by Lisa Childs
Both men nodded. “What’s wrong?” Logan asked. Because it was clear that something was. The young man was flushed and breathing hard.
“There’s a shoot-out in the parking garage! I called 911, but I don’t think the police will get here in time. So I need to go down there.” His throat moved as he swallowed hard, obviously afraid. “I need backup.”
Annalise’s heart hammered against her ribs. “Nick’s in the parking garage.” He’d gone down to get his vehicle to pick her up. Just like her car getting stolen again, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Nick had to be involved in that shoot-out.
“I think Nikki’s down there, too,” Cooper said.
Logan’s face paled, and his hand shook slightly as he reached beneath his jacket—probably for his weapon. But his holster hung empty from his arm. He glanced at her. “I told Nick...”
That he would protect her. She had heard him, and she’d thought it was ridiculous that they thought she needed protection inside the hospital. Obviously they’d been right.
“Go,” she urged him.
He shook his head and turned to Cooper. “You go.”
Cooper was already grabbing the arm of the security guard and pulling him across the lobby.
“Be careful!” Logan called after him. “And make sure they’re okay!”
Cooper glanced back and nodded. But he could only do his best—if he arrived in time. Annalise worried that he and the security guard would be too late to help.
Nick couldn’t be gone.
She pressed her hands over her belly again. And the baby shifted within her womb. Her child couldn’t lose his father before she was even born.
* * *
As Cooper Payne shouldered open the door to the parking garage stairwell, shots reverberated inside the concrete structure. He kept the security guard behind him, shielding him as he would have a Payne Protection Agency client or a fellow serviceman. Fortunately he’d the foresight to leave his weapon with security, so he’d retrieved it before they’d left. He clasped the Glock in both hands, swinging the barrel in each direction he looked.
Where the hell were they? The noise faded to a faint echo as the shots stopped.
His heart stopped, too—for just a second. From his years in combat, he knew why the firing ceased. Because everyone was dead...
His blood chilled, and the hair lifted on his nape. He still kept his hair short, as he had when he’d been enlisted. His brothers wore theirs longer—except for Nick, who had also been a Marine. Nick looked the most like him, and they were nearly the same age.
His half brother was too young to die. Cooper bit the inside of his cheek, resisting the urge to call out to him. To Nikki...
Had she gone down to the parking garage? She hadn’t said goodbye. She had simply disappeared from the hospital. Nikki always did that when Nick was around, though. She couldn’t handle being near the evidence of their father’s betrayal—couldn’t stop blaming Nick for what their father had done.
He hoped she had left before Nick had come down for his SUV, and she was safe.
Cooper slowly moved forward, keeping low so he could duck for cover if the firing started again. Because he was staying down, he saw the blood—the droplets of it sprayed across the concrete. Someone had been hit.
How badly? And who?
Then he saw the SUV. Like the Payne Protection company vehicles, it was black, but this one had all the windows shot out, the glass scattered across the concrete like the blood. The government plate on the back confirmed his fears. It was Nick’s.
But where the hell was Nick?
He lowered one knee to the ground as he leaned down farther, looking for bodies on the other side of the vehicle. He found more blood—small pools of it. Maybe more than one person had been hit since there was blood on both sides of the SUV.
As he looked around, he noticed a Payne Protection vehicle parked nearby—not one of the black SUVs but Nikki’s small coupe. He recognized it from the furry pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
The former cops—Logan and Parker—gave her so much crap about those dice. They had warned she might get a ticket for obstructed vision. Nikki probably didn’t even like them, but she was too stubborn to remove them now. She was too stubborn to give in.
Even if she’d had the chance to drive off, she would have stood her ground. She would have fought to prove herself. That was why Cooper had hired her for his team. He wanted to convince her to believe in herself.
“What the hell happened here?” the security guard wondered aloud, his voice unsteady with fear.
Cooper shook his head. He hadn’t holstered his weapon. He gripped it tightly as he moved around the coupe to the passenger side. The door hung open, and so did the glove box. A box of ammo lay on the concrete next to some spent shells. And some more broken glass. The rear window was broken, and bullets had dented the trunk.
He looked again at the ground—looked for the blood he’d found around the SUV. The search must have distracted him, because he heard a gun cock—a gun too close to him. How the hell had someone gotten the jump on him?
He swung around, pointing his gun barrel behind him—into the pale face of his little sister. His breath shuddered out. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. But she was trembling. So badly that she nearly dropped her gun when she lowered it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”
He didn’t care that she’d pointed the gun at him. “Were you hit?” he asked.
Her curly hair was usually messy, but it nearly stood on end now—almost as if someone had pulled it. There was a red mark on her cheek that would undoubtedly become a bruise, and her sleeve had nearly been torn free of her jacket. She’d been in a hell of a fight.
Concern and anger both gripped him. He wanted to make sure she was okay even while he wanted to rip someone apart—whoever had hurt her.
