The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance)

by Olivia Thorne

  I can see where I am because of the GPS chip in my backpack – just like I can see Dominique’s position, too. I gave her a chip so we could track her. She’s made it to the main house, and is somewhere near the front of the building.

  Thank God she’s still alive.

  I switch to a view of the exterior cameras on the property and wait.

  I absolutely hate having to leave Grant in the hands of that maniac, but I content myself with the knowledge that Epicurus has 24 hours planned out. Five minutes won’t make too much difference.

  I hope.

  As the five minutes elapse, I very slowly creep through the air duct, inch by painful inch.

  JP told me that the duct was specially reinforced to bear Grant’s weight without making any dinging or banging noises. After all, it was designed for him to break in without anyone hearing him.

  But I also know that Epicurus is right underneath me, so I don’t take any chances: I move like a sloth in molasses. I also mute the computer so no audio can play unexpectedly and give me away.

  I think a snail could win in a race against me, I’m moving so slow, but I finally reach the trap door. JP described it perfectly: a rectangular hatch with three locking mechanisms. They look just like the devices on the back of the wardrobe in the apartment in Paris, the one that led us to the catacombs.

  I position myself so that I can go down the hatch feet-first, and then I turn back to the computer.

  Thirty seconds later, the camera right outside the mansion’s front door picks up a black helicopter landing on the stadium-sized front yard. Eight masked men spill out onto the grass. All of them are armed, and all of them are in black body armor with ‘FBI’ printed on the front in white block letters.

  Right on time, boys.

  I’m betting that Duplass sent them here. Probably not to save Grant, but Epicurus. That’s all the Bureau’s number one asshole seemed to care about when he was still awake. That, and getting a warrant.

  Still, the FBI are showing up exactly when I need them, so I’m not going to complain.

  I toggle through the cameras and see that Dominique is waiting in the main hall of the house on her hands and knees. She seems okay. No obvious wounds, at least.

  Her gun is nowhere in sight, which is good. If the FBI sees a gun, they might shoot her.

  A couple of days ago, that would have been my preference. Now, it’s the farthest thing from what I want.

  How things change.

  The FBI and Dominique are both in position. The stage is set.

  It’s time for me to do my death-defying bit.

  95

  I switch to a view of the plastic room and wince in apprehension of seeing Grant in pain – but Epicurus seems to still be in gloat mode.

  I click a button on my laptop, the soundboard activates, and an audio clip of my voice plays over the loudspeaker in the plastic-wrapped room beneath me – just like Al Pacino or Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can hear it distinctly, even in the air duct.

  “Heeeeey Epicurus. Or should I say, ‘Dieter’?”

  The shock on Epicurus’s face is something to behold. I have to stifle a laugh as he whirls around like a surprised baboon.

  “WHAT?! NO! How did you find me?!”

  I muted all audio from the laptop, so I’m actually hearing him shout from right beneath me. He’s more than loud enough for his voice to carry through the reinforced metal.

  I click a button, and my voice speaks in the room beneath me. “It was easy. TOO easy.”

  While Epicurus continues to flail about like a chimp on crack, I check the surveillance feeds in the rest of the house. The audio may be silent, but the video is plenty dramatic even on mute.

  The front door explodes in a shower of glass, and Dominique starts screaming and blubbering quite convincingly.

  She has a future in silent films, I think to myself.

  Meanwhile, Epicurus is screaming, “Where ARE you?!”

  I hit two other buttons in quick succession: “Never you mind. Let Grant go.”

  Back in the main foyer of the building, FBI agents swarm around Dominique, their guns in her face. She points towards the back of the house, tears streaming down her cheeks. The FBI agents haul her to her feet, and then everybody takes off running through the foyer.

  “TELL me – how did you find me?!” Epicurus howls.

  I don’t want to use ‘It was easy’ again, so I settle for “I’m not here to negotiate.” Then I hit the button again for “Let Grant go.”

