by Lisa Childs
She opened her mouth to cry out for help. But who would her neighbors call? The police? They would de liver her to St. John just as quickly as his henchmen.
Of course, his estate was where she’d intended to go, anyway. To talk to Tabitha.
But after what he’d ordered done to her apartment, she doubted he would let her speak to his daughter again. She suspected he didn’t want Jillian talking to anyone anymore.
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? With the sun rising, he had no time; he needed to be back underground before anyone saw him. He needed to be back with his crew, planning his next and hopefully last attack. He had no business standing here, in the shadow of Jillian Drake’s apartment building.
But his gut clenched with foreboding. No birds chirped, and no dogs barked. Hell, he didn’t even hear the engine of a car. It was too quiet. He’d had this feeling before—a lifetime ago when he’d been a marine in Special Forces. And two weeks ago, when he’d essentially lost his life.
He shouldn’t have let her come back here. And he damn well shouldn’t have come with her. God, he’d taken a risk. Anyone could have seen him, could have called the police or, worse yet, St. John.
Closing his eyes, he breathed deep, willing that feeling away. He couldn’t act on it now; he couldn’t rescue her again. But when he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the commotion at the back door of the high-rise apartment building. Two men carried her out, subduing her struggles as they juggled weapons. One of them raised his hand and struck her.
Son of a bitch…
Rage coursed through him, heating his blood. He, who hadn’t wanted anyone to die in this war he’d declared, suddenly wouldn’t mind killing a man with his bare hands. And that was the only way he’d be able to defend Jillian. As he’d told her earlier, he didn’t carry a gun.
Until now, though, he really hadn’t needed a gun. He’d only needed a plan and the shadows to conceal his movements. His jaw clenched, and he turned away from the sight of Jillian trying to fight them off. He returned to the shadows, hurrying into the parking garage. The first light of dawn hadn’t invaded the concrete structure yet. He would use the dark—and the element of surprise—and hope like hell he wouldn’t wind up getting them both killed.
Chapter Eight
Fear gripping her, Jillian fought the men as hard as she could. If only she had a tire iron now…
If only she had him…
Her throat burned as she screamed. Swinging her fists and legs, she ignored the stinging in her cheek from the blow she’d received and the pain radiating up her wrists and ankles from the blows she dealt.
One of the men grunted and cursed. “You sure he wants her alive?”
“If we bring her back dead, he doesn’t have to know it was us. We can say we found her that way.” Unlike the blond guard who’d Jillian recognized from previous attempts to get inside the estate, these men—older and with military buzz cuts—were strangers. But she wondered what she would find on their records were she to investigate them. Assaults. Murders? She’d bet they weren’t security guards; they were mercenaries.
“If we kill her,” the man with short gray hair pointed out, “St. John won’t ever know that she was at Franklin Eberhardt’s place.”
“If we bring her back to the estate…”
“He’ll know you screwed up,” Jillian said. “That you left a witness. It was you—you killed him.”
She winced as another blow struck her cheek, and a cry of pain slipped through her lips. But then one of the men lifted a gun, pointed the barrel close to her face. Her heart slammed into her ribs, and her eyes burned with tears she refused to shed. She wouldn’t beg; pleas for her life would not convince them to spare her.
“Let’s just kill her now.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” a raspy voice advised.
Her heart leaped with hope, and like the men who held her, she turned her head to face him. He was so tall; his dark hair almost brushed against the steel beams that held the concrete ceiling above them. And his body was so broad that they could barely see around to the cars parked behind him.
The gray-haired man laughed. “Hell, we’re going to be heroes if we kill them both.”
“Or martyrs,” the raspy voice warned them.
The guy holding her tensed. “What do you mean? You haven’t even drawn a gun. You’re probably not even carrying one.”
“I don’t need one,” he assured them, his dark gaze meeting hers with a secret message.
But she had no idea what he was trying to tell her. He hadn’t shared any of his secrets with her. Hell, she didn’t even know his name.
“The only martyr here is you,” the gray-haired guy said as he turned the gun on him. “Coming here unarmed…”
“I never said I wasn’t armed.” The man in the mask opened the palm of his gloved hand. “I don’t need a gun,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“A remote control?”
“A kill switch,” he said, his voice an ominous rumble. “If you shoot me—if I drop the remote or push this button—the whole damn garage goes up.”
“You’ll kill her, too,” the gray-haired man said.
“Yeah, but you’re going to kill her, anyway,” Dante reminded them. “This way she won’t be going out alone.”
The guy holding Jillian dropped her arm and stepped back. “You got this garage wired?”
Beneath the mask her savior’s lips curved into a slight grin. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re crazy,” Jillian said. Why had he come back for her? Why had he risked his life for hers?
“But if you blow this place, you’re going to die, too,” one of the men said.
He shrugged those impossibly broad shoulders. “I’m already dead.”
The guard who stood behind Jillian gasped. Obviously he’d heard the same rumors she had, but he believed the myth.
