She stashed a go bag with clothes and money on the roof by the fire escape, tucked out of sight. Two more guns and that was it. She was more than ready for war. She stood on the roof for a few minutes just looking out over her neighborhood, remembering the sound of laughter. There had always been the murmur of voices and the sound of laughter. Now there was just . . . silence.
Blaze sighed and made her way back down the stairs to the bar. It was a beautiful bar, all curved mahogany. Gleaming dark wood. The long mirrors and bottles and glasses stacked neatly. She was a good bartender. Fast. Efficient. Flashy. She could flip the bottles and do tricks with the best of them, and some nights her customers called for that. Her father would stand back, shaking his head and laughing, but his eyes were always alive with pride in her.
She'd nudge him out of the way with her hip, tell him, "Let me show you how it's done, old man," and perform a few outrageous tricks, getting the customers fired up. When she did that, they always had a spectacular night. It brought in crowds outside of their neighborhood, so the bar was nearly always full. They didn't lack for money. Still, the mobsters who had murdered her father weren't after the money. They wanted her home. The property. And they were never going to get it, not even after she was dead.
She caught up the phone and dialed the number on the business card, and then idly tapped the edge of the card on the surface of the bar while she waited as the phone rang. Two rings only.
"Talk to me." The voice was soft. Male. Scary beautiful. Just plain scary. Definitely not the same man who had come by the bar and left his card. This man had an accent she couldn't place. He sounded dangerous, like a man who didn't have to raise his voice to command a room. Like a man you never--ever--wanted to cross.
"I'm Blaze McGuire. Someone with this number came by a couple of weeks ago. The Hallahan brothers killed my father and they're coming for me. An envelope containing the deeds to the properties will be sent to you on my death. Tariq Asenguard and Maksim Volkov will inherit. You can deal with what's left of the Hallahans after tonight."
There was a small silence, and then that voice whispered into her ear. Low. Commanding. "Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. There. Now."
She froze, her fingers curling around the phone. She felt every single word resonate right through her body. He was good with that voice. Even through the phone she wanted to obey him, and she wasn't all that good at obeying anyone--not even Sean sometimes.
"Can't do that," she said softly. "I'm going to die tonight and they're going to pay. If they don't get inside, and I'm gone, be careful. The entire bar is rigged to blow. One wrong step and you're dead. In the envelope you'll receive instructions for disarming everything. Where you can safely step and what to avoid. How to get through the maze."
"Blaze. Get. Out."
He said her name as if he knew her. Intimately. As if he had the right to be worried about her. Protect her. As if she belonged to him. Blaze was a name that, to her, didn't sound feminine. He made it that way, his accent caressing the name, making it something altogether different.
Her tongue touched her upper lip. Her breath caught in her lungs. She had to fight the pull of his voice.
"You don't understand," she said. "And you don't need to. I have to do this. They aren't going to get away with this."
"No, sweetheart, they are not, but this is not the way to do it. Get out of there and wait for us. We are on the way."
The way his voice moved over her body, stroking like a caress, rasping like a tongue, yet still commanded, sent a chill down her spine. More than anything she wanted to obey. Not because she was afraid of dying, but because the note of command in his voice was affecting her in ways she didn't understand.
"Not going to happen," she whispered, her heart pounding. She had the feeling that he was on the move and that he was moving fast. "They killed my father."
"I know, draga mea." His voice was even softer. More persuasive. Sliding into her mind so she felt warmth where there was darkness and cold. Where there was rage. Where she had to keep a hold of that rage and not allow whatever was in his voice to warm that cold. "We will handle this for you, and these men will pay. Get to safety. We are on our way."
She pressed her hand hard to her heart. It was beating far too fast. Pounding. Her mouth had gone dry. Even her head hurt, as if by defying him, her physical body protested. It didn't make sense to her. She'd always been her own person, able to stand up to anyone. She didn't want to talk to him anymore, but she couldn't pry her fingers loose from the phone. She just stood there, one hip to the bar because it was holding her up. Her body trembled when she hadn't been trembling faced with certain death.
