“Man, backseat is a nine-point-five.” Derrick leaned between them and gawked at the constant loop of boobs.
Greer hugged her arms around herself and stepped away from the screen.
Zach clicked and typed. The video disappeared.
Derrick straightened. “Come on, man. I’ve been pent up for weeks. The least you can do is let me watch.”
“The least I can do is not punch your nuts into your nostrils.” Zach’s gaze slid to Greer, and then back to Derrick. “Have some respect.”
“Aw.” Derrick swatted the air with his hand. “She’s used to my mouth.”
“I reset the system, but I need to go scare these kids away.” Zach closed the computer and returned it to the drawer. “I’ll be back soon.”
“I can help.” Derrick stepped toward the stairs.
Zach stopped at the top of the banister. “Great. Clean the kitchen.” His head disappeared below the floor.
Greer didn’t hear the door open or close, but dual relief and grief over his absence plagued her.
Derrick clapped his hands together and turned to her. “About the—”
“If you say cleaning the kitchen is really a woman’s job, I’ll use that frying pan to beat you to death in your sleep.”
“I wasn’t. That talk was just a diversion.” Derrick rushed to the desk. He pulled on the drawer, but it didn’t budge. “The computer, did you catch the password?”
“What are you doing?”
His lanky arms tensed. He pried at the handle with gritted teeth. “Help me.”
“Help you what? What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m trying to save us.”
“Save us from what?”
“There isn’t time.” His hands slipped off and he stumbled back. He moved to the center drawer and pulled so hard the drawer winged from the desk. Paper clips, markers, and pencils scattered across the floor, along with a long silver letter opener.
Derrick dropped to his knees, grabbed a paperclip and the opener, and went to work on the drawer.
The desperation with which her partner worked on the lock sent a wave of gooseflesh rolling over Greer’s skin. Greer stepped backward, toward her gun.
“Why do you think we got grabbed?” His determined gaze left the drawer and found her. The laser line of his gaze zipped to the chest of drawers, and then centered on her. He stood. “Why do you think?” His sharp tone reverberated around the room and smacked her in the face.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here, to find out.”
A hollow laugh rolled from his belly. “He’s the reason.”
“He?” she managed to rasp.
“Zach Saulter isn’t his name.”
Greer’s legs rubberized. She’d never seen him as a Zach, but she hadn’t expected it wasn’t his real name…or maybe she had. The floor softened under her feet, threatening to swallow her whole.
“He runs a rival gang out of the old country, the Rhyke.”
“Who told you this?”
“The Stas.”
“How can you even begin to believe them over your own—”
“What, captain? He’s not a real captain. He’s a gun for hire.”
“Just like you and me,” Greer hollered.
“He played us and the Stas for information. We were pawns, Greer.”
Her head shook in a constant back and forth while she tried to calculate the situation from every angle. The partiality she had for Zach couldn’t come into play. But it already had. He said he wasn’t a good guy, but he acted like one. Derrick said he was a good guy, but didn’t act like one.
Derrick went back to work on the lock. Metal scraped metal and her nerves.
“They took him too,” she finally blurted.
“Yeah, to find out what he wanted from them. I don’t think they got it.”
“Because he doesn’t cave.” Accusation hardened her voice.
Something shifted on Derrick’s face. A slip of the mask. Hair at the back of Greer’s neck stood on end.
He dropped the paper clip on the floor and abandoned the lock. “I think they’ll come after him again. He’ll be back soon. We need to go.”
Derrick clutched the opener in his fist.
“Why didn’t you go earlier?”
“Because you didn’t. But you’ll come with me now. Won’t you, Greer?”
10
“Take a step and we’ll see how well you breathe through your brain.” Zeke trained his Glock on Derrick’s temple.
The man stopped a foot from rounding the desk toward Greer. Her blue gaze found him, but snapped back to Derrick’s hands too quickly.
“Drop it.” Zeke whispered the order and mounted the stairs.
A letter opener Derrick must have found in the old desk clattered to the wooden top.
