She couldn’t, damn it!
Then grab the throat, kick the groin, bend the fingers, and stomp the toes.
Except her hands were immobilized, and her ankles taped.
He pulled her out of the bathroom like that, practically dragging her, yanking her arms backward so hard she thought her shoulders would pop out of their sockets. He threw her on the bed and turned away long enough to reach for the roll of duct tape.
It was all she needed. She flung herself sideways, thrusting her legs over the side of the bed. He lunged at her, and she instantly stabbed her extended finger at his eye. He jerked away just in time to avoid it, but the move gave her access to his ear, which she grabbed and twisted like it was a water faucet.
“Fuck!” he screamed, throwing his whole weight at her, but as he came down, she let go of his ear, turned her hand, and plowed the pad of her thumb right at the tender spot between his lips and nose.
He yowled and jerked backward, giving her enough time to get to her feet and hop toward the door. Almost immediately, he grabbed her from behind and pulled her to the ground, but she wiggled away and kept crawling, sliding, fighting her way toward the bedroom door.
He lunged after her, falling onto her back and smashing her face into the hardwood floor. “I am going to kill you now!” he growled at her. “You bitch! You thought you could beat me. Nobody beats me. Nobody.” He twisted her head to the side, shooting excruciating pain down her back, so hard she was sure he was going to break her neck.
He lifted her head and slammed it against the floor again, making her brain explode with pain. Suddenly realizing her right hand was free, she reached around to fight him off, grabbing his thigh, then higher, finding his balls and squeezing with every ounce of strength she had.
He yelped and jumped up to escape the pain, giving her a chance to shoot forward, reach up to the door—
“Kate!”
Alec! She heard his voice and heard banging on the front door, hammering like his foot would surely break it down. Hurry, Alec!
But Steven leaped on her, rolling her away from the bedroom door. She managed to flip around and take one more stab at his eye, her fingers straight and stiff and unyielding, jabbing right into the soft side of his eye.
“Fuck! Damn it!” He covered his eye and moaned just as she heard the front door explode open with a crack.
“Kate!”
She pushed herself to her knees, determined—so damn determined—to escape. Twisting the doorknob, she pulled it open and threw herself into the hallway just as Alec came running toward her.
He fell to his knees next to her, but Kate shook her head and pointed behind her, where Steven lay on the floor, writhing in pain.
Behind Alec, at least four more men came barreling into the villa, led by Gabe Rossi. “Nice work, Benjamin.”
“I didn’t do a thing.” Holding her with one arm, Alec gingerly worked the duct tape on her mouth, concern darkening his expression as he searched her face. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His voice cracked as the tape pulled and pinched and finally, finally came off.
“Alec!” She reached up and seized him in an embrace, adrenaline and relief and gratitude surging through her. “He wanted to kill me,” she rasped, her voice trembling like her whole body was. She’d come so close to dying. So close. “He wanted to…”
“Shhh.” He pressed her into his chest, his clutch as desperate as hers.
“I was so scared.”
He squeezed harder. “I’m so sorry I left you.”
“No, no. I shouldn’t have…” She let out a sob, all hope for control gone now. “I thought I was going to die.”
“No, you’re too strong for that.” He stroked her hair.
“Hey, don’t touch me!” Steven screamed from the bedroom. “That bitch poked my fucking eye! She ripped my balls off!”
Alec couldn’t help smiling. “See what I mean? Nice work, Smarty-Pants.”
“Had a great teacher.” Great teacher. Great man. Great lover. Great…everything.
Holding him with desperate, vibrating arms, she closed her eyes and ignored the chaos and Steven’s yelling and Gabe’s swearing. It all disappeared as she clung to Alec like he was her lifeline and her happiness and her whole world.
“Alec, you have to go.” Gabe’s voice cut through everything else. “You can’t stay here.”
Alec released her gently, looking up at the man looming over them. “I can’t leave her.”
“This place is going to be crawling with cops in a matter of minutes. I have to get you out of here, now.” He gave Kate a sympathetic look. “You’re safe now.”
“She is not,” Alec insisted. “She’s coming with me.”
“No can do.” Gabe gestured for Alec to move it. “She has to talk to law enforcement and tell them she’s been at this resort hiding from her crazy ex, under protection. You we cannot explain.”
“I’m her bodyguard,” he ground out.
