by Cindy Dees
While Dutch went outside to haul in more firewood, she quickly stripped off her wet clothes and changed into dry ones. Why she should be shy about him seeing her body after he’d already had his hands and mouth on every inch of it, she had no idea. But when he began stripping out of his wet clothing, she felt compelled to turn her back.
A terrible chasm had opened between them. Ironic that making love, the ultimate intimacy, should have driven them apart like this.
Dutch piled more wood on the fire. Then he looked over at where she perched on the side of the bed. “Why?”
She didn’t need to ask what he was referring to.
“I told you. My father made me do it,” she answered simply. “He said he would kill Carina if I didn’t set you guys up, and I believed him. There’s no excuse for what I did. I wasn’t strong enough to say no to him and make him do his own dirty work. And your brother died because of it. I’m guilty of every terrible thing you’re thinking about me. Please don’t blame yourself. I set you up.”
He stared at her expressionlessly, absorbing her confession without comment. She wished he would say something, rage at her or shake her, anything but this stony silence.
She moved to sit beside him on the raised hearth in front of the fire. He wouldn’t look at her, so she knelt down in front of him, injecting herself into his line of sight. “I’m so sorry,” she choked out.
Still no response from him. Just that cold, closed stare. There was nothing else left for her to say. Nothing that would assuage his guilt. Nothing that would change his mind about her. She’d ruined the best thing that had ever happened to her.
But then, they’d been doomed from the very start. She’d fought fate and lost.
She pushed slowly to her feet, feeling much older than her years. She stumbled across the room, blinded by tears that burned her eyes like acid. And then something vibrated against her chest. She froze. It vibrated again. Her cell phone. How was it working now? Had the battery been too cold before?
She fumbled in her sweater for the gadget. As she pulled it out, she glimpsed the incoming phone number displayed on its face. And gaped in shock. Something inside her snapped at the sight of her father’s cell-phone number.
She turned on the phone and said sharply, “What do you want?”
Dutch leaped across the room and strode toward her, but it was her father’s words that galvanized her attention.
“What the hell have you done with my cash, you conniving little bitch?”
Man, that was fast. She answered evenly, “Why do you ask?”
She flinched as her father spewed a string of vicious curses at her. “Don’t play games with me,” he snarled. “Where did you put it?”
Her toes curled in fear. “It’s safe,” she answered, fighting to keep a quiver out of her voice.
“When my men catch up with you, they’ll do whatever it takes to make you talk. You understand?”
She flinched. She’d heard the screams as his men tortured information out of people before.
Her father sounded as if he was trying to temper his snarling rage to cajole her, but the result was a disturbing vocal discord. “Tell me where the money is, and I’ll let Carina live.”
Bingo. She opened her mouth to accept the offer, but Dutch ripped the phone out of her hands and jammed it to his ear.
His voice was colder and deadlier than Julia had ever heard it before, including even earlier tonight. “Listen here, you fucking slimy piece of filth. Your thugs can’t lay a hand on Julia, and neither can your stooges in the FBI because I’ve got her. I’ve got you by the cajones, and I’m going to tear them off and shove them down your throat until you choke. Quit hassling and threatening your own flesh and blood, you sick bastard. And take my advice. Put your affairs in order. Now. I’m coming for you. Real soon.”
Dutch punched the off button and flung the phone down on the bed. He ran a distracted hand through his hair. “You all right?” he asked her tersely.
Hell no, she wasn’t all right! She’d had her father right where she wanted him and Dutch had interfered. “Why did you do that?” she cried out. “He was ready to make a deal!”
“By threatening your life? I saw you go pale. Don’t deny he threatened you and your sister.”
“He did. But he was ready to make a trade with me for Carina!”
Dutch frowned. “What do you have of his that he’d be so willing to trade for?”
“It’s not what I have. It’s what you have.”
His frown deepened. “Come again?”
“Earlier tonight I transferred the hundred million dollars I took from my father into the Blackjacks’ Swiss account.”
Dutch jerked. And stared at her in shock. “How in the flying fuck did you do that? And why?” he demanded. “As soon as he traces that transaction and checks out who owns our account, the bastard will know for sure that the Blackjacks are protecting you, not just me. Your sister’s dead meat.”
She answered quietly. “That money’s only the tip of the iceberg. I found the other bank account I was looking for. My father’s secret one that he tells nobody about. Not even me. It’s in Hong Kong. About an hour ago, the entire remainder of my father’s liquid assets were transferred to your account, too.”
“And how much was that?”
“Just shy of six-hundred-fifty-million dollars.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dutch’s jaw sagged. “Your old man is worth three-quarters of a billion dollars?”
She snorted. “He was. He’s not any more. Let’s just hope my sister’s worth that much.”
Dutch paced the tiny cabin restlessly. “Why in the hell did you move that money into our account?”
“I had to put it somewhere safe. Of all the enemies he’s made over the years, the Blackjacks are the only ones he fears. If you have his money, he can’t casually kill you and take it back.”
