by Chloe Cox
“It was better for him to be shot in the back of the head?”
“Why are you so fixated on this?” Jared said, running a hand through his hair. Was he on something? “It doesn’t matter.”
Sierra blinked.
He raised the gun.
This was real. He’d killed her father. He was definitely going to kill her. Her own brother. Her stupid, arrogant brother.
“They caught the guy you paid to stalk me,” she said, suddenly, all in a rush. “Your plan is ruined, Jared. They know all about it.”
Please be rational.
“Are they here?” Jared said, gesturing with the gun while he did a little pirouette. “No? So perhaps I’ve made some adjustments to that ruined plan, hmm?”
“Jared…”
“Jesus Christ, enough chit-chat,” Jared said, the gun raised. For a second, nothing moved.
And then Jared rolled his eyes again.
“Well?” he said. “Get moving. We don’t have all night.”
Jared marched her around to the East side of the house, keeping to the darkening shadows. The distant roar of the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of feet below sounded suddenly loud in Sierra’s ears, and for a moment she thought he’d try to push her over the bluff or something.
She blinked, hard, and shook her head slightly.
No. Start thinking. You are not letting Jared win.
“Jared,” she said into the silence, still very aware of the gun held to her side. “Just please tell me why.”
He laughed again, and there was something unhinged about it. Something bitter.
“Because it’s mine, Sierra,” he said. “It was all always mine. Rightfully mine. Dad wanted a son. You were just the mistake that killed mom, and no one will miss you.”
To her own horrified surprise, Sierra laughed.
It was a weird feeling, laughing in the face of death. But that had been it. That had been the thing Jared could say that would erase all hope, all excuses. She was free. She didn’t have to care about him anymore.
“Well, you’re wrong about one thing,” she said, her voice tight, clipped. “Conor will miss me. And he’s going to be here any second.”
Jared whooped, his laugh this weird, cracked obscenity in the darkness of the encroaching night. In the shadow of the house itself, they were practically invisible.
“That’s what’s so funny,” Jared said. “You don’t even know. He didn’t take this job out of the goodness of his heart, little sister. He didn’t start fucking you because he liked you, or whatever he told you. And he’s certainly not in love with you.”
For a second—a second—the old demons woke up, reached deep into her chest, grabbed at her heart, and squeezed. That was pretty much her fear, all the time. People only wanting her for what she could give them. Only ever being a means to an end, every relationship being transactional, devoid of real love or trust. And Jared knew it better than anyone. Jared lived it better than anyone.
Then she set her shoulders, and remembered. She remembered what it had been like to be with Conor, what she’d seen. She remembered him.
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” she said into the darkness.
“Mmm hmm,” Jared giggled, and then she felt the cold muzzle of an actual gun poking into her back. They’d stopped, coming to the corner of the enormous house. Sierra was suddenly aware of how cold she was, shivering in her bare, wet feet and a dress that was not really meant for traipsing around the grounds.
“Go on,” Jared said. “Turn the corner. Almost there.”
And then, all at once, she realized where they were going.
The family office.
Where Conor would be.
For the first time, hope surged in her chest. She wanted to laugh again, real joyful laughter, which, again: not appropriate. Apparently adrenaline makes me a little crazy.
“Go ahead,” Jared said behind her. “Go around the hedge, and use the garden door.”
Sierra tried to move as normally as possible. Tried not to let the fevered beating of her heart throw her off balance, tried not to let herself give anything away. All Conor had would be the element of surprise. She couldn’t seem nervous. Or more nervous than she should be.
“Sure,” she said, walking around the hedge. The office itself was a huge oval shape, and jutted out into the garden, with a circular wall full of windows. Bulletproof windows, but windows. There there was a door in that wall of windows onto a tiny private garden. “The garden door of the family office.”
“Yes,” Jared said, the contempt dripping from his voice. “Where we will find your stupid hired gorilla.”
Sierra froze, her hand on the handle of that very door.
Behind her, Jared giggled.
“Oh yes, Sierra,” he said, and again, he didn’t seem all there. “I know what’s waiting for me. Go ahead. I’m counting on Mr. Kelly. None of this will work without him.”
And to bring the point home, he shoved the gun into the small of her back.
Silently, Sierra nodded. She tried to keep hope alive, but God, it was getting hard. She thumbed the latch on the garden door and heard it click. It was unlocked.
She had no idea what was coming next.
“Remember dad’s bodyguard?” Jared said, almost idly, as she opened the door onto the darkness of the office. “Or did you never meet? His named was Michael Donner. I thought his only living relative was this old woman who would die soon anyway, but as it turned out…”
Jared trailed off, and Sierra knew, the way a sibling knows, that he was waiting for her to finish the sentence. That was really what he was after. He wanted to hear her break.
“Mikey,” she whispered.
“That was it,” Jared said, cheerfully. “Now, go inside. And Mr. Kelly,” he said, raising his voice, “I do have a gun.”
Thirty-Three
Technically it took Conor less than ten minutes to get everything he needed. But he stayed, silent, waiting in the dark for something to click. He didn’t know what, but something was off.