  He frowns. I can see it clearly on my laptop screen. ‘I’m not here to negotiate’ doesn’t really fit the conversation, and he can tell by the exact same intonation of ‘Let Grant go’ that something is up. He just doesn’t know what.

  I glance at the house cameras again. The FBI agents are going room to room, making sure the house is clear of shooters. Interestingly enough, there are a few dead bodies along the way.

  Nice work, Dominique.

  The FBI guys point their rifles at the corpses, kick away their guns, check their pulses, and then continue. The entire time, Dominique is sobbing as they half-drag her, half-shield her from potential attacks.

  While I’m watching the screen, I get Mailin’s gun out of the backpack, along with an unused tube of superglue. I pop the orange top, puncture the seal, and make sure I can squeeze goo out of it easily. Then I put the orange top back on.

  I also click the safety on my other gun – the one I ran across the property with – and tuck it into the back of my jeans. I definitely do not want it going off when I land and shooting me in the ass. If everything goes as planned, I won’t need it – but when does anything ever go as planned?

  “What are you up to, Eve?” Epicurus yells as he picks up a scalpel and moves next to Grant. “Tell me where you are, NOW, or I cut his throat.”

  My heart skips a beat, but I press a button on the laptop keyboard.

  Digital me sounds cool as a cucumber. “I know you won’t do that.”

  My intonation is off – I sound weirdly flippant, given what Epicurus is threatening – but what the hell. This charade is only going to last another 30 seconds.

  On the monitor, the FBI and Dominique are right outside the library.

  Time to go.

  I just hope that my ‘sudden arrival’ doesn’t make Epicurus jerk in fright and accidentally cut Grant.

  I hold my breath in anticipation and press the three pressure plates on the hatch.

  The hatch swings open, and I push myself through feet first.

  As my body emerges from the ceiling, I hear Epicurus’s high-pitched shriek of surprise.

  I grab onto the edge of the hatch with one hand – the hand not holding the gun and superglue – and dangle for half a second before I lose my grip.

  It’s a long way down – over ten feet from the soles of my shoes to the floor.

  This is gonna hurt like hell.

  I drop to the floor and try to absorb the impact by buckling at the knees.

  An electric zap of pain still shoots from my feet all the way up my back.

  Then I crumple backwards onto the tile. WHAM.

  Ow, ow, OW

  I still have enough sense, though, to uncork the superglue before I point my gun in Epicurus’s direction. I make sure he can’t see the orange tube, though.

  “NO!” the serial killer screams, and darts behind Grant like a coward.

  “Eve?!” Grant says, his eyes wide in disbelief.

  I grimace in pain as I yell, “Put your hands up, Dieter!”

  Metal flashes from behind Grant’s head, and the scalpel is suddenly at his throat.

  “No, YOU drop the gun, Eve… or I cut his jugular.”

  The key to this next part is making it convincing.

  Which I have no idea how to do… so I just play it like every action movie I’ve ever seen.

  “I’m not kidding, Dieter!” I shout.

  “Neither am I!” Epicurus screams, and presses the tip of the scalpe
l into Grant’s throat. Not enough to cut him, but the indention in his flesh is enough to legitimately scare me.

  “Okay – okay, don’t hurt him,” I yelp, and put the gun on the ground.

  I hover my hand over the pistol and squeeze a nice dollop of superglue on the handle, all of which I keep hidden beneath my outstretched fingers and palm.

  “Slide it over to me, now,” Epicurus commands.

  I give the gun as hard a shove as I can. It slides across the tile floor and ends up about eight feet to the right of Grant.

  Pick it up fast, I plead silently in my head. Pick it up fast, pick it up fast, pick it up fast –

  Epicurus magically complies. He drops the scalpel as he rushes over and bends to pick up the pistol. “Ha – you’ve given up your only advantage, you stupid little fool! What did…”

  One second after he stands back up, Epicurus gets a look on his face like he’s stepped in a pile of dog poo. He looks down at the pistol and opens his fingers.