“What are you planning to do next?”
“Exchange my sister’s freedom for his money.”
“Then what?”
“Then I find the rest of his financial records, hide until he’s put in jail for good, along with his flunkies, and Carina and I begin our lives over again.”
Dutch stared at her speculatively. “You do realize that after this stunt with his money, he’s going to order his men to catch you at all costs.”
She shrugged. “Your account is protected by both the Swiss and American governments. He can’t get into it. Now he has to keep me alive until I can transfer the money back to him.”
“As secret as we try to keep our financial information, he’ll eventually find out where our money is kept. As soon as that happens, he can afford to kill you.”
She met his gaze candidly. “I know.”
For a moment, the tiniest instant, she saw a hint of concern in Dutch’s eyes. But the wall of ice slammed back into place immediately.
“How soon do you expect my father’s men to find us?” she asked. It was a given that they eventually would, of course.
Dutch scowled. “Not tonight but within the next few days. They know we’re in this general area, and there are only so many places we could be holed up. It’s Blackjack policy to plan for the worst, so I’m going to assume at least a couple of your father’s men will spot us soon. Now that the snowfall has let up, I’ll dig out the driveway so when the roads are plowed we can skedaddle. I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow.”
She breathed a sigh of relief that tomorrow they would get out of this death trap.
Dutch responded to her sigh, “Don’t get your hopes up too fast. It may be a day or two before the main road is clear enough for us to leave. I hiked up to check it out earlier tonight, and it’s completely snowed shut. There’s a good four feet of snow plus drifts on top of that blocking it.”
“Will the Blackjacks come get us?”
Dutch shrugged. “There’s nowhere nearby to land a helicopter. They won’t be able to get in any faster than we can get out.”
Every groan of the wind against the walls, every clatter of bare branches, made her jump. The idea of actually sleeping was a joke. The bed felt lonely without Dutch. She missed his reassuring warmth. But he stretched out in a chair with his feet propped up on the hearth, a mismatched pair of pistols in his lap.
Every time she tossed or turned, his masculine scent rose from the sheets, defying her to forget the power and the beauty of what had happened between them earlier. Before he pulled away from her. Before he remembered the true depth of her treachery.
She didn’t know how much more she could take of being so near Dutch, but so far away from him. The night stretched on and on without end.
Even though the coming day held a real risk of dying, she’d never been so grateful to see the faint light of dawn finally creep through the window.
Dutch spent most of the day digging out the driveway and splitting more wood to replenish the woodpile.
As the daylight began to fail, Dutch burst into the cabin on a rush of bitterly cold air and announced, “Guess what just drove by on the main road?”
She looked up at him hopefully.
He nodded. “A snowplow.”
Thank God. She put out the fire while he changed into dry clothes. She put some of their emergency food supplies in the cupboards to replace what she and Dutch had eaten and blew out the flame in the lantern. The little cabin went dark and cold without its welcoming glow. She looked around the dim interior, unsure of whether she was going to miss this place horribly or she never wanted to see it again. Its sturdy walls held the best and worst moments in her life.
Dutch pulled out his wallet and flipped a small square of white onto the table.
“What’s that?” she asked, breaking the impenetrable silence he’d surrounded himself with once more.
“My business card. The owners can contact Blackjack headquarters and get compensated for our use of their property.”
She started to reply, but Dutch froze abruptly and waved her to silence. He glided over to the door as fast and silent as a snake. What was out there? Or rather, who? She prayed fervently it was something simple like an angry bear or a pack of ravenous wolves. After a minute or so, the tension drained out of Dutch’s shoulders.
“What did you hear?” she ventured to ask.
“Snow crunching.”
“You can hear snow crunching from inside a house?”
He shrugged casually. “You could, too, if you knew what to listen for.”
But she didn’t. Her life depended entirely upon his skills. And upon his precarious goodwill.
She asked, “If that noise is my father’s men, why haven’t they barged in here and killed us already?”
Dutch grinned, the sharklike expression of a predator. It had very little to do with humor. “Because they know better than to mess with me in a straight-up fight. I’d chew them up and spit them out. And they don’t know how heavily armed I am. They can’t risk me circling the wagons and hunkering down in here. Inside this log cabin, I’m practically impervious to a gun battle. I could pick them off at my leisure.”
She blinked, startled, and took a fresh look around at the sturdy walls. A fortress, eh? “If this place is so safe, then why are we leaving?”
“Because the bad guys can always bring in bigger guns. We’re safer on the move and out of shooting range of your father’s men.”
She flinched at the disgust in his voice when Dutch mentioned her father. Shame ripped through her to be related to a monster like Eduardo Ferrare.
Dutch muttered gruffly “I’ll go start the car and let it warm up while you gather the last of our things.”
She nodded around the lump in her throat. The easy comfort they’d shared between them was completely destroyed. Its loss ached like a sore tooth. She sighed and gathered up the laptop computer and her overnight bag.
