Rules in Blackmail

by Nichole Severn

  “We did it. It’s over.” She’d pulled him through the Alaskan wilderness once. She could do it again to get him the help he desperately needed. “Come on. We need to get you inside before you freeze to death.”

  The trees to her left shifted, and Jane raised the gun. She’d emptied the magazine into Christopher. No time to go for Sullivan’s stash of weapons in the cabin. Without any rounds left in the Glock, she couldn’t stop more attackers in their tracks, but Christopher’s men weren’t taking her from Sullivan. She might be a lawyer, but she’d kill everyone who tried before leaving him to die here alone. Two figures burst from the tree line, both heavily armed, and Jane’s arm sank with the weight of the gun. Elliot and Anthony rushed forward, the weapons expert already barking orders into the radio in his hand.

  “Jane.” Sullivan wrapped his fingers around hers, his pupils growing bigger until limited amounts of the sea blue she’d started falling in love with remained. Bringing the back of her hand to his mouth, he kissed the sensitive skin there and a chill swept through her. “Go.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” Hot tears fell onto his chest, smudging lines of blood. “This is all my fault.”

  A soft thumping reverberated across the property, but Jane had attention for only the man who’d nearly died to save her life. The man she’d blackmailed into this. Her hair whipped in front of her face. Where had the wind come from?

  “Jane, you need to get out of the way.” Rough hands wrapped around her upper arms, but she shrugged them away. She wasn’t sure who’d grabbed her. Didn’t matter. “The EMTs have to get through.”

  “Help him.” She held on to Sullivan’s hand tighter. “Please, help him.”

  “Jane, come on.” Elliot’s voice filtered through the fog around her brain. He tugged her free of Sullivan’s grip as a team of EMTs closed in a tight circle around him. “You don’t want to see this.”

  “This is all my fault. I’m sorry.” Jane couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Legs weak as Elliot dragged her against him and carried her away, Jane kept her eyes locked on Sullivan’s motionless hand against the spreading red snow. “I’m so sorry.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bullets. Blood. Scars. Some things never changed.

  A groan vibrated through Sullivan’s chest as he straightened in the hospital bed. Hell, that hurt. But the pain and haziness disappeared as he caught sight of a beautiful head of short black hair sprawled across the white sheets on one side of his bed.

  Jane.

  He sat forward, brushing a strand of soft hair away from her face. Her breathing sped up, and a smile pulled at one side of his mouth. He’d never get used to the way she reacted to him when he touched her. She’d wrapped her long fingers around his before falling asleep, and he didn’t dare pull away. With her fast asleep, the nightmares of the last five days had slipped from her features. The bruise along her cheek had lightened, the cut across her head healing without stitches. Not an ounce of fear pulled her expression taut. She looked peaceful. For once. He’d traveled the world, experienced the most amazing and destructive forces of nature, but Jane Reise was by far the most amazing.

  And his.

  This isn’t over with me, you know. I’m not the only one he hired. Menas. Sullivan tightened his grip around Jane’s hand. The mercenary had deserved every bullet she’d emptied into him, but this was far from over. Whoever had hired Menas and his team wasn’t finished. Not until Jane’s heart stopped beating, which wouldn’t happen. Because he’d take another hundred stabs to the torso by another dozen mercenaries if it meant she got to walk away from this. And she would. They both would.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile at another human being like that. A piece of chocolate cake, yes. Not a woman.” Anthony Harris’s forest green eyes—free of sunglasses—locked on to Sullivan. The former Ranger buried his hands deep into his jacket pockets as though he didn’t know what to do without a gun in his grip. Which was probably why he kept scanning the room for potential threats. Anthony cleared his throat. “If someone made me happy like that, I’d fight like hell to keep her with me, too.”

  The number one thing Sullivan could count on his weapons expert for? The blatant truth, even when his trigger-happy best friend should keep his mouth shut. “How long has she been here?”

