Dark Waters (2013) (40 page)

Damn it! That was almost the worst thing of all.

She staggered to her feet and launched herself at him, scratching at his face. A ridiculous amount of pride surged through her when she connected and blood bloomed on a scratch across his left eye. He slapped her and her ears rang. She tried to knee him in the balls but he controlled her easily, every attempt to hurt him fueling his amusement and the homicidal gleam in his eye. She hated his smug smile, wanted to rip that smirk off his ugly face. He shoved her into the bedroom she’d used when she’d stayed here last week. Her suitcase was open at the bottom of the bed. She slapped him in the face and he punched her in the mouth, a sledgehammer of force knocking every thought except pain from her body. She landed stunned on the bed. Tasted blood.

“Don’t bother moving, honey. It’ll just be a waste of energy.” Then he closed the door and grabbed her ankle.

Katherine’s mind was shrieking in silent agony. Ed had set up Davis? Davis had been innocent? All this time. All these years. Pain banded her stomach and she wanted to roll into a ball and scream. But Anna was being dragged upstairs and her daughter needed her now more than ever. Dear Lord, how she’d let that child down. Let Davis down. Been nothing but a poor excuse as a wife and parent. She dragged herself across the floor to the body of the man she’d assumed was the boss. The fact they’d shot him so callously suggested she’d been wrong about that too. Her hands throbbed with pain. Her feet were in agony. How could Ed do that? Huge sobs wanted to engulf her but she forced them back. And even though it was only the word of these evil men, she knew it was true because suddenly her whole life made sense.

Was Ed really dead? She couldn’t believe it. It turned all her anger upside down and inside out, although she would never have been able to forgive him.

The guy tapping keys was mumbling to himself. Sitting behind the enormous kitchen island, he couldn’t see her where she lay on the floor. And the man dragging Anna didn’t consider her a threat because she hadn’t been. She’d been useless. But now the only person who mattered to her was in danger, and she didn’t care if she died saving her—she
was
going to save her.

She found what she was looking for even as she heard Anna cry out again. The dead man had a small penknife on his keychain. She grasped the keys in numb fingers and sawed at the plastic holding her feet together. They snapped apart and she held her breath at the noise, but the man just kept typing.
Probably stealing his friends’ money
, she thought bitterly.

She maneuvered the keys upside down between her palms and found an angle to attack the thin white plastic. It took longer, but after about twenty seconds of frantic movement, the cuff snapped. Pain rushed through her extremities along with an awful utter silence. The man on the keyboard had stopped typing. Her heart thumped. She lunged for the dead guy’s gun, still strapped to his leg, but found herself face-to-face with a shiny silver revolver.

“I don’t think so, lady,” he said.

“Why are you doing this to us? You could just walk out the door,” she implored. “Take the money and run.”

He snorted. “And have Rand, Kudrow, and Vic after me for the rest of my life? No thanks.” He cocked the gun and Katherine closed her eyes. So angry with herself for failing Anna. Angry with Ed, even angry with Davis. She tilted her chin and drew in a last breath. And then came a gunshot, followed by the instantaneous crash of the enormous windowpanes, glass shattering everywhere. She opened her eyes as the man who’d threatened to kill her toppled over. The other man, Kudrow, came running into the room as she ducked behind the kitchen island, grabbing the computer
nerd’s revolver with fingers that were suddenly steady. Another shot, and a man’s dying grunt as a bullet smashed into flesh. And then there was a man she didn’t recognize with a rifle at her side, helping her up, half pushing her out the back door. “Go. Run,” he said.

“My daughter!” she cried, dropping the gun.

The stranger’s eyes hit the stairs. “You first. Go!”

She grabbed his arm. “There’s a man called Harvey too. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

“Harvey’s fine. I saw him earlier. Let’s get you out of here.”

He’d heard the sonofabitch drag Anna upstairs. Her cries of pain ricocheted inside his brain and exploded like deadly shrapnel. He’d wanted to step in so bad that forcing himself to simply stand here behind his bedroom door almost stopped his heart. But he also knew the bastard was holding a gun and until he put it down, Brent couldn’t risk a confrontation.

In approximately thirty seconds, that gun would be the last thing on the fucker’s mind.

He had to wait for the advantage, but that advantage put Anna in ever greater danger and the thought of that bastard touching her clawed at him with frenzy.

He heard Anna smack him, and the return punch and her scream of agony.

His nails bit into the wooden frame of the door. Five more seconds.

Brent had known rage before. Childhood rage when his mother walked away and left them with their father. Adolescent rage every time his dad used Finn like a punching bag for his pleasure. Adult rage in prison when someone tried to demean or degrade him because they thought they had the right.

Nothing
compared to the white-hot anger that sang like fire through his veins and obliterated all thought, all feeling, and all memory.

He walked swiftly out of his bedroom and into hers. The bastard was poised over her, one hand clasping both of hers above her head, the other ripping off her panties.

Brent took the slack off the trigger.

“No!” Anna cried.

What?

