Captive Lies

by Victoria Paige

  “Still at the parking lot. It’s a clusterfuck. Pardon my language, sir.”

  “I’m heading your way. Instead of circling to get me, just make a right and wait for me at the corner.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “A seven-minute walk versus what could be another hour? Positive.” Besides, a walk would be good. He thought about Blaire and how she avoided situations like this. Maybe she had a point. Social scenes were getting old, or maybe he just missed her, and he wouldn’t hesitate to trade all the galas and parties just to have another night with her.

  After he’d wrecked his office wall, he forced himself to gain perspective, setting aside the bitter taste of betrayal. Blaire had tried her best to avoid getting involved with him, but he was the jackass who wouldn’t take no for an answer. So, in some way, he’d brought this down on himself. Whatever Blaire had gotten herself into, she knew she wouldn’t fit in his life. Grant hadn’t accepted that. He wouldn’t give up on her until he understood who she was.

  He also knew he had to tell his father and soon. Grant would beat himself up if he ruined his dad’s chances for another run at the senate. The dossier he had on Blaire and Liam had been forged. Further digging into their background yielded falsified information. Their fingerprints weren’t in the FBI database. There was no record of a Blaire Callahan at the high school in the file. Her parents did not exist. No wonder she put him off about meeting them. As for Liam, he was supposed to be a product of the foster care system, but that was rigged as well. Grant hoped they were in some kind of witness protection, although the guns and the multiple passports nullified that idea.

  He’d been brooding so deeply, he didn’t realize that two men had flanked him before it was too late. A barrel of a gun poked his ribs.

  “Do as you’re told, Mr. Thorne, and you won’t be hurt,” one of the men said. That they knew his name meant this was not some random mugging. Grant immediately thought of his father and their security briefings he failed to pay close attention to. He’d left them mostly to Jake, but he’d sent the guy to DC.

  He cocked his head at the speaker on his right and noticed belatedly that he had an accent … and a pronounced hawk nose. His cohort on his left wore a fedora pulled low that concealed most of the guy’s face. Despite Grant’s grim situation, anticipation churned inside him. Maybe this had nothing to do with the threat against the senator, but it had everything to do with Blaire. He couldn’t alert Tyler just yet because Fedora guy was holding on to his arm where he wore his security watch. They led him into a dark alley just a block from the hotel. Fedora man immediately slammed him against the wall and punched him in the gut. Grant coughed and hunched over, gritted his teeth, and discreetly twisted the dial on his watch to signal Tyler that he was in trouble.

  “Where’s Paulina, mu’dak?” Fedora guy hissed.

  “You idiot, he knows her as Blaire,” Hawk-nose corrected and smacked his partner upside the head. Grant wanted to ram their heads together, but keeping them talking was the better option.

  “I don’t know. She left me,” he informed them.

  “She was stupid to get involved with you. A senator’s son,” Hawk-nose cackled maliciously. “Let’s see how much she cares for you.”

  Hawk-nose swung at him and Grant managed to block the blow. Fedora man’s ham-sized fist crashed against Grant’s cheek and another jab to his stomach sent him staggering. Just as the goon was about to kick him, he grabbed and twisted the other man’s ankle and flipped him onto the ground. Hawk-nose drew his gun, but Grant went low and slammed his shoulder against the man’s gut, sending both of them crashing to the pavement. Hawk-nose’s gun clattered to the side.

  Grant recovered faster and went for the other man’s weapon, rolling on his back and instinctively pointing his gun at Fedora man who had his own firearm aimed at Grant. Hawk-nose picked himself up from the ground and was in the act of unholstering another firearm from his ankle.

  Fuck.

  Footsteps rushed from behind him and judging from his attackers’ expression, Tyler had arrived.

  What followed was a blur of movements and explosion of gunfire.

  Grant felt a burning sting to his arm as his assailants fell to the ground. Standing up, he walked over to them with gun still raised, but he lowered his arm when he saw their condition. Grant had put a hole through Fedora man’s gun hand, but Tyler had put a bullet between each man’s eyes.

