Newborn Conspiracy (20 page)

She felt Donnie move slightly, and she thought he might have looked down at the lifeless woman.

“What a bimbo," he grumbled."I helped her with the surrogacy because she paid me an obscene amount of money and because she wasn’t supposed to tell a soul. You see how well she kept that promise. But she works out very well to be scapegoat, don’t you think? She’ll get the blame for your deaths. And speaking of which, it’s time to die. I bet the police are already in the build inland are trying, to figure out how to get up here."

Donnie was saying all the right things to make him sound like a cold-blooded killer, but because he was practically wrapped around her. Mia could feel him trembling. He was scared, too, and killing someone face-to-face wasn’t nearly as easy as he’d probably thought it would be.

“Let Mia go," Logan said, taking another step forward. Mia could see his hand tense on his gun.

His finger was still on the trigger."You have no reason to kill her."

“I beg to differ. Between the two of you, you can put me in jail with your testimony. That’s why I’ve been after you two."

Logan huffed."You’re actually going to kill us to avoid jail time?"

“A long jail time. Women were murdered at Brighton, and I knew about it. I even covered up evidence. Eventually Collena Drake would have discovered that and she would have had you two to fill in the rest so you could all testify against me."

“So you plan to kill Collena, too?"

“Once I’m done here. She shouldn’t be hard to find. A wounded ex-cop without a lot of friends won’t have a lot of places she can go. Don’t," Donnie warned when Logan came even closer.

“I can’t just let you kill her," Logan said.

“There’s nothing you or I can do about it."

Oh yes, there was. Mia didn’t know what exactly, but she wasn’t just going to stand there and let him kill both Logan and her.

She thought of her son again and fixed the image of him in her head. Tanner couldn’t lose both of his parents. She wouldn’t let him go through what had happened to her. Not when she could do something to stop it.

Logan’s index finger tensed on the trigger Donnie tensed, too. She felt his stance change slightly. There was no more trembling.

He was within seconds of pulling that trigger.

Mia didn’t think beyond doing something, though she really didn’t have a plan. Moving as fast as she could, she ducked down her head and in the same motion, she rammed her elbow into Donnie’s stomach.

It worked. Sort of.

He still fired the shot, but because she’d moved, it didn’t hit her. However, her heart nearly stopped when she considered where the bullet could have gone.

“Logan!" she called out.

She dropped to the ground and tried to catch a glimpse of him, to make sure he was all right.

But she wasn’t able to do that because Donnie latched on to her hair and tried to drag her back in front of him.

He was strong, much stronger than she was, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She was losing the battle until Donnie shoved the gun against her neck.

Right on the scars.

That was a huge mistake for him to make.

Because it didn’t make her weak. She didn’t want to surrender She wanted to fight back. It wasn’t just raw adrenaline that slammed through her. There was fury and rage. She was not going to go through this again.

Mia used the force from her forearm to knock the gun away from her throat.

Donnie tiled again. But she didn’t try to maneuver herself away from him. Instead, she launched herself at him. Mia scratched at his face, hitting him and latching on to any part of him that she could claw or grab.

Donnie still managed to fire again.

She braced herself for the sensation of being shot, or worse, but the only thing she felt was someone pulling her from behind.

Logan.

He tore her away from Donnie, pushing her to the side. She fell against Jason, And since she was no longer standing, that cleared the path for Logan to go after Donnie.

If Logan was hurt, she certainly couldn’t see any sign of it. And like her, he’d worked himself into a rage. But unlike her, he had the size and the strength to do something. He slammed his fist into Donnie’s face.

Donnie staggered back. Landing hard against what was left of the service exit door. He nearly fell back into the gaping hole.

Then Donnie lifted his gun and aimed it at Logan.

Logan did the same.

Mia didn’t have time to shout for Logan to get down. She didn’t have time to do anything.

Donnie dived back into the open space behind him.

The relief was instant. Donnie hadn’t shot Logan. But that relief was short-lived. Because she didn’t hear Donnie crash into anything. Nor was there the sound of him falling down the steps.

