“I don’t like it, O’Riley.”
Evan clamped a hand on Harris’s shoulder. “You want me to trust you to do your job. But right now, I need you to trust me to do mine.”
Harris uncrossed his arms. “You need backup.”
“Already got it.” Evan met Murphy’s gaze. “Time to suit up, soldier.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Shadows
Anna’s eyelids fluttered open. Once. Twice. Fragments of a dark room came in and out of focus as she blinked over the dried-out contacts glued to her corneas. Labored breaths chafed against her chapped lips and something in her mouth. A gag?
Panic speared through the haze clouding her senses. She lurched up, but a cold metal edge strained against her wrists and tugged her right back down. Handcuffs.
Flashes from the car crash reignited a surge of pain throbbing from her temple down to her shoulder. She’d barely seen the van coming before it’d rammed into the side of Evan’s car, hurling the left side of her body into the door and window.
Wherever she was, she had to get out of here. She struggled to sit up again, but the cuffs sawed deeper into her wrists. Each movement rocked acid farther up her throat. Head swimming, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited for her muscles to relax.
Four slow breaths caused the concrete ground to stop spinning. She had to concentrate. Feeling around with both hands, she gripped a pipe and followed it along with her fingers. Damp and corroded, it curved upward into the wall with no opening to slip the cuffs through.
It must be some type of bathroom. No shower, just a toilet and sink from what she could tell. Unmaintained. Freezing. Inside a basement or warehouse, maybe.
Somewhere behind her, tiny claws scurried across the floor. Anna drew her legs in tight to her stomach. The cold from the ground seeped through her jeans and joined a gust of briny air rippling in from a doorway with a pungent stench of fish. Was she by the lake? A dock?
Deep male voices with foreign accents filtered in from outside. Michelli’s men.
A rush of heat eclipsed the chill claiming her body. Anna wrestled the cuffs harder. A burst of light stabbed at her eyes and speckled her vision with black dots until a broad-shouldered man with an out-of-control beard came into view above her.
“’Bout time you woke up.” Without losing his smirk, he flipped up the toilet seat and unbuttoned his jeans.
Anna wrenched her head away, but the rancid odor of urine still singed her nostrils. Bile burned up her esophagus.
A rough grip clasped her arm as he unlocked the cuffs and yanked her to her feet. She rubbed a thumb over the raw flesh left from the metal. He dragged her forward and clenched her arm so tightly, she fought back a whimper of pain.
The industrial lighting lit up a massive, open-walled room cluttered with stacked pallets. Two more men paced along the front entrance point. She scanned the area in an effort to gain her bearings. A glimpse of a barge outside removed any uncertainty. They had her in the Port District.
The guy dragging her must’ve noticed her comprehension. He shoved her toward another man sitting on a crate. Her gaze shot from the tattoo peeking out of his collar to the automatic rifle in front of him right before she lost her balance.
Her chin collided with the crate’s edge, the impact dropping her to the floor. Swallowing the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth, she raised a hand to her jaw, but Grizzly Adams heaved her up before she could assess the damage.
Tattoo Guy tapped his gun against the crate while scrutinizing her profile. Anna squirmed against the other guy’s crude hold when a derisive laugh rasped into her ear. “Give it up, ragazza. You’re not strong enough to fight.”
Fury invigorated her weak muscles and leveled her shoulders. “I’m strong enough for this,” she said through the gag. Thrusting her foot behind her, she slammed it into his kneecap.
A low-seething yelp freed her from his grasp. She sprinted for the exit. The sound of a chamber loading a bullet echoed behind her, but Anna kept her eyes on the lake outside. Almost in reach.
An oversized man with a gun across his torso edged into her path and blocked the doorway.
She stopped and backed away. A glance to her right and left offered nowhere to run. Sweat rolled into the gag clogging the shriek no one would hear. There had to be another way out. She made it only two steps before being yanked back by the hair.
From behind her, fingers clenched her arm with enough force to leave marks. Grizzly Adams wrenched her head backward. Something cold and round pressed into the nape beneath her ear.