  The gun doesn’t fall out of his hand, because it’s super-glued to his palm.

  Meanwhile, I’m up on my feet and hobbling towards the door.

  “STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!” Epicurus shrieks as he stomps towards me, the gun pointed at my back.

  I press the code on the door’s numerical pad: 619382#.

  Beep.

  “IDIOT!” Epicurus screams, and pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  Nothing happens.

  That’s because I super-glued the slide on the gun, too, back at the McMansion.

  Epicurus looks on in amazement as he pulls the trigger again and nothing happens.

  Click.

  He keeps pulling the trigger angrily and getting the same lack of results.

  I was right: a genius at all the digital stuff – but real world stuff, not so much.

  I yank the handle on the door and simultaneously drop to the ground.

  As the door swings open, the FBI agents at the threshold are presented with a man pointing a gun at them and repeatedly pulling the trigger – click click click.

  There’s not really a whole lot they can do.

  BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

  It’s all over in a matter of seconds.

  96

  The first thing I hear after the ringing in my ears subsides a little is Grant’s frantic voice.

  “EVE! Eve, are you okay?!”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine!” I yell back at him from the ground.

  The FBI agents swarm in, hollering at everybody to drop their guns. Since Grant doesn’t have one – and since he’s obviously strapped down to the bed – he’s safe.

  As for me, I tell them right away about the pistol in the back of my jeans. I also make sure my hands are high in the air when I do it.

  “GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!” they scream. “HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

  I move very slowly into position, careful not to spook them. Once I’m spread-eagle facedown, they slip the gun out of my waistband, then zip-tie my wrists and hoist me roughly to my feet.

  I try not to look at Epicurus’s dead body. I feel bad, though God knows there’s no reason to. He was a serial killer. He was going to torture Grant to death, and he would have happily done the same to me. He was a deranged psychopath, a nightmare wrapped in human skin.

  But no matter how much he deserved it, I still hate to have been the Angel of Death.

  I basically forced him into ‘suicide by cop.’ It was justified, it was necessary, and it was the only option I had to save Grant’s life. At least, the only one I thought would work. But that doesn’t mean I’m proud of it.

  There is one darkly comic moment, when the FBI agents try to kick the gun out of Epicurus’s hand. It’s obviously no use because of the superglue, but they don’t know that. So they kick it again, and again, and again, until they realize something’s wrong.

  That five seconds of violent, futile repetition seems aptly symbolic of my entire life for the last week.

  Two FBI agents are leading me out of the room, and two more are unbuckling Grant’s arms and legs, when he yells, “Wait! Bring her back!”

  Normally, I doubt FBI crash teams pay much attention to people when they say things like that at crime scenes – but there is something especially commanding in Grant’s voice, a tone unaccustomed to being disobeyed. Or maybe my escorts just take pity on the half-naked guy strapped to the psycho-killer’s chop block. Either way, they pull me back into the room and let me walk over to him.

  Before any of the agents can stop him, Grant darts forward and kisses me passionately, his fingers entwined in my hair. The entire time I stand there with my hands bound, head tilted back, eyes closed in rapture.

  Oh God… that kiss…

  It was all worth it, for that one kiss.

  As the FBI troopers pull me away, Grant calls out fervently, “I love you!”

  “I love you, too!” I cry as they drag me bodily from the room.

  97

  The FBI keeps us separated for the next two hours as they secure the property and wait for reinforcements from San Francisco. I catch a glimpse of them herding the armor-clad thugs who shot up the airplane at the hangar. They’re all handcuffed together in a daisy chain, one guy’s right hand to another guy’s left. They look for all the world like big, ugly, sullen kindergarteners on a field trip, forced to hold hands by Teacher.

