Blood. Death.
“
Help...”
Only…death hadn’t claimed his victim, not just yet.
Lights blazed in the place, so it was easy for him to find Wesley Locke. The man was sprawled on the floor, just feet from the front door. It looked as if he’d been trying to crawl out for help.
Blood was heavy in the white carpeting around him. And when Saxon drew close to him, the guy’s blood-covered fingers reached out to lock around his wrist.
“Wesley!” Elizabeth’s voice was filled with horror.
Saxon put his gun down. The guy wasn’t a threat, not right then. He helped ease Wesley Locke onto his back so he could see the guy’s wounds.
Shit.
Someone had taken a knife to the man. An up-close attack.
That means it was probably personal. Because Wesley Locke wasn’t the kind of guy who would let a stranger sneak in close to him.
Unless that stranger was one very, very good killer.
“I have to call an ambulance!” Elizabeth said. Her footsteps rushed away.
Calling an ambulance wasn’t going to do any good. Saxon could tell that. He was amazed the guy was still alive.
“Look at me,” Saxon barked.
But Wesley’s weak stare was on Elizabeth. She stood near a table, her hands fumbling for the phone. “S-sorry,” he mumbled. “Guess…I…killed…us both…”
The sonofabitch. “You put the hit on her.”
Wesley was still staring at Elizabeth.
Saxon grabbed the guy’s jaw and forced his head to turn. “Look at me. Not her.
Me.”
Wesley’s breath sagged out.
“Why did you put the hit on her? Because she dumped your ass?”
“No…I-I knew who she…was…”
Okay, that made no sense.
He could hear Elizabeth on the phone, asking for the ambulance to hurry. Then her footsteps rushed back to them.
Wesley’s gaze went right back to her. “S-sorry…you have to die.”
“She doesn’t have to die! You can still call off the hit!” He didn’t know which one of the guy’s enemies had come for him—Wesley loved to make waves in Miami, but what Saxon did know…he knew that Elizabeth still had a chance at life.
Wesley’s breath heaved out. His eyes were shutting. “
N-not…my hit…”
What?
Then Wesley’s hand twisted in Saxon’s grip and he held him—far too tightly for a man at death’s door. “
Who are…you?”
“He’s an FBI agent,” Elizabeth rushed to say. “He can help you, he can—”
“
Run!”
Wesley gasped out the word. “Go, Beth…g-go!” And he tried to yank Saxon down on the floor with him. What the hell? Saxon shoved back at the guy but Wesley’s grip had already eased.
Because the man was dead.
“Wesley?” Elizabeth whispered. She inched forward. Her fingers touched the other man’s cheek. “Wesley?”
Saxon tried to find Wesley’s pulse. Nothing. The guy wasn’t breathing. No more heaving gasps. Only silence. Wesley wasn’t going to be telling them anything else. And right then, they had other priorities. Saxon pulled Elizabeth to her feet and tried to push her toward the door.
But she twisted in his arms, fighting to get free. “No, stop it!” she cried. “We can’t just leave him!”
“There isn’t anything we can do!” There was nothing that could be done to help him. His arms wrapped around her stomach, and he just picked her up and carried her out of there. “We have to cover our own asses!”
He took her out of that room even as she still struggled against him. Elizabeth didn’t get it. The cops would be there soon, thanks to that call she’d made. They’d bust in with a fury, and if they found Saxon there, with a loaded gun on him…a gun that he figured Tommy Haines had used probably far too many times in the past…they’d be hauled down to the station. And before Victor could appear to sort out all the twisted shit—
like the fact that, to the Miami PD, I’m a criminal, not an FBI agent—
Elizabeth would be taken from him.
She’d be on her own, and, right then, he couldn’t let that happen.
He’d almost reached the elevator when the doors opened. Only that elevator wasn’t empty.
He put Elizabeth on her feet even as he brought up his weapon. And he found himself staring straight at another gun. A gun held in the grip of—
Victor?
Victor’s blue eyes widened in stunned surprise. “What the hell?”
Saxon lowered his weapon as Victor stepped out of that elevator.
“What are you doing here?” Victor demanded. “With her? You’re supposed to be at the motel, keeping her safe.”