He had the records—payments that would be traced back to Tony Tomes. Even better: he had the notebooks. Journals, records of everything Jared had done. Every one of his “conquests,” every single “win.” Well-thumbed, worn pages in leather-bound notebooks, filled from beginning to end with Jared’s own handwriting, detailing Jared’s own crimes.
Those journals alone confirmed Conor’s worst instincts about Jared Fiore. It was the obvious wear that did it. Jared read them, over and over again, sitting in the giant leather chair that looked like a throne behind the equally giant desk, getting another thrill, another little hit of dopamine, every time he did. Reliving his own crimes and getting off to it.
But that wasn’t what bothered Conor. What bothered him was that the major security systems had mostly been turned off. Only one had been active, offering token resistance. And there was signal blocking built into the walls. His earpiece had stopped working, and his cellphone got no signal.
So his gut told him to stay. And his mind went into gear.
About a minute after that, Conor heard the voices. Jared’s was loud, too loud, manic. Carrying.
But it was the way Jared was talking that opened up a black pit in Conor’s stomach. He knew who the next voice would belong to.
Sierra.
There was no time to be angry about how this had happened—he would deal with it later. All of his training launched at once. Split second evaluation: Jared would have a gun, had already killed, would not hesitate to kill again, especially if under direct physical threat. Only question was: why hadn’t he killed her already?
Because he’d have no alibi. So Jared had another plan.
Took another fraction of a second to figure out what it was. Then another to figure out what he had to do.
By the time the door opened, he was ready to go.
“And Mr. Kelly,” Jared shouted into the dark office, “I do have a gun.”
; Conor waited.
And waited.
Just enough to see the annoyance start to bubble up on Jared’s face in the dull glow of dusk. Just enough to throw him off.
Then he turned on the light.
Both Sierra and Jared squinted into the sudden light from the desk lamp. Conor had moved it just behind the line of his own vision so he wouldn’t be thrown off by the glare. It gave him a precious fraction of a second to evaluate the situation.
The office was about twenty-five feet in diameter, a large enough distance to cause a problem. Had to play it carefully. Taken in his environment. All the records were in a walk-in closet space, in functional, old-school file cabinets. This room was decorated to be a grand library type deal, with leather-bound volumes on built-in dark-stained wood shelves. And, for some fucking reason, a collection of elaborate glass snow globes scattered throughout.
And Sierra standing there, her eyes slightly red from crying, her shoulders shaking slightly. Jared right next to her, a gun shoved against her ribs. Jared’s skin was sallow, sweaty. His eyes wild.
Then they settled on Conor, and Conor watched Jared’s eyes get very, very angry.
Good.
“What are you doing in that chair?” Jared demanded.
Conor smiled, deliberately. But didn’t answer.
He’d sat down in Vincent Fiore’s imposing throne, right behind the imposing desk. And he knew he looked good seated there, his hands resting comfortably on the armrests. Relaxed, confident, dominant. The way Jared wanted to feel when he sat in that chair. The way he never really felt.
“Thanks for gathering together everything I’ll need to dispose of before the police get here,” Jared finally said. “Very helpful. How’s your earpiece?”
And Jared smirked.
Conor recalibrated, slightly. Jared was more manic than he’d expected. Maybe on something. But he was still a stupid man’s idea of a smart man. Conor’s team knew where he was, and they knew the time window. And Jared obviously knew they’d gotten Tony Tomes. Rationally, Jared was already a dead man walking, or at least an incarcerated man walking.
So rationality was not a big factor. No, this was about emotion.
Conor looked right at Sierra, for the first time. Still hit him like a train. Those big brown eyes were his entire world.
“I’m sorry this is what he is,” he said to Sierra. “He killed your father.”
“I know,” she said.
“And he was going to kill you.”
A tear. Jared would pay for that tear.
“I know,” she said, softly.
Conor got a hold of his own heart and held rein. The only thing that could still scare him was this woman. Her heart, breaking. Knowing that this was the hurt he couldn’t protect her from.
“We’ve covered that,” Jared said suddenly, irritably. Pissed off that his perfect little scenario was tilting out of his control. “Tell her about Mikey, Conor. Tell her the real reason you’re here.”
That, right there.
That was it.
That’s why he hadn’t just killed her, why Jared hadn’t just shot her or Conor the second he walked in. What Conor had been banking on. Jared didn’t just need his sister to die so he could get his hands on her inheritance. He needed her to break first. He needed to see her break. To know he was right, and important, and she was nothing.
And that was what was going to bring him down.
“She knows the real reason I’m here,” Conor said.
“Oh, please,” Jared said, and shoved Sierra fully into the room, following behind. Still twenty feet and a desk between them. “He took the job, Sierra, because he wanted to get me. Because he wanted revenge for poor little Mikey. Who, by the way? Obviously not very good at his job.”
Conor allowed himself a small smile. Jared was trying to get under a Dom’s skin. Good luck with that, little man.
So Conor ignored him, and looked, again, at Sierra.
For a fraction of a second, he was only looking at Sierra.
He was still in battle mode. His adrenaline surging, time moving so slowly he could reach out and touch it, his every cell aware of every little thing in that room that dared to move. But for the first time, he wasn’t in that place alone.
