He shook his head.
She rounded another curve and the lights cut across the road.
“Oh, shit!” She swerved to miss the little eyes in the road and Ian felt the tires thump over whatever the hell it was.
Rori slammed on the brakes and looked in the rearview mirror.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, looking back behind them. No cars were coming. He looked in front of them as she pulled the car to the edge of the road.
“Rori?” he asked.
“What did I hit?” She looked at him, her face creased with . . . he had no clue, he’d never seen it.
She opened her door and the interior light popped on. He rolled his eyes, unbuckled his belt and climbed out.
She stood in the center of their lane dressed in her jeans, squared black high-heeled boots, and a black jacket, looking down at a dark spot in the road. Her hands were clasped to her chest.
“I killed it,” she said brokenly.
Ian shook his head and stepped toward her, looking down. What was left of—a rabbit?—was a squashed area of brown fur, blood and guts.
“Uh, yeah, looks like you were successful there.”
She choked a breath out and looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“What?” he asked, his hands rising, palms up. “What is with you?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I just killed bloody Peter Rabbit.”
Ian licked his lips. “Rori, it’s a damn rabbit. Some farmer is glad the thing won’t be eating his vegetables or some such.”
“But I just mowed down a bunny!”
This from the woman hired to kill him. Sighing, he turned and said, “Rori, get in the damn car.”
She stood for another minute and he turned, waited until she wiped her eyes. “I think you should drive.”
He chuckled then quickly swallowed it as she shot him a look.
Without a word, he waited until she shut the passenger door. He looked back at the dead bunny and chuckled, shaking his head.
Ian climbed in, put the car in gear and continued on.
She was adorable. Completely adorable. The woman was one of the best assassins, and she freaked when she ran over a rabbit.
Smiling inwardly, Ian drove up to his parents’ house near dark. Quinlan’s Lexus sat in the driveway.
Rori hadn’t said a word.
When she reached for the door handle, he grabbed her hand. “What are you thinking about?”
She took a deep breath. “Sorry I flipped back there. I’ve had a lot on my mind all afternoon and Mr. Rabbit just . . .” She huffed out a breath.
“What?” he asked again, running his thumb over the ring he’d placed there on her finger.
“You come from all this,” she muttered. “Kinncaids are all about family.”
And he wanted her to be a permanent part of it. “So?”
“So, I realize I don’t know . . . that is . . .”
“What?” he asked, something in him tightening.
She took another deep breath. “Half the damn time I don’t know what I’m bloody doing with Darya. I wonder if I’m doing it wrong, what it is, how to do it better, how to make her feel safe . . . And then other times . . .”
“Other times?” he prompted.
“I can see why people have kids. Like at the hospital. The baby was . . .” She frowned. “Well, different, all . . . little.”
He chuckled, leaned over the console and kissed her. “They’re supposed to be.”
“I can’t ever have one.” Her voice wavered. “When the doctors told me, it didn’t mean anything.”
Her eyes filled with a pain he couldn’t take away. But wanted to. God, he wanted to. He held her hands and waited. “Never thought about it. Never wondered until last year when I went in for my physical and my doctor started to run tests.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I had a cyst. Nothing major, nothing he was worried about, but felt I should know I was sterile. From the rapes, or from an infection, he wasn’t certain. But I won’t have kids.” She looked out the windshield. “And it never really bothered me until today.” Then, looking at him with a sad smile, she asked, “Isn’t that pathetic?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s normal. We’ll adopt more.”
She blinked, then shook her head. “You come from this.” She motioned to the yard and everything. “Kids and heirs and begetting and all that.”
He grinned. “I never wanted kids, Rori. Never planned to get married.”
She snorted.
He took her chin and turned her face to him, studying the angles, the long lines that showed more strength than any woman he knew, because some of her roads he’d traveled and others he could imagine only too well. “I never wanted to put someone in that kind of danger,” he admitted softly.
“After being shot at, almost blown up, and left behind, I can appreciate that decision.” She shook her head. “We are so fucked up, luv.”
He laughed. “I love it when you say that.”
“That we’re fucked up?”
“No, luv, all British on me.”
They climbed out of the car and walked up the driveway. At the door he paused, held her hand and rolled the wedding band on her finger. Looking at it, he said, “You know, I’m glad I got this when I saw it.” The gold reflected in the soft outside lights. “It fits you. You. Us. Whatever.” He held her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed the finger that held his mark. Ian leaned in and kissed her, held her face in his hands and tried to show her everything he couldn’t put into words.
He finally reached behind her and opened the door. And the first thing he smelled was Elianya—a mixture of heavy, dark floral and musk.
He almost jerked back, but thankfully didn’t. Still standing with Rori, his hand still on the doorknob, he scanned what he could and catalogued it as surely as he would any other hostile situation. He saw the coat, and glancing in the hall mirror caught a flash of a woman with a gun. God help them all.
Leaning closer, he whispered into Rori’s ear, “Follow my lead. Get pissed, scream at me, call me names and then leave. Whatever you do, do not go in the house, don’t even look in the house. Take the car, call John, and get your ass back here.”
