A Kiss of Revenge (Entangled Ignite) (25 page)

“So exotic animals were worth killing him over?” she asked bitterly—rhetorically. So his response surprised her.

“Of course not!” He held out his hands in a “look what I have” gesture. “Open your eyes, Reese. By the time he threatened me, I had a lot more going on than one small enterprise.
That
was worth protecting. If he was a threat, so was his spouse, so of course you needed to be on the plane, too. Amazing, huh? Truth is always stranger.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” She blinked back her sorrow for Brian’s gullibility and all it had led to. She’d have time to grieve later, if she got through this alive.

“So tell me the other half, Reese darling. What has
so
compelled you to find me? And what did you plan to do now that you have?”

“You stole Brian from me. You stole his life from him. Not to mention my home and my livelihood. And I’m not going to let you continue to steal from others.” The words came out almost by rote, the cold ball inside her closing off the hatred and betrayal that had fed her for so long. She didn’t like it. Didn’t like what she had become. Because of him.

“You mean like dear Kimmie?” He pointed out the window with the club. “She cooperated with the FBI, you know. Caused that raid, ruined a very lucrative business.”

“Liar.” He was playing to her guilt, clearly knowing Reese had pretended to be the other woman. But she didn’t feel guilt now, either. “You were under investigation before you’d even hired her. You were just using her as bait because I disappeared off your radar.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Could be. Worked.” He aimed the putter at her and winked.

Okay, that irked her. She clenched her fists. “The problem with eliminating loose ends, Chris, is that each one you cut creates three more. It escalates until you can’t escape it. Eventually, it catches up to you.” She spread her arms. “And here I am.”

“Yes, here you are. What are you going to do with me, pray tell?” he repeated.

“Turn you over to the proper authorities,” she lied. But her voice wavered on the last word, not because of the words themselves, but because she suddenly thought of Griff, waiting in the carriage house, and what he had to be thinking about what she was going to do.

Chris laughed. Full out, throwing his body into an arch while the club quivered in his hand. But it wasn’t quivering, it was shifting, and so was he, using his laughter to move closer. Except he only seemed to expect two reactions from a woman—fear and hatred. Reese had those, of course, but she also had a hell of a lot of other feelings about Chris Kryszka and his activities, and she didn’t react from instinct. Didn’t let emotion dictate her actions. Not this time.

When Chris suddenly turned off the fake laughter and swung the club hard at her head, she ducked and tackled him around the waist, shoving him backward across the shiny floor. The move knocked her bow and arrow out of her hands, but he’d been too close for her to use them, anyway. Caught off balance by his swing, her unexpected move, and the weight of her bearing down on his waist, Chris stumbled and fell on his ass.

She could have ended it then. Could have gone for the stun gun on the neck so close to her hands. It might not have been enough to kill him, but that close to his brain, to the core of his nervous system, it would have immobilized him so she could finish the job.

But it didn’t happen. Just as her weight shifted and her hands curved, a flurry of movement at the door distracted her. Griff stood there, pistol aimed at them. The goon was on the floor, apparently unconscious.

“You don’t have to do it, Reese.” He moved carefully toward them, not taking his eyes off Chris. “There are other options.”

“Like what?” She tipped sideways when Chris shoved her off and got to his knees before Griff’s gun in his face halted him, sent his hands in the air. “We have no evidence,” she said. “The authorities can’t do anything. If we leave him, he won’t stop until we’re dead.” The cold ball inside her broke, spilling despair back into her. She couldn’t let Chris take Griff from her, even if it meant Griff wouldn’t want her afterward. She turned to see where her bow and arrow had landed, and missed Chris’s sudden move. But Griff didn’t. He danced back from Chris’s lunge and pulled the trigger. Even at that close range, though, his and Chris’s movements skewed his aim, and the bullet plowed harmlessly into the floor several feet away.

Chris took advantage of the recoil to leap on Griff. Reese screamed against her willas if she were two people—the one on the floor reacting to the fear of having the man she loved hurt or killed, and the one in her brain, determined not to let either happen. Chris’s club was closer and she scrambled for it, coming to her feet swinging as hard as she could at his head.

But she couldn’t anticipate the movements of the men struggling over the gun, and they shifted just enough that the club slammed down between them, knocking the gun free and the men apart, both grunting in pain. They backed up and she snatched the weapon from the floor and held it on Chris.

He smirked. “You don’t like guns.”

