SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  “That’s a little presumptuous, I think. I have a lot of stuff, Hilan. I’m as rich as hell in my own right, I have a lot of connections, and now that I’ve been cleared and have the mayor kissing my ass, I have more than a little pull. So tell me, if it isn’t money, then what is it? Someone is pulling your strings, and from what I’ve managed to gather, it’s someone a lot smarter than either you or Cameron Black could ever hope to be. Does he have your family? Maybe a friend you want back? I know that whoever was behind it all was threatening Black’s ex-wife and child. I could help you with that, if that’s it,” I say softly, raising my chin when he snorts, laughing with a boom of scorn that is loud enough that I swallow and look at the door.

  If the guys didn’t hear that, then…

  “You know what? I like you. You remind me of my ma before she passed. She also had balls of steel and didn’t beat around the bush like most bitches do. But, just like old Ma, you’re short-sighted. I owe a debt, Mrs. Hart. A long-standing debt that honor demands I fulfill. That, plus a few other reasons, is why I will kill you,” he says simply, his expression turning soft when I shudder and swallow loudly.

  “No debt should be paid in blood; didn’t anyone ever tell you that? I am innocent, and so is Cleo. This person—they don’t care about that or see that we have families who love us. What makes your debt more important than my life? Who is it that wants my sister, and, more importantly, why? I think that I deserve to know the whys of it before you kill me, and, from one fighter to another, you owe me the truth, at the very least,” I say, my voice shaking at the end when he fists his hands and shakes his head.

  “What does it matter? Make this easy on yourself, Rosetta, and don’t fight it. I don’t want it to be painful for you.”

  Painful. Huh. I’ve never really thought about that part of it, I guess, but now, staring down at this killer, I get the sense that if he wanted to, he could make things so painful that death would be a relief.

  “I just want to know. You had me at your mercy before, drugged and out cold. Why not kill me then?” I ask, biting my lip when he reaches behind his back, and I see his hand wrapped around a hunting blade.

  Oh, Jesus. Shit. That thing looks razor-sharp and as long as my forearm.

  Don’t lose it. Just stay calm. Panicking will get you killed.

  Panicking isn’t the only thing that will kill me, you stupid bitch! Do you see the size of that thing? Oh, Jesus. God help me. I can’t go out like this. I’m supposed to have babies and brag about them to Cleo and the others. I’m supposed to get my boobs redone at forty and spend my fifties topless on that beach in Greece while Zeus oils my skin, exclaiming over my still-youthful ass. I can’t die before I’ve done the things that I want to do. I just can’t.

  “That was a mercy. Of sorts. A last warning to back off that you didn’t heed for very long,” he says, sighing loudly. “You see, that’s the problem with you women—you just don’t listen. You were spared, a gift that was given until you started asking your questions again. I tried to warn you that day in the courtroom, tried to make you see. And then you had to go and get that puppy of yours to start sniffing around again. That’s on you, Rosetta. That man wasn’t involved until you brought him in, and now…”

  Another long sigh that makes me freeze, because it sounds like he’s saying…

  “Please tell me that you didn’t hurt Brent,” I beg, the sick twisting in my gut turning to bile when Hilan purses his lips and gives me a sympathetic look.

  “He went sniffing and started asking the wrong questions.”

  Oh, God—no. Oh, God, I think, a horrified breath of sound leaving me as tears fill my eyes and start to streak downward. I’ve known Brent ever since I started at Donald and Donaldson and worked my first case. I helped him with his divorce, one of the few times that I helped a guy fleece his wife, because she’d been cheating on him for almost three years and had passed off another guy’s kid as his. Not that it mattered to Brent, because he loved Josh like his own and refused to give him up. I helped him apply for joint custody, and helped him keep alimony down to a minimum, because he said that if all he paid was child support, then Josh wouldn’t have a good place to live.

  I loved that man like a brother, after we dated for a while but eventually figured out that the spark just wasn’t there. He was there for me with Cleo, and he’s been with me ever since. He can’t be dead. He just can’t be, I tell myself, sobbing out loud when Hilan takes a deep breath and sighs, almost mournfully.