  “She hasn’t left your side since the EMTs brought you through the front doors. Wouldn’t let the technicians look at her until they got your stats stable.” Anthony rolled his wrist to check his watch. “Going on thirty hours. She’s been asleep for about two.”

  Jane. Always putting others first, even when Menas had a gun aimed at her head.

  Sullivan swallowed as the memories of the final battle with Menas flashed across his mind. He’d almost lost her. Again. But this time, it’d been his own fault. “Tell me how we missed the fact Christopher Menas was contracted to come after Jane.”

  “I’ve worked with guys like him and his team.” Anthony shifted in his seat. “They’ve got the resources and the motives to create entire identities that hide what they do for a living. Some have two or three they cycle through to keep governments off their backs. Technically, they don’t exist. No families. No friends. They’re good at what they do. But Menas. Man, this guy is something else.”

  “He used his real name.” Sullivan’s gaze flickered to the rise and fall of Jane’s chest. Why would a mercenary take the chance of being identified? He rested his head back against the mountain of pillows behind him. “He wanted Jane to know he was coming after her.”

  To throw off suspicion of the real threat?

  “How did Menas manage to escape your and Elliot’s detail?” he asked.

  “He knew we were there. He sent a four-man team straight at us as he and three others sped from the construction site.” Spreading one hand over his beard, Anthony let his eyebrows hike higher, a telling sign of stress. “I tried calling, but you never answered your phone.”

  Because he’d tossed it to the floor to have a few more minutes with Jane. Damn it. This whole thing could’ve been avoided had he just been able to keep his hands off her. He’d put her in danger. He’d failed her. Sullivan studied the rise and fall of Jane’s back. She’d gone up against a mercenary. To save his life. Again. Shaking the disbelief from his thoughts, he dropped the back of his head to the pillows propping him up. He could really fall for this woman. He ran his free hand down his face. Hell, maybe he already had.

  “Call Elizabeth. I want a list of Menas’s associates, his phone records from the cell you recovered from the cabin, his laptop if you can track it down, travel records and anything else she can get her hands on. Jane said the stalking started while she was on tour. Find out who else on our suspect list has made a visit to Afghanistan.” Sullivan ripped the IV out of the catheter in his inner wrist. Stinging pain radiated up his arm, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. He’d survived worse. “Get it to me as soon as possible.”

  Anthony speed-dialed Blackhawk Security’s resident former NSA analyst and shut the door behind him. They wouldn’t have the intel for at least another hour. Enough time for Sullivan to put a new plan in place. With Menas’s team out of commission, they were back at square one. But the question had changed from who was stalking Jane to who wanted her dead enough to hire a contract killer?

  A soft moan whispered from between her lips, and Jane’s hold on his hand tightened. He stroked his fingers along the inner line of her wrist, bringing her around slowly. She lifted her head, a smile pulling at the edges of her delicate mouth. Those hazel eyes brightened as she studied him. “You’re awake.” She pulled her hand from his and pressed her palms into her eye sockets. He’d never tire of the huskiness in her voice when she woke, an experience he intended to live over and over. She sat back in the chair, stretching her neck to one side, then the other. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ll live. Thanks to you.�
�� He hadn’t been okay with her stepping between him and Menas at the time, but without her rushing the mercenary at the last second, Sullivan would’ve died from high-speed lead poisoning. He owed her his life. Again. “How many times have you saved my life now? Two or three?”

  “Three.” A flash of straight white teeth deepened the laugh lines around her mouth and Sullivan’s heart stuttered. “Should I make another reference to how the army comes in to save the day or let it be this time around?”

  “I knew you were going to go there. You grunts never could take a win humbly. Got to let the whole world know you saved the day.” He shook his head, but had never felt so relaxed, so...at peace than he did in that moment. Anthony had been right. Jane made him happy, gave him purpose beyond running Blackhawk Security, and a reason to look forward to the future. And he’d fight like hell to keep her.