“Amazing how much you remember,” she snapped. “I don’t like them, but I can use them.” Something slammed into her from behind, and the gun went flying again. Her roar of rage cut off abruptly when the floor knocked all the breath out of her. That, and the heavy goon landing on her.

To hell with it
. She flashed all the stored electricity in her body into him. His arms flopped on either side of her, his torso jerking, and then he went still.

When she crawled out from under him, everything had changed. Chris had the gun now, held loosely in his right hand. Griff was on one knee, frozen, his breathing labored. He was hurt. Chris had done something to him in the few seconds she was on the floor. And now she was drained of her secret weapon, which probably wasn’t so secret anymore.

“Kinda pathetic.” Chris blotted a bloody nose with the back of his free hand. He spoke to her, but watched Griff, as if he considered the investigator to be the bigger threat. Reese reached out to restore her collection, and the power came just as easily as before. Except now she didn’t know if she could use it. “All this time, all your hard work to find me. And you couldn’t pull the trigger.” He raised the gun to Griff’s forehead and turned to look directly into her eyes. “Epic fail.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Nooo!”

Reese had never moved so fast in her life. She snatched her arrow off the floor and lunged at Chris, slamming the arrow into his chest as the gun went off. She was half aware of Griff toppling to the floor in her peripheral vision, and her scream became a roar of rage and grief.

Her attack carried her to the floor on top of Chris, who gasped as they landed but managed a twisted grin. “Not a killing blow,” he wheezed, and winced. “You’re not strong enough.”

She twisted the arrow. He yelled, and she felt bone crack. She’d gotten into the sternum, if not beyond it. Not fatal damage, as he’d said. But she wasn’t done yet.

“You were probably right,” she told him, her hands sliding on the slick metal shaft as she bore down to keep him pinned. “I couldn’t pull the trigger. Couldn’t just kill you.” She bared her teeth at him and his eyes widened. He knew. He probably didn’t know how it was going to happen, but he knew this was the end. “You should’ve learned your lesson the first time, asshole.” She sucked up more electricity, pulled it all tight, and braced. “
Don’t. Hurt. The. Men. I. Love
.” And she sent it all into the arrow and into his heart. He didn’t flop and jerk like his henchman. Every muscle locked, his eyes boring into hers, and the light slowly faded out of them. When every last spark had drained from her into him, he settled to the floor, limp.

Dead.

Griff
. She whirled, a sob escaping when she saw his prone body. The world went dark around her, everything disappearing except him. She flung herself in his direction, landing on hands and knees beside him on the gleaming hardwood floor. Her breath caught. Could he be…? “Griff.” She gently rolled him. The bullet had scored a crease just above his temple, but it wasn’t deep. She didn’t know why he was unconscious until she tipped his head the other way and saw the reddened bump above his left eye. He must have hit his head when he fell.

With a few of her wits regained, her vision cleared and her hearing returned—just in time to register the pounding of footsteps on the stairs and in the hall outside.

Fuck
. She had to get them out of there.

Most of the approaching feet seemed to be coming toward the door she’d originally entered through. But there was another door opposite, and that opened into a dark hallway. She recovered her bow and tossed it over her shoulder, ripped the arrow out of Chris’s chest, and hauled Griff—who was just coming around—to his feet. He grunted and took some of his weight off her, which eased her mind.

“You okay?” She guided him toward the doorway. “Can you walk?”

He blinked hard a few times and held his head carefully, but stumbled along with her. “Yeah. Kind of.” At the doorway he glanced back, and when he turned to step into the hall, his back was straighter, his jaw set. “Let’s go.”

She let him set the pace, concerned that he had to touch the wall in the narrow hallway as he walked. Vision problems, balance, or both? He probably had a concussion, but she couldn’t help him with that now. Not until they got away.

The hall was obviously a servants’ passage and led to an equally narrow set of stairs. They hurried down as quietly as they could, Reese in the lead. The arrow in her hand dripped blood, but she didn’t waste time trying to wipe it off. The people behind them didn’t need a trail to follow—there was only one way she and Griff could have gone.

A shout echoed toward them. They’d found Chris. A few seconds later, she and Griff reached the bottom of the stairs, an elevated door that opened into the gigantic—and blessedly empty—kitchen. She barreled through the nearby exit door, ignoring the alarm that went off. She checked Griff, who seemed steadier, and they ran together toward the hill where they’d left the horses. She slowed long enough to shove the arrow into her quiver and catch hold of the handcuffs still dangling from her right wrist, so they wouldn’t jangle.