"I-I . . ." She found herself stammering. All she had to do was put the phone down, but she couldn't. Her fingers were locked around it.
"You do not want your beautiful bar blown all to hell," his voice continued to whisper in her ear. "Our way is so much better. You will continue to have your property. Your home. The neighborhood will be rid of a couple more of the monsters."
So soft. So intimate. As if they were in bed together. Tangled up. Arms and legs. She could almost feel him moving in her. That intimate. And she couldn't drop the phone. She should. But she couldn't. She was mesmerized by his voice. She stared out the large window that took up nearly one entire wall. On the other side of the window were thick iron bars. She'd cried when they'd had to install them. She'd lived there most of her life in complete freedom, and then someone somewhere made the decision to ruin their neighborhood.
"People are dying."
"I know, draga mea. We will stop them, but giving them your life is giving them another victory."
"They killed my father." The words broke from her. She hadn't cried. She'd refused to cry, not even when she'd told Emeline. Not until after. Not until the men who killed him were dead. "They broke him into pieces and then they killed him."
"I know, inimamea," he whispered.
She had no idea what language he spoke, only that he spoke it with the most intimate accent possible. She didn't dare look away from the window or she would have closed her eyes. To hold his voice to her. Wishing she had known him before she was a stone inside. Before her smoldering fire had grown into a wildfire burning out of control, for vengeance.
"Let us handle this. It is what we do."
"After." She tilted her chin. Straightened her shoulders. "You handle them after." She forced her fingers to loosen their death grip on the phone. His voice was so mesmerizing, so hypnotic, she could almost believe he was a dark sorcerer bent on controlling her through his voice alone. But she wasn't given to flights of fantasy. She had been raised to deal with any issue, and the murder of her father was personal. "After," she whispered again. "You deal with them after."
"Wait. Blaze. Wait for me."
His voice. That voice. It seemed to be inside her. Inside her head. Stroking her from the inside out. She had always relied on herself or her father. Sean had taught her that. Given her that confidence. But his voice and the way it seemed to be inside her head made her feel as if without him, she wasn't Blaze anymore. She was adrift.
"At least do that for me. Go up into the apartment. I'm about four minutes out. We can deal with them together. You go upstairs. I will come to you from the roof after we get rid of them, and we will make a plan. Together."
Blaze closed her eyes and forced her numb fingers to work. She hung up. The moment she did, she felt sick. More, her head hurt. Not a little bit, but pounding, as if by hanging up, something inside her got left behind and set off little jackhammers tripping in her skull. She pressed a hand to her knotted belly and picked up one of the guns lying on the bar. Her hand shook and that shocked her.
She had absolute resolve when it came to bringing justice to her father's murderers. Of course she was afraid. No one wanted to die. But she was confident. And utterly committed to her cause. Still, her hand shook when it never had before. That was how much his voice had shaken her.
A slow heat
curled in the pit of her stomach, and a small shiver went down her spine. She would have liked to have met the owner of that voice. Then again, maybe not. She talked with men all the time, the bar separating them. She could laugh and flirt and know there was that boundary no one crossed. His voice had crossed it.
She slammed the magazine into her weapon and turned her attention toward the bar-covered window. She saw the flash of headlights as the car raced down the street toward her property, and she knew instantly it was them--the Hallahans. They had come. Her stomach settled. Adrenaline began to pump. She took a few deep breaths as the big SUV slammed into the sidewalk and screeched to a halt. All four doors popped open and the men spilled out.
She could see them all clearly, even in the waning light, because she'd changed the lightbulbs outside the bar to illuminate the sidewalk. She'd used a high-wattage bulb, uncaring of what the electricity would cost. She wasn't going to be around to pay it. She studied them, these men--no, monsters--who had beat her father to death. They'd broken his bones on purpose to torture him. They could have called her, but they hadn't. They'd enjoyed hurting him.
