Harper groaned and tried to roll to her side, but something was preventing her from moving.
She struggled, tried to sit up, couldn’t. Tried to move her legs, couldn’t. Tried to move her arms, still couldn’t.
Panic set in, stealing her breath as she opened her eyes and blinked. Nothing but darkness met her eyes. She opened her mouth to yell, but only a muffled sound met her ears. And her head . . .
Blinding pain was stabbing at her skull. At her fuzzy skull, she belatedly realized. She felt as if she were moving in slow motion, in water. If she could move.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
She sucked air in through her nose and screamed as loud as she could. Her muffled voice echoed back at her, followed by a rush of warmth that felt like . . . her breath.
In a daze, she realized why it was so dark, why she couldn’t move, and why her breath was rebounding over her. She lifted her head—the only part of her that wasn’t strapped down—and discovered in a rush of horror she was right.
She was in a body bag. She was drugged and strapped down, just as Destiny had been. Oh God . . . she was back in that facility where that monster carved up bodies and stole organs.
“Now, now,” a familiar voice said somewhere close. “You’ve woken up, I see. Let’s just have a look, shall we?”
She froze, recognizing that voice as the doctor she and Rusty had heard when they’d been here earlier tonight. The one Pierce had called Jones, or Jackson or . . . no, Johnson.
A zipper sounded, and then light shone down a single line in the center of her vision. Plastic crackled, and then the light grew stronger, blinding her as the two halves of the bag were pulled open.
“My, my. They did a number on you, didn’t they?”
He spoke as if he were talking to a child. Harper squinted and tried to see his face. All she could make out were fuzzy shapes and . . . Glasses, he was wearing glasses.
“Let’s just see where we’re at, shall we?” He moved out of her line of sight. Rustling echoed from the right. Plastic clicking. Then he returned, filling her vision with his shadowy, fuzzy shape as he lifted an object in his hand and moved it over her, lowering it near her arms, which were strapped together against her torso. “Hold still now.” Something tight closed around her upper arm, then he pressed his finger against the crook of her elbow and said, “This might hurt.”
He stabbed a needle into the crook of her elbow, and she cried out as pain ripped up her arm.
“Hmm, not a very good patient.” He tugged something off the end of the needle—a vial she realized, a vial of her blood—and pressed another in its place, waiting for it to fill. “Don’t worry. This will all be over soon. They didn’t have to give you too much to sedate you. It’ll be out of your system soon enough. Then you’ll have a nice long sleep.”
She winced as he yanked the needle free, not bothering to be gentle, not bothering to cover the spot with a bandage. As he took the vials to the counter near the foot of the gurney she was strapped to and started testing her blood—for what, she didn’t know—he hummed as if there was nothing fucking wrong with this situation. As if she were a lab rat and not even human.
“Oh, this is wonderful, wonderful,” the man crooned. “You’re a universal donor. Your organs will be easy to place. Very easy. But the drug isn’t quite out of your system. We’ll have to wait a little bit longer.”
He turned and grinned down at her, and now that her vision was clearing, she could see the evil gleam in his eyes. And the fact the man had no soul.
“As it is, turns out the boss wants to watch.” He nodded to his left. “I’ve got a camera set up when he’s ready. He’s dealing with your boyfriend first. But when that’s done . . .” He clucked his tongue. “Then it’s showtime.”
Harper’s heart rate shot up. He was talking about Rusty. They had Rusty. She screamed behind the tape over her mouth and kicked her arms and legs as hard as she could.
“Oh, you are a wildcat, aren’t you?” He sighed and stepped to the end of the gurney, shaking as if he couldn’t contain his excitement. “I can’t wait to see what surprises you have inside.”
Every muscle in Rusty’s body vibrated with pent-up restraint as he was escorted into the fancy mansion on the outskirts of the city where the text had told him to come to—alone, with no weapons and no witnesses.
