For what felt like the tenth time that day, a gunshot split through the air. Charles tipped sideways, eyes wide, and fell to the floor.
Confused, Jackson whipped his head to the left.
“And that is why you never agree to be partners with someone.”
Michael didn’t lower his gun as he moved around one of the beams. A choice that didn’t fare well for Jackson. He brought Charles’s gun up and tried to take cover, but it was too late.
* * *
JACKSON RAN THROUGH the maze of steel and concrete like a bat out of Hell.
He had no doubt that the few yards of a head start he had on Michael were the only thing keeping him alive. However, one misstep and he was done for. No question about it. If Michael had an opening, he wouldn’t hesitate in killing him. And Jackson wasn’t that confident that with his current surroundings he could stop the man.
Jackson might have had a sketchy background, wrought with disorderly conducts thanks to bar brawls and self-defense—plus a few run-ins with other unsavory characters over the years—but he knew his aim wasn’t as true as the mercenary’s. It was one thing to shoot paper targets, bottles in a field, or even a man a few feet away in a lobby but it was an entirely different beast to hit a trained man bent on killing you with the hefty advantage of a surprise attack. Plus, if he’d added up correctly, Charles’s gun was low on ammo. If he had any chance of winning their duel, he’d need to make every shot count.
So, with more pain than he’d ever felt in his life, his heart pounding and his mind racing, Jackson wove his way through what was becoming his personal construction nightmare as far away from Nikki as he could get.
Just thinking about the woman, unconscious, defenseless and hurt, gave him a second wind. It also gave him something he realized he’d been working without since the car crash.
Complete clarity.
He ran the length of the unfinished building until he hit the corner of the nonexistent office. Instead of turning to follow the outline of the connected building, Jackson pivoted around a beam and raised his gun.
It was time for a last stand.
Chapter Sixteen
Nikki wished the gunfire would stop. Each violent bang racked her with fear so acute for the bodyguard that it stabbed into her chest, adding to the pain already warring within her. Two more had sounded before she’d been able to fully stand.
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good.
She waited for another shot, unsure of what she would do if they got closer. Looking around, she could see nothing that would be a good match for a gun. Heck, she didn’t even know where she was.
Footsteps caught her attention, cutting off any thoughts of coming up with a game plan. Trying to pull herself to her full height, Nikki barely managed to stand when Jackson rounded the corner.
“Thank God,” she exclaimed, overwhelmingly happy to see he was okay. But then, just as quickly, her heart sank. “Oh, no, Jackson!”
The bodyguard was struggling. Even around the half smile he was giving her, she could see that plain as day. One hand hung loose at his side while the other pressed above his chest, near his shoulder. Blood covered that hand, and Nikki realized with horror that one of the gunshots she’d heard had found its way into him.
“The other guy got it worse,” Jackson tried to joke. “I’m not the only one with a bullet in him.” Nikki took a step forward and nearly fell. Despite his injuries she saw the panic in his eyes as he managed to close the space between them in a flash. “Take it easy there,” he chided, voice strained.
“Jackson, you’ve been shot!”
He made a show of looking down as she reached out for him. “Really? Hadn’t noticed.”
Nikki’s touch seemed to zap the last of his energy. He fell against her. A backward trust fall that surprised her. She tried her best to keep them both, upright, but with the left side of her body nothing but very large pins and needles and her right ankle sprained, all Nikki could do was fall with him to the floor.
“Are you okay?” she asked on reflex after she righted them both. It was clear he wasn’t. Still, he nodded and leaned against the back of the nook she’d been hidden in.
“It’s funny,” he said. “It’s like I never left here.”
Nikki wanted to ask what that meant when he winced and sucked in a breath.
“We need to get you help,” she decided. Once again she tried to stand. This time, however, it wasn’t her body or pain that stopped her. Instead, it was Jackson. He took her hand and stilled her.
“There’s nothing around here,” he said, his smile disappearing. “Charles is down and I took care of Michael but that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet. I wouldn’t put it past Andrew to send more men after you if he has them. Stay hidden until Calvin finds us.”
Nikki gently pulled her wrist out of his grasp.
“I’m not going to hide,” she said. “Not while you’re hurt and I can do something.”
Jackson’s expression softened.
“You can do something,” he said. “You can stay with me until the cops find us. I just look worse than I am.” A small smile pulled up the corner of his lips. Then, just as quickly, Jackson gave her a look of pleading so powerful that her resolve cracked. “Please,” he added, voice laced with raw emotion.
The world seemed to fall away. If she left him now she might be able to get help, but at the same time, she realized that if she left him now he might not be there when she got back. In the moment, that possibility was almost too much to bear.
So Nikki grabbed his hand and moved so that she was facing him, her feet pushed beneath his outstretched legs. He tried for a smile. It was weak, she knew that, but it was also genuine.
And it broke her heart.
For the first time in a long while, Nikki’s eyes began to water. When she spoke, there was nothing but sorrow and deep regret.
