A Kiss of Revenge (Entangled Ignite) (12 page)

She yanked her hand hard against the handcuff, trying to elongate her fingers, tucking her thumb in as far as it would go. She felt a pop and a searing pain went up her wrist, but she was free. When she straightened her hand the thumb joint popped back in, sending more excruciating pain radiating through her and making her sick to her stomach. Thank God they’d only used one.

Using her right hand to grab the dress the john had ripped off of her, she slid her arm through it, managing to snap a couple of snaps despite the destroyed left sleeve and her numb left hand. She had to find a way to get outside. Where was Griff? Please let him not be stupid enough to come in here. If she was arrested, he was her only hope.

Before she could tell him that over the earpiece, someone grabbed her arm. She shrieked, jerking away. Dob’s face went even more purple and he grabbed her again, yanking her closer and wrapping an unrelenting arm around her.

“Let me go!”

“No way. There’s only one way to get out of this.”

A
hostage?
She pulled harder, but his grip tightened. Ripper, seeing them struggling, jumped onto the bed and barked ferociously. Reese didn’t know if he was barking at her or Dob or both, but she didn’t have many options. She bent and bit Dob’s arm. His grip loosened and she slipped out, then grabbed a wrench lying on the table. She reached for Ripper’s collar and dug the fingers of her throbbing hand under it. The dog struggled against her, sending waves of pain up her whole arm.

“Get away or I’ll brain him,” she warned Dob.

Dob stopped but didn’t look convinced. She glanced over her shoulder. The doorway was still blocked. There was a closet, but unless it had attic access, it was a dead end. Behind the bed, just above the headboard, was a heavily draped window. It was her only chance. But not if she didn’t get Dob away from her.

She stepped up onto the bed, holding the wrench aloft and keeping her grip on Ripper, who’d stopped barking and struggling. Dob looked like he was trying to steel himself to tackle her, and she braced. He took a deep breath and dove at her feet. She let go of the dog, jumped to the right, and slammed the wrench down on Dob’s head.

Without hesitation, she turned to the window and shoved the curtain aside. A short scream escaped her when a face loomed in the glass. She recognized Griff as she jerked back. He quickly raised the window.

“Come on.”

She looked back. Men in black windbreakers with yellow FBI lettering swarmed around the tangle of men on the floor. One pointed to her and another turned, letting go of Bark.

“Shit.” She kicked off her heels and climbed onto the headboard. Griff backed down a ladder leaning almost vertically against the window ledge, and she swung herself out onto it. Without thinking, she gripped the sill with her damaged left hand. A renewed bolt of pain made her whole body lurch, and she lost her balance. The ladder started to tilt backward. She lunged forward and grabbed the window with her good hand, but Griff directly below her was too much counterweight for her to drag the ladder back to the window. It wavered right at the tipping point, pulling against her tenuous hold.

“Get down!” she yelled. Her fingers started to slip. She wrapped her arm around the top of the ladder and leaned forward as hard as she could, but she couldn’t adjust her grip on the window. They were going to fall.

Griff realized what was happening and let go of the ladder, dropping to the ground. She fell forward, slamming against the house, just as the agent in the bedroom reached for her.

Her “flight” mechanism was so sharply engaged she didn’t think. Stored electricity sizzled all around her, and the agent got a jolt when he grabbed her arm. He yelled and shoved her away. Her feet slipped and she fell, flailing, into thin air.

…

The fall was only about ten feet, but had she landed on her back she could have been seriously hurt. As it was, Griffin wasn’t a soft landing pad. He collapsed under her, his arm hitting her in the temple and his knee bruising her back. She thought she heard something crunch, too, but not inside of her.

Oh, no
. She rolled free as soon as she had enough breath and wits. Griff lay gasping, his right leg bent funny.

“Oh, God.” She struggled to her knees. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he wheezed, dragging himself upright and pushing her hands away from his leg. “It’s not broken. Let’s go.”

They half ran, half hobbled, across the yard to the side gate. She expected agents to swarm them at any moment, but the commotion stayed centered at the house. They got through the side gate and she glimpsed a SWAT-style truck in the circle before Griff yanked her along the wall, behind the trees that bordered it.