  Oddly enough, no one in the FBI asks me what happened, although I’m prepared to shout “Lawyer!” the second they do. Maybe the carnage they found at the hangar, plus the plastic-wrapped torture room, are making them a little slower to pass judgment.

  I see Grant again when they take all of us – including JP and Dominique – to the black FBI helicopter on the lawn.

  “JP!” Grant exclaims humorously. “You came after me!”

  “I wanted my ten million dollars,” JP says, totally deadpan.

  Grant grins, then turns to Dominique. “You okay?” he asks her in a far more serious voice.

  She looks at him, and I can see the longing in her eyes. We all know the reason why she traveled across the ocean to save him, and it wasn’t money.

  She smiles tightly and nods, resigned that the reward she wants isn’t the one she’s going to get.

  “Thank you,” Grant says, seriously and sincerely.

  She says something in French, which can’t be anything but You’re welcome… and then she looks both happy and brokenhearted at the same time.

  If I’d seen that same emotion from her yesterday, I would have been a jealous wreck. Now I just feel a pain in my heart on her behalf.

  I can be that secure because when he looks at me, love fills his entire face.

  We try to kiss again, but the FBI agents separate us forcibly and stow us in opposite ends of the helicopter.

  Doesn’t matter. We spend the entire flight back to San Francisco grinning from ear to ear and staring into each other’s eyes like lovestruck teenagers.

  98

  I could turn this into an interminable list of this happened, then this happened, but long story short, we get taken to FBI headquarters in San Francisco where they separate us and rake us over the coals. I lawyer up immediately. Or at least I say nothing but ‘Lawyer,’ even though one never appears.

  Two hours later, I’m finally reunited with Grant in a cement-walled interrogation room.

  Unfortunately, Duplass is waiting for us. He’s sporting a black eye where Dominique clocked him, and man does he look piiiiiissed.

  He also looks different. Not the pissed part – that’s par for the course. No, it’s something else. For a second I chalk it up to the black eye, and then it finally dawns on me: I’ve never seen him before without his ever-present Bluetooth earpiece.

  Too bad, dude. It’s either in an air duct in Marin County, or an FBI evidence locker.

  Mailin’s there, too, standing in the corner behind Duplass. He gives me a knowing little glance, like Don’t worry, I’ve got your back. My worries go down…
mm, maybe ten percent.

  The Frenchies aren’t present. I’m guessing some bilingual agents are sweating them down in their native language somewhere else.

  “Hey babe,” Grant teases me as soon as I’m escorted in. “Long time no see.”

  They’ve got him dressed in an FBI prisoner’s jumpsuit, but even that looks incredible on his muscular frame.

  Before I can say anything, though, Duplass snaps, “Sit down.”

  “Where’s my lawyer?” I ask as I grab the chair next to Grant.

  “I’ve been asking the same thing for the last two hours,” Grant says.

  Duplass shakes his head. “You don’t get a lawyer right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is a matter of national security.”

  “National security?!” Grant exclaims. “How?!”

  Duplass points at me. “She hacked the NSA.”

  Oh yeah. Actually, that would qualify as a matter of national security.

  I don’t look at him directly – I only glance at him out of the corner of my eye – but I can tell Mailin is watching me worriedly.

  Don’t worry, dude, I want to say. You had my back when I was 17, and you helped me save the love of my life today. I’m not about to rat you out now.

  “Yes, I did hack the NSA,” I say.

  While Mailin’s body noticeably relaxes, his face betrays how horrible he feels about leaving me hanging out to dry.

  “So you admit it,” Duplass gloats.

  Grant looks at me in surprise, and I’m pretty sure I can tell what’s in his head: What about never admitting to anything, even when you’re caught?

  The corollary to that, though, is Never screw a friend. And I’m not about to screw Mailin, not when his help is one of the reasons Grant’s still alive.

  So I try to evade instead.

  “Yeah, I admit it. But this isn’t about national security. National security was never at stake. You just don’t want to look bad.”