  Well, fuck.

  It would be another three hours before Grant returned to the brownstone with Tyler who grimly walked ahead of him. After getting patched up by an EMT, Grant, together with his bodyguard, made a statement to the police explaining that it was an attempted mugging.

  Grant crashed on the couch, grunting his appreciation when Tyler brought him a glass of Scotch that he tossed back.

  “You know who those men were?” his security person asked tightly.

  He shook his head. “Not really, but they had information.”

  “About Ms. Callahan?”

  Grant nodded. “They’re after her. My guess? They’re hoping that roughing me up will flush her out.”

  Tyler emitted a frustrated huff. “I shouldn’t have agreed to let you walk.”

  “Tonight was not your fault.”

  “You’re my responsibility.”

  “You did your job,” Grant muttered. “Quite thoroughly.”

  His bodyguard’s jaw hardened. “You’re pissed I killed them.”

  “It’s done, Tyler. Drop it.” Grant wanted them alive for questioning, but he could hardly blame his bodyguard for doing his job.

  “Donovan’s coming back tomorrow,” his man told him. “We’ll review your security detail including expectations.”

  Before Grant could reply, his phone, which was on the coffee table, vibrated. It was a blocked number. Both he and Tyler exchanged glances. Grant nodded, giving the signal to have it traced.

  “Thorne.”

  “Grant?” A choked sob. “Oh my God. Are you all right?”

  Blaire.

  He closed his eyes briefly, letting her voice wash over him. She had cared enough to call. To expose herself. That counted a lot. A whole damned lot. “Blaire,” he said simply. All the anger and betrayal sifted away like sand through his fingers.

  “Where was your security? How did this happen?”

  “I’m all right, baby,” he assured her and then, “How are you?”

  An irritated sigh hissed through the receiver. “I’m fine. You’re the one who got hurt.”

  “You sound pissed at me,” Grant stated incredulously. “I’m not the one keeping secrets.”

  Silence.

  “Are you in trouble, Angel?”

  “It’s not your problem, Grant. I’ll handle this. I didn’t want to get you involved in the first place.”

  “I already am.”

  “No, you’re not. Stick to Jake and Tyler.”

  “Tell me who’s after you, baby.”

  “I can’t,” her voice cracked. “It’s best you don’t know. Forget about me, Grant.”

  No fucking way.

  “Blaire, I know about the guns and passports.”

  “You broke into my cabin?”

  “I had the key.”

  “I don’t recall giving you the right …” she broke off. “Why are you doing this? You need to let me go.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Now is not the time to be bullheaded, Grant.” There was rising hysteria in her voice. “How did they even get to you?”

  His woman was distraught. Grant had yet to look at himself in the mirror, but he bet he didn’t look pretty. Fedora man had a solid right hook. There was blood on his Tuxedo from the flesh wound he sustained from a gunshot from Hawk-nose; he was thankful the man was a lousy shot.

  “It’s not important how,” Grant said. “Now, I want you to come home.” He looked at Tyler who shook his head. That meant he hadn’t traced the call yet.

  “Don’t do this, Gran
t. I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to you or your family.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Responsibility to his family weighed heavily in his mind, but he needed Blaire with him to keep things under control. Knowing that dangerous people were after her was driving him insane.

  “No, we won’t.”

  “Goddammit, Blaire!” Grant roared, his calm deserting him. “You tell me where the fuck you are, right fucking now, or you can be sure I’ll find who those bastards are working for and get the fucking truth from them.”

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Your choice, Angel.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “Call it whatever you want. Now,” he said in a steadier tone. “Tell me where you are.”

  11

  Blaire

  “He’s okay.”

  I sagged into the motel sofa, its lumpy cushions settling uncomfortably under my tense muscles. My body felt like it had consumed an inordinately high amount of caffeine and I was experiencing a crash.