If he contacted the police, Harper was dead. If they saw any evidence he’d brought backup, she was dead. They’d made it clear they were watching him. He wasn’t sure when they’d put eyes on him, but he was holding on to hope it hadn’t been when he’d left his vineyard. His money was on the moment he’d turned onto the freeway. That was when he’d noticed the lights following him, all the way through the city and out to this desolate estate. Which meant they didn’t know the plans he’d made with Hunt before that.
At least he prayed they didn’t.
Two bouncer-size bodyguards in black suits had patted him down as soon as he’d arrived. They’d taken his phone, but finding him unarmed, had led him through a series of fancy rooms and down a set of curved stairs to a lower level. Another bodyguard followed closely at his back. None of the three spoke, and as they moved, Rusty prayed again and again that he’d made the right decision.
They wouldn’t try to auction Harper off. He was sure of that. She wasn’t a teenager. She wasn’t a virgin. They could make a few bucks off her by selling her on the black market, but they knew she was a cop. And she could defend herself. They’d never risk the chance she might escape from whatever fucking piece of shit purchased her as a slave because she knew too much about their organization to be left alive.
Which meant they were going to kill her. Just the thought sent bile rushing up his throat, but he forced it down and reminded himself they had time. These men might be monsters, but they were also businessmen. Harper was a healthy, fit woman in the prime of her life. If they’d gone to all the trouble of kidnapping and binding her up like they had in that picture, they were planning something else. They were going to harvest her organs first.
The two men in suits ahead of him stopped at a set of double doors and turned to face him. Stone-faced, the one on the left reached for the door handle and pushed it open, moving into the space ahead of him. The other stayed at the door.
It was an office, he realized as he stepped into the room. A big office with dark wood paneling, an entire wall filled with shelves and old books, a mahogany fireplace fronted by a couch and several side chairs, and a big old desk on the far side that was immaculately clean except for a phone, a lamp, and a single pen.
The bodyguard moved to the desk and stopped there, turning sideways and clasping his hands in front of him in silence. Ignoring him, Rusty glanced over the paintings on the walls, knowing they were spendy too, not recognizing the artists or even caring. Jordan had once had expensive paintings like that on the walls of his office. The same office where he’d beat Rusty to a pulp the day he’d revealed Lily was gone. Disgust burned in Rusty’s gut. Some men craved possessions. He was going to do whatever it took to make sure Harper was no one’s possession, ever.
A door to the left of the big desk opened, and a tall, dark-haired man in his late fifties entered the room, wearing slacks, a striped dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a jacket that was clearly custom-made to fit his tall frame. A man Rusty recognized from a photograph Harper had shown him.
“Mr. McClane,” he said, moving behind the desk and reaching for the fancy leather rolling chair. “We finally meet.” He nodded toward the bodyguard.
The bodyguard nodded back in response, set Rusty’s cell phone on the edge of the desk, and moved for the door. Behind him, the door clicked closed.
His jaw clenched down hard as he stared at Gabriel Rossi. The mayor of Portland. “I’m here, like you asked. I followed your instructions. Tell your thugs to let Blake go.”
“I would love to, but”—he reached for Rusty’s cell phone, turning it over in his hands
as he studied the screen, then leaned back in the chair—“she’s caused all sorts of problems.”
Rusty’s vision turned red all over again, but he forced himself to stay in control. Losing it now wouldn’t help Harper. And he’d known this prick wouldn’t live up to his end of the deal. “I’m the one you want and you know it. You have me. Let her go.”
Rossi sighed, powered down Rusty’s phone, and dropped it on the desk as if he were bored. “Sadly, that’s not up to me anymore. I tried to get Renwick to keep her in line, but . . . the man has no spine.”
The door opened again, and Andrew Renwick stepped into the room, his head hanging, his shoulders slumped, every part of him somber and nearly defeated.
Rusty ground his teeth together to keep from lunging at Renwick, and then a third person moved into the room, accompanied by the hum of an electric wheelchair.