“Hold on,” she begged when they had jogged halfway down the alley. She had to see what was happening, if they’d gotten everyone. She reached toward the top of the wall. “Boost me up,” she told Griff, and when he looked at her like she was insane, ordered, “Just do it!”

He laced his hands. She put her bare foot into the pocket and he launched her upward. She hung over the top of the wall, trying to see through the trees to the house. There was movement near the front porch but she couldn’t tell what. She walked her hands to the left, ignoring the screaming pain in her hand as she searched for a gap in the branches. Griff limped along below. That was all he needed, for her to fall on him again. She clenched her teeth against the wobble in her arms.

There
. A hole in the foliage. She could see the front porch clearly now. The feds milled around, some using walkie-talkies, a couple on cell phones, the rest talking to each other or watching the door. Where were the scumbags? Her arms were about to give way when a handful of cops came out, shepherding Bark and Dob and the client between them, hands cuffed behind their backs. Half the group followed them out the front gate, the rest dispersing into and around the house. There was no sign of Skav.

She let Griff lower her back to the ground. “Skav must have left the house earlier, when he told them to lock me up,” she said. “I don’t see him out there.”

“What?” Griff glowered. “How did I miss hearing that part?”

“They were outside the office I was hiding in.” She waved that off. “He won’t know about the raid. We can use him.”

“We’ve got to go,” Griff told her. “Scheme later. Safety now.”

They dashed toward the street, but he angled her away before they reached it, cutting through a narrow strip of woods and along the front wall of the next property so that when they emerged on the street, they were just past a slight curve that hid them from any federal scrutiny.

A few minutes later, they were at his car, and shortly after that, her house.

“Thank God,” she moaned, collapsing onto her couch. Almost immediately, she pushed herself up again. “Ice. For your leg.”

He followed her and eased himself into a kitchen chair, accepting the bag of frozen peas she handed him and draping it over his knee. When she grabbed a small ice pack and held it against her left hand, he frowned. “What happened?”

“Dislocated thumb. It’s fine. How—”

“Why didn’t you say ‘snake’?”

She stared at him, not comprehending. “What?”

“ ‘Snake.’ The code word. You were supposed to say ‘snake.’ ”

“Oh, that.” She had never really intended to use it, and truthfully, the word had slipped her mind. “What does it matter? I found something.”

But he wasn’t ready to listen. “I shouldn’t have let it go on so long. As soon as I knew—”

“Knew what?”

He dropped his head forward, and she thought he hadn’t meant to say that. “Griff? Knew what?”

He sighed and lifted his foot up onto the adjacent chair, adjusting the peas on his swollen knee. “When I didn’t come up with anything yesterday searching with their names, I reached out to a contact at the FBI. It was…um, possible they were investigating this group.”

She didn’t know how FBI protocol worked, but she doubted they’d raided the house tonight on Griff’s say-so. “They were.”

“Yeah. And about five minutes before they went in, my contact called me to warn me. He didn’t know what I had going on, but didn’t want me to get tangled up in it.” He lifted a shoulder at her stare. “He owed me one.”

“A big one, apparently.” She dropped into a chair at the end of the table and laid her hand on it, grateful for the solid support under the raw throb in her thumb joint. “Thanks. For getting me out of there.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t graceful, but you’re safe. So tell me it was worth it.”

She didn’t, because he obviously didn’t think the phone number was enough.

“Let’s find out.” Ignoring her pain and fatigue, she stood to go into her office and switch on her computer. While it booted up she quickly changed out of the torn red dress and into flannel pajama bottoms and double-layered tank tops. She’d left her clothes behind, but nothing about them identified her. Hopefully no one would find the sticky note with Big K’s number on it in her pocket. If the authorities did figure out she was the woman who escaped—like, say, from her fingerprints all over the place—they might misinterpret her reason for having the big boss’s number.

Griff’s necklace bumped against her breastbone, and she closed her eyes in a moment of thanks that she’d been too rushed to take it off for the filming this time. If she’d left it behind…

“I overheard Skav say he’s meeting with Big K in two days,” she called as she went back to the computer. “I just need to trace the phone number to know where that’s going to be.”