She didn't take her eyes from the window, watching them come up the sidewalk, moving with confidence, their beefy frames rolling side to side as they moved together to approach the bar.
Everything went silent. Time tunneled, as it often did when a fight was close. Her attention focused on the door. She became aware of her heart beating. Each separate beat. Each pulse. The ebb and flow of her blood as it rushed through her veins. Everything around her went still. Utterly still. She didn't hear insects. She didn't hear traffic. There were no solid footsteps as the men with their steel-toed boots came closer. There was only Blaze and the gun in her hand.
Her hand was rock steady now, and she took a slow breath, watching the window, keeping an eye on the door handle of the bar. If they touched that, if they opened the door, it would set off the charge.
Without warning, the Hallahans backed up, moving toward their car, all four of them. Blaze took a step forward, her body hitting the bar. She shook her head. They couldn't leave. She moved quickly around the bar and stopped dead, looking at the web of wiring. The entire room was a trap. She would have to spend an hour dismantling everything. What had tipped them off? They hadn't even gotten close to the entrance. Damn. Damn. Damn.
TWO
CURSING, BLAZE RUSHED up the stairs, automatic cradled in her arms. She raced through the apartment for the fire escape. Slinging the weapon across her back, she climbed fast and made it to the roof before the SUV with the Hallahans in it was all the way down the street. It was moving fast, but still, as she leaned out over the thick cement wall that formed the railing, she counted all four of them inside the vehicle.
She closed her eyes briefly. She was going to have to take the fight to them, on their turf. Never a good idea. In the meantime, she couldn't leave her bar rigged with explosives. If somehow, someone innocently found an entry point, it could be very bad. She sagged against the low wall and slowly pulled the gun from around her neck.
All that preparation and now she would have to start all over. She knew where the Hallahans holed up. They owned a strip joint just a few blocks over. Well, they didn't own it. Their boss owned it. The faceless man who called himself Reginald Coonan. There were no pictures of Coonan. None at all. He owned a significant amount of property in her neighborhood as well as a few buildings between her neighborhood and the one where the strip club was located.
There were no properties in residential areas listed as belonging to either the Hallahans or Reginald Coonan, which meant she was going to have to work a lot harder to get to them. She'd start with the club Coonan owned, but she had no idea where they actually lived. She bit out a few more curses and kept staring down the empty street. Nothing moved. "Damn it," she said aloud as she turned back toward the fire escape to climb back down to her apartment entrance. "Just damn it."
Going to the mobsters' lair would be really dangerous and would call for completely different tactics. She didn't want anyone innocent to get hurt, especially the dancers and employees at the club. She couldn't imagine that the Hallahans treated the strippers with respect and would mind if the dancers were caught in a cross fire.
She removed the magazine from her weapon and tossed it on the kitchen table. She had the blueprints for the club. It hadn't even been that difficult to get them. There was an apartment over it, like she had over the bar, but they didn't stay there. They only used it to take their women. So where did the Hallahans actually reside? She would have to do a little surveillance and follow them, find a way to take the war to them without endangering innocents.
With resignation, Blaze started down the stairs to the bar. She had a lot of work to do to remove all the traps and explosives she had rigged. She gathered up the weapons she had placed on the curved stairway and made her way to the bar. She'd taken two steps in when arms came around her, large male hands removing the guns.
Blaze whirled around, hands up, ready to defend herself, heart beating wildly, shocked that anyone could have penetrated the bar without blowing themselves up. Shocked that she hadn't heard a sound, or sensed a presence. The man facing her was already a distance away, and she hadn't seen or heard him move. He was utterly still, his arms relaxed at his sides, the guns loosely in his hands.
She drew in a breath, knowing, without him speaking, exactly who he was. This man had to be Tariq Asenguard's silent partner. She'd never seen a more handsome man, not in the traditional sense of handsome. He was too rough for that. But he was undoubtedly sexy and all masculine. His shoulders were set wide. His hair was as black as night and long. He had it pulled back and secured behind his head. That wasn't why she took a step back. Away from him. She wasn't a coward. She really wasn't. But this man wasn't just dangerous. He was terrifying. His eyes were absolutely the blackest--and the coldest--eyes she'd ever seen in her life. There was no expression on his face at all. He was remote. Removed. Ice-cold.