  “I didn’t want to tell you that. I told you, I don’t want to make this painful.”

  “You killed my friend. He was a good man, a protector, just like you were supposed to be. What kind of man kills innocent people? Sure, okay, I wasn’t too happy with Donald and the others, but they were not bad people. And Cleo! You were in that apartment, weren’t you?” I seethe, my grief turning into white-hot rage. “What kept you from killing them? What made you stop before you killed Cleo?”

  “Orders. I’m a soldier, born and bred. I kept following orders, even when I lost my place. This is no different, and, like I said, if not for this debt, I wouldn’t hurt a single one of you. But it’s there, it needs to be paid, and this is the price. You had your chance, and you blew it.”

  “Fuck you! Screw this,” I scream, leaping over the couch so fast that I see his eyes go wide.

  I don’t stop, don’t hesitate, and only turn to see where he is as I run, feeling my bare feet slapping against the granite floor for mere seconds before I hear the thunder of boots. It’s loud, almost a deafening drumbeat that I can’t allow myself to focus on in case panic overwhelms me. I need to get away, and, while we were talking, I was going over the only option I have. We’re four stories up from the ground, a blessing that I will thank Zeus for later, because that man has the paranoid mind of a genius. Fire hazard, he said, when I asked why we wouldn’t get the upper floor, and right now, I am grateful. I can’t make a four-floor jump, but what I can do is get to the door in the back and get out to the fire stairs that Zeus had built into the building.

  “Bitch,” I hear him bellow, the sound of my own breaths mingling with his footfalls.

  I can’t let that influence my actions, though, even if every step is an unsteady tremble of fear. The kitchen is behind me, and the hallway to the back of the apartment is flying by, when I feel fingers clutching at the ends of my hair. Screaming, I run harder and ignore the pain of the ripping strands as they come out of my head, freeing me from what could have been an end-game situation.

  There’s not much else to do but keep going, and I hit the back door with a terrified, muffled sob, keying in the code so fast that I don’t even think about it before I am out of the apartment, slamming the door behind me and panting as a body hits the wood, yelling out curses. Running faster, I spot the door to the fire stairs about twenty feet ahead, at the end of the same hallway that leads back by our apartment. I don’t want to go past it, and I feel my feet slow in terror of its opening just as I reach it, but nothing happens as I hurry past.

  Getting there takes a matter of seconds, and getting to the stairs using another code takes a few seconds more, but I finally fall into the stairwell, safe—at least for the moment—as the gloom around me pulls me in. I’ve never been in this part of the building, and I can honestly say that it’s as creepy as heck to be in an unlit area, with shadows jumping out at me at every turn, as paranoia takes hold. Where is Hilan? Did he get out of the apartment? Does he know that I’d go for the stairs? Is he hunting me down right now?

  The questions cause fear to grow in me even as I start to force my mind to work, staying exactly where I am because, in all honesty, I’m too weak with fear to move from my spot and go down the stairs. The security guys weren’t in the hallway, I think, swallowing down the bile that surfaces at the thought. I didn’t see bodies or encounter blood in the hallway, though. Where were—

  Rosetta Hart! Would you stop stalling here, and move? Get downstairs!


  Obeying my inner voice, I shakily force myself off the wall and cling to the railing, slowly, ever so slowly, creeping down the stairs until I reach the door to the next floor. Luckily, I know some of the codes that Zeus made me memorize just in case of an emergency. At the door, I key in the code, making a mental note to have Zeus install lighting in here separate from the fire alarms. It’s only when I step into the hallway on the next floor that I realize that the lights aren’t out because of the lack of alarms. The floor itself is dark, as if the power has been shut off.

  Did Hilan—

  Of course he did, you idiot. Now stop thinking and asking questions, and move. Knock on the doors! Get a phone. Call the goddamn cops.

  I need to call the cops, and so I wobble towards a door and start pounding on it, a sense of urgency suddenly filling me, and ominous dread replacing what little relief I felt at getting away. No one is answering, and pounding on the door of the one other unit yields no results, either, until I realize that this floor is empty!

