Midnight Shadows (4 page)

“I swear I don’t know anything else,” Armando sobbed. “She said she was from up north, that her name was Lauren Kendall. Her family is all gone. I swear that’s all I know.”

Marsh’s face appeared above him. “I believe you.”

Though agony pounded in his knees and ankles, Armando closed his eyes in relief. Finally, at last, it was over. Now—

Something cold and hard pressed against his right temple. Armando opened his eyes. Ryan Walker had a Glock against Armando’s head.
 

“You traitorous bastard!” A last gasping scream of “Noooooo—”
 

And then there was nothing.

Chapter Two

She was in big trouble.
 

Sabrina stared at the pool table where the bloody, lifeless body of one of the most notorious drug lords in the country lay. Dying rarely came easy, but for Armando Cruz it had come with an unequaled brutality. The man had been a disgusting, vile specimen of humanity. She could still feel his filthy hands on her, smell his foul breath. The revolting image of his penis wasn’t something she could unsee.
 

Despite her revulsion and disgust of the man, watching his torture and murder had been a singularly unpleasant experience. The sheer barbarism of the act was sickening, but she hadn’t expected it to be followed up with a bullet to his head. Who were these people? What had Cruz done to them to deserve such a brutal end?

Silly. Here she was worrying about a lowlife criminal dying when very soon she might be joining him. Every instinct she possessed was telling her to run, but Sabrina stood frozen in place. The gun now digging into her spine was troublesome, the man holding the gun even more so. She had trusted him.

Undercover cop Ryan Walker had been her entry into Cruz’s domain. The drug lord’s former mistress, Lauren Kendall, had come to Wildefire Security, the agency she and her sisters owned, for protection. Which they had provided. But when they’d taken the case, they had known that providing protection wouldn’t be enough. Cruz would always be a threat to Lauren until he was stopped.
 

Sabrina had gone undercover to get information on Cruz. Her intent had been to help put him behind bars and remove the threat against Lauren. What had just happened here had not been anywhere on her radar.

One thing for certain—Cruz was no longer a threat to Lauren. Problem was, how was Sabrina going to get out of this? Ryan Walker was a dirty cop. A killer. No way in hell did he plan to let her live.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Walker said.

Just before going into their meeting with Cruz, Walker had told her to be prepared for anything. Having him double-cross her hadn’t been on her list of things to be prepared for.
 

“Why did you kill him?”

Walker came to stand in front of her, his gun only inches from her face. The cold amusement in the man’s eyes wasn’t encouraging. “It was time for him to go. Cruz didn’t know it but he was a minnow in an ocean of sharks. His biggest mistake was believing he was more than that.”

“What are your plans for her?”

The guy asking the question sat on the sofa. He’d been the one to question Cruz, to give orders for each blow of the hammer into the man’s bones. But now he looked so relaxed he was practically reclining. It was apparent that this was nothing new for him. The bored expression on his face said he’d been there, done that, and didn’t really care if he had to do it again.

“I’m going to take her some place, screw her brains out, and then dispose of her.”

Sabrina’s shiver of revulsion brought a cruel smile to Walker’s mouth. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you go with a smile on your face.”

A lot of things—sarcastic and insulting—came to her mind to say. She might be impetuous and rash, but she wasn’t stupid. Pissing off a man holding a gun on her wasn’t a good idea.

“Boss says hold up,” the guy on the couch said. “He wants to talk to her.”

The mysterious boss man everyone kept referring to who had apparently ordered Cruz’s death. As of yet, no one had been generous enough to offer his name. Cruz had trusted the man. Had said he’d brought Cruz into the business.

 
Whoever this boss man was, he had a remarkable influence. The gun that had been pointed at her lowered in an instant.

Sabrina eased away from Walker, inch by inch, and eyed the door—her only way out. She was going to have to make a run for it and needed a clear path.

“What does he want with her?” Walker asked.

“Does it matter?”

“She could identify me. I could lose my job at the department.”

“You seem to think you’re important.” The man on the sofa grinned up at him. “You got Cruz’s ego issues?”

“I’ve given dozens of tips, provided tons of information over the years. Hell, I just killed Cruz for him. I’m an invaluable member of his organization.”

“You’re a snitch and a weasel. And a bad cop.”

“I’m an asset.” Walker’s voice shook, no longer arrogant.

The man on the sofa lifted his gun and without the slightest flinch, fired, shooting Walker twice in the chest.

Sabrina jumped out of the way of the falling dead man as her brain scrambled to keep up with everything that was happening. In less than an hour, not just the rules but the whole damn game had changed. Without a doubt, she had stumbled into something she’d never had to deal with before.
 

What now?

As if shooting a cop was just another day on the job, the man on the sofa continued his relaxed pose as he turned his attention to Sabrina. “So the question is, what should happen to you?”

With no weapon and under the guise of being not so bright arm candy, Sabrina had little choice but to maintain her cover of a beautiful ditz. “Seriously, mister. I just came along cause Ryan promised to take me to Club 500 after we left here.”

“You don’t seem too upset to see your lover dead.”

“We weren’t lovers. He was just a guy I dated a few times.”

“You have very bad taste in men, my dear.”

With one notable exception, that was one statement Sabrina Wilde could wholeheartedly agree with.
 

“I don’t know anything about what’s going on here. I don’t
want
to know.”

“Perhaps not, but you just witnessed two murders. That’s not something one easily forgets.”

“I have a real bad memory.”

He gave her a lazy grin. “I like you.”

She had no idea if that was a good thing or not.

“You’re a tad too perfect looking for me, though. Makes a man want to mess you up.”

