Devil May Care: Boxed Set (48 page)

Rome

If I were being one hundred percent honest, I knew that there was a pretty good chance that I wasn’t going to meet up with Olivia at the airport. I hoped that some part of her realized this, too, and would understand that I wanted her at that airport in the hopes that she would buy a ticket and get the fuck out of Dodge before things went to shit. There was a possibility that once I was out of the picture—something I hoped wasn’t about to happen to me—they would leave Olivia alone, but the more information I got about Jacob, the less I was inclined to think so.

He was dangerous in a lot of ways and he obviously had enough power to cause some real waves for people. It left me uneasy and I hoped Olivia would be able to get the hell out of the line of fire without me.

I’d given Axel a heads up, at least. I hoped that would mean he’d look out for her if I didn’t make it out of this mess alive. She technically wasn’t his responsibility, but he’d fucked up when it came to how things went down with me, so I was hoping he’d see this as a straight across the board deal.

It was how I would have seen it.

Once Olivia and the car were completely out of sight, I made my way towards the mansion ahead of me. Olivia had told me that she’d crawled down a trellis from the third floor. That would put me in the master bedroom, or maybe it was just one of the regular bedrooms and looked like a master bedroom because everything was so fucking large in one of those stupid, cookie cutter, pre-fab mansions. From there, she couldn’t tell me anything. Olivia had apparently been blindfolded for most of the way to the mansion as well as in the mansion itself. It sucked, because I would have liked some more information, a bit of a heads up about what I was walking into, but it didn’t change things.

I still had to confront Jacob.

I didn’t bother keeping low to the ground as I raced across the bright green, well maintained lawn right outside the mansion. It was day still and there was no way I was going to blend in with the bright, luscious green foliage of the place. Instead, I focused on speed. Someone was going to see me if I tried to sneak around, and they probably would with me just running, too, but at least if I was fast they might be looking the other way as I made it to the wall.

Making my way around the side of the building, towards where I’d seen Olivia running before, I pumped my legs and created as much speed as possible to propel myself forward. I slammed hard into the wall as a result, but I’d made good time. Heaving slightly, I paused, listening.

There was shouting going on and I frowned. Had they heard me? There was definitely a good shot of that, but hopefully they were concerned with something else.
Like Olivia’s escape,
I thought.

Which was both good and bad. On the one hand, if they were shouting about Olivia, that meant they hadn’t yet seen me. That meant I still had a chance for surprise and maybe I’d be able to corner Jacob alone. On the other hand, if they were looking for a missing Olivia, then there was also a chance they were searching the place top to bottom and they wouldn’t be too upset if they found me instead of her.

Either way, I couldn’t stop now. Jacob was in this building somewhere, and I was coming for him.

I followed the wall of the building for a while. The building was huge and I had to crawl through bushes and ferns and avoid falling coconuts from too large palm trees as I went, but at least the shrubbery was providing some sort of cover. When I was just racing across the grass, I was out in the open and anyone who was looking would have seen me. Here, the angle was harder if someone was in the house, and the bushes meant I was partially concealed, despite the obvious color differences between us. At least they had enough leaves to cover me as opposed to the dried out, winding and gnarled bushes that grew in Nevada.

Home was not a particularly hospitable place most of the time.

As I continued to move, I saw several people running out across the lawn. I ducked down, hiding further in the bushes, hoping to avoid their eyes, but I needn’t have worried. They were all scrambling, cursing and shouting to one another and waving guns like they had something to shoot but couldn’t figure out where it was. After a beat, I realized they were looking for Olivia still.

I went ahead and let them look. Then, when I could see their backs, I started to move again. Obviously this was a tricky situation, because there was a chance that they might see the movement and, assuming I was Olivia, come after me, or worse, just shoot first, but I had to make time. If I just stayed put, eventually someone would think to look where I was hiding. They’d spot me and then I really would be dead. And I wasn’t interested in dying before I got a swing at Jacob.

Jogging slightly, crouching low now so that the bushes did the work of hiding me, I followed the wall about halfway around the building. I was beginning to think that Olivia had climbed down something else—there wasn’t a trellis in sight—when I my hand came across a thorny vine. It pricked me and I jerked my hand back, surprised. I cursed it, but that curse died on my lips when I saw what the vine was growing up. A trellis.

Doing a quick check of the grounds to make sure no one was coming, I hoisted myself up the crosshatched wood. The vines were thick and curling, making it difficult to find good holds for my bare hands, the thorns pricking and scraping at every opportunity, but I ignored the cuts I received. I moved quickly, hauling myself up first the first story, then the second. I briefly considered stopping there. If Olivia had been held on the third floor, then they were probably looking for her there, right? But after taking a moment to think it through, I decided going in right where she’d headed out was the best plan. By this time, they clearly knew she was gone. Men were searching the grounds for her, which meant they knew she wasn’t in the room anymore. And if they knew that, then there was no point in continuing to check for her in that room.