“She just got a new one.” Gabe waved another man over. “Miles, get over here and meet your new principal.”
Alec didn’t budge. “It’s not that simple, Gabe.”
“Fine.” Gabe stepped back and crossed his arms, fury darkening his handsome features. “You stay with her, talk to the cops, get your name plastered all over this, and then you can watch when Vlitnik hunts her down and makes her his personal punching bag. Is that what you want?”
A whole new kind of fear rolled over Kate.
And Alec looked like he felt the same thing. Silent, he inched away from Kate, gently letting go of her.
She reached up to him. “Alec—”
“He’s right, Kate. This is why I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“No shit,” Gabe added, along with another push. “Let’s move it. The Carlsons just got a divorce.”
One of the security professionals came up behind Kate. “I’ve got her, Gabe. You two can go.”
Outside, a siren blared. With one more look of sheer agony, Alec took off with Gabe, disappearing into the sunshine pouring over the back patio.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Gabe still had a shot at keeping Alec safe and under the radar, but he’d have to move him to a new location, possibly a new country, very soon. Until he could do that, he’d sent Alec down to a safe house on the south part of the island with Nino, put Robyn to work as a housekeeper under Poppy’s care, and started trying to figure out exactly how Steven Jessup had found Kate.
After being examined by a doctor and pronounced concussion free, Kate interviewed with law enforcement, and her reason for staying at the resort under a false name made perfect sense. With her loony-tune ex caught dead to rights, the sheriff wouldn’t have to question the staff. But Gabe still needed to find out how the security breach had occurred up in Boston.
He suspected it stemmed from the judge, but he had to be sure it wasn’t through his cousin’s security firm. That link to his organization down here had to be airtight or this operation would fall apart.
He personally escorted Kate to her father’s room.
“Judge Kingston,” Gabe said after they arrived and the older man had had a chance to confirm his daughter was in one piece. “You were to tell no one where Kate was going or why.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “No one, not even my admin knew.”
“She had to, Dad,” Kate said. “Steven said he worked your new assistant.”
“And likely got something out of her, but…the only place I had information about where you were was in my chambers.”
“And he got in there?” Gabe asked. “How?”
The older man sighed and looked sheepishly at Kate. “I…forgave him.”
“What?” She choked the word. “Dad, I know you have to acknowledge him in the courtroom or if you see him in the courthouse, but”—she fell into a chair and stared at him—“you forgave him?”
“Not completely.” His eyes, much the same shade of jade as his daughter’s, filled. ??
?He made me believe he still cared about you, and I thought maybe it would be better for you.”
“Dad. Seriously?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Katie.”
“You told him where I was?”
“No, no. But, thinking back, there was one time we were talking in my chambers and I had to leave for a moment. He must have rifled my files.”
Gabe stood, not needing to be here for the rest of this father-daughter chat. Kate was going to ream her old man a new one, and it sounded like he deserved it. But Daddy was the client, so at least the error was on him and not Gabe. “I have my answers now. I’m out.”
Kate stood immediately. “Not without me. I need to see Alec.”
“Not happening.”
Her jaw dropped, and color slipped from her cheeks. “What do you mean?” Her eyes widened in panic. “Please tell me he’s not already gone. Please tell me you haven’t sent him somewhere with a new name.” Her voice cracked, and she put her hand on her chest. “Please.”
“Listen, it would be better if you—”
“Don’t tell me what would be better!” She practically launched herself at him, her eyes wild. “If one more goddamn man tries to tell me what he wants from me, what I should do, or what would be better for me, I will kill someone. And I know how.”
The judge stood. “Mr. Rossi, I insist you help my daughter. Don’t keep her from this man. She’s been pushed around by too many people.”
Gabe huffed a breath, considering all the implications. He could risk it. After all, he’d stuck the two of them in a villa and let them have at it. He should have guessed that something more than a casual friendship could boil up. And by the look in this woman’s eyes, it was way more than that.
“All right, I can take you to him tonight,” he said. “When it’s dark. But now, I’m going back to my office, and you and your dad are going to stay in this room, and no one is going to leave. I promise I’ll come and get you as soon as it’s dark.”
She nodded and sat back down in the chair. “Okay. Dad and I need to have a long talk anyway.”
Gabe left and made it halfway across the lobby before his cell vibrated again, this time with a call from his younger sister, who had what he hoped was a solution to a different problem.
