Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (58 page)

“Faith!”

She heard her name roared like thunder down the corridor. It was followed by a crash. But she couldn’t look.

He’d known. Jonas had known it would come down to this. Maybe not who, but the how. He’d known that death would finally catch up to her. And now she was staring it right in the eye.

“Get in the elevator, Faith. I didn’t give your uncle a lethal dose of cyanide this morning. But I can. And I will. Maybe your dotty old grandmother, too.” Liza smiled. But there was no humor in her expression. “She likes me since I was kind enough to help her make that call.” The smile vanished. The gun bruised a rib. “Now, get in the elevator.”

“Faith!”

Jermaine Collier’s black, soulless eyes warned her not to respond.

He was coming. Jonas was coming.

Liza linked her arm through Faith’s to mask the gun, then guided her onto the elevator. With a nod to Collier, he released the button and the doors began to close.

He raised the knife to Faith’s eye level and ran his thumb along the flat of the blade, sending her a deliberate message. “Do you have the disk?”

Faith swallowed hard and forced herself to breathe. To think. To buy Jonas time to save her. “Yes. But I made a copy. Other people have access to that information.”

“Who?” Liza demanded.

Collier’s eyes glittered with anger. “She’s toying with us.” He slipped the blade of his knife beneath the thin strap of her purse and lifted it from her shoulder. “She hasn’t had time or the means to—”

The elevator alarm buzzed at a jarring decibel. The doors froze open with only a matter of inches separating them. Then they began to shake. Faith knew.

Liza barked an order and shoved Faith against the wall of Collier’s chest. The doors parted with a mighty heave. A cruel arm clamped around her chest, pinning her arms. A knife blade pricked her throat.

“Faith!” The doors sprang open. She caught a glimpse of that beloved, battered face. She saw the blood at his mouth and the deadly intent in his eyes. “Let her go!”

Liza leveled her gun at the opening between the doors and fired.

“Jonas!” Faith screamed as the force of the gunshot threw him back against the opposite wall.

A puddle of blood soaked the shoulder of his denim shirt as the doors drifted shut and the alarm ceased to blare.

“Jonas?”

It wasn’t the knife pressing against her vocal cords that choked the volume out of her voice.

J
ONAS STAGGERED
to his feet and peeled off his coat. The motion ached, but there was no sharp, shooting pain. The bullet had gone clean through his shoulder.

He’d left the agents dazed or unconscious, lying on the floor. He’d ignored the shouted threats of hospital security and local police being summoned. Faith needed him. He had to get to her.

He’d gotten a glimpse of a woman with red hair, longer than Faith’s. And he’d seen her eyes. The same dead-brown eyes of a father he’d pursued and lost so many years ago.

Darien Frye had a daughter.

And she had Faith.

The bastard with the knife must be Copperhead. He’d seen blood on Faith’s throat. A cleansing rush of vengeful adrenaline cleared Jonas’s head. He summoned every deadly, covert skill he’d ever used to survive his family and serve his country. He’d promised Faith he’d keep her safe. Hell. He owed her that much. She’d brought three days of sunshine into a life that had been lived in the darkness. He owed her at least that much.

He pushed himself away from the wall. His balance was fine. He was losing blood, but there was a lot left in him to lose before he’d fall.

There was no opening the elevator doors now. He looked at the numbers lighting up above them. The elevator was moving. Going down. Everything he loved was going down with it.

Jonas pulled his gun and ran for the stairs.

S
TRUGGLING WAS
pointless, but she battled, anyway. Jermaine Collier’s grip was every bit as strong as Jonas’s had been. But his clasp on her upper arm was rough and bruising as he dragged her out the automatic exit doors and into the dank, fumy parking garage adjoining the hospital.

“How can you still be alive?” Faith’s question was all accusation. “Did you kill someone else to take your place and throw off the Feds and the police?”

“Jermaine did, actually.” Liza seemed pleased to point out the brilliance of her strategy. “My neighbor, Gabe, was actually Gabriela Montez. I switched places with her and reported my death to the police.”

“DNA will prove it’s not her. What about her family?”

“She has none in this country. And why run a test? She was positively identified by the police.” She smiled up at Jermaine.