Rusty’s mouth fell open as he stared at the heavyset man dressed in a suit. He was bald on top with a fringe of white hair around, and he was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that made his dark eyes appear almost beady. But he was familiar. And with one look as he used a hand to maneuver the machine into the room, Rusty knew who he was.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” the man said with a note of glee in his strained voice. “Never expected me to be alive, did you, son?”
Rusty stared at James Jordan, unable to piece together the past with what he was seeing. Jordan was alive? He’d made it out of that fire? He’d survived? Rusty stared at him, seeing no burn marks. No signs he’d ever even been in a fire.
It wasn’t possible. The air contracted in his lungs, making his chest tight and achy. Jordan had been alive all this time?
Head spinning, feeling like he was in some kind of sick dream, he glanced toward Rossi, who was seated behind the desk, eyes narrowed, lips thin, watching Rusty closely, then to Renwick, cowering in the corner, and finally back to Jordan in the wheelchair.
A very much alive Jordan. And very much in control of this room and the men Rusty had thought were running the Plague.
“I don’t . . . How did you . . . ” Rusty blinked, staring at Jordan again in disbelief. “Who shot you?”
“A cop. One who was working undercover at the time when we were first starting up. He surprised me, I’ll say that much.” His swollen lips curled just a touch in a twisted smile. “But he got what was coming to him. Took a few years, but we got him back. He’d figured out I was still alive, you see. He was getting too close again. Damn cops are always doing that. Playing hero and getting in the way. But we took care of him. Just like we’re going to take care of his pretty little daughter.”
Holy shit. He was talking about Harper’s father.
“B-but there was a fire. I saw you burn.” A fire the man who’d shot Jordan had started. Double shit . . . Harper’s father had done that too.
“You saw a body burn. Just not mine. It was what we call a convenient cover-up. My men were easily able to toss a homeless man into that blaze in my place. The fire definitely took care of the matter of your mother. Would have taken care of you too, if I’d been coherent enough to tell them you were hiding behind that desk.”
No, that wasn’t right. Rusty’s brow lowered. He remembered seeing the same man who’d shot Jordan start that fire. Only . . . The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if that was accurate. His eyes had been swollen. He’d definitely been concussed. It was possible he’d blacked out behind that desk. That the fire had started later. His memories from that night weren’t as clear as he’d once thought.
“Now.” Jordan seemed to sit up straighter in his chair. “Enough with the walk down memory lane. I always knew you were alive. I just had no idea they’d hide you right under my fucking nose. The situation is very simple. You fucked with the one thing I cared about most in this world. Now I’m going to fuck with the one thing you care most about.”
Harper. He was talking about Harper. In that moment, Rusty knew that nothing he’d done in the past could have saved Lily. He’d been a kid back then. He couldn’t have stopped Jordan because he’d had no idea what kind of true evil lurked in this man’s soul. But he did now. He knew how this man thought and what he wanted and how he planned. And if it was the last thing he did, he was going to make sure he didn’t ruin another life ever again.
Jordan turned toward Rossi. But instead of giving him any kind of signal like Rusty expected, he pulled a gun from a space between his hip and the inside of his wheelchair, pointed the long-nosed barrel capped with a silencer toward the corner of the room, and fired.
Rusty jerked back and stared wide-eyed toward Renwick. A hole in his chest spread blood all across his white shirt.
Rossi swiveled in his seat at the desk and shook his head as he glanced toward Renwick. “Stupid son of a bitch,” Rossi mumbled. “Gave him one job and he couldn’t do it. All you had to do was keep the bitch under control,” he yelled at Renwick.
Renwick’s legs gave out, and his body slid to the floor. Just before he died, Rusty heard him whisper, “I’m—sorry. Tell her, I’m . . . sorry.”
Rusty’s hands were shaking as he held them up, his heart pounding like a thoroughbred’s as he waited for Jordan to turn the gun on him. But he didn’t. Instead, he lowered it to his lap, let go of it to rest his fat hand on the controls of the wheelchair, and turned the contraption toward Rossi at the desk. “Make the call. And get the remote. I want him to watch as they carve her up.”