Their eyes locked and he said, simply, “I fell in love with you. And everything changed.”
Time hung on that beat.
“You expect anyone to believe that?” Jared broke the spell, sneering. He was sweating, too, becoming more and more agitated the longer it took for him to get what he wanted.
Conor looked at him. Give him just enough juice…
“You expect anyone to believe you actually care?” Jared screeched, getting a little thrill from Conor’s simple acknowledgement. “It was always about the revenge, admit it. You wanted me, Kelly, that’s why you ever met her in the first place. She was just a means to an end.”
He practically spat it out.
“You really think that, don’t you?” Conor said. He could see Jared was on the verge of losing it. Just another narcissist who would collapse in on the void inside himself when he couldn’t bully his way out of trouble. They’d covered antagonists like this in SERE training. Jared was more vulnerable than your usual two-bit sadist captor. He had no other skills, no other tricks—just money and a lack of a conscience. And an awareness of his inadequacy.
Conor could use it.
“You really think that because you can’t imagine anything else,” Conor continued. Like it amused him. “Yeah, I took the job to get at you for Mikey’s murder. And then I fell in love with her. You don’t plan that. It’s human. But you don’t understand that, do you?”
Conor looked at Sierra, one last time. One last time.
She was smiling softly now, tears wet and shining on her cheeks.
“I believe you,” she whispered.
“No!” Jared shouted, and he reached out and knocked one of those crystal snow globes off the nearest shelf. “You’re so smart, you tell me, asshole, why did I bring her here? Why do you think I wanted you here?”
“There were two reasons,” Conor said, running his mental calculations one last time. “What you tell yourself, Jared, and what really motivated you. You’re too weak to know the difference. But the real reason is that you wanted to see Sierra break. You wanted to see her lose everything, because you already know you’ve lost everything no matter what happens here, and that’s who you are.”
“Oh yeah?” Jared said. “And then what?”
And he raised the gun level at Conor.
Conor had been waiting for this. Jared wouldn’t act until he’d gotten what he needed, that hit of superiority. Conor wasn’t giving him that and it was making him crazier and crazier. He was completely tuned into Jared, every breath, every twitch of the muscle below his right eye. He needed him rash, angry, his timing off, his aim poor.
Almost there.
“And then,” Conor said, “you were going to shoot me, shoot her, and frame me for Sierra’s murder.”
Jared blinked stupidly, his lip quivering. Conor watched.
“But you didn’t plan on one thing, Jared,” he said.
The gun shook in his hand.
“Oh?”
“Yup,” Conor said. “You didn’t know that I’d gladly take a bullet for her. Or that it would take more than one to stop me.”
And the room exploded.
Time barely moved as it unfolded, just like Conor had planned. His hand on the heavy crystal snow globe, weighted by a metal base. The rush of it flying across the room, a missile head right at Jared’s head. Jared flinching, and the gun going off as Conor’s hands planted on the desk as he vaulted over it. Sierra’s scream as she clawed at Jared’s arm. One stride, two, to cross the room, and a flying tackle as Conor finally got his hands on Jared Fiore. His hands closing on Jared’s windpipe, his training kicking in to immobilize the smaller man immediately. All of it according to plan, except one thing.
The last th
ing Conor saw before everything went to black was the flash of a second gunshot.
Conor woke up to a smooth, tiled white ceiling and the need for one thing.
“Sierra.”
He tried to shout but it came out a croak as he sat straight up, yanking at the IV in his arm. He pawed at it, wanting to get it out of his arm, get this stupid paper dress off of him, get out of this room and find her.
“She’s fine,” Kane said from the corner. Conor spun his head, still woozy from whatever they’d given him. He growled. He hated being knocked out. Kane added, “Physically, anyway.”
“Where?” Conor croaked.
“Getting coffee,” Kane said. “I made her go. She needed to walk around.”
Conor relaxed enough to lean back in his hospital bed. A fucking hospital bed. Goddammit.
He could feel everything. That was good. Big ass bandage on his left leg was less good. He closed his eyes and tried to remember.
Whatever they gave him for surgery would mess with memory formation. But he had bits and pieces. He must have passed out from blood loss. Position of the bandage told him the bullet probably clipped his femoral artery. But they had been on a compound miles from the nearest hospital. If he’d been hit in the femoral, he shouldn’t have made it.
Then it flashed. An image of Sierra leaning over him, her face in anguish, an IV connecting her arm to his as she squeezed a tennis ball with her hand. Another dumb flash: tennis ball was signed. One of the trophies from the family office. He wanted to laugh, but he was too pissed off.
“Did you turn her into a blood bag?” he said.
“You mean did we do a field transfusion while we waited for the medivac?” Kane said. “Fuck yeah we did, you dumbass. Turns out she’s O-negative. Plus, she loves you. And she has the kind of crazy insurance that will send a medivac to come get you on a moment’s notice.”
“You let her watch all of it,” Conor said, accusingly. He knew from experience that could be worse than getting shot. There was nothing worse than feeling powerless while someone you cared about bled out, and Sierra had already been traumatized to hell.