Cross Fire, page 33
I pressed my lips together and shook my head.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and his gaze slid back to Jordan. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have given you a phone or a knife, and I’m not about to be tracked, maced, or stabbed.”
He reached for my legs, and my heart leaped into my throat. “What are you doing?” I protested anxiously, pulling my knees into my chest.
“Frisking you for weapons or a phone. Sit still and it’ll be quick and painless.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“What happened to ‘I’ll cooperate’?” he asked with a sneer.
“I don’t want you touching me. Ever.”
His jaw hardened, and I knew I must have wounded his pride. Not only did I not want him running his hands all over my body, I didn’t want him finding the phone in my back pocket. I needed that connection to Marx.
I gasped when he grabbed my ankle and wrenched up my pant leg. He searched inside the top of my sock and then did the same with my other leg. I kicked at him, but he batted my foot aside.
He shot me an impatient glare. “Keep it up and we’re gonna do this with you facedown on the floor and my knee in your back.”
When his hands moved up my legs, I screamed and tried to squirm away from him. He slapped a hand over my mouth and looked around nervously. Was there still someone on the premises that worried him? Was Kristen still unaccounted for?
“Do that again and I’ll gag you,” he said.
I sank my teeth into his pinky, and he jerked his hand back with a yelp of pain. I spat the taste of his blood from my mouth.
“You bit me, you little . . .” He drew back a hand to hit me, and I ducked my head between my arms. He must have changed his mind at the last second, because the blow never landed. “You’re lucky I don’t hit girls.”
He grabbed the chain of the handcuffs and yanked me to my feet by my wrists. I clenched my teeth against a whimper of pain.
“I don’t have time to fight with you on this. I’ll just have to pull off the road and frisk you later before we get to our destination.”
He gripped my waist instead of my arm this time, apparently determined not to let me wrench free again. I squirmed and tried to peel his fingers away, but he only dug them in deeper, drawing another wince of pain from me.
“And if you pull any more of that biting and kicking crap on the way to the car, I’m gonna put a bullet in pretty boy’s head. Understand?”
My eyes snapped to Jordan’s motionless body, and I remembered the venom in Danny’s earlier statement: “I probably should’ve just shot him.” I wouldn’t give him a reason.
“You know, it’s a shame it had to work out this way,” he said, his suddenly flirtatious tone at odds with the way he roughly dragged me toward the door. “We could’ve had a nice evening together.”
Sure . . . right up until you knocked me out and stuffed me into the trunk of your car.
“We could’ve had a delicious homemade meal, maybe a little dessert.” His gaze swept over me, and I recognized the unsettling hunger I had seen in his eyes at the precinct. It made my stomach lurch with dread.
“The plan was flawless,” he continued. “A little something in your drink to help you relax for the road trip, and you would’ve just fallen asleep. From there, all it would’ve taken was a convincing story about your abduction by thugs that I unfortunately couldn’t save you from. None of this had to happen.”
I locked my legs as he tried to walk me out the front door. He lifted me up just enough to carry me over the threshold and down the steps.
“Out of curiosity, where did I go wrong with the dinner thing? Too forward?” He paused, but I didn’t answer. “Another guy? It can’t be that I’m not your type. I’m a cop and I’m a good-looking guy. And I know I’m charming.”
Was he serious right now? He wanted to know why I had rejected him?
“Or do you think you’re too good for me?” Old bitterness tainted the question, and I could see it in his eyes when he glared down at me. “Is that it? You think you’re better than me?”
He squeezed my waist tightly when I didn’t answer, and I bit back a pained whimper.
“I don’t usually date guys who slam my head into walls,” I said, trying to loosen his viciously tight grip across my stomach.
“That was your fault. I tried to make this easier on you, but you don’t like the easy way. You’re lucky I’m not like these guys.” He gestured to the body of one of the enforcers we stepped over. “They would’ve hit you back and then some, so why don’t you show a little appreciation.”
Appreciation, I scoffed silently. He was trying to abduct me. “How did you even find me? I thought safe houses were supposed to be—”
“Safe?” he said with amusement. “No place is ever truly safe, Holly. All it took was one very small tracker hidden on the underside of the marshals’ car while they were in the precinct parking lot. Led us right to you. They think they’re so much smarter than the rest of us.”
So it hadn’t been Jordan who led them here. Danny was responsible for the bodies scattered across the lawn and inside the house.
“People died because of you.”
“No, they died because of you,” he shot back. “If you’d accepted my invitation when I offered it, all of these people would still be alive.”
The thought made me sick. Could I have prevented all of this if I had simply agreed to have dinner with him? If I had just gone willingly?
“Where are you taking me?”
“A place you’ll probably be a while, since Marx doesn’t know when to back off.”
“You don’t have to do this. Let me talk to him, and maybe I can get him to drop the case,” I pleaded.
“He won’t drop the case. I know Marx. Unless he has a good incentive—like the well-being of someone he cares about—he doesn’t back down.”
They were going to hold me over his head to ensure he backed off the investigation. For how long? Would they even keep me alive, or just kill me and lead Marx to believe there was still hope?
