by Lisa Childs
“You don’t know him,” she pointed out. “He doesn’t care about vengeance. He cares about Tabitha. He in tends to pay you a ransom for his daughter. He has money, stock…”
“But yet he sent you here to hide her away from me.
How am I to bring my part of the exchange to the meeting now?”
“Use me,” she offered. “Bring me with you.”
He laughed. “He only agreed to this exchange be cause I have what matters most to him. His daughter.
You think he cares about you?”
No. But again, she wouldn’t reveal her weakness to this bully. “Yes.”
“If he cares so damn much, why would he send you here? Why would he risk your life for hers? He doesn’t give a damn about you, Miss Drake.”
She flinched, her heart aching with a pain more in tense than the result of any of the punches she’d taken.
She had already fallen for Tobias.
“No,” Edward continued. “It’s time I cut my losses and leave.”
“The police are looking for you,” she reminded him. “You’re not going to be able to take a commercial flight. And there are too many barricades for you to just drive out of the city.”
“With what I have planned, they won’t be looking for me.”
“He’ll be looking for you,” she said. “Tobias is coming back.”
“He’ll be too late,” he said. “He won’t be able to save his daughter. Or you.”
TOBIAS HAD EXPECTED a battle. Hell, he had anticipated a war. So he was almost disappointed to simply walk through the open gates. The lone guard left on duty merely nodded at him. “Mr. St. John…”
He had ditched the mask and contacts. Jillian and Tabitha should be in the safe room by now, out of the cruel grasp of Edward St. John. So it didn’t matter anymore who saw him.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“Who?” the guard replied. “Nick Morris?”
“No. The man who looks like me—” Tobias lifted the flashlight beam to his face “—the one who took over the house a couple of weeks ago.”
The guard’s brow furrowed. “What man? That was a different man?”
“My twin.” He swallowed down bile with the admission. “Where is he?” Tobias repeated his question.
The guy blinked, then stammered, “You—he—just left in the car. I didn’t know why…with the power down across the city. I thought that was why you came back…because you couldn’t get anywhere.”
Edward would be able to get to their meeting place, though, since Tobias had moved the barricades between the estate and their warehouse assignation.
“Did he leave alone?” Tobias asked. Had Jillian gotten her and Tabitha to the safe room before Edward had returned?
The man shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him leave the house, and the windows of the limo are tinted. I couldn’t see inside….”
Tobias glanced at the house. All of its windows were dark now, too—the generator shut down to buy Jillian time to make it to Tabitha’s room. He had only one way of learning if this part of his plan had been successful.
He had only to go home…
His breath catching in his lungs, he headed toward the front door. Soon he would hold his baby in his arms again, to feel her close to his heart. But she wasn’t the only female he wanted to hold again. He needed to see Jillian, too, to convince himself that she was safe, that he hadn’t risked her life.
But as he reached for the knob, the house shuddered and rumbled. Then it exploded.
Chapter Thirteen
The flames rose like tongues lapping at the night sky. Edward trembled with excitement as he watched through the back window of the limo as it circled around the block. It was perfect…absolutely perfect.
“I hope he burns to death,” he said. And once his twin’s body was recovered, no one would be looking for him. Edward would be free to leave just as he’d arrived—unfortunately, with nothing.
But at least Tobias had nothing, too. Not his empire, his daughter or even his life…
“You should have been in that fire, too,” Edward told the woman sitting on the backseat beside him. “I should have let you burn alive in the house…just like his daughter did.”
Jillian could barely restrain her sobs. With blood crusted on her swollen lip and her hair disheveled, she didn’t look as beautiful as she always did on television. But she drew his attention and his attraction. Edward had never met a woman as strong as Jillian Drake, one who fought instead of using tears to try to soften a man. She was nearly as full of fire as Tobias’s mansion. Maybe he wasn’t leaving with nothing, after all.
“You better hope he’s dead,” the reporter warned him. “Because if you hurt Tabitha and he survived, he’ll make you suffer.”
He laughed uneasily. Had Tobias been close enough when Edward had triggered the explosion? Since the driveway wound away from the gates, he hadn’t been able to see if his twin had made it inside before he’d detonated the bomb. His brother wasn’t the only one with explosives expertise learned as a Special Forces marine. One of the mercenaries had known enough to wire the bomb inside the house for when Tobias made his final move.
Through the open window, the soft wail of sirens signaled the approach of the authorities. Soon they would find Tobias’s body, but Edward wouldn’t be able to wait around to watch them drag the charred remains from the house. He had to hide now, like his brother had been forced to hide. Urgency quickening his pulse, he directed the chauffeur. “Drive.”
“Where do you want me to go, Mr. St. John?” the young man asked, anxiety in his voice and in the gaze that met Edward’s in the rearview mirror.
Edward paused, his head pounding now. He hadn’t thought beyond this moment, beyond his brother’s pain.
“The warehouse,” the woman suggested, “where you were supposed to meet Tobias.”
“You think I’m stupid?” he asked, clenching her shoulder in his fist to shake her, as anger heated his blood. “You think I’m going to blindly walk into the trap he set for me?”
