“Please!” Zoe cried out. “I haven’t hurt you! I haven’t done anything to you! I didn’t even know you until you broke into my house and took me!’
Victor advanced on Hugh, but he made sure to move his body to the side as he closed in on the guy. If Hugh got trigger happy, he didn’t want the bullet to be any place close to that bomb. “Give me the gun,” Victor said. My freaking gun.
But Hugh’s brow had furrowed. “You were in the prison. Talking with Bates.” His head lifted. He aimed the weapon at Victor once more. “You’re on his payroll, aren’t you? Just another dirty agent, willing to do anything for good old Luther.”
“No.” An immediate denial.
“You made a deal with him! I’ve seen it before! Cops, FBI agents—you’re all on the take!”
Shit. He did have a deal with Bates. And that deal was contingent on getting Zoe Peters out of that place alive. “You have it wrong—”
“What’s he gonna give you?” Spittle flew from Hugh’s lips. “If you take me out? What is that bastard gonna do for you?”
Cancel a hit. “Hugh—”
“What is your deal with him?” Hugh was screaming now.
Zoe was dead silent.
Victor lifted his chin. “If I bring Zoe back in, then he’ll cancel a hit that he has…a hit on one of my friends.”
Hugh laughed. Mocking, rough laughter. “He’s lying to you. He won’t cancel anything. Your friend is dead, and you don’t even realize it.” The laughter slowly faded away. “Dead…like you.”
Then he fired at Victor.
Chapter Fourteen
Victor hadn’t checked in.
Saxon frowned down at his phone. His brother should have called by now, but he hadn’t. Victor never missed a check-in. Never.
Victor had sworn he would call Saxon. The plan had been for Saxon to never call him, probably because his uber-suspicious brother wanted to only use a burner phone when he contacted Saxon but…Something was obviously wrong with the plan.
Saxon called his brother. Not some number to a burner phone, but Saxon’s real number. The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times.
Pick up, Vic. Just pick up.
On the fourth ring, the phone was answered.
“Victor,” Saxon said his name in a relieved rush. “What the hell, man? You missed your check-in with me—”
Then he heard laughter. Laughter that sure as shit didn’t belong to Victor.
“I’m afraid Victor will be missing more than just a check-in,” a grating voice told him.
“Who is this?” Saxon demanded as every muscle in his body locked down.
“I’m the man who just shot the FBI agent.”
“Then you’re the man I’m coming to kill,” Saxon said flatly. Victor isn’t dead. Vic isn’t dead!
“Get in line,” the guy told him and he hung up the phone.
No, no!
Saxon dialed back immediately, but the phone just rang and rang.
***
“I thought you were here to rescue me,” Zoe Peters said as she turned her head to stare at Victor. “Not die with me.”
He wasn’t dead, not yet. The bastard had shot him in the right shoulder—trying to take out my firing arm—then he’d cuffed Victor and left him on the floor of that damn basement.
Now he was in that room with Zoe, and she still had a bomb strapped to her chest. Not the best odds he’d ever faced, but not the worst ones either.
Victor’s phone was ringing again. A phone that Hugh had in his hand.
“Who is that asshole calling?” Hugh demanded. “Why won’t he just stop?”
Victor sucked in a deep breath and ignored the pain that pulsed through him. “That asshole is my brother…” Think, think, think. There had to be a way out of this. A way that didn’t involve Victor and Zoe getting blown into a million pieces.
“Family,” Hugh muttered, disgust thick in his voice. “Family is why I’m here. Why you’ll die. Why she…” Fury darkened his face. “Why she will die. I’m going to make Bates pay for what he’s done. I will make him—”
“You’re trying to get at Luther Bates?” Like he didn’t already know that. “Then answer that phone. My brother has something that Bates wants very, very badly.”
Hugh’s eyes turned to slits.
“Bates took out a hit on the Ward family years ago. Maryann Ward is the lawyer who gave the DA all the evidence on Bates. She’s the one who sent him to prison.”
“Maryann Ward.” Hugh smiled. “Oh, I do remember her name.”
“Then maybe you remember that the hitman took out Maryann and her husband, but he missed the daughter, Elizabeth Ward.”
Hugh’s smile stretched even more. “Elizabeth.”
He didn’t like the way the guy said Elizabeth’s name. With such smug satisfaction. Victor started backpedaling with his plan because…something is off here. Some shit is really off.
Other than the bomb and the woman who’d been held hostage and—
Hugh answered the ringing phone. “Do you have Elizabeth Ward?”
“No!” Victor shouted because maybe Saxon would hear him. “Don’t give her up! Send the FBI here—I’m in South Carolina, with Zoe—”
Hugh sighed and lifted the bomb trigger.
“Don’t say another word,” Zoe whispered. “I don’t want to die like this.”
Victor stopped talking.
Hugh held his stare. “I ask again…” he said into the phone. “Do you have Elizabeth Ward? Because your brother just brought her to my attention…and I have to think that he wouldn’t have said her name unless you really did have her with you.” And the guy looked as if he’d just been given some amazing-ass Christmas present.
***
Do you have Elizabeth Ward?
Saxon had to loosen his hold on the phone because he was close to splintering the thing. “Who is this?”
“We covered this already,” he was told, “I’m the man who shot your brother, and I can be the man who kills him, too.”
Not Victor. “What do you want?”
“I want Elizabeth Ward, if you have her.”
His jaw locked. “I don’t.” Lying was easy.
“Oh, that’s too bad.” The voice was mocking. “Because now I’m going to put a bullet right between your brother’s eyes.”
“No!” Saxon shouted.
The guy demanded once more, “Do you have Elizabeth Ward?”
“Yes,” he growled. Elizabeth’s image flashed in his mind. Beautiful, sensual Elizabeth. The woman who could make him feel so much, who could make him need so much.
“I want her.”
Too fucking bad. She’s mine.
“I’ll let your brother go, if you bring Elizabeth Ward to me.”
That wasn’t going to happen. “Tell me where you are.”
“Your brother already told you…South Carolina.” Now the guy’s voice was annoyed.
“I’m nowhere near South Carolina.”
“Then you’d better get here, fast, and when you do, we’ll talk again.”
“Don’t you hurt him, do you understand me?” Before he could fly to South Carolina, the guy might decide to sink a bullet into Victor’s brain.
“If you don’t bring Elizabeth to me, I’ll do more than hurt him.”
Shit, shit, shit! “Why do you want her? What are you going to do?” Because you won’t—
“Elizabeth Ward and I share an enemy. I need her. You bring her to me, and you and the FBI agent can just walk away.” There was a pause. “He says he’s your brother. Surely your brother is worth more to you than she is?” Then he laughed again. “Maybe you think you know the woman, but you don’t. I know her secrets. I know all about Elizabeth…now bring her to South Carolina.”
The guy knew her secrets? That didn’t make a bit of sense to Saxon. Elizabeth didn’t have any secrets. She was good and kind and the best thing that had come into his life in so long.
The best thing…since I met Victor and Jasmine. They’d been my only family until I found her.
“Call again when you’re in South Carolina. If I don’t hear from you in four hours, the FBI agent is—”
“I’m on the West Coast,” Saxon rushed to say. “I need more time.”
“What you need…is to get on a freaking plane. Get on a plane and head to Charleston.” The line went dead.
Saxon stood there a moment, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do.
Trade one life, for another?
He looked down at his phone. Victor had always been there for him. His brother needed him right now. If Victor was already shot, if that bastard on the line hadn’t been lying…