“Yeah, right, a little problem with that.” Saxon gave him a grim smile. “Taggert’s goons found us. Three bozos that I knew—Tommy Haines, Flint Mayo, and Romeo Gustav. They burst in on us and I…” He glanced down at the gun he still held. “Had to get us the hell away from them.”
Victor swore.
“Tell me that Taggert is off the streets now,” Saxon urged. “Come on, man, you tell me—”
“He’s dead,” Victor said, voice tight. “Looks like a hit from someone who knew exactly what the hell they were doing.”
Wait, someone had just taken out the hitman? Saxon shook his head.
“He was carved up when I found him,” Victor continued.
Elizabeth gave a choked gasp. Saxon glanced at her and saw her shaking hands rise to cover her mouth. He knew exactly what she was thinking.
His gaze slanted back to Victor. “Yeah, well, you’re not going to like this…but Wesley Locke is dead, too.”
“You didn’t—” Victor began.
“No, someone beat us here. Someone who carved up the guy with a knife.” Just like Taggert. “Sure seems to me like someone is tying up loose ends.”
A muscle flexed in Victor’s jaw.
“H-he was alive,” Elizabeth whispered.
Both Saxon and Victor looked at her then.
“When we got there…”
“So was Taggert.” Victor’s voice was grim.
A killer who liked for his victims to suffer? Liked for them to linger with no hope of survival?
That’s one sick bastard.
Horror flashed on Elizabeth’s face. “Wesley said it wasn’t him! He said he didn’t put the hit on me!”
With the bodies piling up, Saxon was thinking someone else had to be pulling the strings. But who else would want Elizabeth dead?
“I called an ambulance,” Elizabeth whispered.
Victor immediately pressed the button on the elevator, calling up that ride once more. “Get her out of here,” he ordered Saxon.
Damn straight.
Elizabeth tried to edge away from them. “But—”
There were no buts. He wrapped his fingers around Elizabeth’s wrist.
“I’ll take care of things here,” Victor told him. “You keep her safe.”
That was exactly what he intended to do. The elevator doors opened. He hurried inside, pulling Elizabeth in with him. He punched the button for the garage then looked back at Victor. Right before those elevator doors slid closed again, he heard Victor mutter…
“Just who are you, Elizabeth? Who are you really?”
And Saxon’s gut clenched.
He needed Elizabeth to be exactly what she appeared to be. A woman who was smart, kind, tough…strong. He needed her to be that.
Because if she wasn’t, if she turned out to be something, someone else…he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
Chapter Five
Elizabeth’s heart was about to race out of her chest, and she was about ninety percent sure that she’d be vomiting soon.
Wesley had just died. Right in front of her. She’d never seen anyone die before. Her parents—she’d seen them after the accident. Their bodies had been mangled, their faces barely recognizable. She’s been shaking and crying as she identified them.
But they were already gone. Their suffering had ended.
When they’d burst into that condo and found Wesley, he’d still been struggling to live.
“What’s going on?” Saxon’s voice was flat. Dangerous. Rather scary-as-hell. Her gaze jumped from the floor of that elevator—she’d been staring at it rather blindly—to his face. He was staring at her with an unreadable expression.
She wet her lips and tried to swallow back her fear. “What’s going on?” Elizabeth parroted his words. “People are dying.”
“Taggert tried to kill you, so don’t act as if you’re grieving for him.”
His words felt like a slap. “I didn’t want to kill the man! I wanted him in prison, not hurting anyone else!”
“And Wesley?”
“I told you…he didn’t put the hit on me.” And Wesley had confirmed that, just seconds before he’d died. “He’s not the one who did this to me.”
“Wesley said that he knew who you were.”
“You know who I am, too. Elizabeth Ward.” Nothing special about her. Nothing that should make folks want to kill her.
The elevator doors opened. Saxon glanced around the area before they exited, and she noticed that he kept his gun close as they hurried toward their vehicle. Their
stolen
vehicle. He hadn’t mentioned that part to Victor—
Saxon pushed her back against a column in the parking garage. He caged her with his body, holding her there securely. “I see Gary…others must be coming.”
Who the hell was Gary?
But he wasn’t looking at her. His body—heavy, muscled, but taut with tension—was pressed intimately to hers. Every breath that he took, she felt. His rich, masculine scent wrapped around her. The warmth of his body also slowly penetrated, pushing away some of the horrible chill she’d felt ever since she walked into Wesley’s condo.