“Don’t kill him. He’s not worth going back to jail.”

He dropped his jaw. Did she really think he gave a fuck about prison right now?

The guy’s hand started to reach for the pistol on the nightstand. “Move another inch and I’ll blow your head off,” Brent told him. Christ, he wanted to damage him. Wanted to stick a bullet right between his eyes for daring to hurt Anna.

The hand stopped moving. Instead the guy rolled to his feet, but took Anna with him so she was a human shield.
Fucking, fucking fuck
.

Anna’s eyes beseeched him with apology.

Damn, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t just shot the fucker on the bed, but the bullet might have hit Anna too and he couldn’t risk it. There was a massive crash of glass downstairs. Shots fired. Brent smiled grimly. They were at a standoff. They all listened for the running feet of a swathe of cops, but nothing happened. Brent knew it was Finn, but this guy must be wondering what the hell was going on.

Brent kept his eyes on the soulless black gaze and his gun didn’t waver. Anna’s eyes were huge green pools of what should have been terror but looked a hell of a lot softer than that. She smiled at him and his heart threatened to blow. God, he loved her.

“Let her go and I’ll tell you how to get out of here without the cops seeing you,” Brent offered.

The eyes flickered.

“I don’t give a shit about anything except Anna.” Brent edged closer to the door. “There’s a trapdoor in the roof. You get to it through a hatch in the next bedroom.” Brent tilted his head.

The guy kept eyeing his handgun. Brent braced himself just in case he decided to dive for it. He didn’t want to risk shooting Anna, but the guy could not get that firearm or else they’d both be dead.

“Put the gun down or I’ll break her neck.” The bastard changed the angle of his grip. It was no idle threat. The way he moved his hands to exactly the right spot proved he’d done it before. Probably too many times to count.

“He’ll break my neck anyway. Don’t let him escape, Brent. You already stopped him from raping me.” A firestorm of relief swept over him, but they were still in deep shit. Anna was struggling to breathe as she balanced on tiptoes, clutching at the guy’s hips. “Rand here deserves to spend his life in prison.
You’re
the good guy.”

She was bleeding and naked except for a flapping shirt and she was trying to make him feel better? He wanted to snarl but didn’t dare let his attention shift for even a second. In his peripheral vision, he saw a movement in the trees outside. A shadow that didn’t belong. Brent moved so he wasn’t in the line of fire and prayed like he’d never prayed in his entire goddamned life.

“I love you. Please don’t think this was your fault,” she said.

Damn. How did that even happen?
A woman like her loving a man like him?

“Aw, how sweet.” Rand laughed, and shifted his grip to make that final fatal twist.

As Rand’s arms tightened painfully around her neck, Anna knew she was about to die. He’d win, and Brent would be destroyed.
No!
She made a last frantic lunge for the knife sheathed at Rand’s waist. Her heart almost seized when she finally snagged the handle and pulled it free.

She adjusted her grip and drove the blade deep into Rand’s solid thigh. He howled in pain and released her. She leaped for
the bed and Rand’s gun. He’d been seconds from raping her—the knowledge gave her a hunger for vengeance she’d never experienced before.

But he grabbed her foot and she hit the mattress face-first.

“Let her go, asshole.” Brent raised the gun and aimed it at Rand’s chest. But Rand let go of her foot for a moment to fling the nightstand, one-handed, at Brent and it knocked the gun out of his hand.

Grabbing at the sheets, Anna tried to drag herself across the bed. She didn’t care that she was nearly naked. She just wanted to live. Rand grabbed her foot again with bruising force. She turned her head and watched him rip the knife from his thigh, a look of hatred blazing from those black depths as he raised the knife to slash her. Memories of Peter flashed through her mind and she kicked hard.

Brent launched himself, connecting his solid fist to Rand’s nose, which burst with blood, and he let her go. The fact Brent had already risked everything for her made him a hero. The fact he’d been willing to kill for her showed her his love and devotion. She didn’t need the words and doubted she’d ever get them. A barrage of blows knocked Brent back a step, and her heart lodged in her throat as Rand lunged after him with the knife.

“Get out of here,” Brent yelled at her.

No way was she leaving him.
The gun
. She scrambled across the bed and grabbed Rand’s gun, but her hands were shaking so badly and the two men were so close together she couldn’t risk shooting.

Brent clearly needed all his wits to fend off the enraged man coming after him with a bloody knife clutched in his fist. He dodged to the left and kicked at Rand’s knee. Rand grunted in pain but didn’t go down. Brent grabbed a towel off the radiator and wrapped it around his left arm for protection as he tried to keep between Anna and the man who’d tried to destroy her, who’d treated her like she was a piece of trash.

He was protecting her again. Protecting her from what it felt like to take a life.

“You think you’re some sort of badass because you killed your old man?” Rand swiped blood off his chin with the back of his hand and sneered at Brent.

“I protect what I love.”

The admission stunned Anna and she swayed. Finally, he’d recognized the instinct that was programmed into his DNA. She wouldn’t change him for anything.