Playing For Keeps (Montana Men)

 
PLAYING FOR KEEPS

Montana Men 4

Jaydyn Chelcee

Erotic Romance

Secret Cravings Publishing

www.secretcravingspublishing.com

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A Secret Cravings
Publishing Book

Erotic Romance

Playing for Keeps

Copyright © 2012 Jaydyn Chelcee

E-book
ISBN: 978-1-61885-391-2

First E-book Publication: November 2012

Cover design by
Dawne
Dominique

Edited by Colleen
McSpirit

Proofread by
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Gaynor

All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Secret Cravings
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Dedication

To all you ladies out there who love a sexy cowboy!

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Taming the Cougar
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Marla isn't looking for love or anything else from a
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 Can Marla put aside her distrust of men for a younger man? Can
Chris convince her he's not like other guys?

*
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Rachel Hayes' father
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Miloni
temple
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Tumi
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PLAYING FOR KEEPS

MONTANA MEN 4

Jaydyn Chelcee

Copyright © 2012

Prologue

There will be time to murder and create.

~T.S. Elliot

Washington, D.C.

February 16, Monday

11:00 p.m.

“Punch the button,”
the brunette
screamed, charging inside the elevator like the lead steer in a stampede.
“Punch the button! Hurry!” She whirled to steal a look past the open door, her
hands jittering nervously at her sides.

Although
Jayla Ross hadn’t seen the lady’s face, she heard the terror in her voice.
Stunned, she stared at the back of the woman’s dark head. What on Earth?
Puzzled, and a bit frightened by the unknown, Jayla looked around. She wondered
how the hell the hysterical lady thought
she
could push the button when the woman stood smack in front of the panel. She
started to nudge her to one side, but the oddest sounds outside the elevator
gave her reason to hesitate. The faint
pop-pop
was unfamiliar, yet it sent a tingle of apprehension up her spine. The
muffled sounds reminded her of a firecracker that fizzled, withholding the big
bang, yet her blood chilled.

The
woman threw up her hands in a self-defensive gesture. “No,” she cried, but the
word was as useless as her defense. A third
pop!
Not another sound escaped as the back of her head exploded like an over-ripe
tomato. A mix of blood and brain matter sprayed the front of Jayla’s pale blue
suit, face, and strands of her hair.

For
a moment, she stared blankly at the front of her outfit,
unable
to comprehend what had just happened. Everything inside her shut down
—
her breathing, her ability to think
coherently. Faint whimpers of distress and horror surged in the back of her
throat, but she wasn’t even sure they managed to escape.

Her mind locked like the steel jaws of a bear trap. That
didn’t stop the victim from toppling against her. She slid against her, limp as
a rag doll, leaving a wider smear of blood down the front of the Jackie
Kennedy-era jacket Jayla had purchased to wear to the Vintage Party she’d
attended earlier in the evening.

Automatically
Jayla caught the woman
. The elbow length white gloves clinging to her forearms
turned crimson at the fingertips. The woman was taller, and outweighed her by
at least twenty pounds
—
and
she was dead weight. Jayla’s legs buckled like straw. Unable to support her,
she lowered the woman to the floor as gently as she could, then hunkered down
beside her.

Jayla’s
mouth worked, but for the life of her, she couldn’t force a single word past
her numb lips. She thought the strange wailing noise was coming from her, but
she wasn’t sure. The urgent need clawing at her numb mind demanded she get up
and run, but she was frozen to the spot. In that single, endless moment, she
felt as if she’d been sucked inside a black hole. Her mind voiced questions at
the rate of warp-speed, running the words together in her head.
What had just happened—what had she
witnessed—why wasn’t she screaming—running—breathing?

A
woman had been shot down right in front of her eyes, and she just sat here like
a zombie. Dazed, Jayla stared at the splatters of crimson dotting her gloved
hands. Oh, God. This was bad. Feeling shocky, she lifted her arms to eye the
bloodstains on them. Her mind felt blank, comprehension murky as a dark pool,
yet she knew that wasn’t true.

At
the moment, her brain was the only thing functioning half-way normal. It was
her body that refused to cooperate. She stared at the blood pooling on the
elevator floor. Blobs of crimson speckled the dead woman’s face. It slowly
dawned on Jayla the lady was wearing a dark wig. Why the absurdity of it had
such an impact or was suddenly of vital importance, she didn’t know, but the
urgent need to shove the damn thing aside overwhelmed her. At the same time a
silent alarm clanged a warning—
don’t
touch her.

Jayla
released a tense breath. She had a bad feeling. Ignoring the warning, she
pushed the edge of the dark hairpiece out of the way. She widened her eyes and
stared at the strands of platinum-blonde hair beneath the expensive extension.
Her heart leapt into her throat. “Oh, shit!”

Punch the button!
The dead woman’s words screamed in her head, but Jayla’s muscles quivered like
jelly and refused to cooperate. Now, thinking was beyond her capability. Wide-eyed,
she gaped at the dark strands of the wig, then the lighter threads of hair
underneath it. Fighting to draw in air, those final, hysterical words blurted
in terror, burned a hole in her mind.