  Shit. Oh, shit. Don’t freak out. Just get back to the stairs and get to the next floor, I whisper silently, my body moving on autopilot.

  But when I reach the fire door, I realize that going down via the stairs isn’t possible. I know the codes for this door and my own, but no matter how hard I think, I can’t remember the codes for the lower floors. Shit. Dammit. Okay, so I can use the elevator—it’ll be okay. Hilan’s probably already moving, but he’d assume that I’d use the stairs. Getting trapped on the stairs is not smart, not if he’s going in there, which I can assume that he will probably do. With no real idea, though, I have to take a gamble, and so I move towards the elevator and push the button, nearly hysterical as I wait for the doors to spring open.

  When they do, and hands reach out to grab me, I scream bloody murder and try to fight, kicking and clawing so frantically that I pause only when a hand slaps me, and someone grabs hold of my shoulders, slamming me into the elevator wall and shaking me back to reality.

  “Would you shut the hell up?”

  Sin?

  “Sin!” I scream, more prayer than question, as my eyes clear, and I see her standing in front of me, the other hand letting go and distracting me enough to make me look to my left, where Mindy is standing—wide-eyed, panicked, and jamming at the button on the panel as if her life depends on it.

  She stops only when the doors close, but immediately starts to wring her hands as she turns to look back at me.

  “This was a bad idea! I told you that it was a bad idea to come here! Oh, my God, that guy almost caught us!” she yells at Sin, panting and near-hopping out of her own skin.

  “It wasn’t a bad idea! I told you that something was wrong when Nathaniel didn’t answer your calls, you idiot.”

  “Oh, God, Nate! I forgot all about Nate. Where is he? Who was that guy? Where the hell did he get that machete?” Mindy screams hysterically, stopping only when Sin slaps her back to a state just a notch lower than outright hysteria.

  As for me, I finally blink away my shock and find my voice, still uncomprehending but getting to the point of sanity again.

  “What the heck are you doing here? Not that I’m ungrateful, because I’m terrified as hell, and I really, really wasn’t doing okay on my own.”

  “Nathaniel wasn’t answering Mindy’s calls,” Sin tells me, her breath stopping her words when we feel a jolt and then slam into the walls as the elevator stops abruptly, halting our downward progress. “What the hell was that? Did we stop moving?”

  “Oh, Lord. Sweet Jesus, help us! We’re not moving. It stopped. Why did it stop?” Mindy screams, slapping at the panel until she’s pressed every button, though they don’t light up at all.

  Power, I think, struggling to think logically despite the shock and fear that are thrumming through me. The power’s been cut off.

  “Stop it! Stop screaming,” Sin yells when Mindy starts to run around in circles, her movements becoming jerkier and more uncoordinated as the seconds tick by. “We have to stop panicking and calm down. We are not going to help ourselves by freaking out about this.”

  “Did you see that knife? It was huge, Sinai. That guy came running out of Rosetta’s apartment ready to use that thing. He’s going to find us and kill us. Oh, Lord God, please don’t let him kill me. All I was doing was checking on my boyfriend,” Mindy sniffles, her croaked words turning to sobs that wrench my heart because I loved Nate, too.

  I didn’t even know that she was dating Nathaniel. Not that it surprises me, because, honestly speaking, and without the prejudice of the past, Mindy is quite hot in her own right.

  “A boyfriend that we didn’t find because he wasn’t there. Where is everyone, Rosetta, and what the hell is going on? Was that Hilan I saw running out of your apartment with a huge-ass knife at the ready?” Sin asks, her calm demeanor going a long way towards helping me calm down and take deeper breaths than the shallow, frantic pants of air that I was taking in before.

  With the calm that I gain, I start feeling a little less unsteady, and now that I’m not quite as harried as I was during my flight down the stairs, I can do more than pound at the walls like Mindy is now doing, and actually form some semblance of a rational thought.

  “He was there for me. To kill me. He said—he said that it was a debt that he was repaying, an old debt, and that he had to kill me because I keep looking for answers about who is after Cleo,” I tell her, blowing out a deep breath to regulate my inhalations.

