72 Hours (14 page)

“How could you be so sure?”

“Considering your history with Grace Nolan and knowing you were destined to at some point be a thorn in my side, I arranged to get a small sampling of Danny’s blood for DNA testing shortly after his birth from a nurse who his pediatrician clearly didn’t pay enough.”

“But…” Rage—and fear that this man had been insinuated into his family’s life for so long—was robbing Alex of his wits and he shook his head, determined to stay focused on the kill or be killed scenario they’d backed themselves into. “You would have needed mine, as well.”

Contadino’s smile chilled him to the bone. “You do tend to get bloody a great deal. It was simply a matter of having the right person in the right place. I knew Danny was your son seven years before you did, Allesandro.”

To hell with beating him to death. Alex reached for his back-up piece at the back of his waist, just as Grace came through the door. Silver flashed, and only when the pain took his breath away did he realize Contadino had thrown a knife, now embedded in his shoulder.

Even as he opened his mouth to yell to her, Grace had hesitated, her horror-stricken gaze following the path of the blade. Contadino took advantage of that split-second. Yanking her arm back, he disarmed her and pulled her in front of him. The barrel of her gun didn’t even tremble as it was pressed against her temple.

The
déjà vu
hit Alex almost as hard as the gut-twisting fear as he stopped in the process of raising his own gun. It was another reminder of why couples shouldn’t be partners, except they both had more to lose this time. Contadino was probably the only man on the planet with the emotional weapons to bring them down—using his love for his mother and Grace’s feelings for Alex—and it was Grace who was going to pay for it. Again.

* * *

For a second, everything seemed frozen. Grace heard water dripping. Her own breaths, a little more frequent and ragged than those of her captor. Raindrops pattering on the roof.

Contadino’s fingertips were hot as they pressed into her neck, holding her still. The barrel of the gun pressed to her head was slowly warming against her flesh. Her knees trembled but not too much.

Danny…

The past superimposed on the present, like a repressed memory brought into the light, and Grace looked into Alex’s eyes. She remembered how they’d looked that night in London even as she saw them now.

Panic. Fear. Resignation? But it wouldn’t work this time. Contadino had a gun, not a knife. He was shorter—not much, but enough. And there was also the bottom line—no way in hell was Alex going to have to go through this again.

Mommy loves you, baby.

Grace reached up and yanked back hard on Contadino’s pinky as she drove her foot down onto his instep. Simultaneously, she jerked her head forward and the bullet skimmed by her, deafening…burning.

She screamed as she fell, the jerking of Contadino’s body over her the only way she could tell Alex was emptying his gun into the bastard. In her ears there was only ringing, and she felt blood flowing like hot summer rain down the back of her neck. She hit the old planks and dust plumed into her eyes, blinding her as easily as the gunshot had deafened her.

I’m sorry, Danny.

Hands grabbed her, rolling her over, and Grace fought, kicking out. Tears—from the pain and the dust—flowed over her cheeks and she blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision.

“Grace!” He was holding her tightly, rocking her even as he restrained her. “Stop, Grace. It’s over.”

She could hear. The ringing persisted, but she could hear Alex shouting the same words at her, over and over, until the sobs she’d barely been aware of abated.

“I’m…okay,” she managed to whisper through teeth clenched against the intense pain coming from the back of her skull.

“Good. Now you can tell me what the hell you think you were doing.”

The anger in his voice almost made her smile. She’d managed to scare him but good this time. “Not letting you…shoot me again.”

She winced when he gathered her against his chest and squeezed. “You crazy bitch. I thought he was going to get you, too.”

“Not a chance.” She tried to kiss his neck, but her world went blessedly dark before her lips could find his flesh.

Chapter Eleven

Alex leaned his head against the back of the most uncomfortable chair on the planet and closed his eyes. The dim, quiet—and secure—room he’d managed to finagle for his team seemed like a haven after what they’d been through, but he’d managed to piss off the nurse in charge during the admittance process and she’d seen he got the shit furniture.

Carmen was sleeping off her concussion on a fold-out cot in one corner of the room. Gallagher, in one of the two real beds nursing a gunshot wound to the leg that would lay him up for a few weeks—was watching her sleep.

The man was second to none in the stones department. Contadino’s men hadn’t been screwing around—the armament piercing bullet had gone through the chopper and into Gallagher’s leg. And still he’d cleared the roof and extracted all three of his wounded team members. There was a chance the zeroes wouldn’t even all fit on the bonus check Alex would be writing him come Christmas.

Grace tossed and turned fitfully in her own bed. She despised drugs—she hated a fuzzy brain more than she hated pain—and she was paying for her refusal now, even in her sleep.

Contadino’s bullet had carved a shallow groove across the back of her head, causing it to bleed like hell, but fortunately not fracturing the bone. She’d have one hell of a scar and cutting her hair exceptionally short was no longer an option for her, but she was alive.

They’d also had to flush her eyes to rinse away the small, gritty particles mixed with the dust, and she had bruises on her throat from where the bastard had held her.

They’d all suffered some very minor injuries—although his own knife wound was a little more serious than minor—but there was no reason they couldn’t be recuperating away from the hospital. As a rule, it was a place they all detested. But they all needed sleep, and Alex couldn’t resist the opportunity to have his entire team—the three people in the Group he actually considered his friends—all present and accounted for, and tucked in safely beside him.

The door opened slowly and Alex barely tensed as the nurse slipped into the room. The guards outside their room were the private security of a friend of his, and nobody Alex hadn’t cleared was getting in.

The nurse leaned down so he’d be able to hear her quiet tone. “I really think she should be medicated. She’d rest easier.”