“Okay, we’re clear. Let’s
go.”
Then they were running toward the truck. Jumping inside. She expected him to gun the engine and rush out of there as if escaping from the gates of hell. But he didn’t. He just took them out, all nice and slow-like.
“We don’t want to draw any attention,” he said.
Right. No attention. At the scene of a murder. He’d removed all of the broken glass from the truck’s window earlier, so if anyone looked at it now, they’d probably just think the window was down. They were driving all Sunday-afternoon-slow, so it didn’t look as if they were terrified or—
“We’re getting away from the city.”
They were already out of the parking garage. But as soon as they exited that garage, she heard the scream of sirens. She looked up and saw police cruisers and an ambulance heading for her. Elizabeth forgot to breathe right then.
But Saxon just pulled the truck to the side of the road. When the line of rescue vehicles had passed, he maneuvered the vehicle back onto the street and kept driving.
All slow-like still.
She didn’t speak for a few minutes. Mostly because she was trying to get her ragged emotions under control.
Wesley is dead. Dead. He’s—
“Are you all right?” Saxon demanded. “Because you look like you might pass out any moment.”
She felt that way. Her cheeks were stinging, alternating back and forth between feeling ice-cold and red-hot. “I’m fine.”
He grunted. “Keep holding that shit together, sweetheart. You’re doing great.”
Elizabeth thought she might be in hell. “Who—who’s Gary?” Should that name have meant something to her?
“Gary is one of the FBI agents on Victor’s team. Only Gary usually plays back-up, staying out of the way while he works on his computers.” Saxon sighed. “For him to get pulled into an investigation like this, that means we’re in trouble.”
“Not you,” she said, the words too soft. “Me. Whoever is doing this…that person is coming after me.” But because Saxon was with her, he was being put at risk too. “Stop the truck,” she ordered him. “Just take me to the nearest police station.”
He kept driving.
“Saxon? Stop the truck!”
He stopped the truck. Luckily, no one else was on that street. “Do you want to live?”
“Y-yes.”
“Then you keep trusting me, because I’m your best bet, sweetheart.”
She tensed at the endearment, but it hadn’t sounded mocking. It had actually almost been—
“I’ve done things you can’t imagine. Things you don’t want to imagine.” His voice was a rumble in the dark interior of that truck. “But because of who I am…I know how to fight. Damn dirty.”
She’d seen him do it.
“I’ve kept you alive this long, and I don’t intend to let anything happen to you now. Stay with me, stay alive. It’s as simple as that.”
Her heartbeat drummed in her ears. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you risking so much for me?”
Silence.
She didn’t want him risking his life for her. She didn’t want anyone hurt. Because if he wound up on the floor, like Wesley—
what will I do?
Headlights flashed behind them.
“You have to make a choice, Elizabeth.”
Her breath heaved out. “Drive the car.” Because in this crazy world, he was the one person that she trusted completely. “But you’d damn well better not do something ridiculous like die on me later.”
He laughed, and that rough, rusty sound went straight to her heart.
***
“Another one, sir?” Gary asked as he stood just outside of Wesley Locke’s condo.
Victor gave a grim nod. He was glad his agent had arrived so soon. “And it looks like the same MO.” He’d need a medical examiner to tell him for certain, but judging by the injuries he’d seen…
I think the same man killed both Wesley Locke and Kurt Taggert.
How long had Locke fought for survival in that condo? Had he been in there, bleeding out, when Victor had discovered Taggert’s body? Shit, he felt as if the killer were two steps in front of him with every move that he made.
Victor raked a hand through his hair. “We need a team to get over to the Moontree Motel. Three of Taggert’s guys burst in that place and tried to get Elizabeth Ward.”
Gary’s eyes widened. “Is she all right?”
“She’s with Saxon.”
Gary blinked. “Is that…wise?”
Victor really didn’t like the guy’s tone. He’d revealed more info about Saxon to the guy lately—mostly because the mission had been coming to a head. When Saxon worked undercover, Victor liked to keep the details of his cases locked down.
But we were so close to taking out Taggert. I had to tell the rest of the team what was happening.
Because when the FBI went in with guns blazing, he hadn’t wanted Saxon getting caught in the cross-fire.