  I need to be steady now and not panic. As Sin said, and as poor Mindy is now proving, losing it isn’t going to help us.

  “What else did he say?” Sin asks as Mindy keeps pounding, though she slows down when it becomes apparent that no one can hear her.

  “Nothing. Just that he has to do it in order to fulfill a debt, and that’s when I ran.”

  We need to get out of here. Now. Because as surely as I know that Hilan won’t stop until either he’s dead or I am, I know that he somehow shut off the power and is coming for us. How the elevator worked while the floor itself was in darkness, I can’t say, unless…he was herding me this way. Watching me—

  “Oh, God. Oh, shit! He pushed me into the elevator when he couldn’t get into the stairwell,” I yell at Sin, my nerves firing up with panic again.

  “What?”

  “I—I was in the stairway, the emergency fire exit that Zeus incorporated into the building. The doors have keypads that require a code for access. I was in there, and then when I came out onto a lower floor to get help, the power was off. But not to the elevator. If it was a total blackout—”

  “The elevator would have been out, too,” she finishes, her curses joining Mindy’s wail of terror.

  I don’t blame her, and maybe it’s because I can relate that I pull her close and hug her, trying to convey comfort, when inside, I feel anything but. I’m no G.I. fucking Jane, and, contrary to what most folks think about themselves, none of us are John McClane. Not even Bruce freaking Willis. I can’t just get out of here, climb up an elevator shaft, and miraculously save us all. I’m just a woman with human failings, and right now, my biggest failing is that I am so scared that my body wants to collapse under me.

  “We’re all gonna die!” Mindy wails, clinging to me while her tears soak the skin at my shoulder.

  “No, we aren’t. We need to get out of here. If he herded you this way, then he’s coming, Rosetta, and if he managed to shut off the power, then he can turn it back on to get in here. We need to get out,” Sin tells me, her voice hard even as it trembles.

  “How? The elevator has stopped, Sin, and we’re sitting ducks—okay, Mindy, hush now. I didn’t mean it. We’re going to be just fine. Just fine,” I tell her soothingly, shooting Sin a look.

  No joke—if I have to get this crying, sobbing mess of a woman out of here, we are all fucked. She’s nearly hysterical and clinging to me like a vine, and if I didn’t have to somehow save us, I’d almost feel sorry for her. It can’t be easy having been raised a compl
ete coward.

  “We’re going to die. That man is going to make the doors open, and then he’s going to stab us all to death. Oh, Jesus, Lord in heaven, I pray…” she starts to mutter while still wailing, her terror so strong that I don’t think she’s thinking clearly.

  Thank God that Sin and I are, though, because we both lower Mindy’s fragile, sobbing body to the corner of the elevator and then lunge for the doors together, our fingers digging at the small slit where the doors meet.

  I will say this again, mostly because I need something to focus on while I try in vain to pry the doors open: we are not in any way Die Hard material. No, indeed. The amount of strength required to jam our fingers between the doors isn’t easy to muster, and let me tell you this—when they do that shit in the movies, and the doors just slide open…it’s not fucking true!

  “Pull, Rosetta! Goddammit, pull as hard as you can!” Sin screams at me as we manage to pry the doors far enough apart to fit our fingers inside.

  Ignoring the pain of a broken nail and the strain on my fingertips, I dig deeper, curl my fingers around the door as far as I can, and pull, straining so hard that I feel the muscles in my arms start to burn and protest against the effort. It takes what feels like an eternity, and the doors don’t just pop open all the way, but eventually, Sin and I get them pulled apart wide enough that we can see an opening.

  I’ve watched Speed, and I absolutely love that scene where the elevator gets stuck, and people have to be pulled out through that small opening. What I don’t love about this real-life version, though, is that the opening is tight and barely big enough for us to crawl through. It’s low and close to the floor, with the very bottom of the elevator suspended just past the wall of the shaft and revealing the opening to the next floor. We’ll have to belly-crawl and fall onto the floor from here, and all I can think about is being halfway out when the elevator turns back on.

  “We have to move!” Sin yells, her eyes wide and filled with the same fear that I have.

  “No! No way. I am not—”