Only a faint glow of white from the blanket of snow illuminated the darkness when she stepped outside. It was still freezing, but not as frigid as last night.
Dutch was just finishing digging out the car door enough to open it. He slid into the driver’s side and left the door open—probably a safeguard against carbon monoxide buildup in the Jeep—as he turned the key. The engine roared to life.
But in the split second after the engine started, a bright flash enveloped the entire vehicle like a supernova. A microsecond of blinding light, and then the Jeep leaped up into the air as a tremendous explosion lifted it completely off the ground. The open door flew off, tumbling across the snow like a Chinese acrobat.
Flames engulfed the car as a wall of sound and heat slammed into her, throwing her bodily against the wall of the cabin at her back. For a moment the blast pinned her to the logs. Then just as suddenly, it dropped her to the ground. She slumped in the snow for a second, dragging a painful breath of scorched air into her lungs.
And then she screamed.
She scrambled toward the burning hull, clawing and scrabbling through the waist-high snow, sobbing Dutch’s name. She couldn’t make out the shape of his skeleton in the intense blaze. But she was determined to pull him from the fire even if it cost her her life to get him out.
She ran and fell, stood up and stumbled forward again. The explosion had melted a ring of snow around the vehicle, and it was already freezing into a bowl-shaped sheet of ice. And somewhere within it was the man she loved. Suffering. Dying.
A strange clarity came over her. The terrible heat of the fire burned away everything except the certain knowledge that she did not want to go on living without Dutch. On a sob, she rounded the corner to the driver’s side of the vehicle. She lunged forward to throw herself into the flames. She would find him…. Something black and strong snaked around her waist. Yanked her back.
Her father’s men. No! She would not go meekly back into his cruel clutches. “You bastards!” she screamed. “You’ve killed him!”
A hand slapped over her mouth, silencing her, but she continued to rage inside her mind. She fought with all the pent-up fury in her being, unleashing twenty years of terror and misery upon the head, shins and ribs of her captor, any part of the man she could punch, scratch, kick, or hit.
“Julia!” a harsh voice barked in her ear. “Stop it!” The arms around her tightened mercilessly, an inexorable noose strangling the very life out of her. Just the way her father always did. Any show of independence or defiance was crushed.
She fought until the last of her strength gave out. Until the horror of her loss overcame her, drained her of any fight she had left. It was too much. The pain was too great. She would never defeat her father. She just wasn’t strong enough, ruthless enough, to beat him at his own game. And what was the point, anyway? Dutch was dead and Carina was her father’s prisoner. She went limp in her captor’s arms.
Cautiously, the vise of the arms around her loosened.
“I’m done,” she said woodenly. “You win. My father wins. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Don’t give up on me now,” a deep voice retorted. “I’d hate to give the bastard the satisfaction.”
She blinked. Turned around very slowly. And flung herself against the tall, blackened form holding her.
Dutch fell over backward in the snow and she landed on top of him, heedless of the cold and snow showering down on her. Hot tears flowed, unchecked, down her cheeks. “Oh God, I thought you were dead,” she sobbed.
He pushed her hair back from her face. “So did I for a minute, there.”
“How?” she stuttered. “How are you…”
“Alive?” he finished for her. “I left the door open when I started the Jeep and the initial blast of the explosive charge blew me out of the car before the gas tank exploded and engulf
ed it in flames.”
She looked up abruptly at the wall of snow over their heads. “Who?” she gasped. “Are they here? Now?”
“That’s a damned good question,” Dutch growled. “If they’re not here already, they will be soon. In these mountains, the sound of that blast will carry for miles.”
Julia looked over her shoulder at the column of light and smoke rising high into the night sky. It could probably be seen for miles, too. Her father hadn’t gotten word to his men to back off until he got his money back. Was it just that the message hadn’t been received yet or—Oh, God—had her last-ditch strategy failed?
Dutch growled, “We’ve got to get out of here now. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head in the negative. “I was still on the porch when the Jeep blew.”
Dutch set her aside swiftly and rolled to his knees. “Stay low. Follow me,” he murmured. He crawled away from the burning shell of the Jeep, tunneling a path through the snow. Bemused, she followed him down the hill, toward the side of the cabin. But the road was the other direction!
Nonetheless, she scrambled along behind him, her gloves soaked and the snow cold on her face and neck. Dutch angled slightly away from the cabin itself and headed into the woods behind the log structure.
They almost made it to the perimeter of the trees when a spray of snow shot up in front of her.
Dutch swore and dropped flat.
He didn’t have to tell her to do the same. Someone was shooting at them. He motioned for her to crawl beside him. She inched forward on her belly, getting snow in her mouth and inside her coat. It was wet and miserable and freezing cold, but that was the least of her problems right now.
“I’m going to move away from you and lay down some suppression fire. Do you know what that is?”
She nodded immediately. Her father’s men talked about such things all the time. Dutch was going to spray a bunch of bullets at the bad guys to force them to duck and stop shooting long enough for her to go somewhere. “Where do you want me to go?” she murmured.