They were passing the carriage house when a shape loomed ahead of her. She wanted to shoot him, but with no time to retrieve the arrow, that would leave her prints behind. Bad idea. She wound up to hit him with the loose handcuff, but Griff launched himself ahead of her and took the guy down with one punch.

Down, but not out. As they ran past, he was already struggling to his feet and lumbering after them.

She charged down the hillside, not caring about vegetation or the road or how easy she was to follow. Once they got to the horses, they’d have a better chance. She whistled, not expecting it to do any good. Sin wasn’t her horse, they had no communication or loyalty built over time. He wouldn’t know the whistle was her or where he had to go.

The goon behind them drew closer. She whistled again, this time more urgently. She heard a
crack
ahead and to the left, and changed direction. A moment later Sin cantered toward her between trees, his reins wrapped around a thick broken branch of the tree she’d tethered him to.

“Get up there.” Griff disentangled the branch from the reins as she vaulted into the saddle, cursing the stupid handcuffs. She reached a hand down for Griff, but he shook his head.

“Too much weight. I’ll get Halo. Go!”

“No way!” She turned Sin so he circled around behind Griff. “You go. I’ll hold them off while you get Halo. Don’t
argue
!” she yelled in frustration, and he closed his mouth and ran down the hill. She clucked at Sin and followed, trusting the horse to pick his path while she looked back for their pursuers. She couldn’t hear them over Griff’s crashing and Sin’s swish-stomping, but she couldn’t see anything. A few moments later Griff released the bay from its tree, mounted, and whirled the horse. They started out parallel to the path, but the brush and few trees made the going dangerous in the dark. She guided Sin onto the more flat road and urged him on, Griff beside her.

Hope made her light in the stirrups, gliding over Sin’s withers as he galloped around the gentle curves. They might just make it.

But then headlights flashed around them, and the sound of engines reached her ears.
Vespas
. They must have had more stashed somewhere. In tandem, she and Griff guided the horses across the main road at the bottom of the hill and into the tall grass. The Vespas couldn’t follow, but they sped down the road anyway, apparently intending to intercept them, or even to catch them at the stables. There weren’t a lot of places they could have gotten the horses, after all.

She didn’t want to put the stable owners at risk, nor did she want anything bad to happen to the horses. She angled Sin toward a point in the curving road slightly ahead of the Vespas. When they got close but were still not very visible in the dark, she slowed Sin, sliding off his back and securing the reins loosely on the pommel so they wouldn’t drag. He stopped, but she slapped him on the rump and he took off, hopefully for home and safety. A few seconds later, Griff’s horse followed him.

Griff tugged at Reese’s arm, and she crouched beside him, mostly hidden in the tall sea oats.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “They won’t find us.”

She wanted to argue. Holding still still made her feel like a sitting duck. But they had cloud cover now, and movement would give them away more easily if the goons searched the grasses with flashlights. So they hunkered down as low as they could and still be positioned to run if they had to, and froze when the Vespas returned, motors slow and steady now instead of racing.

And damn it, they rolled to a stop barely thirty feet from where she and Griff were hiding. A light flashed over them but didn’t pause. She heard a male voice say, “Turn off the engine,” and a moment later silence fell.

Reese buried her face in her knees and waited.

“I don’t see nothin’.”

“They’ve got to be out there. The horses were riderless.”

“You wanna go in there? Sand fleas devour me, man.”

Silence, and the light played back and forth, back and forth. Reese fought not to move, even to try to get closer to the ground. Griff’s hand somehow found hers and squeezed. The tension subsided enough to keep her from vibrating, and a moment later, the light went off.

“Shit. Forget this. We got two bodies to take care of. Come on.” He said something about a mess that got lost in the engines starting up again, and the Vespas purred off down the road.

After a moment, she and Griff slowly stood. She felt his eyes on her even though she couldn’t see him. Her heart sank even before he spoke.

“
Two
bodies?”

“I had to shoot Armen.” She motioned with her arms. “Bow and arrow. He must have bled out.” She wanted to claim self-defense, describe the circumstances, but why bother? Griff might have forgiven her killing Chris in the end, because the bastard had shot him. But killing two men? That surely tested his moral code to the breaking point.