“I’m so sorry, Jackson,” she nearly cried. “This—all of this—is my fault.”
Jackson looked confused, eyebrow raised, but Nikki wasn’t about to sit there and let him deny her this burning truth.
“If I’d never hired you, if I’d never said those things about Andrew,” she continued, tears nearly spilling over. “If I’d only saved Morgan, none of this would have happened. And you—you’d be okay. I’m so sorry.”
Jackson didn’t speak for a moment. His wondrous, soulful, so beautiful blue eyes found her own undeserving gaze.
“I was working two jobs when it happened,” he finally said. When she was about to question him, Jackson gave her a look that said to hold on. What he was saying was important. Something he needed her to hear. A plea that blossomed into a vulnerability like the one she’d seen earlier.
“I remember coming into the house just absolutely exhausted. I hadn’t had a real break in days but I was trying to make as much money as I could to help out, so I didn’t care. I remember he was sitting at the dining table with a plate of leftovers in front of him. He said they were for me and I was so beat I didn’t question why he was being so strange.”
Jackson shifted a little, as if he were physically moving through the memory. The movement made him wince, but still he continued. “We talked about nothing for a while—the weather, football, even a crush I was nursing—until he told me he needed to go. It was early in the morning and he hadn’t had a job in a while, so I asked what he was going to do.”
Jackson’s grip momentarily tightened. A pulse of emotion that had escaped with the memory. “‘It’s time I teach them a lesson. One they won’t forget.’”
Nikki felt her skin crawl. She kept the impulse to shiver at bay.
“I asked what that meant, but he never answered. Just left. In hindsight, I realize how angry he seemed in that moment, but I was so tired, so ready to take a break, that I di
dn’t follow him. Didn’t think to question him anymore,” he continued. “So, because I wanted to go to sleep so badly, eleven men and women were gunned down by a man I could have stopped.”
Nikki felt her heart shatter further as Jackson finished the story that had made him known as the son of a man who snapped over a drunk driving arrest that cost him his job and ruined the lives of eleven families. The same incident that had turned all those families against him, the one man who could have stopped the attacker or at least warned the victims ahead of time.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tried, sure of her words, voice stronger than before. “You didn’t know what was going to happen. If you had, you would have stopped it. You didn’t kill those people, Jackson. He did. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“And you shouldn’t blame yourself,” he said, without an ounce of hesitation.
Nikki blinked, stunned at the force behind each word.
“You didn’t kill Morgan Avery, you didn’t make some elaborate plan to have yourself killed, and you didn’t shoot me. So don’t you tell me any of this is your fault, because I’m telling you right now that it’s not.”
Nikki was speechless. Since Morgan’s death, no one had outright blamed her for it. Not even Morgan’s family. By the same token, no one had absolved her of the guilt she’d always carried, either. Even the boys who dealt with the regret and loss in their own ways hadn’t touched the subject past a mention here or there. It was like the elephant in the room had hidden in the shadows. Sometimes they’d forget, but when they remembered they didn’t talk about it.
Now Orion’s newest bodyguard, and a man she’d thought so little of after their first meeting, was laying it all out on the line for her. It was disarming yet somehow felt right that it was him.
Jackson squeezed her hand.
“It’s okay to move on,” he continued. “No matter what happens, you always remember that, okay?”
The pressure on her hand again finally broke her wordlessness. Still, she didn’t know what she was going to say until she was already saying it.
“Kind words from a man whose hair is too shaggy,” she whispered, a smile pulling up her lips. She brought her left hand, painful needles and all, up to the blond halo of hair and ran her fingers through it to add to her playful jest. Jackson smiled and closed his eyes at the touch.
And then didn’t open them.
“Jackson?”
The bodyguard didn’t move.
“Jackson!”
His eyes fluttered open.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Still here. I just need to rest a moment.”
Nikki let out an exhale that made her body sag. The relief she felt, though, was short-lived.
“You need help,” she said. “And I’m going to go get it.”
Jackson’s eyebrows drew together, as if he was gearing up to scold her, but Nikki wasn’t having it. She rocked back on her feet and, through the pain of everything that had happened in the last two days, stood with determination. “I’m not asking for your permission, so telling me not to go won’t do any good.”
Jackson opened his mouth before closing it again. He nodded.
“Take a right up ahead and you can follow the building straight to the road,” he said, pointing in the direction he’d come. “Nikki, be careful.”
“You, too.”
Nikki turned and slowly began to walk away from the man who had saved her life countless times over the span of two days. It was her turn to return the favor.
* * *
NIKKI WENT PAST Charles’s body without stopping. She’d seen the blood and the way he was lying against the concrete. He wasn’t alive. He couldn’t hurt her and she couldn’t help him. Not that she thought she would, even if he’d crawled toward her begging. For all she knew he’d been the one to shoot her bodyguard.