  “You’re going back to him?” Liam asked, presumably because he heard me give Grant directions to our location. My friend helped me escape from Grant and he tried to talk me out of it at first, but I threatened to leave on my own. We’d been holed up in a motel in Plymouth, an hour outside Boston. Liam and I used the Dark Web to keep tabs on the criminal underworld, anonymously monitoring common chatrooms to gather information and get a pulse on whether something was about to go down. We knew Russian Organized Crime (ROC) used it and, apparently, they knew we did as well. It was there we discovered that a couple of their associates went after Grant, but failed.

  “He’s going to get himself killed if I don’t.”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t think a man who’s made it to the top like Grant Thorne would be stupid enough to get himself killed.”

  “He said he was going to dig deeper into who attacked him,” I snapped. “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s getting you back, isn’t he?”

  My relief that Grant was okay trumped my infuriation at his persistence. I looked regretfully at Liam. “I’ve wasted your efforts to get me away from him.”

  “I tried to talk you out of it, remember?” Liam reminded me. “My opinion? You’re better off with him right now because he has the resources to hire enough security to protect you.”

  “But it’s not about my safety anymore, is it?” I pointed out. “What about his family? His father is a United States Senator, for goodness’ sake. Who I am will ruin his family.”

  “Never talk about yourself that way, Blaire,” Liam said. “We don’t choose our families and your father tried to do right in the end.”

  “Grant knows about the guns and passports, Liam.”

  “Shit. That means he has the flash drives as well. You’ll have to tell him something.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “No,” he sighed. “It’s been two years. I failed you and your father the first time. You’re not hiding from Mikhail Orlov forever.” He returned his attention to the piece of wood he was carving. This had been his hobby for as long as I’d known him. He’d make intricate miniature wooden sculptures—animals were his favorite. Right now, he was working on a bear. He’d never given me any of his little masterpieces, though I asked him once.

  “Maybe when I’m dead and buried” was his response, and I never asked again. I think woodworking relaxed him. I wished I could say the same with my painting. I couldn’t paint when I was tense.

  The months I’d been with Grant, I hadn’t seen Liam consistently. It saddened me that the days of driving a mile down the road whenever I needed company were over. He was all I’d known since we’d run from the Russian mob.

  “It’s my fault we’re on his radar again,” I said. “We were supposed to be dead.”

  “He had suspicions we faked our deaths. I told you this. Grant may be our silver lining.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ll have someone else to watch over you now.”

  My heart constricted. “Liam.”

  “I won’t be able to protect you forever, Wren,” he said. “But I have a feeling Grant Thorne will.”

  My throat burned at his words. “We’ll figure this out.” I echoed Grant’s words and reached out to hold my friend’s hand. “Please, Liam, come with me.”

  He smiled sadly. “I’m so close to getting us what we need, but I will contact you. By the way, lose the phone you used to call Grant and use another burner.”

  Liam had made headway in finding out who had the other piece of evidence that would support what we already had against the ROC. I knew he avoided taking risks because of me. He didn’t want me to be alone in this world, but he’d developed a grudging respect for Grant in the past months, especially in the way he cared for me. I was afraid of what was to come, but if there was one thing life on the run had taught me about Liam, he wasn’t afraid of anything except abandoning me to the mercy of the Russian mafia.

  “Grant may drop us when he realizes how much trouble we’re in,” I told him in part because it was a strong possibility, and partly because I didn’t want him to be suicidal.

  My friend appeared to consider this. “Then he’s not the man I thought he was. But, my advice? Don’t dump all our shit on him at once.”

  “I’m not lying to him anymore, Liam.”

  “Then don’t lie. Let him know you’re not ready to tell him everything.”

  “This is Grant we’re talking about here, you think he’ll be contented with piece-meal information given that he’d discovered our stash—”

  Liam held up his hand as if to shush me and then cocked his head toward the door. He tossed his sculpture and knife into an open bag.

  “What?”