The masked man, who’d so often been called the phantom, grinned wider. Then he fiddled with the remote, his fingers edging closer to the buttons. “Maybe it’s time I had company in hell.”
The guy who’d held Jillian whirled around and ran for the exit. His retreat drew the attention of his partner, just long enough that he didn’t see the blow coming. A gloved fist connected with his head, knocking him to the pavement. The man in the mask kicked away his gun, then struck him again. Her rescuer grabbed Jillian’s hand, pulling her from her shocked trance.
“Don’t just stand there,” Dante warned her as he began to run, tugging her after him toward the stairwell in the corner of the parking structure.
Shots rang out behind them, striking against the steel door to the stairwell as it slammed closed behind them. He picked up a mop that he found on the landing and jammed the wooden stick through the inside handle of the door.
“We’re trapped,” she said. “If we go up…”
“We’re going down,” he said, and instead of tugging her along, he swung her up in his arms. His feet hit the steps hard as he descended into the basement. He darted around crates and tools before finding and pulling open a door that led to another flight of stairs, one that brought them even lower than the basement. He’d brought her back to where he lived underground. She’d heard about the tunnels that ran under the entire city, but until the night before, she’d never been inside them. Dante had, though. He’d obviously been using them to carry out all his attacks on St. John’s businesses.
“You were lying about the explosives,” she said.
He nodded.
“What if they’d called your bluff? What if they’d shot you?” she asked, wrapping her arms tight around his neck.
“I told them…I’m already dead.”
And for the first time she began to wonder…if he really was a phantom.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” St. John asked as he stared at the men he had hired specifically for their lack of conscience. “You couldn’t find her or you lost her?”
“We had her,” one of the men admit
ted, his jaw swollen and bruised.
St. John gestured toward his face. “She didn’t do that to you.”
“He was there,” the other guard admitted. “He was wired with a bomb.”
“So he threatened what?” St. John asked. “To take everyone out if you shot him?”
The gray-haired guy sighed and nodded.
“You should have shot him,” St. John said as he pulled a gun from the center drawer of his desk. He shot one man and then the other. Both of them had been too startled to move. Why had they been surprised?
They’d been there the day before, when he’d shot Eberhardt for refusing to buy back his business. He’d left them to clean up the mess. But they’d only created a bigger one.
He buzzed the intercom. “I have something you need to take care of,” he told his recently reinstated chief of security. He’d warned the man not to interrupt even if he heard shots. Maybe he could trust Nick Morris.
But it was good that he hadn’t trusted anyone else. He may have destroyed most of St. John’s enterprises, but there was something the phantom didn’t know about, something he wouldn’t find. It was time St. John cut his losses and left. But he couldn’t do that yet, not when he had something else—someone else—he needed gone first.
Morris stepped inside, no surprise flickering in his eyes as he glanced down at the dead men. “I’ll take care of this.”
St. John shook his head. “No. I want you to find him—the man with no face—and that reporter. I want them dead.”
DAMN IT! DAMN IT TO HELL!
Dante had had to bring her to hell again. For her protection…
But what about his? He’d taken an incredible risk back at the parking garage. If something had happened to him, then St. John would have won. And the man would have no reason to hold on to his insurance anymore.
Dante hadn’t just risked his own life. He’d risked…everything. And he still risked it now. With no time to blindfold and bind her, he had to trust that she wouldn’t lead the authorities, the media or St. John back to him as soon as he let her go.
But he’d painfully learned long ago to trust no one. He tightened his grip as he carried her through the last stretch of the tunnel to his private rooms.
“You don’t have to carry me,” she said, her soft body wriggling against his chest. “I can walk.”
“You have no shoes,” he reminded her. And he couldn’t let her walk barefoot underground. Hell, he couldn’t let her go anywhere right now.
“I lost them earlier…and I had no time to grab a pair…before they abducted me….” She trembled with fear.
He shook with rage. “They hurt you.”
Her hair brushed his neck as she shook her head. “No. I’m fine.” But a quaver in her voice belied her claim.
At the door to his private rooms, he clasped her close with one arm while he jammed the key in the lock with his other hand. The rusty hinges creaked as the steel door opened, and he swung her over the threshold and shut the door with his back. He dropped the arm beneath her knees, and she slid down his body, her soft curves molding against him, tensing his muscles.
“You’re not fine,” he said as he stared down into her face. A bruise along her cheekbone had her pale skin turning red and swelling. He ran his gloved fingertip along her jaw. “You’re hurt.”
She lifted her hand to her face and touched her cheek. “It’s nothing. I’ve taken harder hits than this before and survived.”
“Who hit you?” he asked, his rage surging back with a protectiveness he had only felt for one other person in his life.
She shook her head. “It was a long time ago.”
“So it had nothing to do with your job?” It had been personal; someone she’d cared about, someone she’d trusted, had hurt her.
She expelled a ragged sigh. “I can’t deny that I do have a dangerous job, at least lately.”