“It’s probably not listed,” Griff called back. He hadn’t left the kitchen.

“I can narrow it down, though.” She opened her Internet browser and navigated to a site that did reverse lookups. “Yep. It’s unlisted.” The site came back with
unidentified number
. Damn. She tried an area code/exchange site and came up with Chelsea, Massachusetts. “Got the city, at least.” With a few clicks, she’d pulled up the town map.

Chelsea. Why did that name sound familiar?

Griff appeared in the doorway, hunched over to hold the ice against his knee. He looked around, but with nowhere to sit, he groaned his way to the floor. “He could be anywhere around there. Or a hundred miles away, if the number is a cell phone.” He gave a rumbling sigh and lay back. “You’re no further than you were three days ago. You should just let it rest.”

“Shut up.” She glared at the screen in frustration. “It will never rest.” She drummed her fingers on the desk, thinking, studying the satellite images underlying the road map. What could be in Chelsea? Was Big K living there, maybe in an area like The Charms? Or were they using a place there for other criminal activities? Where would Skav be meeting his boss?

She slowly zoomed out, scanning the street and business names and running all the snippets of conversation she’d heard over the past couple of weeks, at the house, and the guy at Artsfest…

She zoomed out again and spotted water.
Marinas
. That was it!

“
Alpine Nirvana!
” she cried. “Artsfest guy said they were moving the boat. Here. To Chelsea!” She pointed, squinting. “We just need to figure out which marina.”

“I can do that.” Griff pulled himself upright, grunting in pain. “Move.”

She jumped to help him into the chair. “I’ll get some painkillers for you.”

He mumbled his thanks and started typing while she went to the medicine cabinet to get him some ibuprofen.

In the bathroom, she took a moment to regroup. Griff had risked his life and his career helping her get into and out of that house. She’d repaid his trust with a twisted knee and a narrow escape from the feds, and she couldn’t turn off her own needs long enough to nurse his injury. She was ashamed of herself.

When she returned to the computer with the ibuprofen, a glass of water, and an apple, he was pulling pages off the printer. He raised an eyebrow at the apple. “What’s that for?”

She rolled it in her hand, feeling silly. “I don’t know, an apple a day. Can’t hurt, right?” She set it on the desk and sat next to it. “What’s the pain level? Four hundred milligrams?” She shook two tablets into her palm. “Or six hundred?”

“Six. Thanks.” He tossed them down with some water. “Captain’s Walk.”

Reese took the papers he handed her. “Captain’s Walk?”

“It’s where
Alpine Nirvana
is docked. But only for two more days. The slip rental only goes to then.”

She glanced at the directions he’d printed, and the layout of the marina with the slip pinpointed. “I can’t believe it. Thank you!” She could actually confront Big K within a matter of hours! Joy bubbled up in her and she threw her arms around Griff, landing in his lap and almost knocking him out of the chair. “Thank you,” she repeated, more softly. His arms had wrapped around her automatically, and they were strong and hard and felt good enough to distract her.

“You’re welcome,” he murmured, his hand splayed at the base of her neck, his mouth near her ear. She shivered, a sudden, quick movement she couldn’t control, and with her body up against his, he must have felt it. His arms tightened and he hugged her against his chest a moment longer. She held still, uncertain what he might be feeling or thinking. Unsure what she wanted him to think or feel. An ominous
ftttzzz
from the computer monitor drew her attention back to the room. It hummed, and she realized she was crackling with static-like electricity. She closed her eyes and concentrated on sucking it all back inside her, carefully, and the monitor went silent, the hum in the room subsiding.

She eased back, and he turned his head so that his mouth was an inch from hers. For an instant she thought he was going to kiss her again. Then she was on her feet, so fast she felt the imprints of his hands on her upper arms before she registered the hands themselves, pushing her away.

Embarrassed, she circled behind the chair, picking up the papers she’d dropped. “I guess we should get some sleep.”

“I guess we should.”

“I’ll, um.” Awkwardness filled the room. She glanced around, then snatched the ibuprofen bottle to replace the cap. “I’ll leave this in the kitchen for you. Do you want, um, some more ice?”