  The word barely left my mouth when my friend tackled me across the bed as the door exploded inward.

  Liam had already drawn his gun by the time we fell on the other side of the mattress. Bullets flew through the room, lodged into the wall and shattered windows. I crawled to my bed and snatched my weapon from under the pillow. Lying on my back on the carpet, I cocked my gun. I scrambled to my knees and, using the bed for cover, returned fire. But the firefight was short-lived. There was a dead man on the floor and bullet holes on either side of the door frame. Our attackers had either fled or were dead. Liam was rarely caught off-guard. He had an uncanny “Spidey sense.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked gruffly.

  I nodded, but had trouble regulating the surge of adrenaline.

  “Deep breaths,” my friend ordered as he got up to check on our unmoving attacker. He had prepared me for scenarios like this, but no amount of preparation could substitute for a real shootout. Oh. My. God. I couldn’t wimp out now. I stood and pointed the gun at the guy on the floor, nodding to Liam that I had his back. I tried to speak but my teeth only clattered, so I clamped my mouth shut.

  He leaned against the wall beside the door, then quickly pivoted through the door to clear the hallway. His body relaxed. “They’re gone. There’s blood on the floor so we got some of them.”

  “He’s dead,” I said, pointing to the man in our room. “I don’t recognize him at all.”

  “Neither do I,” Liam replied. “He must be a low-level soldier. They’re not very experienced. Too eager. Should have used tear gas. The bad news is, it looks like their orders were shoot to kill.”

  Versus being captured and tortured? Maybe death was preferable.

  “We need to move,” Liam said as he shoved our things into a duffle. “The cops will be here in seven minutes or less.”

  “What about Grant?” Given that this place would be crawling with uniforms soon, I doubt he’d think I’d bailed on him again, but how would he find us?

  “We’ll drive around the block. It’ll take him an hour at least to get here.”

  I nodded shortly. Calling him wasn’t an option. Our phone call was the only way these ROC thugs could have tracked us down which meant Grant�
�s phone was the problem. Scant minutes later, Liam and I exited the motel. There’d been tentative spectators, doors slightly open and suddenly shutting as we hastened by. I was wearing a hoodie and had my head down. Liam had on a baseball cap. We both had our guns tucked into our pockets, trigger finger on the barrel, ready to engage if our assailants were lying in wake. Keeping vigilant, we moved in the shadows until we got into our Ford sedan. Liam gunned the engine, backed up, and left the motel parking. Two blocks up we parked at a diner to change clothes. I put on a sweatshirt while my friend donned a NY Giants jacket and took off his cap. Afterward, we got back on the road. It was only then that I noticed my hands were shaking. Cold and clammy with an uncontrollable tremor, I ended up sitting on them.

  “You okay?” Liam asked.

  “I’m shaking,” I gave a nervous laugh. “I’ll get it together in a minute. Dead bodies I can handle, just not used to getting shot at.”

  “You did well back there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious, Wren. You didn’t lose your shit.”

  “I’ll be honest, I feel like throwing up right now.”

  Liam glanced at me. “Want me to pull over?”

  “Keep driving,” I said, rolling down the window. “The fresh air helps.”

  “You’re a survivor,” Liam muttered and I wondered if he was trying to convince himself that I was.

  Almost to the hour, we pulled back to the diner across from the inn. Blue and red lights from three police cruisers strobed and lit the scene. A crime scene investigation van was parked near the law enforcement vehicles. There was a bigger crowd of spectators now than earlier.

  Liam swore under his breath. “We’re so screwed when they match those prints.”

  “You fixed it right? It won’t link back to us?”

  “Our prints have been scrubbed from most databases, but not all. Yours likely won’t find a match.” Liam hammered the steering wheel in frustration. “My fingerprints are a different matter. I’ve been with various government agencies for almost thirty years. There’s bound to be a record of my prints floating somewhere. If their forensic lab is tenacious in finding out who I am, I’ll be in deep shit.”