“Well, it didn’t take long to chase those kids off, Alexi.” Derrick held his hands up in surrender and turned toward him. “Almost like there weren’t any kids. Just like there isn’t a Zach Saulter.”
“There were kids,” Zeke countered, “six months ago. I never knew the footage would come in handy.” He shrugged. “Well, for more than the obvious. And Zach Saulter exists. He’s just a lawyer in Dallas.”
Greer’s jaw dropped as though he’d pissed on a Bible.
He’d expected as much. He just hadn’t expected the weight of her reaction to sit on his chest like an angry gorilla. His breath hitched.
“I told you.” Derrick shifted his jaw toward Greer and his left foot shifted ever so slightly in her direction.
If she noticed, she didn’t give any indication. Her gaze locked on Zeke’s, waiting for an explanation he couldn’t give. Especially not with a rattlesnake coiled between them. He needed Greer to recognize Derrick for what he was—and for her to hold on to the misplaced trust she had for him a little while longer.
Zeke squeezed the steel between his palms and used it to harden his voice. “How’d you know?”
“They questioned me for hours, chained in that damn warehouse. The Stas wanted to know about you. When I said I didn’t know anything, which was true…” Derrick jabbed a finger at him. “You didn’t show us shit and told us even less.” A snort spewed from the wanker’s razor-edged nose. “They tried to turn me against you. So they told me that shit. What they didn’t know is that I never had an allegiance to you.”
“Well, you did the British Academy proud. Truly, a moving performance.” Zeke dipped the end of his Glock and tipped his head. “I’d clap, but I might blow your lying ass off.”
Greer stayed unusually quiet. Her gaze bounced back and forth between them.
“Say what you want, but she already knows the truth,” Derrick said.
“Yes, she does.” Zeke fisted the front of his shirt in his left hand and yanked it up, revealing the ravages of his captivity. “She knows what a questioning from the Stas looks like.” He released his shirt. “You have a pledge of loyalty. I don’t. They didn’t question you. What would they gain? You’re a lowly pissant who doesn’t know anything.”
Derrick flung himself around so quickly his shirt flapped in the breeze. “Greer, did they do that to you?”
That primitive desire to protect Greer flopped around in Zeke’s chest once more. Someone mercilessly held defibrillator paddles to it, forcing it to life inside him.
“They didn’t question her,” Zeke growled.
Derrick’s brown gaze sliced back to Zeke. The top of his lip curled into a hideous sneer.
“How do you know for sure?” Greer voiced the man’s question in a whisper. “There’s so much I can’t remember.”
He held Derrick in his periphery, but centered his gaze on Greer’s soulful blue eyes. “You’d remember every hit, every cut, every lost breath, every burn. There also isn’t a mark on your body.”
“He’s seen you?” Rage cracked Derrick’s voice and his carefully constructed facade. His pecs puffed with rapid breaths and he stepped in her direction.
“C
areful.” Zeke’s index finger eased down the trigger guard, itching to take a shot.
Had they been a couple before all this? Had they been intimately involved? Zeke entertained the notion for no more than a second before deciding they hadn’t. Not because he figured Greer had been saving herself for him, but because Derrick Coen’s brash and irreverent personality didn’t lend itself to intimacy.
His didn’t either, now did it?
Greer stumbled back from the sudden outburst, but caught herself. Then everything changed. A certainty he hadn’t seen in her demeanor since training straightened her spine. Her gaze sharpened to the fine point of a blade.
“Those bastards abducted me. They drugged me for nine long days. Zach…” Her gaze bobbled for a fraction of a second before firming on Derrick. She pointed at Zeke. “He, whatever his name is, he saved me. He dealt with the aftermath.” Her finger shifted to her sternum. “And my body isn’t your concern.”
Sweat beaded on Derrick’s flushed forehead. His mouth formed a hard line. “Sure it is.”
The dip of Derrick’s temple begged for a bullet. It took ounces of reserve to keep from hugging the trigger and giving it to him. He didn’t need the son of an Irish whore much longer, but he needed to know where he’d gotten the information he’d told Greer.