His gaze moved over her and left behind a chill. He didn't miss anything. He took his time, still, not moving a muscle, yet conveying a readiness to deal with anything. All with no expression.
She knew he wasn't in the least bit like the Hallahans. They enjoyed violence. This man didn't enjoy anything at all. He was too removed from it. Too removed from humanity. He didn't seem capable of emotions. He would explode into violence, but he would do it all without even the slightest hint of feeling.
Time slowed down. Tunneled. Blaze couldn't breathe for a moment, taking another step back--toward the bar. She let her gaze shift, just for a moment, to the room. The grid was gone. Something that would take her an hour or so to unravel, this man had done in minutes. How he had gotten in, she had no idea.
She had made a terrible mistake choosing Maksim Volkov and Tariq Asenguard to be allies. She'd told them about the envelope giving them the property when she died. The Hallahans had turned and gone away without so much as pulling a gun. Were the two factions of mobsters really allies, working the neighborhood?
She knew his partner was close, right there in the room. She could feel him, but he was somewhere behind her. She hoped not close. The gun was taped under the edge of the bar. She just had to get to it. They couldn't have cleared out every weapon, not when they had to dismantle the explosives she'd rigged throughout the room.
"Do not try it," he said softly just as she moved.
She ignored the compulsion to allow his words to rule her, already, thankfully in motion, diving over the bar in an aikido roll, tearing the gun from the tape beneath the edge of the bar. She felt the solid slap of the stock in her palm; her fingers closed around it, and then her wrist was caught in a fist so tight she couldn't release the weapon, but she couldn't use it, either. He pinned her arm across his chest, the barrel of the gun directed away from him.
She smelled him. All man. He smelled good. Too good. He felt like a rock, hard and unyielding, as if instead of skin he wore armor. Instinctiv
ely she held her breath, afraid to take anything of him into her body.
"I do not want to hurt you, Blaze," he said, his mouth against her ear. "You clearly know what you are doing and I cannot take any chances. Release the weapon to me."
There it was again--that need to obey him. She barely obeyed her own father. Why she felt such a need to do what this man told her--simply from the low, very soft sound of his voice, she didn't know, but she couldn't let him stop her. If she stopped, even for a moment, she'd have to face the sight of her father's body, bloody and broken, thrown out of a moving car to roll onto the sidewalk and come to rest there beside the door of the bar, right at her feet.
Reflexively her fingers tightened on the stock, and she tried to shift her body weight in order to use his weight against him. There was no getting him off-center. He didn't shift, not even when she did. His fingers didn't move. Didn't waver. He didn't seem to even take a breath. She wasn't altogether certain he was human. He was too still. Too confident. Too easily anticipating her every move, and she was very well trained.
"Blaze."
A million butterflies took wing in her stomach. That had never happened to her before. Never. She didn't have butterflies. She didn't react physically to men. She especially didn't react when the man was an enemy and her father's body had barely been put in the ground. Still, she nodded slowly because she had no other choice. One arm, feeling like an iron bar, was around her belly, and he held her there, immobile.
She nodded again. Swallowing. Trying to get her brain to think past feeling like a captive, an immobile one, and come up with a plan of action. Trying not to feel what his body felt like against hers. Not to be aware of herself as a woman--and him as a man.
"Let go of me," she hissed. She kept her voice low as well, but it didn't come out commanding the way his did. She sounded shaky. She felt shaky.
"Release the weapon to me and I will step back. I am not going to harm you. Neither is Tariq. We came to help you. You asked us, remember?"
She relaxed her fingers, allowing him to take the gun from her hand. The iron bar disappeared from around her belly and he was gone, moving so silently she didn't hear him, but she knew he was no longer pressed up against her. He'd taken all the warmth with him.