Faith tried to face the fake detective, but he held her too tightly. “They’ll figure it out,” she protested.

Liza hurried her pace. “What’s to figure? You’re the only loose end left. Once you’re gone—”

“You don’t have to tell her everything.” Jermaine jerked her arm in its socket, punishing her instead of Liza, pricking tears of pain that Faith quickly blinked away.

“Jermaine…” Liza warned.

“I’m telling you to take the disk and off her.” Collier’s voice was cool and toneless, even when it was angry. “We can frame that mountain man who’s already attacked two deputies, a security guard and who-knows-how-many federal agents.”

“Jonas never hurt any of them.” Faith felt honor-bound to defend him, even to these murderers. “He’s not like you. Killing a sweet old man. Leaving a trail of dead bodies—ow!”

“Shut up.” Collier twisted her arm up behind her back, wrenching her shoulder. He sliced through the collar of her shirt and gouged another little nick from her skin. “If you say one more word, I’m cutting your throat.”

“Easy, Jermaine,” Liza ordered him. With her gun held up beside her face and her eyes scanning the cars and concrete support pillars for hidden authorities or innocent witnesses, she zigzagged across the garage toward the waning sunlight at the ramp that would take them up to the next level or out onto the street. “I’ve waited too long for this. I’m not going to let your paranoia spoil it.”

“If your retribution gets in the way of my million dollars—”

“It won’t.” Liza’s order was considerably more volatile. She shook Faith’s purse which she clutched in her fist. They’d already discovered the disk inside. “First, we deliver this. Then we can kill her. And show the DeLeones firsthand how we handle
problems
within the organization. I think my father would have approved.”

“You’re not doing this for the DeLeones,” Collier argued, twisting Faith’s arm again, since he couldn’t seem to expel his anger any other way. “When I worked for your father, business was business. You blame this bitch’s father for Darien’s suicide. And you want someone to pay. You wanted to get her so mixed up in this mess that the cops or the Feds or the DeLeones would kill her for you.”

“That’s not true. I wanted her to take the blame for the theft and deaths so our names would be clear. Then we could kill her.”

“She’s a liability. She’s seen what’s on the disk.”

Faith took heed of the rift between her kidnappers as Liza pulled out a set of keys and headed for a long black car. It was a long shot, but with Jonas lying wounded or dead in the hallway upstairs, her fast thinking might be her only chance at surviving.

“I have seen the disk,” Faith spoke as loudly as the pain radiating up her arm would allow. “I can recreate the formula my father made.”

Liza looked over her shoulder laughed. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, roomie. You just gave me one more reason to kill you.”

“May I?” Collier asked between clenched teeth. Faith closed her eyes and tried to think of anything besides the press of the knife between her breasts and across her belly. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t scream or show the fear that seemed to give him such satisfaction. “You’ve caused so much trouble that I’m really going to enjoy this.”

“Not yet.” Liza chastized him and pointed the remote key chain at the car to unlock it. “William Rutherford tried to bargain with that information, too. He said he’d hand over the disk if I promised not to harm you. The old fool thought he could protect you. I guess he forgot the tiny little detail about being able to identify me and linking my father to your father’s death.” She waved the purse that held the disk in front of Faith’s face. “Is that the same deal you’re trying to make?”

“Maybe. I—”

Liza stood with the back driver’s side door open. “First, I have the disk, so you have nothing to bargain with. Second, you’ve figured out enough that you’re a liability as well. Third—” she smiled over Faith’s shoulder “—I’d hate to disappoint Jermaine.”

He dragged the tip of the blade across her throat, chilling her with the cold steel, just to emphasize the point.

But Faith wasn’t done fighting yet. “I already shared some of the formula.” She was winging it now. “I sent it to an organization called The Watchers. They’re a government security agency. They go after men like your father, who sell out their country. They want me alive as much as you want me dead.”

Liza’s eyes narrowed, considering her story. “You’re lying.”

Faith tipped her chin and faked her confidence. “About the information or The Watchers?”

“About all of it! You’re a naive country girl from Podunkville, Missouri. I deceived you for two and a half years. At college, in Saint Louis.” Liza’s temper was getting the better of her now. She pointed her gun toward the car’s back seat. “Put her in there. Tie her up.”