Tattoo Guy lunged from the crate and cast his partner a warning glare. “Boss gave us orders. She stays alive.”
“For now.” Hot breath poured onto her skin. “Don’t worry, ragazza. I’ll be sure to tell Daddy you said good-bye.”
Anna closed her eyes, fighting back fear, until every raging thought subsided. Except one.
Evan.
Low-hanging clouds obstructed the moonlight and darkened a night Evan spent five years dreading ever having to face.
Anna had been gone for twenty-four hours. He knew the statistics. Knew the rate at which the odds of survival in a case like this plummeted. It’s why he hadn’t stopped searching, not even to sleep.
Crouched behind a barrel, he craned his head toward the snowflakes hitting his overheated skin and thanked God Michelli’s hired guns didn’t have “low key” in their vocabulary. It’d taken Evan and Murphy less than two hours to narrow down which warehouse they had Anna in.
Evan’s fingers clenched at the thought of her locked up in there. Slow, even breaths pressed his back deeper against the metal container until his heart’s steady tempo aligned his focus.
Angry gusts of wind coming off the intersection of Lake Michigan and the Calumet River stormed across the docks. Merciless. Driven. The same way he needed to be right now.
If this turned south, Michelli would walk during tomorrow’s trial, and Evan would lose the battle he’d trained for.
This wasn’t the time to let doubts assail him. He’d made a promise. One he’d die keeping. Even if that moment ended up being tonight.
Evan checked the mag on his Sig, butted it back in, and radioed Murphy on the other side of the transit shed. “How many guys you count?”
“At least four on the inside. Armed with nine millimeters.”
They’d easily taken down two other thugs patrolling the docks. But even with Harris’s units holding the perimeter, Evan had a feeling it’d turn ugly fast once gunshots fired. He needed to get Anna out of there.
“All right,” Evan said. “Let’s smoke them out. Stand by to move.”
“Copy that.”
They each lit a fire in the barrels closest to the entry point.
On cue, two men came out to inspect the black smoke billowing in the wind. Evan gripped the man on his side in a sleeper hold. Three gunshots popped off before he went down. The echo shuddered across the terminal.
Evan signaled to Murphy. “Move in. Go, go, go.”
They dove inside and took cover behind two steel beams. Shell casings from automatic rounds thundered against the pavement. Evan raised his brows at Murphy. “Only nine millimeters, huh?”
He shrugged. “What fun would a raid be without upping the stakes?”
Evan shook his head at him. “Cover me.”
Murphy fanned out, gun firing. Evan sprinted up two rows and backed behind another pillar. The stench of blood, sweat, and gunpowder clouded the air. He needed to get into close combat range fast.
At the sound of the magazines emptying, Evan and Murphy both darted forward. One from the left, the other closing in from the right.
Seeing Anna on the ground with a blood-soaked gag in her mouth and terror in her eyes throttled him. Vehemence like he’d never known drove him straight for the tattoo-covered guy with the automatic weapon. Evan hooked a blow to the guy’s rib cage and took one to the jaw with the butt of the rifle.
Vision blurring, Evan d
ropped his gun.
A muffled scream from the floor pulled him back to the scene in time to dodge another swing.
Evan rammed a shoulder into the guy’s stomach, bulldozed him into a crate, and wrestled the rifle away from him. Clutching him by the shirt, Evan slammed him against the boxes.
A bloody smirk spread to the cold, dark eyes egging him on. “You gonna kill me?”
It took everything in Evan not to. “No, but you might not have as much luck in prison.”
A haunting laugh shook down the guy’s body as if recharging him. He broke Evan’s hold and sprang for Anna. Murphy tossed Evan his gun. But the guy already had Anna in a choke hold, her body a shield. He pulled a handgun from his shin and aimed it from Evan to her. A wild expression dared Evan to make a move.
Instead of fear, remorse streamed from Anna’s eyes. Tears didn’t dilute the message they held. She wanted him to take the shot.