“We need to get you to the ER.” He holstered his weapon now and reached for her. He would carry her there—like he’d carried other soldiers from combat. Nikki looked like she’d been to war.
She stepped back and shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said. But her voice cracked on the claim, and her brown eyes glistened as tears pooled. “Thanks to Nick.”
Cooper tensed. That might have been the first time she’d referred to their half brother by his first name.
“Where’s Nick?” he asked, and his voice cracked now as he remembered all the blood he’d found. Had that been Nick’s blood?
Nikki shook her head. “I don’t know...but I think he got hit.”
The blood had been Nick’s—at least some of it.
A tear slipped between her furiously blinking lashes and trailed down the red mark on her cheek. “We need to find him.”
Depending on where he had been hit, they might not have much time to find him and get him help before it was too late.
Before Nick couldn’t be saved...
Chapter 4
He was a dead man.
Nick had learned long ago that there was no honor among thieves. His own mother had turned on her former boss and lover and testified against him—to save herself from a prison sentence.
Nick had just witnessed that lack of honor again as one of the gunmen, with no regard for his injured partner, had jumped into his vehicle. Or was it the one they had stolen from Annalise earlier that day? The little SUV wasn’t the older model sedan she’d had six months ago. But the Honda had an Illinois license plate. Maybe the men were from Illinois, too. Maybe they had followed her to Michigan.
But why? Why would anyone want to harm sweet Annalise?
Nick intended to find out. But the man sped off in the little SUV, leaving his partner behind. His concern was only for himself. Nick had pursued the vehicle first, running after it as it careen
ed around the corners of the parking structure. He’d fired shots into the rear window, taking out the glass like the gunman had taken the glass out of his SUV, when they’d fired at him through it.
And Nikki...
Rage gripped him as he remembered what he’d stumbled upon when he had headed toward his vehicle. The fight. Those men had hurt Nikki. They had pulled her hair, punched her face. She’d fought. His sister was a hell of a fighter. She had punched back. She had kicked. She had pulled moves he hadn’t known she knew. But she’d been outnumbered...
The rage kept him from reacting to his gunshot wound—from one of the bullets fired through the broken window of his SUV. He’d felt the sting of it and could feel the blood oozing from his torn flesh to soak his shirt. But he ignored the pain to pursue the vehicle—until it was clear he wouldn’t catch it. The engine revved as it pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street. Horns honked as other vehicles nearly crashed into it. The Honda sped off. One of the gunmen had gotten away.
The other man couldn’t.
He had been hit. Nick wasn’t sure which one of them had fired the shot, him or Nikki. As well as a good fighter, she was a good shot. If she wasn’t, the men might have abducted Annalise outside Payne Protection. Was that why they had come to the hospital parking garage? Had they been determined to try again?
But if they’d been after Annalise, why had they been attacking Nikki? Why had they been standing beside Nick’s government-issue SUV?
Who the hell was their real target?
Nikki?
Her coupe had been parked near his SUV—near enough that she had been able to go for her gun. If she hadn’t, he might not have survived the onslaught of ammunition the other men had fired at him. Sometimes she acted like she hated him, but she had helped him. Hell, she’d probably saved his life.
And instead of making certain she was okay, he had left her alone. Sure, the other gunman was injured. But he was still armed. He could hurt her.
Of course, the injured man had been running after his partner, too—until he’d seen Nick behind him. Then he had dived between some parked cars. Nick hurried back toward where he’d remembered losing him—between a Hummer and a Cadillac—in the reserved staff parking section.
It was easy to track him. All he had to do was follow the blood trail—the one that wasn’t his. His blood was running down his arm and dripping from his fingertips. At least it was his right shoulder that had been hit, since he was left-handed.
He gripped his gun more tightly as he tracked the blood to where it turned from a trail to a pool. But he didn’t need a weapon. He found the man leaning against the side of the Hummer. Deep gouges marred his face. Someone had scratched him. Nikki? Or Annalise? His eyes were open. So was his mouth.
But he wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t answer any of Nick’s many questions. He was dead.
Then Nick heard the telltale metallic click of another gun cocking—near his head. And he worried that he might be a dead man, too.
* * *
Annalise had loved Nick too long to lose him now. Not that she’d ever really had him. Even that one night...
They had made love. But he didn’t love her. Not like she had always loved him. She couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t been in love with Nicholas Rus.
“Where is he?” she asked Nikki.
Tears brimmed in her brown eyes. She shook her head and tousled her already tangled auburn curls around her pale face. “I don’t know...”
Logan cursed.
Nikki flinched—either over his reaction or because she was in pain. She had obviously been roughed up. But she had refused medical attention for her injuries. She had rushed into the lobby instead—to fill in Logan on what had happened in the garage.
The men who’d stolen Annalise’s car had come back. They had been waiting in the parking garage.
For her?
For Nikki?
For Nick?
Why? What did they want?
Annalise owned nothing of value to anyone but her. After all the times they’d broken into her home and her office and stolen her vehicle, they had to realize that she had nothing they wanted. So why wouldn’t they leave her alone?
