A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (29 page)

“Yeah,” Tobin chuckled, and Kate turned to head back out to the front of the clinic. “Thanks, Kate. I needed the pick-me-up.”

She stopped and looked back, and smiled. “Anytime. And you will find a good guy someday.”

“God, I hope you’re right.”

Sebastian glanced out of the corner of his eye as the other three climbed into his black car. Jesse got shotgun, apparently, and he was fidgeting with something in one of his front pockets, his gray eyes darting about nervously even though they were very alone in the alley they were parked in, and no one was out on the sidewalk. Inwardly, Sebastian sighed; he could not be any more obvious if he tried to be.

“Seb, are you sure about this?” Jesse started as he pulled the door closed behind him. “I mean, seriously, we’re talking about shaking down this joint in the middle of the day—”

“Jess, stop trying to talk like a 1940s mobster. You’re not good at it,” Sebastian interrupted irately. “And yes, I’m sure about it. This guy has been skimming off the top of what he owes us for months. He wants to play it that way, then we’ll play it that way and see how he likes it. No one will be in there this time of day, and no one outside in this neighborhood would be stupid enough to get involved with us.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jesse conceded, glancing in the backseat at the other two guys. Sebastian worked with them a lot more than he worked with Jesse, and they trusted him not to lead them into anything stupid. It came with being one of their boss’s lieutenants. “I just… I never done something like this before.”

“Which is why your uncle assigned you to me. Just keep quiet and get your hand out of your damn pocket. The last thing we need is someone calling on someone having a gun before we even get in there.” Sebastian shifted the car into drive as Jesse yanked his hand out of his pocket sheepishly, nodding. They pulled out of the alley and started down the street. He had been doing this for too long to be concerned about anything going badly, although he rather wished he hadn’t been told to babysit Jesse in the process. The kid was squirrely on the calmest of days—now he’d been given a gun and a major assignment, and that, to Sebastian, spelled disaster in the making. But they only needed ten minutes. In and out in ten minutes. Nothing goes wrong, he has no reason to draw that damn gun. One of his own guys had been staking out this place for weeks; Joe would be going to grab lunch in a couple of minutes and that would be their window.

He turned the corner and headed down the street; a second later, one of his hands was off the wheel and grabbing Jesse’s shoulder, hauling him back so that he wasn’t leaning forward across the dash with all the subtlety of a screaming baby. The kid sulked back into his seat, and Sebastian turned his brown eyes toward the front of the jewelry store they were approaching, not speeding up or slowing down. He smirked slightly when he saw the Out for Lunch, be back in 20 minutes sign on the front door, and slid up against the curb. One of the guys in back climbed out of the car before Sebastian had so much as fully stopped, heading to the front door. When he did stop, the other guy climbed out as well, and Sebastian grabbed onto Jesse’s shoulder.

“Now, what did I just tell you?” he asked roughly, his eyes narrowed as he glared at how he was fidgeting.

“Uhm, ah… keep my mouth shut and don’t mess with my front pockets,” Jesse recited, and Sebastian nodded, letting him go. He fought the temptation to bark a few more orders at the kid as he all but scrambled out of the passenger’s side and rolled his eyes in annoyance. Instead, he unbuckled his own seat belt, grabbed the suitcase at his feet, and climbed out, glancing up and down the street. There were a few people down on one of the corners, not close enough to see what they were doing—teenagers, probably. Probably high out of their minds. He locked the door.

By the time he’d approached the front of the jewelry store, the first of his guys had efficiently undone the lock on the front door, and he headed inside, glancing around. There was, of course, no one else inside, and he smirked a bit more. “Alright, nice and quiet. Mark, you go get into Joe’s office and find the safe. Take any cash you find and anything else of interest in there. Do not break anything. Rob, unlock some of these cases and take what’s inside.”

“What should I do, Seb?” Jesse asked quickly, his voice a squeaky mix of excitement and anxiousness, even as Sebastian shot him an annoyed glare for disobeying his rules.

“You do not do anything. You do not touch anything, or go anywhere. You stay right beside me and don’t get yourself in trouble,” he answered swiftly as Rob popped open the first of the jewelry cases and moved onto the next one.