Keeping his gun trained on them, Evan shook his head.
Another dark laugh fed the guy’s misguided sense of power. “Don’t worry, Ranger. You can’t win every mission.” He ran the barrel down Anna’s neck.
Evan kept his eyes on hers, praying she remembered their signals from when they played in the attic. She gave an almost-imperceptible nod, and he readied his finger on the trigger.
“Maybe not, but I only need to win one.”
Anna thrust her foot behind her and dropped facedown. Evan took the shot, hitting middle mass. One look at the bullet hole in his chest, and the guy collapsed to the pavement. Evan kicked the rifle away, glanced at the other gunman, already down, and nodded at Murphy.
Rumblings rang from outside. Harris and his men would be moving in, but so would Michelli’s. Evan knelt to the floor beside Anna and untied her gag. Breaths came hard and fast as she grabbed hold of him.
He pulled her close, nothing getting to him more than the tremor shaking her body against his. He scooped her up from the ground and looked to Murphy. “How many rounds you got left?”
He checked his mag. “Enough to have your back.”
Tires squealed out front, sirens not far behind. Murphy covered them as they exited the shed and sprinted for the town car waiting for Anna. Evan opened the back door, lowered her inside, and stepped back.
She caught his arm. “What are you doing? Let’s go!”
Everything he wanted to say to make her understand amplified the sweat bleeding through his clothes. Doubts wrestled with promises until he didn’t know which was right anymore.
“Evan?”
Please God, let her forgive him. Inhaling, he brought a radio from his belt to his mouth. “Radiance secured.”
Her clasp on his arm faltered.
He’d executed the op without taking a single bullet. But nothing could’ve left him more paralyzed than the look of betrayal confiscating the trust in her eyes.
Blue and white lights cut into the darkness as two patrol cars skidded onto the scene. Evan ducked in the car and caught John’s gaze from the driver’s seat. “Move out.” He swung the door behind Anna and backed up.
The car took off, leaving a hollow sting in its wake. Evan shoved it down. Anna was safe. That was all that mattered.
Two uniforms steered the men Murphy and Evan had smoked out into the back of a cruiser while Harris’s partner carted the other thug from the transit shed. The scumbag smirked at Evan. “You think this is gonna keep Michelli from walking tomorrow?”
“Maybe not, but this will.” Of all people, Marissa strolled up with Harris, carrying a manila folder in her hands. She stopped in front of them and flashed Evan a don’t-look-so-surprised expression. “Told you I was working on a big story.”
With a haughty glare pinned on the man in custody, she flicked the folder with her red-tipped nail. “Dates, transactions, clients. I’d say your boss is going away for a long time and taking quite a few people with him. Turns out Mr. Michelli’s been in bed with the CEO of Carmichael Enterprises for a good decade.”
“Carmichael Enterprises.” Evan stared at her. “As in the city’s largest shipping company?”
“You got it.” Her glossed lips sprawled into a glowing smile as though prepping for the headshot that’d be beside her newly acquired column in tomorrow’s paper.
“How did you . . . ?”
Her contented grin tugged to the left. “You’re not the only one who’s trained to follow a lead, Evan. I’m a journalist. It’s what I do.”
Comprehension registered. CEO . . . The executive from the gala. Evan ran his tongue over the corner of his mouth. He couldn’t fault the guy for falling victim to Marissa’s charm. She was a pro. Had even fooled him for a time.
Brows together, Evan looked from her to Harris. “You knew about this?”
Harris shook his head. “Not until she came down to the station earlier.”
“A heads-up would’ve been nice.”
“You were in the zone.” Holstering his gun, Harris grinned. “Didn’t want to ruin your chance of being invisible.”
He wasn’t going to let that one go, was he?
Murphy moseyed up beside Marissa. “Props for the element of surprise. I’ll give ya that.”
She flicked her chin toward the transit shed. “Not too bad yourself.”
He shrugged. “I might’ve played Call of Duty once or twice.”