“He’s here,” she pointed out. “And it’s there—the ransom he promised you. I saw it. The money. The jewelry.”
The future. Edward could see it, too. But dare he trust her? Dare he trust Tobias?
“He wouldn’t lie to you—not when he thought it could save Tabitha’s life.” Her voice quavering with the tears she had yet to shed, she added, “In exchange for his daughter, he would give you anything you wanted.”
Edward chuckled at his brother’s weakness. Maybe their mother had done him a favor by selling him. She’d raised his brother to be weak.
“Even you?” he asked the redhead. “Do you think he intended for you to be part of the ransom?”
He wanted her to see that his brother was no hero. He was no better than Edward. Their mother had had no reason to keep Tobias and discard him.
“You can’t hurt him anymore,” she said as she gestured toward the smoke billowing over the cement wall surrounding the estate.
The flames had already died down; hopefully the blast had been enough to kill him since the fire might not have burned long enough to do the job.
Her voice soft and resigned, she murmured, “He’s gone.”
Disappointment flashed through Edward. Maybe he’d killed Tobias too quickly. Too impersonally. He’d never actually had the chance to meet his brother face-to-face, to see the life ebb from his eyes as Edward took it all away from him. “Yeah, he’s gone….”
“You have to leave now,” she advised him. “Before someone sees you here, before someone realizes that there were two of you.”
Until he’d finally tracked down his birth mother, he hadn’t realized there was someone else out there, someone with his face, his voice…his life. The life he should have been living. Instead of all those years he’d spent behind bars, paying for crimes he wouldn’t have had to commit if things had gone differently for him. If he’d had someone who’d actually given a damn abou
t him…
His grip tightened on her arm. He had someone now. And he wasn’t going to let her go…not until he knew for certain if the ransom existed.
“Okay,” he consented, and gave the address of the warehouse to the driver. “Let’s go see what I inherited from my dearly departed brother….”
WATER RAINED DOWN from the sprinklers, dousing the flames as well as his hair and his clothes. But the wood was still hot and brittle beneath Tobias’s feet as he ran up the stairs. The fire had done more damage than the blast. The bomb hadn’t been powerful enough to destroy the reinforced structure of the house.
But how much damage had the fire done…?
Smoke filled the house, adding to the complete darkness, so he stumbled down the hall. The walls were hot beneath his touch as he felt around for the door to his little girl’s room. It stood open, and faint light streaked through the bars on the broken window. The moonlight fell across a body on the floor beside what was left of his daughter’s bed. Before the water had doused them, flames had burned the clothes and charred the flesh. He covered his nose and mouth at the gruesome scent of it, as horror filled him.
Too big to be a child, it had to be…
“Not Jillian.” Tears stung his eyes from more than the smoke. “Please God…”
He stepped closer, his legs shaking slightly as the weakened floor trembled beneath his weight. Until someone could check dental records, there would be no way to identify the body. No way to know if Jillian had made the ultimate sacrifice for him and his daughter…
Tabitha…
Had Jillian managed to get her inside the safe room? His heart pounding hard, he headed toward the closet. The charred floorboards protested his weight. No matter how strong the structure of that panic room, it required the support of the rest of the house or it would drop into the basement, proving more tomb than refuge.
He fumbled inside what was left of the closet. His daughter’s clothes were tattered rags hanging from blackened metal hangers. Some of the metal of the sliding door had burned off. Blackened, the control panel was indiscernible in the dark. He reached inside his pocket for the remote system for the room; the switch looked no different from a car’s keyless entry control. It was what he’d held up in the parking garage that morning, what had saved him and Jillian from getting shot.
Hopefully it had saved her again. He clicked a button, and the scorched panel creaked open, the wood cracking and splintering against the steel of the panic room door.
A blast of fresh air washed over him, relieving some of that tension in his gut. The explosion hadn’t com promised the room, or the generator that powered the light. His little girl sat on the bed in the corner, her arms wrapped around her legs, her head on her knees as she sobbed.
His gut clenched again with pain. Tabitha was terrified. And she was alone. Jillian hadn’t made it inside with her, but she had kept her promise to keep his daughter safe.
His throat thick with emotion, he could only whisper her name. “Tabitha…”
A cry slipped from the little girl’s lips, and she trembled in fear.
“Honey, it’s me,” he assured his daughter as he dropped to his knees just inside the doorway. For the first time ever, Tobias wanted to make himself smaller and less threatening. “Sweetheart, I swear that it’s really me. It’s your daddy.”
She lifted her head just an inch or so, just so she could peer over her knees at him. Her blue eyes narrowed with suspicion and hatred as she met his gaze. Her soft voice sharp with a bitterness he’d never heard from her before, she asked, “Really?”
Pain clutched at his chest—pain at having his own child look at him like that, with fear and hatred. He nodded and lifted his little finger. “Pinkie swear—it’s me.”
Her body tensed as she studied him silently. The suspicion remained; she didn’t trust him. And he couldn’t blame her. He’d vowed to be a better parent than his mother had been; he’d vowed to protect her. But he’d failed her.
“Oh, baby…” His voice broke, and he uttered a ragged sigh of defeat. “I’m so sorry….”