“But I’m supposed to be helping with this! How am I helping if I just stand here?” he whined.

“You’re helping by not doing anything stupid that will get us caught. Shut up and just watch the front door—from next to me, Jesse!” God, this kid was going to get them all killed, Sebastian thought with a grimace. He set the suitcase on the counter and opened it, then knelt down to peruse the jewelry displayed in the first case. Mostly rings, and he started to put the ones that looked particularly valuable in the suitcase. He didn’t know anything about jewelry—but he knew price tags. Anything over five hundred dollars was definitely going to hurt Joe. But that was the point. He would get everything that was taken back as long as he paid his debts. If not, then some girl down the line would be getting a very lovely emerald ring, he thought in amusement as he eyed the piece that was over eight hundred. A very lovely emerald ring. Ought to buy him a bit of good will with the girls down at the club, too.

Jesse was shifting anxiously back and forth as Sebastian finished with the first case and moved on to the next. Rob was still three or four cases ahead as he expertly, calmly picked the lock of every single one—his specialty, which was why he was so valuable in all of this. No one could pick locks as well as Rob. Sebastian had moved on to the bracelets and watches, and he inspected a high-end platinum one, wondering if Joe would really miss it.

“H-hey, Seb?”

He sighed. “What, Jesse? And seriously, what did I tell you about saying anything?”

“I know, I know, it’s just… I think I heard something coming from upstairs.” He was peering at the stairs that led up to Joe’s loft above the store, and Sebastian lifted a brow.

“I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s an old building.”

“Should I, you know, go check it out?”

“No, you should most definitely not go check it out, Jesse.”

“C’mooon, let me be useful here, Seb!”

Sebastian surged to his feet and grabbed Jesse’s shirt. He was a good head taller than the little weasel, and the sudden reminder of that fact made the kid yelp in alarm as Sebastian glared at him.

“When I tell you what to do or not to do, you listen to me, Jesse. This is not some game that you can screw up like you have everything else in your life. I agreed to bring you along as a favor to your uncle, but I’ll be damned if I let you screw this up because you think you have the balls to prove anything. Now shut up.”

Sebastian let him go and knelt back down to continue going through the jewelry, feeling his annoyance near overflowing. He hated kids like Jesse who thought that this was some dare, like stealing a pack of cigarettes from a convenience store when he was high. He took a deep breath to keep dots from spotting his vision and continued on. Necklaces. Necklaces were good.

As he was grabbing a few gold chains from where they were so nicely displayed, he glanced at Jesse—who had his gun drawn. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sebastian asked in a low, menacing growl.

“Seb, there’s someone here,” he answered.

“Put the gun away.”

Jesse turned back to look down at him, and replied in a hushed tone. “Seb, I know there’s someone here! If someone catches us, don’t you think we should be—”

“Get out of my store, you sons of bitches!”

A loud bang deafened Sebastian where he knelt behind the counter, and Jesse was falling to the floor, eyes wide with terror. Sebastian grabbed his own gun from where it was hidden in his pants and surged to his feet.

“Big mistake,” he growled, and fired the handgun at Joe.

“Alright, let’s see how that heart’s doing, old girl,” Tobin said, smiling down at the lovely golden retriever that sat calmly on the floor of the examination room. As she grabbed her stethoscope off the counter, she looked up at its owner, an older, rounder man, and rubbed the dog’s ears. “How’s Maria been doing, Leo? Any problems since the surgery?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. She’s been doing a lot better. Still gets tired much quicker than she used to, but I’m sure that comes with being a bit on the older side in general. When she does feel like playing or running around, she’s just like her old self,” he answered with a pleased smile, which Tobin returned. Maria wasn’t a particularly old dog, but she had started to have a lot of very distressing heart problems the previous year; Leo had had to face the tough decision of either having her undergo surgery, or putting her down. She was glad that he had chosen the former.

“That’s great. She should have quite a few more years left on her after the surgery, but when she’s tired, just let her rest,” she told him as she crouched down and put the earpieces of her stethoscope in place, and then lifted the chest piece to the dog. Maria let her with an idle sniff, and Tobin smiled softly. The fur that had been shaved away was still in the process of growing back, so it wasn’t hard to find the best spot to listen to the retriever’s heart.

