“No! You can’t convince me to go back. Do you have any idea what Giuseppe does to the people who cross him? He breaks every bone in their body. If they pass out, he injects them with a stimulant to wake them up, then tortures them—slowly. And that’s just business to him.” She choked on a sob, and the gun wobbled in her hand. “So what do you think he’ll do to the woman who killed his son?”
Her fear was so real, so palpable, it was like a living, breathing thing in the room between them. She was breaking his heart, cracking it wide open. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise you’ll be safe, but I need your help. If you run now, he’ll kill Cam, and then he’ll still come after you. I know you’re scared, but we can end this, Dahlia.” He risked another step forward, slowly reaching a hand toward the gun so as not to spook her any more than she already was. “You just need to trust me. Please.”
Tears continued to flow. She shook her head. “No. I learned a long time ago not to trust anyone. I’m sorry, Vaughn.”
She raised the gun again and fired.
Chapter Sixteen
Vaughn hit the floor and rolled behind the bed, but the bullet never even came close to him. It shattered the bedside lamp and sent ceramic flying like shrapnel. One piece sliced across his forearm, but that was nothing compared to the wound he could have ended up with if she’d been aiming. She had been at point-blank range. There was no way she should have missed him…unless she hadn’t been aiming for him at all.
He sneaked a peek around the edge of the bed and saw that she was gone, the motel room’s door hanging open. Already he heard the sirens of an approaching police car. Fastest response time in the South, he thought bitterly.
Frustrated, he sat up against the wall and assaulted his scalp with both hands. He should’ve realized she’d pull a stunt like this. Should have known she’d run again—but when it came to that woman, his judgement was clouded. Always had been. He’d wanted her to be more than the coward she’d seemed, but he was wrong. Points to her—it wasn’t often he so thoroughly misjudged a person.
He noticed his phone under the bed and reached for it. Marcus’s name was still highlighted on the screen, so he hit the call button and leaned his head back against the wall.
“Dude,” Marcus said in greeting. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. I know why Sage looked so familiar. She’s—”
“Dahlia Bellisario,” Vaughn finished in tune with him, then added, “Yeah, I know. She told me.”
“She told you?” A pause. “Hey, is everything okay?”
“No.” He gave Marcus the Cliff’s Notes version, and by the time he was done, the former FBI agent was cursing, succinctly summing up Vaughn’s feelings about the whole clusterfuck. “I’m currently sitting here in a motel room without a car, my gun, or my wallet, and I have twenty-four hours to get home or a sociopath is going to torture my brother. So, no, everything is not okay. I don’t suppose HORNET is up for a hostage rescue mission?”
“We would be if everyone wasn’t on leave,” Marcus said and swore again. “It’ll take too long to round them all up and get them to DC.”
Vaughn rubbed at his eye as a headache drilled into his skull behind it. “That figures.”
A beat passed in silence. “Okay, dude,” Marcus said finally. “Get your ass to the nearest airport and call me with the location. I will pull every string, call in every favor I owe, and have a plane there to pick you up. With or without Dahlia, we’ll get your brother home.”
…
The first exit to Atlanta was only a mile away, but Dahlia didn’t take her foot off the gas. Dammit, her tears wouldn’t stop. As much as she tried wiping them away, they just kept flowing, pouring down her face, blurring her vision. She probably shouldn’t be driving in this state of emotional upheaval, but like her tears, she couldn’t seem to stop.
She’d known, as soon as Vaughn demanded where his brother was, she’d known it was Giuseppe on the other end of the line and not Cam. She’d also known in that second what Vaughn would ask her to do and sheer, cold terror had propelled her off the bed.
She didn’t remember grabbing his gun, hadn’t consciously plotted an escape—she’d been operating in adrenaline-fueled flight mode. How could he ask her to walk in to the lion’s den when she’d spent the last five years of her life running terrified of that very beast?
I won’t let anything happen to you.
She wanted to believe him, she did. But if it came down to a choice between her and his twin, he was going to choose his brother. She couldn’t fault him for it—it was what anybody would do in his situation—but because of that, she couldn’t trust him to keep her safe. She’d learned a long time ago if she didn’t look out for herself, nobody else was going to.
The exit zoomed by.
Shit. She wasn’t paying attention. She swiped at her face with her sleeve and told herself she’d catch the next one.