Tabitha jumped up from the bed and threw herself at him. “Daddy! My daddy!”
He wrapped his arms tight around her fragile little body. “Tabitha, my sweetheart….”
The little girl sobbed, her tears dampening his neck as she burrowed close. “Daddy, you’re here. You’re really here!”
“I’m really here,” he assured her. “And I won’t leave you again. I promise.” The floor creaked, and the steel-walled room shuddered. “I won’t leave you, but we have to get out of here.” The lights dimmed and the air filter clanked and clattered. “Now.”
He backed out the open panel of the safe room and headed across the floor toward the door to the hall, careful to keep his shoulder between Tabitha’s head and the body lying on the floor beside the bed. But she glimpsed it, her breath catching. “She’s dead….”
“Yeah…” He couldn’t lie to her. As well as always protecting her, he’d promised himself that he would never lie to her. “I—I thought you were dead,” Tabitha murmured with a sniffle. She must have believed that was the only reason he would have stayed away from her. “But Jilly told me you were alive, that you were coming…”
Before giving up her own life, she had sought to comfort his daughter.
“I tried to get home sooner,” Tobias said as he hurried back down the creaking stairs, water trickling from the sprinklers onto them. “But I couldn’t…”
Tabitha ducked her head beneath his chin and trembled again, but not because the cold water chilled her. “Because of the bad man. He’s gone?”
“He’s gone.” For now. And with the wail of sirens growing louder, he doubted Edward would be returning anytime soon.
“Where is she?”
“Who?” Tobias asked as he hesitated just outside the front door. If he stepped out there, if the police saw him…
But the gates were closed again; all the guards were gone. It would take some time for the authorities to gain access.
“Jilly,” Tabitha said, cupping his cheek in her small hand so that he turned back to her. “The lady from TV. Where is she?”
Maybe it was the smoke that stung his eyes; maybe it was an emotion he couldn’t give in to yet. But more than regret filled him when he thought of Jillian Drake. Tobias had never met a more selfless woman. She had thought nothing of her own safety, her own life, when she’d rescued his daughter.
Damn her…
Damn her for putting herself in danger. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I—I don’t know,” he answered honestly. Maybe it wasn’t her body. God, he hoped it wasn’t her body….
“She helped me,” Tabitha said. “I asked her to help me days ago. And I didn’t think she heard me. But she came back. She helped me.”
“I know.” If not for Jillian Drake, his daughter would have certainly been dead.
Tabitha shook her head, and tears streamed down her face. “Susan had a pillow on my face. I—I couldn’t breathe. And—and I couldn’t fight her anymore…”
Tobias shuddered at the horror his baby had endured. “Oh, sweetheart…”
“But Jilly saved me,” she said, her voice querulous. “She—she got hurt. Nanny Susan made her bleed.”
Tobias’s breath caught at the thought of what both females he’d cared about had suffered. “Oh, my God…”
“But she knocked out the nanny,” Tabitha said with grim satisfaction. “That’s who—who’s up in my room…on the floor by my bed.”
The nanny. Tobias had forgotten all about her, and he’d never realized the threat she’d posed. She’d almost killed his daughter. If not for Jillian, she would have.
The reporter hadn’t been kidding when she’d claimed to be a survivor. He expelled a ragged breath of relief. Maybe she hadn’t given up everything for him. “So Jillian got out…before the explosion?”
Her eyes wide and bright with tears, Tabitha nodded. “He took her. The bad man has Jill
y.”
Jillian might have stood a better chance of surviving the explosion and subsequent fire. “No…”
“Do you know where he took her?” Tabitha asked him. “Do you know where she is?”
The man had nothing now—no means of escape but for the ransom Tobias had promised him. “I think so.”
She wriggled down from his arms. “Then you have to go. You have to save her.”
Tobias hesitated at leaving his baby girl standing alone on the driveway in front of their fire-damaged home. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know I just promised you that I wouldn’t leave you again. But you won’t be alone long. There are firemen and policemen coming. They’ll protect you. And Mr. Morris will be here soon.”
He’d had the security footage delivered to the police department so that his friend would be cleared of murder charges. Of course his friend would probably still be charged as an accessory after the fact, but the lawyer to whom Tobias had also sent the footage should be able to get him out on bail.
Tabitha stepped forward and reached out, but instead of closing her arms around him again, she shoved at him. “Go, Daddy, go save Jilly,” she urgently advised him.
He nodded, overwhelmed by the maturity and generosity of the five-year-old. But he couldn’t make her a promise that he might already be too late to keep.
Jillian had protected Tabitha from Edward, but the man was smart enough to know that she mattered to Tobias, too. And he only went after what mattered most to Tobias.
Until he’d found that body lying on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom, he hadn’t realized exactly how much the reporter mattered to him. He loved Jillian Drake. And now he was about to lose her.
Chapter Fourteen
As the car neared the warehouse, Jillian’s heart beat harder and faster. She’d bought herself some time. But not enough.
“So tell me about yourself,” she said. The men she had known that were arrogant and self-absorbed like Edward St. John—her dad and her ex—could spend hours talking about themselves. “I don’t even know your name….”