No, that didn’t sound good at all.

Unfolding his long body from the sofa, he stood and gave a lackadaisical one- shouldered shrug. “Unfortunately I don’t always get what I want.”

Sabrina tensed, readying herself to take flight. She had little chance of surviving, but she refused to stand here like a statue and let him just shoot her at point blank range.

Even if she could avoid being shot, the three other men in the room wouldn’t let her get away. Still, she would not go down without a fight.
 

Instead of pointing the gun at her, the man used it to gesture as he gave out instructions to the other men. “Julio and Dennis, take care of Cruz’s body. Put him in the water. Leave Walker here, though. We’ll let the cops wonder if Cruz did all this.”

He winked at Sabrina. “Gotta keep’em guessing.”

He glanced at another man. “Garrett, you’re with me. We’re going to take a ride with Ms.” He frowned. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Lilah Green.” She didn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice. The fear was real.
 

“Let’s take Ms. Green with us.”

Sabrina tried to tell herself this was much better. She could handle two men better than she could handle four. Never having been an optimist even on her best day, she ignored the snarky, “Yeah right” comeback that whispered in her mind.

The men, apparently Julio and Dennis, set to work on Cruz’s bloody corpse. Taking a tarp from behind the bar, they lifted the body from the pool table and started rolling him. Either Cruz killed so many people that he kept plastic tarps around to clean up the mess or they’d been prepared for this.
 

 
The other man, Garrett, jerked Sabrina’s arms behind her back and zip-tied her wrists.

She winced at the tightness and tried one more pitiful look at the man issuing orders. “Look, mister, really. I won’t tell anyone.” She blinked rapidly, working up some tears. “I promise.”

“Look at it this way, sugar. If you survive, you’ll have an adventurous story to tell your grandkids. Besides, the boss might like you so much, he might decide to keep you for himself.”

Oh joy.

Ian sat in a parked car half a block from Armando Cruz’s club. Sabrina was in there. He had no idea what she’d gotten herself into or what was going on behind those walls. He only knew that no way in hell was he going to leave her on her own.

She’d be pissed that he had followed her to Miami. Didn’t matter. He’d been watching her back too long to stop now. They were no longer PI partners, but so what? Looking out for her had nothing to do with business and everything to do with his sanity.
 

He glanced at his passenger, his companion of two years—a gift from Sabrina. “What about it, Jack? Should we just sit here like two slobbering idiots panting after the same girl or should we go in and see what we can see?”

Tongue lolling to the side, drool pooled on the leather car seat as sad, droopy eyes gazed at Ian lovingly, trusting him to know what to do.
 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Ian scratched the hound behind one of his long floppy ears and then slumped back into his seat with a disgusted snort. Was he an idiot for just sitting here waiting for something to happen? He knew Sabrina Wilde. Ninety-nine percent of the time, she could get out of any kind of trouble. He’d seen her dodge bullets, knives, and once she’d outrun a pack of wild dogs. No, she wasn’t superwoman, but she was intelligent, crafty, incredibly gifted, and fearless. It was that one percent that drove him crazy…kept him awake at night. That one percent would get her killed someday. Ian planned to make sure that was at least a hundred years from now.

She would be furious if she knew he’d added a little safeguard to her wardrobe. It wasn’t something he had done a lot. When they’d first started working together, she’d been reckless but had tempered that with commonsense and sound reasoning. The last few months, commonsense had all but disappeared. Something had ignited the wildness in her again.
 

Of course what that something was, remained a mystery to everyone but Sabrina herself. Hell, sometimes he wondered if she even knew why she took the chances she did.

They had known each other for four years, had started working together within months of meeting. Ian figured he knew her as well as anyone. Meaning sometimes he didn’t know her at all.

When she had told him she was going back to her hometown of Midnight, Alabama, to open up a security agency with her sisters Savannah and Samantha, he hadn’t liked it but had understood. Family came first. And being one of identical triplets, the sisters had an amazing closeness. Only made sense for her to want to work with them.
 

So he had put on a stoic face and wished her well. Since he was only a few hours from Midnight, he told himself he’d see her almost as often, he’d just have to drive a little farther.

He had been in love with her almost from that first meeting. Spunky, sarcastic, loyal, brave, beautiful, and absolutely the most maddening woman he’d ever had the good fortune to meet.

When she had told him about Wildefire Security’s first case, he had been intrigued but also a little concerned. Messing around with the likes of Armando Cruz wasn’t a good career move. Especially since the case involved protecting a woman who happened to be Cruz’s ex-mistress.

Still, he had been certain that Sabrina would discuss plans with her sisters before she did anything too dangerous. He’d been wrong. When she had called and told him she had a way inside Cruz’s domain, he’d been furious and worried as hell.

He had expressed his concerns in a manner he had deemed appropriate at the time. Meaning he’d demanded she back away from the job before she got herself killed. That hadn’t gone over well. Sabrina had never responded well to ultimatums.

And then he’d done something even dumber. He’d extended an invitation to visit his family in Sarasota again. The moment the words were out of his mouth, he’d wanted to take them back. That first and only visit had been a disaster. He had known another one would be out of the question but had promised his mother. Ian figured he was an asshole about a lot of things, but when it came to his mom, he didn’t break promises. Sabrina’s response had been predictable. She’d run like the proverbial scalded cat.

Sabrina had a commitment phobia. He’d learned that early. It had taken a year and a whole lot of late night surveillance jobs to get her to tell him why. In the dark of night, waiting for a criminal to show his face or an unfaithful spouse to leave a lover’s bed, time could drag. In those hours, you found yourself sharing a helluva lot more than you ever planned.