  “You always know what to say.” Jane slid her hand back into his, a few cuts and bruises decorating the thin skin along the top of her hand. Her smile disappeared. Connecting that beautiful gaze with his, she rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. Not a good sign. “My leave is due to end in two days, Sullivan. The army was generous enough to give me these last few months off, but with the threat gone—” she inhaled slowly “—with Christopher gone, I need to get back to work. In Afghanistan.”

  The pad of his thumb stopped midstroke against the back of her hand. Afghanistan? “You’re leaving.”

  Not a question. Sullivan rested his head back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. How could he have been so stupid? Of course she’d planned on going back to Afghanistan. Her life was there. Her job was there. At least, until she was reassigned.

  “Unless...” she said.

  He straightened. “Unless, what?”

  “Unless I put in to be reassigned here in Anchorage.” That gut-wrenching smile of hers returned, and Sullivan couldn’t help but hang on every word. “There’s an opening at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, and I’m thinking of taking it. It’d be a step down in salary for me, but Anchorage could be my last assignment before I have the option of discharge in about a year. My CO has already said the position’s mine. All I have to do is ask.”

  “Then ask.” The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to think about what he was asking of her. He exhaled hard, but the tendons between his neck and shoulder strained. Sitting up as best he could, Sullivan ignored the pain shooting throughout his torso and brought Jane up onto the bed. Damn if he popped a few stitches. Jane was worth every ounce of agony. “I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to play games with you. I want you to ask for the transfer. I want you to stay here, with me.”

  Her heart beat fast against the soft column of her throat. He’d caught her off guard. Good. Smoothing her fingers over his arms, she studied him from the waist up. “Great. Because I already put the call in to my CO while you were passed out. He’s sending me the papers in the morning.”

  Sullivan threaded his fingers through her hair and brought her mouth to his. He drank her in, memorized her in ways he’d never experienced before. He kept the kiss soft when all he wanted to do was claim her. She was staying. For him. For them. Tilting her head to the side, she opened her mouth wide, inviting him, nipping at him. She pressed herself against him, but the leads connected to strategic points on his body were determined to block his access to her. The EKG pounded loud in his ears, an echo of his own heart rate, and Sullivan couldn’t drown the laugh rumbling through his chest. He gently framed her jaw with both hands, calluses against silk, and put a few small centimeters between them. “Any more of this and the nurses are going to run in here thinking I’m having a heart attack.”

  His hospital room door opened, but he couldn’t focus on anything but her. His Jane.

  “As much as I’d like to leave you two to go at it like rabbits,” Anthony said, “I’ve got that new intel you wanted.”

  Sullivan’s stomach sank. Right. The world wouldn’t stop just for them. “Anything we can use?”

  “New intel?” Jane studied Anthony, then turned back to him, eyebrows drawn inward. She checked the clock on the wall. “Oh. If this is another case, I can go. I’m supposed to give my statement to Anchorage PD in a few minutes anyway.” She gathered her jacket in one hand and stood. “Then I need to go home and change.”

  Sullivan clamped his hand around her arm, staring up at her without any idea how he would tell her the truth. He owed her an answer, owed her far more than that, but his instincts screamed he was about to lose Jane all over again. Right when they’d agreed to give this a shot. But if she discovered the truth on her own? He’d never see her again. “It’s not a new case, Jane.” He licked his bottom lip, a nervous habit of hers he’d obviously inherited since setting sights on her in his office. “It’s your case.”

  “What do you mean? Christopher is dead. My case is closed.” Her eyes narrowed as seconds passed. Confusion slipped over her perfect features. “I shot him seven times, Sullivan. He’s officially been declared dead.”

  “Christopher Menas was paid to take you out, Jane.” He clamped his hand around hers, desperate to keep her within arm’s reach. Not for her—Jane was strong—but for his own selfish need to hold on to her. “And whoever hired him is still after you.”