“There’s something you need to know,” Rusty said quickly as Rossi reached for the phone.
Rossi’s hand froze against the receiver.
He was out of time. He had one shot to save Harper’s life. All he could do was hope and pray he’d made the right choice and that Hunt was already there.
“I thought you might double-cross me,” he said, staring at Jordan. “Which is why I gathered all my research on the Plague and left it for my brother. You know who he is, don’t you? A journalist. The same journalist who brought down your friends, the Kasdans. By now Alec’s already uploaded all of it to the internet and triggered a dead man’s switch. If Harper dies, it goes out. If your thugs carve her up, it goes out. If they do anything to hurt her, six years of research, documenting everything I’ve seen and every person involved, will hit the papers by morning and be the biggest scandal Portland has seen in years.”
Silence filled the room.
Jordan’s beady eyes narrowed with veiled hatred. “The world already thinks I’m dead.”
“Jordan . . .” Panic rose in Rossi’s voice as he pushed to his feet.
“Shut up,” Jordan snapped, staring at Rusty. “I don’t give a flying fuck about a scandal,” Jordan said in a low voice.
“Oh, you will.” Rusty met his stare head-on. “You’ll care because you’ll lose millions of dollars and everything you’ve built. And because my cell phone over there that you think is turned off was recently loaded with some fancy software by my sister’s fiancé that has been broadcasting this conversation right to my brother the whole time you’ve been talking.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“He’s got my name,” Rossi screamed at Jordan. “He’ll ruin me.” He grasped Rusty’s phone and hurled it toward the far wall. It cracked against the wood and hit the floor with a thunk.
“You’re panicking,” Jordan growled. “Stop fucking panicking.”
“I’m not going down for this. I’m not going down for you . . .” Rossi lurched around the desk and dove for the gun in Jordan’s lap.
He was too slow, though. Jordan grasped the gun and lifted it. A popping sound echoed though the room, and Rossi grunted as the bullet struck his stomach and he fell.
Rusty knew this was his only chance. He lurched forward, but Jordan lifted the gun and pointed it at him, stopping his movement.
“Not yet.” Shifting the gun to his other hand so he could keep it trained on Rusty, he wrapped his sausagelike fingers around the wheelchair’s joystick and backed the wheelchair up
to the side of the desk. Then he reached for the phone from the corner of the surface, laid it on his lap, and dialed.
He lifted the phone to his ear and waited. “Yes,” he said, holding the gun steady, the barrel pointed at Rusty. “Go ahead. Start. No, I don’t care if the feed isn’t working. She’ll scream loud enough. He can listen through the phone.”
Rusty’s vision turned red. “You son of a bitch. If you even think of—”
“This is my favorite part.” Jordan pulled the phone two inches away from his ear and turned it so the receiver was pointed Rusty’s way. “When he makes the first cut. You’re going to love the sound she makes.”
Rusty’s heart lurched into his throat, and his gaze zeroed in on the receiver. A crackling sound echoed over the line, followed by a groan. Sickness surged up his throat, and his heart rate shot into the triple digits, but his feet were cemented in place, every muscle in his body flexed and ready to pounce but useless to Harper from so far away.
Please, please, please . . .
More crackling sounded over the line. Metal scraped. His breathing sped up as he listened. There was some kind of commotion happening on the other end of the line. A banging sound echoed. And then he heard a whispered, “No, no, don’t you dare . . .”
Rusty jerked forward a step. “Harper!”
A scream ripped through the line, echoing in the room like cannon fire.
In his wheelchair, a satisfied smile curled the edges of Jordan’s fat lips. “I told you you’d like that first sound.”
Rage was a firestorm inside Rusty, one he couldn’t control. One he could no longer hold back.
A series of pops echoed over the line. Jordan jerked back from the phone and dropped the receiver as if it had burned him. And Rusty didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself at Jordan, surprising him.
The gun went off, but Rusty had already knocked it to the side, and it went flying. His body slammed into Jordan, sending the wheelchair straight back and down to the ground with a thud.
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