Just the opposite.

She could hear him running away.

Escaping, And if that happened, this nightmare would start all over again, Logan, Tanner and she would never be safe.

Logan obviously knew that, as well, because much to Mia’s horror, he raced into the stairwell after the man.

LOGAN DIDN’T STOP and think.

He did what he knew he had to do, and what he had to do was go after Donnie.

If Donnie had told the truth about the blocked stairwells and elevator, Logan couldn’t count on help from the police or his own crew. They might not be able to get through whatever obstacles Donnie had set in time to stop him from escaping.

Logan raced into the service stairwell and stomped through the debris left from the explosion. He heard Donnie. Not in the stairwell below, but above.

The man was headed to the roof where he probably had an escape route all planned out. Well, Logan couldn’t let him go through with that plan. Donnie had to be stopped.

Logan barreled up the steps, taking them two at a time. Or rather trying to. The pain was instant and it rifled through him until the muscles in his leg knotted. If he’d been a hundred percent, this wouldn’t have been much of a match. But as it was, he was going to have to muster every bit of determination he could to put an end to this.

And then he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

Footsteps coming from below him.

Cursing and praying he was wrong about what he would see, he glanced down.

He spotted Mia one flight of stairs away.

She wasn’t looking at the weapon, but she had Jason’s gun gripped in her hand. And that wasn’t all. She didn’t seem panicked. Or afraid, She looked determined.

Logan wanted no part of that.

Because her determination could get her killed.

“Go back," he warned her.

She frantically shook her head."No, I won’t. You need help."

That was true, but he didn’t want help from her. He wanted her safe, and that wouldn’t happen if she was anywhere near Donnie.

“Go to the suite." he ordered. And then he played dirty pool."Think of Tanner. He needs you."

“I am thinking of him," she insisted."I’m thinking of you, too. I’m thinking of all of us."

Logan cursed, but he couldn’t take the time to argue with her. Judging from the sound of Donnie’s steps, the man was almost to the top. Logan’s best chance was to outrun Mia and hope to have everything resolved by the time she caught up with him.

It was a lofty goal.

Especially since each step was agony.

Still, he forced his body to do what it didn’t want to do. He kept running. He kept forcing himself to move up those stairs.

Then, Logan heard the door slam at the top of the stairs.

Hell. That wasn’t a good sound. Because it meant Donnie had made it to the roof and was likely on the last leg of his escape route.

Logan kicked things up a notch and turned the comer of the last stairwell. He spotted the door that would no doubt lead to the roof.

He also spotted the shadow.

A man’s shadow.

Logan’s mind had just enough time to register that this was a trick, that Donnie hadn’t indeed gone out that door but was waiting to ambush him. Logan dived to the floor just in the nick of time.

The bullet that Donnie fired slammed into the concrete-block wall just above Logan’s head.

Before Logan could fully regain his position and re-aim his gun. Donnie launched himself at him.

He came down those steps, tackling Logan, and the impact sent him hard into that same concrete that the bullet had struck. Donnie didn’t stop there. He rammed his knee into Logan’s injured leg.

The pain was instant.

It knifed through Logan, knocking the breath out of him. And in the back of his mind, he knew that his injury had been his fatal flaw. It’d weakened him and given his opponent an ad vantage that he shouldn’t have.

Logan expected Donnie to finish the attack. He expected Donnie to shoot him.

And there was a shot.

It blasted through the stairwell, echoing through the hollow space.

But the shot Logan heard didn’t come from Donnie.

It came from below them in the stairwell.

Logan glanced down and saw Mia. She had Jason’s gun raised in the air, and the bullet she’d fired had gone into the ceiling. She had her eyes closed, terrified of the gun she’d just fired.

Donnie immediately honed in Mia and Logan could tell the moment the man spotted her. He could also tell that Donnie was about to make Mia his main target.

The brief distraction that Mia had created was all that Logan needed.

When Donnie shifted to re-aim his gun at Mia.