Before she got the chance, though, the door to the examination room quickly opened, and she looked up in surprise as Lisa burst through, looking a little bit distraught. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, Dr. Emerson,” she said immediately as Leo stepped aside, and Tobin pulled off the stethoscope.

“What’s wrong, Lisa?”

“There’s a phone call for you, from the hospital.”

Tobin frowned and stood up. “The hospital? What about?”

“Your dad. He had a heart attack. He’s being emitted to the ER.”

Immediate concern flashed across her face and she was hurrying out to the front desk.

“I’m sorry, Leo, I need to take this,” she told him quickly as she passed, and then grabbed the phone off the desk. “Hello? Yes, this is Tobin Emerson, his daughter. A heart attack, you’re sure? Right, no, I’ll be there as soon as I can be. Thank you for calling.” Tobin had long since perfected the ability to seem completely calm in the face of medical uncertainty, but she felt panic welling in her as she quickly turned around to look for Lisa. “Uhm, okay. I need to go. Tell Kate what’s going on and to call me if anything major turns up. Leo, Dr. Fields will be finishing up your appointment as soon as she’s done with her current patient, I am so sorry that we were interrupted.”

“It’s alright, Dr. Emerson.”

She smiled, but she was trembling. “Thank you—uhm, keys.” She started to head toward her office, but Lisa had already gotten them. “Thank you, Lisa.”

“Of course. Call us later so we know things are okay.” Tobin nodded, and it was all she could do not to bolt to the front door of the clinic. The owners and excited pets in the waiting room looked up as she rushed past, but although the latter barked at her happily—recognizing her, since the clinic had a good reputation—she ignored them and hurried past.

Her dad was in the hospital. That wasn’t good; that was very much not good. And he was still in critical condition from when his heart attack had been reported. At least he had been out somewhere where someone could call, instead of home alone by himself, to be found only after it was already… Dammit, she had told him about watching his cholesterol! She might not be a people doctor, but she still knew how important at least a reasonable diet was. And now… now…

It had just been her and her dad for a while. Her mother had died when Tobin was fifteen—breast cancer. She had never had any siblings; that was why she had always had pets growing up. But she couldn’t lose her dad too, she just couldn’t. She’d be all alone with her cats, and even with the clinic, and Kate and Lisa, that just wasn’t good enough. She couldn’t lose her dad, too, not after losing her mother. She wasn’t ready to be alone, and her dad was all she had left.

Those thoughts were distracting and panic-inducing, but she managed to get into her car and start it, pulling out of the parking lot and into the street. Of course, this time of day, traffic was absolutely terrible, but she went as fast as she could without attracting unwanted attention. That was the last thing she needed right now—being pulled over by a cop because she had been speeding. No, she needed to get to her dad. She needed to get to the hospital and know that he was alright. That didn’t stop her, though, from angrily honking her horn at a jackass in front of her who didn’t move forward on a green light.

Since looking at the clock too much would only make her panic more, Tobin wasn’t really sure how long it was before she made to the hospital, pulling into a parking structure and gritting her teeth in aggravation as she had to circle up several levels to find a space. She all but ran to the nearest elevator, though, and when it took over a minute to get to her level, she bolted instead to a staircase. Hurrying down the steps, she found her way to the main hospital entrance and rushed to the front desk, where she quickly waved down a nurse.

“Hi—hi, uhm, I’m Tobin Emerson. I got a call that my dad, Jack Emerson, had a heart attack,” she explained quickly.

“One moment,” the nurse said in that calm, aggravatingly detached voice that people used when they didn’t know the person you were panicking over. Meanwhile, it felt like your entire world was collapsing. Tobin dug her nails into the palms of her hands, silently willing the woman to hurry up when she knew yelling at her would not help the process. “Okay… it looks like your father has been rushed to surgery. His heart attack was severe enough to require a coronary bypass.”

Tobin paled, feeling like the floor was bottoming out under her. “Uhm, what floor? Is there a doctor or a nurse I can talk to—someone?”