d seen his heart and knew it was broken. But it was a good heart. A heart she loved, just as she loved Marcus’s.
Flaws and all.
Even if they both broke her heart, she refused to keep from offering it. They had taught her that love was out there, that the life she wanted was out there, and she would find it.
Isabella set the ring back in the box and placed the box in the middle of the bed. Maybe the person sleeping there would use it as a chance to start over.
Then she tucked the photos in her purse, double-checked to make sure she had the phone, and then she headed for the door.
She shut it and locked it behind her, then paused to look at the dirty, worn key. This was the security blanket she’d held on to? The home she could always return to if her new life fell apart?
No longer.
She would never come back.
Even if everything with Marcus went south, she was no longer the girl who would return to this world. She simply wouldn’t. This home…it wasn’t a security. It was her past, and she wouldn’t return. She had come too far, and she’d done it on her own. She didn’t need this anymore.
Isabella squatted and slid the key under the door.
And as she ran down the decrepit stairs, there was a lightness in her heart that had never been there before.
Luke was startled to see his old bedroom was exactly as he’d left it. His graduate diploma still leaned against the wall under the window where he’d stashed it, never bothering to hang it up. His favorite pen was still on the ornate desk he’d bought himself. The bookshelves were lined with his reference books.
Had Marcus thought he would come back?
Was the old man that naive? Marcus changed the decor of the house every six months, and yet he’d left Luke’s room untouched for eight years?
It made no sense.
But as Luke strode across the room toward the door, Isabella’s story popped into his mind. About how Marcus had sat there with that beach photo every night. Something tightened in his chest, and he quickly pushed it away. There was no room for wishful thinking.
Luke eased into the hallway and made his way silently down the corridor. Security cameras winked at him from every corner, but he ignored them, fully confident they weren’t working. Footsteps raced down the hall, and Luke melted against the wall, almost hoping someone would come his way.
He heard someone yell that the security system was down, and then the footsteps thudded down the stairs, no doubt toward Marcus’s office, where everything was controlled.
He reached Marcus’s bedroom suite at the other end of the house with only a couple of close calls with a guard. Twenty-one minutes until the cameras would be engaged again.
Luke knocked on the door.
No answer.
He silently opened it and stepped inside. The room was unrecognizable from the last time he’d been there, which fit with Marcus’s need to redecorate constantly. Another massive bed, huge dresser, ornate blinds that blocked out the sunshine.
Overdone.
Luke shook his head, almost amused at Marcus’s awful taste. He’d forgotten how unappealing his father’s style was.
Luke walked across the room and slid open the trophy case holding Marcus’s most prized possessions. He removed the autographed Red Sox game ball from its case. He turned it over, carefully inspecting the stitching. He grinned when he saw that the coloring of the stitching of a two-inch section was still slightly off. He’d left it that way on purpose. A challenge to see if Marcus was smart enough to notice someone had tampered with his ball.
Marcus had failed.
Luke tossed the ball, but the earrings stashed inside didn’t rattle. There was no indication they were inside. That would have made it too easy for Marcus.
Luke felt a faint hint of sadness that Marcus was so clueless. The man put on such a good show of being dominating, but Luke knew how weak his father was. He counted on those who surrounded him to back up the persona of power he carried. Inside, Marcus was weak. How did the man expect to survive in this business if he couldn’t notice things like his most prized possession being tampered with? Of course he would have failed to notice signs Leon was planning a takeover…
Luke smiled ruefully at his thought. Isabella was clearly getting to him if he was actually contemplating the possibility that Marcus was innocent and Leon had set it all up. More likely, Leon had floated the idea of shooting Isabella for financial gain, and Marcus had clapped his hands in delight.
But for Isabella’s sake, he needed to find out the truth before he took any action.
The answer would be in Marcus’s office. Leon knew about the passageways leading to the office, and no doubt would have them rigged. It would be impossible to get down the back way. The only option would be the frontal assault, which Leon wouldn’t be expecting.
But there was a hell of a risk of running into someone and being forced to act before he was ready. Luke paused on the landing of the main staircase and listened to the muted sounds of voices from below. Seventeen
minutes until the cameras went back on.
Despite the risk, he needed to know what was really going on. For Isabella. For himself.
The baseball in hand, Luke headed straight for the men who’d been trying to kill him.
Isabella hurried up the stairs to their motel room, her heart pounding at the thought of using the phone Marcus had left for her. Would Luke think of it as a betrayal for her to call Marcus directly?
But Luke could be hurting Marcus even now. She had to do something.
She slid the key card in the lock. Would Luke really hurt his own father? In her heart, she didn’t think so. She knew how much he valued human life, and she couldn’t believe he would sacrifice his own standards. He’d suffer forever.
But what would he do to save his friends?
That was different.
She opened the door and stepped inside. “Luke?” She almost hoped he was back, so she wouldn’t have to make the choice now. She wanted him to step out of the bathroom and tell her Marcus was safe, that all was well.
But the room was empty.
She threw her purse on the bed and walked into the bathroom. Flipped the light switch, but it didn’t come on. She tried again.
It took the third attempt before she realized the lightbulb had been removed and was sitting on the edge of the sink. She stared at the white globe, and became aware of a faint breeze ruffling her hair.
She spun around to see that the window was open and the curtain was drifting in the breeze. The window had been closed and locked when she’d left. Luke had made dead certain the place was impenetrable.
And now it was open.
Her muscles twitched with the urge to race for the door, but she didn’t move. She didn’t know if someone was waiting for her in the room, preparing to pounce the moment she raced for the door.
Isabella swallowed, hooked her toe on the bathroom door, and ever so slowly began to pull it shut. There was a good lock on it, and Luke had augmented it when they’d arrived. If she could get it closed, she might be safe.
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