Faith barely had time to duck her head before Collier shoved her inside. She kicked out, connecting with his thigh but missing her target. In the space of a heartbeat, he switched his knife to the other hand and pulled out his gun. “That’s it.”

She scrambled on her hands and feet toward the other side of the car. But Liza hit a button and locked the door.

“Time to die.”

She dived over the front seat, desperate to escape the bead of that gun.

A shot rang out, echoing off the concrete walls and ringing in her ears. The gun flew from Collier’s hand. Faith snatched at her chest, but she wasn’t hit.

“Faith!” Jonas. Collier’s hand hung limp at his side and blood oozed from beneath the crisp white cuff of his shirt. “Get away from her!”

He was alive. Jonas was alive!

Liza ducked behind the open door and fired off countless rounds at their attacker, giving Jermaine enough time to find cover and search for his gun. The deafening sound of gunfire echoed through the garage with the same intensity of thunder in the mountains. Shaking with every tiny explosion of sound, Faith unlocked the passenger-side door and slipped out to the concrete floor.

She crawled along the cold, smooth surface, just getting away from the deadly spray of bullets and spent cartridges and dings of metal and concrete shrapnel. She’d covered the distance of two cars and hidden behind a third when the sudden silence startled her. “Oh, no. No.”

Was Jonas dead? She had to help him. Rising to her feet, she tried to spy him through the shadowed garage. The debris of spent cartridges indicated where Jonas had hidden behind a tall SUV. But there was no sign of movement. No sound.

Liza was blocked from view as well. Jermaine Collier was the only one she could see. He had taken cover behind a support pillar, emptying his gun and quickly reloading. “You might as well give it up, mountain man,” Collier taunted. “You’re hit and you’re out of ammo.” He swung around the pillar to fire.

“But I ain’t dead.” A huge knife sailed through the air and pierced the center of Jermaine Collier’s chest.

The hit man’s eyes and hands popped open. His gun clattered to the floor. Sweat formed a sheen across the top of his bald head. But he didn’t fall. Faith watched in tight-lipped horror as he closed his fingers around the handle of the knife, and with a deliberate denial of any pain, pulled the knife from his chest.

Everything around her took on a sudden surreal quality. But it was real. It was all real. The heightened sense of awareness brought on by fear and intense relief. The oily smell of the cars. The vicious barrage of hateful words. The sight of Jonas Beck flying through the air and smashing Jermaine Collier down to the concrete floor before the hit man could react.

Their fight was cruel and intense—two wounded giants battling for their very lives. Faith’s heart pounded against the wall of her chest. She had to help. How could she help?

But she was too late. Like every other tragedy of the past few days, she couldn’t stop it. She felt the tap of cold metal against her scalp.

“Get up.” Liza hadn’t disappeared with the disk. She’d come for Faith. “Get up!”

She slowly stood. Liza settled the gun behind Faith’s ear. She could see Jonas now, trading punches with Collier, his face bleeding from a cut across his cheek. His shoulder soaked with blood. No. No, he didn’t deserve to die. Not like this. Not for her.

Obeying the command of Liza’s gun, Faith walked to the black car and climbed behind the wheel. As she slid across the seat, Liza got in behind her and started the engine. She was abandoning her partner.

Faith wouldn’t abandon hers.

As Liza shifted the car into Reverse, Faith lunged for the gun. She smashed her foot on top of Liza’s on the accelerator. The car burned rubber, then found traction and careened backward, crashing into a pillar. The whiplash momentum threw Faith against the dashboard. She lost her grip and tumbled to the floor. But Liza was shaken, too, her head bleeding from where she’d hit the steering wheel.

Faith recovered more quickly. But with the gun lost at Liza’s feet, she opted for escape. She shoved open her door and fell out onto the concrete.

Ignoring the pain that swirled inside her head, Faith got to her feet and ran toward Jonas. “Jonas? Oh, God. Jonas?”

He rose to his feet with Collier’s head locked between his massive arms. The black man turned the knife he held in his fist and plunged it back into Jonas’s ribs.

“Jonas!”

Jonas’s startled gasp betrayed his pain, but he moved his arms in a fateful twist. Collier’s eyes opened wide. They never closed again. Jonas released him and he fell to the floor. Dead.