“Why?” she asked, tensing against him as he pressed the car keys into her hands.
“Tell John to call Pete. Elianya Hellinski is here with my family in the living room. From the gun in her hand, I’m pretty damn certain it’s not a friendly sit-down. How the hell . . .”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Damn it!” he yelled, pushing her toward the yard. “I’m not asking you, Rori. I’m fucking telling you.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes flashing. “This is so bloody like you! Everything is always Ian’s way. On Ian’s time. At Ian’s convenience. Well, I’m tired of it! Sick and bloody tired!”
“Lower your voice,” he said, still loud.
“I don’t have to. I’m tired of this game. Tired of being at your bleeding beck and call. It’s not my fault if you can’t accept the truth.”
“What truth?” He still didn’t look behind him, but left the door open enough that anyone in the living room beyond could hear, if not all, at least enough to understand the disagreement.
“You don’t listen!” she yelled. “I’m leaving!”
“No, you’re not. Rori, come back here! Rori!” he yelled and hurried after her even as she jumped in the car, spitting gravel up into the air.
He prayed to God she got to Johnno. Taking a deep breath and making certain he had his extra gun in the small of his back, he turned and slammed the front door as hard as he could. “Damn it all to hell and back anyway,” he said.
He strode past the living room, as if intent on going upstairs. And as he knew she would, her voice floated out.
“Ian, do join us.”
He halted, stopped in the middle of unbuttoning the top button of his shirt, and slowly turned.
<
br /> “Elianya.” Her hair was jet black, styled shorter, her eyes a dark brown, thanks, no doubt, to colored contacts. Still, she shouldn’t be here. There was no way she should have gotten past all the damn guards.
He glanced quickly around the room. His parents sat on the couch, Darya between them. Quinlan was tied to a chair, his head hanging. Was his brother alive? Where the hell were Gar and Roth?
To Elianya he said, “You’ve a new hairstyle and color, I see. The spa did a wonderful job.” He nodded. “Not many can carry off that hair color.”
Taking another deep breath, he stepped into the room. How much time did they have?
His heart thundered in his chest. One last mission. This one last job. Please, God, don’t let this be his failure. He had way too much at stake.
Chapter 30
“Can you call Pete?” Rori asked into the phone, pulling to the side of the road and cutting the lights.
“Yeah, where are you?”
“At the end of the driveway, just off the highway.” She cut the car off and knew they’d be going on foot.
“I’ll be there in just a minute.” John hung up and she waited.
Her hands shook. It had been so long since her hands shook because of a job; she could only stare at them. Hell. Leaning over, she checked the glove box. Empty. Console empty.
Under the seat. Ah. Extra gun. Thank God. She turned it. A SIG Sauer P222. Fit perfectly in her hand.
She got out, locked the car and waited. At least she’d worn black today and boots. Her fingers thrummed on her thigh.
She listened and heard John coming down the highway before his lights cut across the corner and he barreled to a stop by her car. He too was in black. Some habits were hard to break.
He pulled a bag from the back of the SUV he drove.
“You managed to keep Aiden at home.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t ask. Just took off and told him to stay by the phone and to let no one but Ian or me into the house.”
John opened the case and took out a knife, shoved it down near his ankle. A gun into the small of his back, another in his waist. A coil of rope and duct tape.
“Cool, tape. Can I help?”
For a moment, he paused, then said, “Where did you get the car?”
“Ian. He took it from the garage this morning.”
He nodded. “Hand me the keys. I can’t take her in an SUV with car seats.”
She didn’t need to ask who, as she handed him the keys. “If she hurts them . . .”
He paused in shoving the keys into his pocket. “Elianya Hellinski is mine. She always has been. I’ve waited for too long for this.”
Instead of arguing with him, she started off toward the house. He quickly passed her and she jogged alongside him through the woods back to the house.
“We’ll go in by one of the back doors and try to sneak up on her.”
“That’s your plan?” she asked.
“Got a better one?”
“You take the back door. I’ll take the upstairs. She’ll either come out those French doors or she’ll have to go through the entryway. If I’m anywhere else, she’ll see because of that stupid hall mirror.”
The dead leaves crunched under their boots.
John mumbled something to himself she didn’t catch, then said, “Pete will be here in about half an hour. He said he was flying.”
“Good.”
He stopped, turned to her and put his hand on her arm. “I have to be gone with her by then.”
“Why, John?”
With a voice as cold as the winter, he said, “She killed my family. My girls. My wife. I can’t let her go this time. No matter what the cost.”
“The explosion.” Damn. Understanding, Rori nodded. “Let’s rock and roll, mate.”
Neither spoke as they made their way to the house and through the backyard. In one of the windows they could easily see in. The woman in a siren red pantsuit held a gun in one hand, a 9-millimeter from the looks of it, and something in her other hand, which she used to motion to Quinlan, still strapped to the chair. He had something taped to his chest.
“Bloody hell.”
“Bitch.” John took the phone out and she heard him softly telling whoever it was at the other end to get a bomb squad out here as well, explaining the situation.