“Then quit it,” he suggested, even though he was certain she hadn’t taken those harder hits on the job. And he wondered now if what he’d considered ambition and aggression was just her determination to survive.
She laughed. “You’d like that. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me finding out who you really are, Dante.”
“True,” he conceded.
“It’s too late,” she said, her green eyes bright with knowledge and something else. “I already figured out who you are.”
His heart slammed against his ribs. Had he betrayed himself? How had he given himself away? He shook his head. “No. You can’t know.”
Because if she did, her knowledge risked what he’d given up everything to protect.
JILLIAN DIDN’T HAVE to be able to see his whole face to know she’d stunned him. His shock was evident in the intensity of his dark eyes as he stared down at her, and in the way his big body, so close to hers, tensed. He’d gone to great pains to protect his identity, but he’d risked it to protect her.
“You’re my hero,” she told him.
“What?”
“You’ve saved my life,” she reminded him. “Not once or twice, but three times.” He wouldn’t have rescued her that many times if he’d only been using her. St. John was wrong about him. Everyone was wrong about him.
He wasn’t a phantom or a monster; he was a hero.
He shook his head. “Don’t mistake me for something I’m not. I’m no romantic robber, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. I’m nobody’s hero.”
“You’re mine,” she insisted. “No one has ever come to my rescue before.”
“And you’ve needed to be rescued?”
She had never told anyone about her childhood. But then she’d been right not to trust her ex-husband or her best friend with her painful secret. She shouldn’t have trusted them at all, because while she’d been working, they’d been betraying her. “You don’t want to hear my sad story,” she warned him, forcing a smile.
His gloved fingertip slid across her bottom lip. “You do this,” he said, “no matter what’s going on—you manage to smile. I’ve often wondered what’s behind that smile.”
She laughed, even as nerves lifted goose bumps on her skin. “Most people figure there’s nothing behind it.”
“Then most people are idiots. There’s no mistaking your intelligence,” he said with a heavy sigh.
“You say that as if it worries you.”
“It does. You worry me,” he said as he stepped back from her and moved closer to the door. “Because if anyone messes up my plan, it’ll be you.”
She shivered with the loss of contact, just now noticing the damp air. “So everything you’re doing—everything you’re destroying—it’s been according to some plan that you have?”
He uttered a ragged sigh. “You can’t quit your job, because you never stop being a reporter, asking question after question….”
“I think you should stop,” she advised. “Forget about this plan of yours, whatever it is. Forget about St. John. I’m not the only one in danger.”
“I can take care of myself,” he said, his lips curving into a slight grin beneath that leather mask.
“You were almost blown up, almost shot,” she reminded him. “Sure, you can take care of yourself. But I wasn’t talking about you.”
He tensed. “Then who?”
“Tabitha St. John,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion as she remembered the child’s fear. “She’s caught up in the middle of this…war between you and her father. She’s the one who’s going to get hurt.”
“Why do you think that? What do you know about that little girl?”
“I know that she’s scared. She talked to me at the estate. Her father’s so caught up trying to take you down that she’s been neglected. She doesn’t even think he’s her dad anymore.” Jillian’s dad had been like that, able to control his violent nature, until something set him off. This mystery man was setting off Tobias St. John every time he destroyed more of the billionaire’s dwindling empire.
A muscle twitc
hed along his jaw. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” She drew in a bracing breath. “I know what she’s going through. To be so young and so scared, to have no one to turn to.”
“No one to rescue you?”
She nodded. Her mother had been too afraid to help, no matter how much Jillian had pleaded for her to stop him.
“You were abused as a child?”
Emotion choking her, she could only nod again.
“You think someone’s abusing Tabitha?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but she asked me for help. I want to help her.”
“And you think you can do that by stopping me?” he asked.
“I don’t know what your plan is,” she admitted. “But she’s caught in the middle.”
“So are you.”
“But you’ve protected me,” she reminded him. “You need to protect her, too.”
“You have no idea…”
“Then tell me.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. The only thing I can say is that Tabitha won’t be hurt.”
The determination in his raspy voice and dark eyes eased the tight knot of apprehension in Jillian’s chest. She believed him. She couldn’t see his face, but she believed that he would protect the child as he had protected her. Trembling with cold and nerves, she crossed the space separating them and lifted her hands to his chest. “You are a hero.”
God, he was huge—and hard. Muscles rippled beneath her light touch, and his heart pounded fast, the beat strong enough to lift his chest against her palms. “You have no idea who or what I am,” he warned her.
He was right. And she knew she should heed his warning—that she should step back. But she moved closer, pressing her body against the long, heavily muscled length of his. “Tell me,” she urged him.
“Give you the scoop you’re after?” he asked. “Is that what you’re doing, trying to seduce me?” He covered her hands with his gloved ones and pulled them away from his chest.
“I’m trying to thank you,” she said. “For saving my life. I know that wasn’t part of your plan.”