She limped past him and instead focused on the road in the distance, not the pain in her ankle or the weird, wild changing pressure that spiked up the left side of her body. While she knew Jackson needed medical attention and fast, she couldn’t deny that she was still worried about whatever partial injection she’d been given. She just hoped it wouldn’t have a permanent effect on her. The only reason she was walking right now was the need to help her blue-eyed savior. It put power behind her resolve. Power she needed.
The building ended and Nikki limped her way right up to the road, kicking up dirt and worry in her wake. The sun was starting to set and she knew it wouldn’t be long before darkness covered them. While it reduced the heat, it also meant chances of rescue would decrease. So she needed to find someone or something now. Looking to her right, she could see no cars or people, no pay phones or businesses that looked open or even functional. She looked the other way and could see the wreck in the distance. She put a hand over her mouth as she saw the flipped SUV they had been in. It squeezed at her heart, knowing that Jackson had somehow managed to get her out of it and taken her so far away to hide her. To keep her safe. She was so focused on imagining what had happened when she was unconscious that she nearly missed the car parked at the stoplight, a few yards from the wreckage.
Nikki’s heart sped up as she started toward it, cautious of her surroundings. However, that all went out the window when she was close enough to see two men standing in front of the car.
“Thank God,” she said, taking in their normal attire and concerned looks as they faced the wreck. They turned, faces only crinkling further in confusion. “You don’t know how happy I am to find people.” Nikki put her hand against the back door of their car, hoping they wouldn’t mind, to catch her breath.
The man closest to her had dark skin, bright eyes and thick eyebrows that slammed together at, what she guessed, was the rough state of her appearance. His friend, a man much shorter than herself with a pair of sunglasses on despite the low light, had an expression that switched from confusion to something else she couldn’t quite understand.
“Were you in that thing?” the short one asked, pointing back to the SUV. Nikki nodded and, for a reason she’d never be able to explain, glanced in the backseat of the vehicle she was against.
Her blood ran cold.
Two more men were lying across the backseat. Gunshot wounds matching Charles’s.
Nikki looked back at the men in front of her, already knowing there was no way to hide that she’d seen who were probably the original owners of the car.
“If it makes you feel better,” Bright Eyes said, now smiling, “we were going to take you even if you hadn’t seen our friends.”
Nikki turned on her heel but didn’t get far beyond that. The short man might have lacked height, but he made up for it in strength. He grabbed her around her waist while his buddy opened up the back door. She kicked and lashed out and twisted this way and that, but still the short man managed to sling her into the backseat and on top of the dead men. She scrambled to turn around, trying desperately not to hurt men who were already dead.
“I’ll follow you,” Bright Eyes said to the man already walking away as if they’d already won, as if they’d already beaten her.
And maybe they had, but Nikki realized that she didn’t care about herself at that moment. Instead, she was thinking about Jackson, hidden and hurt. All by himself. So, as the man pushed the door shut, Nikki thrust her leg in the way, keeping it open.
Then she screamed for all she was worth, hoping that someone who wasn’t on Andrew’s payroll would hear her.
“Stop that!” yelled the man. He flung the door open enough to grab her leg and tried to wrangle it back into the car. When he couldn’t stop her high-pitched wail or shut the door, he balled his fist and punched out.
But Nikki had had enough.
It wasn’t her life she was fighting for right now.
She grabbed the man’s outstretched arm, narr
owly dodging the hit, and pulled him to her. With her left leg already out of the car she thrust her foot up as his body came to her and hit him hard where the sun didn’t shine. He recoiled with a roar of pain and folded on the asphalt. It was enough of a gap to allow her to get out of the car and try to run.
“I don’t think so,” said Bright Eyes from somewhere behind her.
No sooner had she decided to turn and fight the man than the sound of an approaching vehicle made them both pause. It turned onto the road and sped right up to them.
“Backup,” she heard the man say.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
The black van hit its brakes a few yards in front of her at the same time the back and passenger doors flung open.
Two men jumped out, guns raised.
Nikki nearly cried.
Chapter Seventeen
Oliver Quinn and Mark Tranton aimed their guns at the two men behind her with equal looks of anger and promise.
“If you so much as move, we’ll shoot!” Mark yelled. His voice was a boom that echoed through the world around them. The men behind her silenced.
Nikki stared, surprise quieting her, too.
The driver’s-side door opened and Jonathan Carmichael jumped out, gun also in hand. He didn’t raise it, though. Instead he moved quickly to where Nikki was rooted to the spot.
“Nik,” he said, voice filled with concern. “You’re okay now.” He put his hands on her shoulders and lowered his eyes to meet her stare. “Nikki?”
“How are you here?” was all she could say.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said. “But I’ll explain later. Right now let’s get you away from them.” He threw a look of pure hatred at her attackers.
That shook her completely out of her surprised haze.
“Jackson,” she hurried. “He’s been shot. He needs help.” She pointed over their shoulders.
“We had Calvin on speakerphone when we pulled up,” he said. “He said he was sending the closest cruiser and EMT our way.”
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