“I agree,” Alex replied. “But she’d hate us both in the morning. If she needs something, she’ll let us know, but I can tell you now it won’t be anything stronger than more of that Tylenol with Codeine.”

“I could just slip something into her IV, you know. Just a little something to help her sleep, but not enough so she’d really notice in the morning.”

Alex scrubbed his face with his hands. He’d like to. And as Sean Devlin, he had emergency medical authority over every member of The Devlin Group. “I promised her I wouldn’t. But if she gets any worse, I’ll wake her up and we’ll get more Tylenol into her.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “See that you do, because you obviously aren’t going to get any sleep until she’s quiet.”

To his horror, tears welled in Alex’s eyes. “We have a son…he’s eight.”

What the hell did
that
have to do with anything? Christ, he must be more tired than he thought. He just wanted this woman—this fierce healer who’d put him in his place when he’d started barking orders in her ER—to know he wasn’t just the boss. That he was…hell, he didn’t know what he was.

“I’ll get you a pillow and a blanket,” the nurse whispered, and she ducked out of the room

“Oh jeez, you big crybaby,” Gallagher taunted from his own comfortable bed. “I’ll make room for you to bunk with me. But if you spoon me I’ll have to kill you.”

Alex chuckled, then stopped when the cell phone in his pocket buzzed silently. The number told him it was Charlotte, the woman who practically ran his entire life from a technologically tricked-out brownstone in New York City.

“Hey, Batman,” she said in her usual greeting. “I just had a call patched through from SOUTHCOM regarding an upset little boy they’re babysitting for you?”

Oh,
shit
. He heard the question in her voice and he knew she was never going to let him forget not being privy to all the juicy details of the last few days. “I promise I’ll call you tomorrow and fill you in. Better yet, I’ll let Carmen call and spill everything. You can have a girly gossip session, okay? But why is Danny upset?”

“He’s convinced something’s happened to his mother, whose name just happens to be Grace Nolan. Hmmm. She’s not answering her cell, so he’s trying to reach his father. Name? Why, look…it’s Alex Rossi. You are
so
going to be sorry.”

“Charlotte, I…hell, I didn’t even know.”

“Yes, well don’t be surprised if you find yourself contracted to guard some rich broad’s frou-frou little poodle princess. What do you want me to tell SOUTHCOM?”

The little boy Alex had been whispered that answer in his ear. “Patch Danny right through to me, Charlotte. I’ll talk to him myself.”

And tell him what? That his mother had been shot in the head, but her thick skull had deflected the glancing blow and she was going to be fine? His life was all about thinking on his feet, but he wasn’t usually dealing with eight-year-old boys.

He didn’t have long to think about it, because Danny’s voice came on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

“Hey, Danny. It’s your…it’s Alex.”

“Is Mommy okay? I had a bad dream and my tummy feels funny and I can’t stop thinking about her and why isn’t she answering her cell phone and
why
can’t I talk to her?”

“She’s sleeping, Danny, but she’s fine. There was a…situation, and she had a little injury to her head, but she’s okay.”

“Pinky swear?”

“Yeah, buddy. I pinky swear your mom’s okay. And she’ll be coming to get you very soon. Just a couple more days.” The team had some loose ends to tie up, and he wanted Grace steady and healing before their son saw her.

Danny was quiet for a long moment. “Is the bad man gone?”

“Yes,” Alex said quietly. How surreal that the boogeyman of his own childhood had become the boogeyman of his son’s. “The bad man is dead, son. He can’t ever hurt you—
us
—again.”

“That’s good. Can I talk to Mommy in the morning?”

“I’ll have her call you when she wakes up, okay? But you should be asleep right now.”

“I can sleep now. ‘Night, Alex…um, Dad.”

“Goodnight, Danny.”

He closed the phone just as the door swung open again. He thanked the nurse for the blanket and pillow, then tried to get comfortable. Ten minutes later he was stretched out on the floor. Five minutes after than he was lying next to Gallagher, a blanket rolled between them to protect the other man’s leg. And finally Grace sank into REM, and Alex closed his eyes.

* * *

Grace was ready to hold her son. She’d talked to him many times since leaving the hospital, but until those little arms curled around her neck, her world was still off-kilter. And the nurse had given her a fool-proof recipe for homemade chocolate chip cookies she was anxious to try.

Her head still ached, and the wound site would be very sore for a while yet, but she was ready to go. Her bag was packed and set by the bedroom door. She’d done her part in dealing with the fall-out of the last several days—a debrief with the pharmaceutical company and the endless red tape that always accompanied dead bodies. It was time to go home.

In the same split second Contadino’s bullet had struck her, Danny’s entire childhood flashed before her eyes. And the image filling her mind as she regained consciousness was Danny’s face as somebody—Alex?—informed him his mother was dead and never coming back to him because she’d had to be a hero and get the bad guy herself. It shamed her that it had taken being shot in the head for her to see what Alex had been trying to tell her.

Alex.
It was time to leave Alex. Oh, she knew she’d never be rid of him permanently now, though she was going to try like hell. The man he was wouldn’t allow him to ignore his child, but she had to make him see how dangerous he was to them. And her own rollercoaster ride down Memory Lane was over. She had to go back to being the same person she was before Rustikov had stepped into her kitchen.

Or almost the same person. She was short a good friend now, having lost Sean Devlin as surely as if Alex Rossi had assassinated him. She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the bedroom window and sighed. What a damn mess the two of them had managed to make of things.

The door opened, but she didn’t look up. When it closed again she knew it was Alex. And once again she couldn’t decide if she should wrap herself around him or beat him in the head with the bedside lamp.

He stepped up behind her and when his hands closed around her waist, she leaned back against him.