Unless it really wasn’t her that they were after...
The trouble hadn’t started for her until after Nick had been to Chicago, until after that night they had made love in the house where he’d grown up.
“Nick chased them out of the parking garage. And I don’t know how he could...” Nikki’s voice cracked with emotion as she continued, “I think he was hit. I know he was hit.”
“Hit?” Panic clenched Annalise’s heart. “You think he was shot?”
Biting her lip, Nikki nodded. “He was bleeding. There was blood all over the cement.” She shuddered. “But it didn’t stop him.”
Nothing stopped Nick from going after what he wanted. The son of a drug addict single mother—the odds had been against his making anything of his life. But he had accomplished everything he’d wanted. He’d joined the Marines, gone to college and earned a high position in the FBI. No, nothing stopped Nick.
“So he must not have been hurt badly,” Nikki said as if she was trying to convince herself.
But his half sister didn’t know Nick like Annalise did. She had no idea how determined—how single-minded—he could be.
“He needs medical attention,” Annalise said. How long could he survive with a bullet in him? Even Nick had limits to what he could endure.
“Cooper will find him,” Logan assured them.
Then he focused on his sister, and a muscle twitched in his cheek, above his tightly clenched jaw. Annalise recognized the telltale sign of stress and tension. She’d seen that same muscle twitch in Nick’s cheek so many times. But she had seen him clench his jaw like that even when he hadn’t been stressed or angry. She’d seen it when she’d hugged him. She had thought that was because he didn’t like being touched.
But maybe her hugging him had stressed him out. Maybe he’d had to struggle for control of the passion she’d experienced the night they’d made a child together.
“And while Cooper is finding Nick,” Logan said, “you’re going to the emergency room to get checked out.” When he took his sister’s arm, she flinched. “Nikki, you are hurt!” And he swung her up in his arms as if she were a child.
Embarrassment flushed Nikki’s face with color even brighter than the mark on her cheek. Annalise’s heart swelled with concern and sympathy for the other woman. She understood what it was like to be underestimated—like Nikki’s brothers obviously underestimated their little sister. She also understood what it was like to be hurt and need their comfort and protection. She could recognize that Nikki was torn between wanting to be a tough, independent woman and the little girl who needed her big brothers.
The wheelchair forgotten, Annalise hurried after the brother and sister as Logan carried Nikki back to the ER. Logan shouldered open the door marked No Admittance. There was no security guard to stop him. They were all in the parking garage—looking for Nick and the men who’d shot at Nikki and him.
Not just at.
Nick had taken a bullet. He was bleeding. He needed to be in the ER, too.
“I’m fine,” Nikki said as she wriggled in Logan’s arms. “I’m not the one who needs medical attention.”
She was worried about Nick, too. But then, she’d been there. She knew how badly he’d been hurt.
“You shouldn’t be back here,” the doctor who’d treated Annalise agreed. “We have critically wounded coming in!”
“Critical?” Annalise uttered the word on a gasp of shock and pain.
A ding rang out, and doors to an elevator at the end of the hall opened. Two men—dressed in scrubs like the doctor—pushed out a gurney. A sheet covered the pati
ent from head to toe.
She couldn’t see the man’s face. But his legs dangled from the end of the gurney. He was tall and broad. His shoulders hung over the sides.
Her heart pounded furiously with fear and dread. Nick was tall. Nick was broad. But it couldn’t be Nick.
It couldn’t be.
When he’d enlisted in the Marines, she had been so afraid that she would lose him. And when he’d joined the FBI...
He had been in so much danger so many times and had survived. Today he’d only been going down to the parking garage to retrieve his vehicle—for her. He shouldn’t have been in danger there. Of course, she shouldn’t have been in danger outside the Payne Protection Agency, either.
Her voice cracking, Nikki asked the question burning in Annalise’s throat. “Is he dead?”
The medical professionals ignored her—until the doctor standing beside them asked, “Did you pronounce him?”
One of the doctors nodded.
“There was nothing we could do,” the other one said. “He bled out before security cleared the parking garage for us to treat him.”
Tears burned Annalise’s eyes. Nick had bled to death while waiting for help?
She couldn’t bear the thought that he had been alone and hurt. But then Nick was always alone. He insisted that was the way he’d wanted it. That was the reason he’d given for always pushing her away.
Nikki gasped, too, and the tears that had brimmed in her eyes spilled over. “No...”
They had been named for the same man. If they had anything else in common besides their names, they might not have pushed each other away. Now Nikki would never have the chance to connect with the brother she’d obviously resented.
And Annalise’s baby would never get to meet his or her father—just as Nick had never had the chance to meet his. Horror and regret overwhelmed Annalise, making her legs tremble and threaten to fold beneath her. Before she could fall, though, strong arms closed around her, holding her up.
* * *
“Mrs. Payne?” a young woman asked. She stared across the desk at Penny, her dark eyes wide with concern. “Are you all right?”