I dug in my heels as we approached the car, trying to slow Danny down and buy myself a few more minutes.
He yanked me forward impatiently. “Come on, Holly, don’t make me hurt you again.”
“Like you care.”
“I do. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“And the others?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll do what I can to keep them in check while I’m around, but I have a pretty busy job, so all I can promise is that they won’t kill you.”
Fear trickled down to my toes. “And you’re okay with that? Aren’t you supposed to be one of the good guys?”
He looked down at me. “I am one of the good guys. I put my life on the line for people who don’t deserve it every day, and do you think I get rewarded for it? No. I get a measly paycheck, hate from half the community, and criticism from the other. No gratitude.”
I tried to pull away from him, and he crushed me tighter against him. “Stop it.” He popped the trunk of his car, and I redoubled my efforts to escape. I couldn’t go into that cramped, dark space.
He wrapped both arms around my waist and hoisted me up to stuff me into the trunk. I planted my feet on the car and pushed back as I screamed for help, hoping someone would hear me.
“Why can’t you just . . .”—he grunted in frustration—“go in the trunk!” He shoved harder, and I pushed back.
I was not going in that trunk without a fight. He was going to have to knock me out to get me in there, which unfortunately I didn’t think he would lose any sleep over.
“It’s a short trip. I promise.”
A maroon car sped into the drive and skidded to a stop in front of Danny’s vehicle, blocking him in. Danny swore and jerked me back from the car. He wrapped an arm around my body, gripping my shoulder and holding me flush against him. My breath caught when I felt the metal barrel of the gun press against my temple.
Marx stepped out of the car and snapped his gun up in one fluid movement. “What are you doin’, Daniel?”
Jordan staggered out of the house with one hand pressed to the back of his head and the other gripping his gun. He looked pale and dazed. Confusion flashed across his face when he saw Danny holding a gun to my head.
“Stop!” Danny barked when Marx inched forward. He jammed the gun into my temple, and shivers of fear flowed through me.
Marx stilled. “You don’t wanna hurt her, Daniel. She’s just an innocent girl. Let her go.”
Danny laughed. “I’m not an idiot, Marx. The moment I let her go, you and Mr. Overprotective here are gonna fill me full of holes.”
Jordan seemed to have shaken off his lingering confusion and disorientation, and he had his gun trained on Danny.
“Nobody has to die today,” Marx said.
“Oh, plenty of people died today. There’s a house full of dead people. I don’t plan on being one of them. Let me and Holly get in my car and drive off, and I promise she gets to live.”
Marx’s jaw tightened. “I’m not lettin’ you take her.”
“Then we have a problem, because I’m not letting her go so you can shoot me.”
“I could shoot you right now if I wanted to, Daniel,” Marx said, keeping his voice level.
Danny squeezed me tighter against his body. “I doubt you would risk that. You care about her too much.”
“You’re nearly six feet tall. You chose a barely-five-foot hostage,” Marx pointed out. “I could shoot you in the head between one breath and the next.”
Danny shifted nervously. “You won’t do it. You could hit her accidentally, and I don’t think you could live with yourself if you kill her.”
“Can you?”
“I can live with a lot for the right amount of money.”
“Money. That’s what this is about?” Marx asked with disgust. “That’s why you have a gun to that girl’s head?”
I swallowed uncomfortably when Danny’s arm tightened across my body.
“No, I have a gun to her head because you have a gun to my head,” Danny sneered. “Is this the part where you offer to put your gun down if I put my gun down?”
“I’m not puttin’ my gun down.” Marx’s eyes captured mine briefly and then shifted back to Danny’s. “Because as much as I like zebras . . .”
I missed whatever lay at the end of that sentence, because my mind flashed back to the moment in the bathroom of Marx’s apartment when he told me we needed a “trigger word” so that we both knew he was about to pull the trigger, and he was waiting for me to duck.
Danny was speaking when my mind returned to the present. “Never pictured you as a zebra print kind of guy, M—”
I followed every step of the escape maneuver I had practiced with Jordan, and I was still silently praying it would work when I slipped free of Danny’s grip and hit the ground, a second before a series of gunshots rang out.
Danny crumpled behind me, and I scrambled through the gravel driveway to put distance between us.
Jordan kicked the gun from Danny’s hand and rolled the gasping man onto his stomach to cuff his wrists behind his back.
I had seen a man die from gunshot wounds before, but that didn’t make watching it a second time any easier. I could hear the wet rattle of Danny’s breathing as his lungs filled with blood.
Marx holstered his gun, then slipped his hands under my arms and hefted me to my feet. My legs folded beneath me as my head swam with dizziness, but he caught me and propped me up against his car.
“Get them off. Please,” I pleaded, thrusting my wrists toward him. He pulled a small key from his pocket and unhooked the handcuffs.
“You’re okay now,” he said soothingly.
Okay . . .
Danny had been prepared to shoot me, and there was a house full of dead bodies, lives snuffed out over money. Over me. I was anything but okay. I stared at the man barely clinging to life as my mind tried to process it all.