Her eyes widened, but the set of her jaw firmed. “The hell it is.”
“You’re my prize.” Derrick’s smile grew. He lunged.
Zeke’s index finger tightened on the trigger. Instead of Derrick’s head, he lifted the barrel and aimed for the blacked-out figure skirting the roofline with an automatic rifle snugged to his chest. The man’s arms flew back. He teetered and then fell backward off the tin roof.
Another shadow shifted on the far end of the barn past the kitchen window. Derrick’s hands gripped Greer’s shoulders.
A roar erupted from Zeke’s throat. He’d only heard anything like it once before. The first time his father had beaten his sister with a closed fist. He’d been five, a boy, completely incapable of helping. Now, he could do amazing, terrifying things with his hands.
Greer caught Derrick’s chin with a punch. His head jerked, but his grip held. He shoved her toward the far wall, near the chest of drawers—and her gun.
Zeke holstered his Glock and—
A deafening boom echoed in his skull. Invisible force shoved him to the floor. Bits of wood and glass hailed, pinging off his prone form like angry hornets. Black lapped at the edges of his consciousness.
Greer?
He had to find her. The need pushed him forward more ardently than the blast. The black tide receded. He blinked. Crimson laced his field of vision. Zeke used the back of his arm and swiped at the blood. He pressed to his hands and knees. Blood blinded. The floor swayed.
“Greer?”
Zeke listened for her answer. A distant ring replied. Again he wiped at the stream, and then forced his eyes wide.
Derrick dragged Greer’s limp body across the debris-laden floor. Her bare feet scraped over splinters of tin and chunks of glass.
A possessiveness completely foreign gulped its first heavy breath. Zeke pulled a knee to his chest and struggled to stand. He searched for solid ground, but floundered, finding only the hard edge of the kitchen table.
“No!”
From too far away Greer’s voice cut through the haze and disorientation. He grabbed the hand towel from the table top and dragged it across his eyes. The smoggy room developed like an old Polaroid. Using the chair for balance, Zeke straightened. A large hole gaped in the front of the barn. The blast had been made for distraction, not destruction…except for his car, which seemed to be at the epicenter of the blast. He couldn’t see it. That was a good thing for Derrick. Maybe when he caught the fucker he wouldn’t kill him.
Grunts of a tussle and the smack of flesh meeting flesh filtered in through the gaping hole. Greer yelped. Nope. Derrick was already dead. He just didn’t realize it.
Rage drove him forward. He ran full tilt toward the old loft door. The rusted hoist chain hung from the large round pulley and weathered wood post he’d kept through the updates. Zeke leaped into the open air. He looked right, expecting to meet the bullet of the shadow he’d seen ghosting across the barn roof moments before the blast. His left hand clamped the rough metal. Blood had snaked down his arm. Several links in the old chain slipped through his grasp. He redoubled his effort. His grip held. No shots rang out. Gravity went to work.
Chain screeched through the un-oiled wheel. The baler hook at the bottom of the circular length soared. Before it met the pulley—shit—before it passed him knotted links jammed into the pulley’s slender opening. His fall stopped with an abrupt jerk. The chain slipped from his fingers and he fell toward the earth.
A tuck and roll saved his ankles from total decimation. His shoulder took a hit. Blood trickled down his face once again. Zeke anchored himself on a knee. He yanked his sidearm from the holster.
Greer stood over Derrick. Crimson oozed from the man’s nose. Her knuckles whitened around the letter opener she held high in the air. Determination tightened her features. Her fist drew for the strike.
A shot split the air from the right. The other shooter. Zeke swung toward the barn. He focused a bead on the gunman.
Greer screamed.
Zeke’s stomach followed his bullets across the yard. The man grabbed his neck, fell forward onto the tin eave. He was up and running before the thought registered. His barrel swung back around and found Derrick, ready to obliterate the man, but completely unprepared to see the horror of what had happened to Greer.