Logan drew back his fist. He put everything he had into it and his punch landed hard against Donnie’s face. So hard that Logan heard a bone snap in the man’s jaw.

Donnie staggered back.

Logan didn’t give him any chance to use his gun. He tried to knock it from his hand and shoved him against the wall. Then he did it again. The second time did the trick. Donnie’s eyes rolled back in his head and his gun dropped to the floor.

And so did Donnie.

It was chaos again.

Mia could hear the frantic movement and voices in the hotel corridor. The police had finally broken through the magnetized locking mechanisms that Donnie had attached to all the doors and the elevator.

Along with an ambulance, the police and some members of Logan’s team had arrived, all of them rushing into the building and onto the damaged second floor. Everyone was scrambling to make sure there were no other injuries and no other explosives.

Once they were certain of that, they would be evacuated. Probably not Logan, though. Since he’d knocked Donnie unconscious, he’d stayed in intense combat mode and had ordered her back to the suite. She’d complied, mainly because she wanted to check on Tanner and because she wanted to get away from Donnie, the man who’d created the horrible chaos that’d nearly gotten them killed.

Mia sank down onto the suite floor just outside the bathroom where Dorien and Tanner were still tucked away. Tanner was asleep. How, Mia didn’t know. But her son hadn’t even stirred amid the explosion and the ensuing fight.

A fight they’d won.

She was too worried about Logan to appreciate that now, but she would later.

It was over. Donnie had been arrested and the threat was gone. Of course, that led her to another question—where would she go?

Mia was still asking herself that when she heard footsteps. Her heartbeat spiked. Her body went on alert. But she soon saw that it wasn’t a threat.

Logan walked into the suite. Correction—he limped, just as he’d done on the stairwell. Mia got up and hurried to him. He didn’t resist when she slipped her arm around his waist and helped him to the bed. She didn’t miss his grimace of pain.

“You need a doctor," she insisted.

He caught her when she tried to pull back and face him. Instead, he pulled her closer."No.

Right now, you’re what I need."

That took some of the tight out of her, Mia melted against him.

“How’s Tanner?’ he asked.

“Sleeping."

Logan reached over and for a moment she thought he was going to hold her hand, but he didn’t. He took the gun away from her.

A gun she hadn’t even remembered she was holding.

A sound of amusement jumped in her throat. Here she was, a person with a diagnosed phobia of guns who hadn’t even been aware she was holding one.

He placed the weapon on the night table next to the bed. "The police will need to take it since you fired a shot."

Of course, they would. Mia stared at the gun and wondered why she’d let something like that have so much control over her. But that was the past. It wouldn’t control her any longer.

Just minutes earlier she’d come face-to-face with a horrible fear—losing Logan. Everything else in her life suddenly seemed very manageable.

“How’s Jason?" she asked.

“He’ll be fine. The medics think he has a concussion, probably some cracked ribs, but they don’t think it’s anything too serious." He turned toward her, “You saved my life."

“You’ve saved mine too many times to count." She kissed his cheek. "Why did Donnie do this?

Was it really only because he didn’t want us to be able to testify against him?"

Logan nodded. "And apparently he was working alone when he came after Collena, you and me. I heard him tell the police that he’d lured Genevieve here with the promise that he’d help her get revenge, but that he planned to set her up to take the blame. He insists that her death was an accident."

“Well, that bomb wasn’t an accident so he can be attested for attempted murder."

“That and a whole lot more, including the crimes he committed at Brighton. And I believe he set the fires at both his house and Collena’s office, figuring that would take care of any witnesses or evidence against him"

“So he did all of this so he wouldn’t have to go to jail." Mia shook her head, “He risked our lives for that."

“But he didn’t win" Logan reminded her. "I think I also figured out how Genevieve found us at my house. Donnie had already planted the bug in the diaper bag, but by then, the cops had taken him for questioning. Since he was tied up for hours, I believe he used his phone call to tell Genevieve where we were. He probably hoped she’d save him the trouble and just fly into a jealous rage and kill us"