So I went ahead and climbed the last stretch to the third floor. There was a balcony there with a large sliding glass door which looked like it was open. I could see a bit of a curtain peeking through, fluttering slightly in the wind. Swinging my legs over the side, I planted onto the balcony and then paused, crouched down so hopefully I wasn’t visible from the ground. There I waited for a long minute, listening. It still sounded like people were making a ruckus downstairs and in the yard. I couldn’t hear anything from the inside of the room—which I should have been able to if anything was going on, because the door was
definitely
open, I could tell now.

Feeling more confident that no one was in the room, I moved to the door. I kept myself low, using the banister to hide me from anyone looking up towards me. When I reached the door, I carefully looked around it, poking just my head inside.

Olivia had been right. It definitely looked like a master bedroom. I saw a large chest of drawers and a huge bed. Some paintings, things I didn’t really care about one way or the other. Then my eyes dropped to the doors. There were three of them it looked like. One was open and looked like it led to a walk-in closet that was probably larger than my entire apartment. Another was closed and there was banging on the other side of it. The third was open as well and looked like it led into a bathroom. My guess was that had been where Olivia had been allowed to use the restroom, then locked the door and escaped.

There was more banging and shouting coming from the other side. I ignored it and checked the bathroom. There was another door there—and the tiny ass window Olivia had mentioned—and on the other side of that I could hear voices.

“What the fuck? Open it already!”

“I’m fucking
trying
! But it’s locked.”

“No shit it’s locked, genius! I know
that
, just get the fucking thing open!”

I frowned. That meant there were at least three men. Two outside the bathroom door, trying to open it. Another outside the main door, banging and trying to get in. All of which was going to make my job suddenly a lot harder.

There was a gun tucked into the waistband of my jeans and I currently held the element of surprise. Two things in my favor. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of things working against me. Like how many people were
actually
outside in that room. There might be two or three men at the other door, or even a dozen standing just behind these idiots. Plus, I had no idea what the room beyond looked like. I was hoping it was a hallway, because that would mean it was narrow and it would be a lot harder to have a bunch of people shoved in there. They’d want some breathing room and Jacob had probably sent a bunch of them to search the grounds and other rooms. But if it was a big, open dining room or work room or living room? Well, that was another story. They could shove an awful lot of people into a space like that.

I weighed my options as the pounding continued.

“Jesus, how long are you going to try to break that fucking door?” It was the same voice from in front of the bathroom door, so I was thinking that there were only three men. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I hoped.

“Shut up, Marcus,” a third voice, fainter than the last, called back. “I’d like to see you try better.”

“Try better,” the man, Marcus, snorted. “Where the fuck did you learn English anyway?”

“Dick. I talk just fine.”

They continued to argue. I walked farther into the room and came close to the door of the bathroom, the locked one that led outside. I could hear scraping and ticking, clicks and catches. Someone was obviously trying to pick it, which was good, because that meant they didn’t have a key.

“Just shoot the damn thing open already!” one of the men complained.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Marcus countered immediately. “If she’s fucking in there, it’s our heads if she gets shot or something. Lucifer said he wants her alive and I don’t want to be the one to make him come down here and tell us we fucked it all up.”

I froze. Lucifer.

Two very important pieces of information had just been floated my way. First, Jacob was here. I hadn’t been sure before, but that confirmed it. He must have been on the top floor, sending his men out to do his dirty work, keeping a cool distance as much as possible. Second, it told me that they didn’t know for sure Olivia wasn’t in the room anymore. Searching the grounds was a precaution, but no one had seen her outside the room. Which meant they wouldn’t be shooting the room up for fear of harming her, since Jacob wanted her as leverage against me.

Fitting.

Weighing my options, I came up with a rough and dirty plan.
Choose a door. Bust it open. Use the element of surprise to take down Jacob’s goons. Then go after Jacob, who was on the fourth floor.

It wasn’t the most foolproof of plans, but it was all I had just then.

I debated which door to go through. The one guy was still banging on the main bedroom door with what sounded like no luck. If I opened it up on him, he’d probably tumble right through and I could take him quickly. But that still left me with two guys, one of who might already have a gun drawn.

With that in mind, I chose the main bathroom door instead. Reaching for my handgun, I pulled it from the waist of my jeans and carefully cocked the hammer back, doing it as slowly as possible to avoid making too much of a sound. It made only a tiny click, but I heard a pause. The main bedroom door was still being pounded on, but the guy who was trying to pick the lock sounded like he’d paused.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, confused.

“You know what I hear? Stupidity floating in the air. Get back to work,” Marcus told him in irritation.

I moved closer to the door until I was standing right in front of it. I took a deep, steadying breath, reaching for the handle of the door.

“You don’t have to be such a dick all of the time.”

“Whatever. I thought you were supposed to do this for a living?”

“I got
arrested
for—”

He didn’t finish his response, because right at that moment, I twisted the doorknob and jerked the door open. At the same time I straightened out my right arm and took aim, catching the standing man, who I assumed was Marcus, right in the chest when I pulled the trigger. He had a moment to be surprised, before clutching at his chest and staggering back. When blood started staining across his shirt, he lifted his hand and stared at his palm, which had become coated in bright red blood. Then he collapsed. Probably not dead yet, but not far from it if the gurgling noises were any indication.