Personally she thought the woman was stupid. Had she really thought she’d get away with it? Not that Rori wanted her to even try, but from what she’d read and learned of Elianya Hellinski in the last month, the woman should have really thought this one through a bit more.
Where the hell were their bodyguards?
There was no sign of Roth. Or she hadn’t thought so until she saw his jean-clad legs near one of the doorways.
John motioned to the darkened French doors on the side of the house. She nodded and jogged down, climbing the ivy and trellis until she reached Darya’s room. She kicked the doors in, then made her way through the room and quickly to the top curve of stairs, directly over the entryway.
*****
“What do you want?” he asked Elianya, always keeping his eyes on her. One gun, one detonator. Anger pushed through him.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she purred.
The 9-millimeter Glock was a concern, but it was the detonator she held in the other hand that worried him the most. He sat in the chair across from his brother, Roth’s feet near him. He could see the pool of blood, the trickle out of the corner of his friend’s mouth. Rage at that alone clawed through him.
His parents sat on the couch and he could see the mixture of fear and anger in their faces. His father was tapping his fingers on his knee. Mom’s hands were white-knuckled. He couldn’t blame them. Darya was staring at the woman, her face pale. If he’d ever wondered, ever had any lingering doubts on whether or not Darya had met Elianya, they were now gone. As clearly as if Darya had spoken to him, her eyes and expression, both angry and terrified, glared at Elianya.
He looked back at their captor. Think. Think. There had to be a way out. There was always a way out. “Let them go.”
Elianya chuckled and leaned down the back of his chair, her breath hot on his ear. “Do they know who you really are?” she whispered.
His parents watched them, his father as angry as he’d ever seen him.
“What did you give my brother?” he asked, shifting his gaze to Quinlan.
“Little of this, little of that.” Her laugh grated across his nerves. “A new Elianya creation.”
Good God. Quinlan’s head hung to his chest, and sweat dripped off his brow. Every now and then he’d twitch. Please let him be all right. She could have given him any cocktail. Hell, now his brother’s heart could be giving out and . . . No! Pain hummed at the base of his skull.
Ian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Focus. Anger wouldn’t get anyone in this room out alive.
“Some do all right on my little creation, and other than the headaches, Quinlan’s been doing fine.”
“How long have you been giving it to Quinlan?” he asked. How the hell long had she been working to get to him?
She laughed again. “Since the night I met him.” Again she leaned down. “Have to say, for brothers, you both do things marvelously similar and yet so differently.”
He closed his eyes. “How much have you given him, Elianya?”
Her heels clicked as she walked around past him. “Enough, maybe too much. I’ve given him quite a bit tonight.”
“What the hell did you give him, Elianya?”
She smiled, evil and catlike, and even with the colored contacts, he could see the madness that drove her, the depravity that lurked just beneath the polished exterior. “My newest money creation. A cross between X, Dimitri, and roofies, bit of enhancement. So technically he could fuck until he overheated himself, thus frying his brain. Probably die with a hard-on for me.” Her laughter grated out again. “Think how many men will now die very, very happy. My creation has that same side effect as X and we can�
�t ever seem to get rid of that one.” She shrugged and straightened. Her laughter reminded him of nails on a chalkboard. She walked around the back of the couch and put her hand to Darya’s head, watching him all the while.
He wanted to simply kill her.
Her grin grew.
Darya jerked her head up and glared over her shoulder at Elianya.
“You ruined so much, Dimitri. I worked long and hard to build up the business I did.”
He nodded. “Child porn and child prostitution is a hard market to break into, is it?”
“Always playing the sinner,” she said, “and all the while you’re the saint.”
She walked behind his mother and he fisted his hands. Leaning down, Elianya pointed toward him with the gun, and said close to his mother’s head, “Do you know your son has killed people, Mrs. Kinncaid?”
His mother’s eyes locked with his, but he looked away.
“Like you?” his mother asked.
Ian closed his eyes and snapped in Czech to Elianya, hoping his parents would stay out of it.
“What? Don’t want them to know how you carried out hits?” she asked him in turn. Then in English. “Killed for profit. Killed because he was ordered to and, I daresay, in some cases simply because he felt like it.” Behind Darya she stopped again and put her hands, one with the gun, the other with the detonator, on his daughter’s shoulders. “Did you kill my guard I left behind?”
He only stared at her.
She laughed. “Such the hero.” Shaking her head, she said, “That was always your problem, Dimitri. Or should I call you Ian?”
He didn’t answer and she continued, moving toward him.
“I wanted you. But you thought you were too good for me. No man rejects me. No man. And then you ruined it more by creating all that trouble for my business.” She leaned down and kissed him, bit his lip until he bled. He pulled back and thought about hitting her. He could probably get the detonator away, but if he didn’t . . .
Quinlan hadn’t moved.
His mother kept looking from one to the other to the body on the floor.
“Let them go,” he said.
Elianya shook her head. “No. And why would I?” Those dark eyes flashed. “I want you to suffer. So who goes first?” She stepped behind his brother and grinned, then his mother, tapping his mother’s temple with the 9-millimeter, then his father.
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