Brain matter and blood clung to blades of grass.
She hunched forward. Her white blonde hair cascaded over her shoulder. Slender fingers hid those beautiful blue eyes from the annihilation that was Derrick Coen.
The tip of his Glock wavered. Muscles in his entire body rubberized and he actually stumbled to the side. Whether from the blood loss or relief he wasn’t sure. But he had time for neither. He moved forward, blocking Greer from the line of the barn. The setting sun cleaved into his sensitive vision. Zeke squinted against the dying light and surveyed the perimeter. Branches swayed in the light breeze. Bugs accosted the kitchen window, beating themselves against the glass, trying to get to the florescent light.
No one scaled the roof. No one moved in the woods. It didn’t mean they were safe. It just meant they wanted them alive. Zeke had endured his last day in captivity and would die before he returned.
“We need to go.”
She looked at him with wet, blood-shot eyes. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m not dead yet, so it’ll keep for now.” He held out his hand. When her fingers wrapped around his they grabbed something else deep in his chest.
11
“Who shot him?”
Z—she’d taken to mentally calling him that, since she didn’t know what the hell his name was—hiked his other foot into the truck, slammed the door shut, and plopped a motel key on the seat between them. “I was beginning to think you’d succumbed to shock.” His big hand wrapped around the shifter and yanked the relic into drive.
“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, for all your muttered cursing.”
“Men don’t mutter,” he groused.
“I’d say let me check your pants, but that won’t be necessary.” She flashed him a smirk. Her nerves vibrated from the non-stop rollercoaster, but this mindless banter with him—whoever he was—made it tolerable.
He slid her a sideways glance, but didn’t even crack a smile.
“I didn’t peg you for a materialist. I mean, we’re both alive,” she pointed out.
The old pick-up wheeled into the back parking lot with a long series of groans and squeaks. Z parked the vehicle behind a motel two hours away from the Pennsylvania farmhouse and closer to New York. “It wasn’t just a car they destroyed. It was a symbol, a…” He let the words fall off with a shake of his head. “Just wait until I find them.”
“A symbol of what?”
Z opened the door and leaned out, but stopped. He surprised her by turning back and slumping against the seat. A sigh drained from his lips. It expelled the tension in his shoulders. “Freedom. It was my freedom.”
It might be the first real answer he’d given her. The subject matter meant something to him. His willingness to share shifted something between them. A grimace creased his blood-crusted forehead. He grabbed the wheel with his left hand and shifted toward the door.
Greer held her breath and dove. After all, it couldn’t be any more terrifying than hearing that shot rip through the wilderness and thinking that Z’d been shot. She reached out slowly, giving him time to escape if he wanted. He watched her hand stretch the distance for his. Her finger slid over the top, smoothing over the large ridges of veins, tendons, and coarse hairs. It was wider than she’d imagined, warmer. She didn’t so much hold his hand as shield it.
“Even when they held you captive, they didn’t take your freedom. You’re stronger than that.”
A cloud drifted through his stormy gaze. Had she taken him back to those awful days? Had she over stepped the tentative bounds of their budding…who knew what it was? For that matter, was it anything? The knot in her throat said it was something, on her part anyway.
“They—whoever they were—targeted Derrick. They shot him before you or me. Derrick knew something valuable. I don’t know who took him out, but if we figure that out we’ll figure out why we were taken.”
Greer lifted her hand. “I didn’t say that so you’d—”
“I know.” He trapped her hand against his palm. “I’m telling you what I can.” His lips compressed and then released. “I just can’t go back there.”
No wonder he couldn’t rehash the days of imprisonment and torture. “More than most, I get that.”
Z nodded. “Back at the barn, why didn’t you run when Derrick gave you the chance?”
She looked at their hands, at his strong fingers, capable of crushing hers in their grip, capable of cuddling hers in their grip. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“According to Derrick, I’m the leader of a notoriously violent gang.” The firm line returned to his mouth.
Prisoner Mine Page 10