Marx brushed the hair back from my face. “Who hurt you?”
I touched my forehead with trembling fingers and stared at the slick redness that coated them as I pulled them away. A mixture of shock and amusement colored my response. “Would you believe me if I said I bumped into a door?”
His expression darkened. “Did Daniel help you bump into that door?”
I gave him a shaky smile. “Technically it was a door frame.”
He released a tense breath. “We’ll get it looked at, but right now we need to move. There could be more of them on the way.”
How could there possibly be more?
He turned to Jordan. “I need you to stay here. Backup will be here any minute, and they need to know what happened.”
Jordan’s gaze shifted to me as he stood, and then he looked back at Marx. “I’m not—”
“I need to get her somewhere safe. Now. I don’t have time to argue with you.”
“Kristen,” I said, with sudden worry. “She’s still here somewhere and she might be hurt. Jordan . . .”
He gritted his teeth before saying, “I’ll find her.”
Marx settled me into the passenger seat of his car and then slid behind the wheel. I caught Jordan’s worried gaze as we peeled out of the driveway and onto the back road.
27
“Where are we going?” I asked as we drove down an unfamiliar street.
Marx glanced in the rearview mirror, and his eyes narrowed at the headlights that appeared out of the darkness behind us.
He slowed to twenty miles per hour, and one hand fell to rest on his gun as the vehicle closed the distance between us.
I gripped the handle on the passenger side as I twisted around in my seat. The headlights pressed in on the rear of the car, and I could feel Marx’s tension. Could this be more of the enforcers he had mentioned?
I held my breath as the headlights gave way to a truck. It swerved over the line to our left, and then cut in front of us. It sped up and disappeared down the road.
Marx’s fingers relaxed on the steering wheel. “The only safe place I can think of at the moment,” he finally said, in answer to my question.
“But if they’ve been following us for the past month, studying our movements, they’re gonna know every place we can think of.”
“I haven’t been here in the past month.” He returned both hands to the steering wheel. “I haven’t been here since summer, and I don’t know where else to go.”
“Where?”
“Matt’s house.”
He was taking me to Captain McNera’s house? I thought about the man who had been in tears due to some bad news in the family the last time I’d seen him. “I don’t think we should go there. What if they follow us? Won’t that put him and his family in danger?”
“You let me worry about that.”
A few minutes later, we pulled into the driveway of a two-story house set back from the road. I followed Marx up the front steps onto a wraparound porch and sank weak-kneed into a chair that rested against the railing.
He pounded on the frame of the screen door with the side of his fist. “Matt!” He waited a beat before pounding and calling for his friend again.
I bent forward, resting my head on my knees. It felt like there was a thunderstorm booming around between my ears, and I couldn’t seem to shake off the dizziness.
“How’s your head?” Marx asked.
I offered him a thumbs-up and heard him sigh. He pounded on the door again, but he didn’t shout this time. My head was grateful for that.
I looked up when I heard a dead bolt snap, and the front door wrenched inward. A shadowed figure filled the opening, and fear gripped me when my eyes snagged on the gun aimed at Marx’s chest through the screen door.
There was a beat of breath-stealing uncertainty before the gun lowered and Captain McNera exhaled, “Holy mother of . . .” He flipped on the light just inside the door, and the dull yellow glow illuminated his tired, lined face. “Do you have any idea what time it is, Rick?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have a problem,” Marx said. “The safe house was breached.”
Captain McNera blinked, his sluggish mind apparently struggling to come to terms with that news at one a.m. “When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Casualties?”
Marx nodded but didn’t elaborate. “Can we discuss the details inside?”
“Right, of course.” Captain McNera opened the screen door to invite him in. “Helen’s at some kind of women’s retreat with the church, so we can talk freely in the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.”
Marx helped me to my feet despite my assurances that I was fine, and I saw Captain McNera’s eyes widen a fraction in surprise. He hadn’t noticed me sitting there in the dark.
“I got her out,” Marx explained.
“When you said the safe house was breached, I thought the worst,” he admitted. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I stiffened at the unexpected contact. “I’m glad you’re okay, kiddo.”
He gestured us inside, and Marx led me into the kitchen. He pulled out a chair at the table and demanded, “Sit before you fall over.”
I plopped into the chair with a half-hearted protest. “I’m not gonna fall over. I’m fine.” Aside from the pain ricocheting around inside my skull, which I wasn’t about to admit to.
“You’re a bad liar.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a washcloth as if he were in his own kitchen, then held it under the faucet.
“I didn’t see any suspicious vehicles in my driveway,” Captain McNera said as he strode into the kitchen. “Any chance you were followed?”
“I’d like to think not, but there’s always a chance,” Marx admitted reluctantly. He drew up a chair in front of me and sat down. “Let’s see how bad it is.” He brushed my hair aside and dabbed gently around the gash on my forehead.
“What happened to your head?” Captain McNera asked, his expression pinched with concern. He must have just noticed the blood trickling down my face. I had tried to wipe it away—it was all over the sleeves of my purple T-shirt—but it continued to flow.