Punch the button!

Jayla
stared at the woman whose pale blue eyes looked back—
dull, fixed, and
lifeless as a doll’s. A perfectly round hole, not much bigger than a
centimeter, dotted the space between her eyes. It silently exposed the obvious
truth of the matter. The much bigger cavity in the back of her head, well
—
no mistake
there, the woman was
dead. Dead-dead-dead!

Then
the awful trembling, the panic
—
half
the lady’s skull was missing. Jayla feared
she
wore most of the parts of it. “God, please.” The words sprang
from the back of her dry throat in a soft keening sound. Strangled words that
slipped past her lips as she shoved the wig farther to one side and prayed the
slain woman wasn’t who she knew in her heart to be.

Jayla
scrambled clumsily to her feet. Her heart pounded. Her palms felt sweaty inside
the gloves. She stared at her gloved hands. Sweaty—or were they moist from the
blood soaking through the soft material? “Oh, dear Lord.” Her stomach churned
like a stormy sea. “Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick.” From the corner of her eye,
she caught a distorted image on the brass panel—saw the blurry outline of the
barrel of a gun. “Oh, God. Oh, God,” she whispered.

Terrified
the shooter might hear her raspy breathing and softly uttered words, she
clamped a shaky hand over her mouth. Jayla looked around, frantic. No escape.
She was the proverbial fish in a barrel. Why was he still here? Why hadn’t he
fled like a nice killer?

Then
the ludicrous thought
—
why
should
he run? He was the one with the
weapon. The question was why hadn’t
she
run? Too late now. Jayla stumbled, but caught herself against the side of the
innermost wall. Raw, greasy nausea bubbled in her stomach. Sure as hell, she
was going to upchuck.

Punch the button!
Punch it, now!
Get out of
here. Escape. Run. Run fast. Run far. How?

There was only one way out. And the person with the gun
waited, patient as a spider in its web for her to dare an attempt to escape.
Jayla stood there, plastered against the corner, her mind screaming a denial of
what she’d just witnessed.

Why wasn’t the door closing?
It was
taking forever to slide inside its little slot. She jabbed and re-jabbed the
parking level button. No response. The door was caught half-way and refused to
budge an inch closer to its hatch.

Gasping,
she saw one of the dead woman’s legs blocking the gap. Jayla’s heart sank as
she realized what she had to do if she wanted a chance to survive. Damn! Her
hands shook worse than someone with palsy. Bracing herself with a deep,
fortifying breath, she bent down and gripped the poor departed soul beneath her
shoulders and dragged the body the rest of the way in.

Dismayed,
she watched the door slide toward its slot as if in reverse warp speed
—
slooow—
slow
as molasses in winter. “Hurry, damn it…hurry!”

A
shadow. Closer. Too close. Dark. Frightening. Deadly.

What the hell was the shooter doing?

Smashed
between the body and the wall, she watched the elevator door. Her veins felt as
if icy sludge had been transfused inside them turning every bone, muscle and
tissue to slush. The killer. He stepped into sight. There he stood, plain as day.
He stared back at her through the eye sockets of a black wool mask that covered
his face. Patiently reloading the 9mm he held, he jacked the clip in place,
then pointed the lethal weapon at her.

The
silencer attached to it looked deadly. The terrifying black hole on the
business end of the barrel raised goose bumps on her flesh. Cold chills swept
down her spine and formed an icy puddle at the small of her back.
She
was dead, dead as the woman on the floor at her feet. Jayla braced herself.

Death
—
would it be painful or over in a
second?
Please, let it be over in a
second.

He
hesitated.

She
saw his finger flex, then relax on the trigger. He pointed the gun up, his eyes
cold and deadly. “What are you doing here?” he asked, and stepped back.

The
doors swished shut. The elevator shot down as if it had suddenly found fourth
gear. It jetted to ground level, snatching the air from Jayla’s frozen lungs
like a detonated atom bomb. She felt as if she was on one of those insane
carnival rides where the bottom drops away and the rider held in place by
nothing but the centrifugal force of the spinning wheel.

Her
heart pumped madly. Her pulse pounded. The very core of her brain felt
pulverized, as if it’d been struck by a bullet.
He hadn’t taken the shot!
He could have,
should
have, but he hadn’t. Why?

Jayla
tried desperately to think what she needed to do to get out of the mess she’d
stumbled into, but her mind was still gripped by the horror of what she’d
witnessed.
Think. Think.

Once
she’d moved the body, he’d halted the door with his hip, but he hadn’t taken
the shot because he’d been surprised to see her. Yes. She’d seen the shock in
his eyes—the recognition. She knew him, too, in the Biblical sense of the word.
Only one person had those wintry gray eyes, that cold voice.

And
she’d just witnessed him murder Molly Westcott, the First Lady of the United
States.