“We need to get out of here,” she said before he could try to discuss what had happened on the hill. “We’ll talk later.”

They trudged through the sandy grasses for a long time. She had no idea how long. All she knew was that within a few steps, her legs were filled with lead, her head with the buzz of exhaustion, and even so, she still outpaced Griff and had to wait for him. He got crankier every time she asked if he was okay, or tried to get him to answer orientation questions—name, time, place—to judge his head injury. His words slurred, but he claimed exhaustion and frustration, and with nothing that could be done about it, she shut up and trudged on.

The town was completely silent and unmoving when they reached it. The hotel clerk had dozed off behind the counter, didn’t even move when they came in, which was good, because they looked dreadful, and Reese would never have been able to explain the blood and weapons.

After Griff showered and lowered himself gingerly onto the bed, Reese showered, too, then dressed, packed, and settled near the window to watch the street when she wasn’t watching Griff. She woke him after two hours.

“I’m okay,” he told her groggily.

“How’s your head?” She stroked his hair back, careful to avoid both the lump on his forehead and the crease at his temple.

“Griffin Chase, Chase Investigations, we’re in the hotel on the island of lost dreams, and I have no fucking idea what godforsaken time it is.” He rolled to his stomach and wrapped his arms around the pillow. “Come to bed.”

“I will.” But he was already asleep again, before he could call her a liar.

Fear kept her awake. That was what she told herself, and it was true, but not the way she pretended she meant it. The streets stayed empty and quiet, and the thin walls of the hotel carried no ominous sounds of pursuit. She stayed awake in case that changed, in case Chris’s people decided to tie up loose ends. But even if she’d felt physically safe, she wouldn’t have slept. Wouldn’t have been able to lie down on that bed next to Griffin. She craved his arms around her, yearned for him to tell her everything was okay. Which was ridiculous, because everything was the opposite of okay.

They had to take precautions, just in case Chris’s gang went to the police, but for all intents and purposes, her quest was over. She’d gotten her revenge, ensured she had a future.

But now that future loomed directly in front of her, a massive, unknowable void, instead of the ephemeral “someday” she’d been putting off for a year. She was a widow again, and single.

Free.

She and Griff could overcome the things she’d said to him to push him away, to keep him safe. He understood, and now he
was
safe. But would he still want her? After all she’d done?

Slowly the sun rose and the town stirred, but all activity looked normal. No one came into the hotel this early, and only one group left, a family of four outfitted for fishing off the rocks. But the hotel was the first place the police would look for them if anyone at Smuggler Sam’s called the cops, so she reluctantly woke Griff again.

Within half an hour they were in the back booth of a café on the corner furthest from the police station, hunkered down to wait out the hours until they could catch a flight. The airport would be the second place the police would look. Any restaurant or public area would be on the list, too, but with only two officers on the force, maybe they would overlook their “hiding” spot.

“I doubt Chris’s people will report it,” Griff assured her as she scanned the room and the street outside for the tenth time in as many minutes. “They’re crooks. They don’t get involved with law enforcement unless they have to, and in this case, they don’t have to. They can get rid of the bodies on their own.” His demeanor shifted subtly from calm to hard on the word “bodies.”

Her heart had never risen from its last sinking, but when she saw the change, it managed to find the space to drop again. He’d hardly spoken to her all morning. She could guess what he was thinking, but she refused to assume. They’d talk about this.

“Griff,” she started, but he gave a quick shake of his head. Someone walked by on the way to the bathroom.

“Not here.” He drank some coffee and flipped the newspaper over to read the stories below the fold. She went back to peeking out the window onto the side street, watching for unusual activity.

“There you are. I’m so glad I found you.”

Reese jumped, alarm spiking as she spun, trapped in the booth. How had she not heard someone approaching? But it was Kimmie.

Reese pressed her hand against her chest. “Holy crap.”

“I’m sorry.” The young woman looked haggard but not scared. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Sit down,” Reese offered, sliding closer to the window, earning a sharp look from Griff.

Kimmie shook her head. “No, thank you, I’m okay. I just—”

“You’re fully exposed in the window,” Griff told her, and Reese tugged her arm until she sat. On Reese’s side of the booth, the café’s lettering on the window obscured them from the outside. On Griff’s side, the window ended halfway between the table and the back of his seat, and he held the newspaper to block the only open angle. But where Kimmie had been standing was dead center open glass, and she’d have been visible to anyone who glanced in.