Evan rolled his eyes. Murphy could joke all he wanted. The guy was Ranger quality, all the way.
Marissa tipped her head at Casanova and prodded Evan off to the side.
He squared his shoulders, bracing for whatever she had to say.
But instead of lighting into him, she fiddled with the folder as though stalling for the right words. “Listen, I know you don’t agree with my tactics, but I’m good at what I do. And believe it or not, I care about putting the bad guys away.”
“Never said you didn’t.”
Marissa fixed her brown eyes on him, a sad smile on her lips. “You didn’t have to.” Looking away, she ran a finger over the top corner of the folder. “Truth is, I might’ve pushed the line. On reporting and on us.” Her gaze drifted back to him. “But this is my life, Evan. I can’t apologize for that.”
He raised a shoulder. “Again, didn’t say you had to.”
“Your eyes say enough.” She pinched her bottom lip between her fingers, let go, and clasped her arm. “I want to thank you for caring enough to look out for me all this time, despite how . . . challenging I’ve been.” She edged closer. “I don’t regret us, you know.”
“Marissa . . .”
She waved it off with the folder and readjusted her suit jacket. “Now, take some advice from someone who knows when she’s losing a good thing, and go after the girl you really want.”
Except he’d just lost that girl for good.
Chapter Twenty-two
Broken
Anna gripped the leather seat in front of her. “Turn this car around, John.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. Mr. Madison’s orders are to take you straight home.”
It wasn’t her home anymore. It hadn’t been for years. And this was exactly why.
The second the tires breeched the driveway, Anna gunned out, stormed inside, and wheeled into Dad’s study.
He lowered his cell to the desk. “Annabelle, thank God.”
She stopped him with an outstretched arm. “How could you?”
“How could I rescue my own daughter?” His brow creased.
“That’s not what I meant. Evan, Dad. I’m talking about Evan. How could you ask him to be on your payroll?” She paced the carpet to keep from shaking. “Is this about his father? About their class? Evan was never good enough for you, was he? Is that why he left after high school? To earn enough status for you?”
She strode right up to him, fingers balled tight. “What’d you say to him to make him leave?”
He cupped her shoulders. “Annabelle, stop. I treated that boy like a son. You know that. I was just as shocked as you were when he
left. Even more so when he approached me a month ago.”
“What are you talking about?”
He let go and ran his fingers through both sides of his graying hair. “Evan asked to be your security detail during this case. I kept a car at your apartment at night, but he said he was the only one who could get close enough to protect you without you knowing. That it had to be that way.”
Dad might as well have thrust a gavel through her chest. Anna backed up in search of the wall to steady her. She replayed the last week through her mind, screening for details to prove him wrong.
Her stomach churned. Blackbird. Running into Evan at the restaurant . . . Their paths hadn’t randomly crossed. Evan planned it, setting her up not to suspect anything, to trust him.
Dad’s eyes softened. “He said he had a promise to honor.”
More like an obligation to fill. One he lied about.
“When I caught you scolding Evan in here the day after Thanksgiving, it was about overstepping job boundaries, wasn’t it?” Each time a piece of the story fused together, another piece of her heart came undone. “This whole time he’s been with me, I thought . . .”
Nausea seized her again. Pain throbbed. But this time, it pulsed from that place inside her she’d vowed would never own her again. “I’m such an idiot.”
“Annabelle.”
Gripping the door trim, she circled into the hall, her legs barely holding her.
Headlights streaked through the windows as tires crunched over the snow in the driveway. Evan hustled around a Jeep’s bumper.
A mix of anger, hope, and desperation ushered Anna outside. She couldn’t distinguish between the emotions. Just knew she needed answers, needed him to make it okay.
Evan slowed a few feet away. Dried blood covered a gash above his eye. His five o’clock shadow looked like it’d won the battle for his jawline two days ago. But the war in his eyes hung on.
The snow falling in front of the porch light cast broken shadows over his face. And she knew right then. He didn’t have to say a word. It was true. All of it.
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