  * * *

  “WHAT?” PANIC THREATENED to overwhelm her. No. The nightmare was over. She was supposed to get her life back. She’d put in for the transfer to Anchorage to start over. She and Sullivan were going to try to make this work. The room spun and Jane gripped the sheets for balance. Someone had hired Menas to come after her? “Who...who would hire a mercenary team to take me out?”

  She was one woman. A lawyer for the army with no record of sending innocent soldiers to their deaths, not someone with a highly politicized agenda. She mostly dealt with divorces, immigration and passport issues, and reenlistment questions when she wasn’t assigned to prosecute cases. She wasn’t important.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Anthony has worked with men like Menas before. I’m hoping we can get a hit off a source in one of his circles. I also asked my NSA contact to pull phone records.” Sullivan wrapped his strong, steady hand around hers. “Menas would’ve had contact with whoever hired him. We’re going to find out how.”

  This wasn’t happening.

  Christopher was dead. Despite her initial intentions to bring him to justice, she’d killed him and almost lost Sullivan in the process. Her hands shook as she dropped her hold on the sheets and fisted a handful of her own hair instead. Thirty hours. That was all the relief she’d had with Christopher’s death. What was she supposed to do now?

  Slivers of blood seeped through Sullivan’s bandages. A bullet wound, a knife to the gut and a slash across the arm. She couldn’t remember how many stitches the doctor had told her they’d had to sew in to keep him together, but he couldn’t go through that again.

  “Jane, I need to know what’s going through your head, baby.” Sullivan rubbed small circles into the back of her hand. The weight of those captivating sea-blue eyes studying her was almost suffocating. “Tell me.”

  She couldn’t go home. Couldn’t go back to work. And she couldn’t keep putting the man she’d started to fall for in harm’s way. Not for her.

  Whoever’d hired Christopher Menas and his team had done their research on her, and if Christopher was reporting back, they knew she’d recruited Sullivan to keep her safe. She exhaled hard. Sullivan had done his job. He’d found her stalker. Her muscles tightened. Now she had to learn to protect herself. Jane stood, slipping out of his grasp a little too easily. He’d let her go. Because that was the kind of man he was. Considerate. Caring. Never one to thwart her own agency. She headed for the door. “I have to go.”

  “For how long?” he asked.

  The rough edge to his tone revealed exactly what she’d feared, and Jane stopped cold. He’d eithe
r read her mind or read her expression, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She had to get out of here. Away from him. Away from the whole Blackhawk Security team. The nightmare wasn’t ever going to end. They were all still in danger as long as she stuck around. Anthony waited in front of the door, capable of keeping her here if Sullivan ordered. But he wouldn’t. She had to believe that.

  “Jane, we can fight this thing together. You don’t have to run.” His voice washed over her in comforting waves, and it took everything she had not to turn back around. “Please. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Then you know exactly how I feel.” Jane turned, her heart overriding every logical thought speeding through her mind. She should’ve kept on walking, should’ve shoved Anthony out of the way and left this all behind. But she couldn’t end things with Sullivan like this. Not after everything they’d been through. Five days, that was all it’d taken for her to fall for him. How was that possible? “Do you know how hard it was for me to watch you bleed out after Christopher was finished with you?”

  She fought back the memories, her throat closing.

  Sullivan straightened in the bed. “I can imagine.”

  “Those were the worst two minutes of my life, Sullivan.” She hugged her jacket into her middle when all she really wanted to hold on to was lying in a hospital bed only a few feet away. “I warned you what happens to people who get close to me. And look where you are. Look at your body.” She motioned to the darkening bandages taped all over his chest and shoulder. “But how is it going to end the next time? Or the time after that? I care about you, about what you want and need, and this isn’t it.”

  “Jane, I can—”

  “Take care of yourself,” she finished for him. “I know. But you did your job. Christopher is dead. Now it’s time for me to take care of myself.” Jane headed toward the door, her insides twisting harder than ever before.