“I got nothing,” Chessie said instead of hello when he answered.
“Nothing?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, slowing his step on the marble to listen to his little sister, his only hope of hacking into the encrypted files he’d stolen from Radio and TV Martí in Miami. “Hey, I thought I was talking to my sister. She can find anyone.”
She snorted at her family’s motto for her. “Not from what you e-mailed me,” Chessie said. “As I suspected, I might do better with source material. Can you send me something physical?”
And risk losing what might be highly sensitive, world-shifting material? “No, but I have the physical files on a drive.”
“Send it to me.”
“Not a chance, Chess. Come on down. Tell Vivi you need a vacation, and get your ass to Florida. Plan on staying for a while. I could really use you down here.”
He heard his sister sigh. “I can’t—”
“It’s that d-bag Matt, isn’t it?” he asked, driven by instinct and his profound knowledge of what made Chessie tick.
“I gave him the ultimatum.”
“And that always goes over so well with men.”
“He’s thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what?” Gabe shot back, his intense dislike for his sister’s on-again-off-again boyfriend firing through him. “What an incredible catch you are? How lucky he would be to lick the bottom of your overpriced stiletto? What it’s going to feel like when I kick the ever-loving fuck out of his empty head?”
She made a noise that might have been a laugh…or might have been a sob. “He’s not sure, is all.”
“Then why do you want him, Chessie?”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a single, thirty-year-old woman who wants a child?”
“Obviously not. But I know what it’s like to be a thirtysomething guy, so I’m here to tell you that chicks with your brains and looks are not found on every street corner.”
“Pffft. You’re my brother. You have to say that.”
It was true, but she was too tender to hear it right now. “Then just take a long weekend and come down here to help me. I have to read what’s in those files.”
“I did crack a little of it,” she said. “I thought you were done with Cuba.”
He swallowed hard. “Just curious about some people left behind,” he said.
“But after what happened at Gitmo, aren’t you, like, never allowed in the country again?”
He wasn’t going to put her in the position of knowing any more classified information than she already did. “Chessie,” he said softly. “Come down here and help me find someone, please. You can find anyone, remember?”
She huffed out a breath. “I’m going to see Matt one more time. Then we’ll see.”
Taking that as a yes, he hung up and headed back to his office.
*
“Six months?” The big Jamaican woman’s question pulled Robyn from thoughts that hummed along much like the golf cart she rode in on the way to a villa called Rockrose. “You’re tiny for six months. You need to eat.”
Robyn looked over at her, stilling the hand that, yeah, was always rubbing her belly. “I do my best.” She took a deep breath, and that turned into a hiccup.
“A boy with a lot of hair,” Poppy said as she turned the cart into an opening between tall bushes that hid another one of the expensive-looking vacation homes on the beach. “That’s the third time you’ve had the hiccups in the last two hours.”
“And that means it’s a boy?”
“That means it has hair and a lot of it. Does your baby daddy have thick hair?”
She sighed and looked away, closing her hand over the rail in front of the passenger seat to keep from rubbing her belly, a habit she found impossible to break.
“I have thick hair,” she said, gesturing toward the ponytail Poppy had made her wear.
“So you ain’t sayin’, or you don’t know?”
She bit her lip. “I know.” Poppy hadn’t been in the room when Alec and the other guy interrogated her, so she might think Robyn was just a slut. “His name’s Cole Morrow. He was my boyfriend.”
“Was?”
She shrugged.
“Are you keeping this child or giving it up for adoption?”
“I’m keeping him.” No foster homes, no adoptive parents, no miserable messes for her little boy. Robyn had grown up with a mostly missing drunk for a dad and mother more interested in getting high than anything else. Her child would be loved beyond reason.
“Fine, fine, that’s good.” But Poppy didn’t sound all that sure if it was good or not as she brought the cart to a stop and climbed out. Then she stood like some kind of warrior woman, hands on hips, fire in her eyes. “And I’ll help you.”
The offer was so sincere and unexpected and sweet that Robyn drew back. No one ever wanted to help her. Not really, not for no reason.
Poppy walked to the back of the cart, shaking her head. “All that hullabaloo today, and I never went down to the laundry and picked up my fresh towels. We can’t finish this last villa without a new set.”
“Why would you help me?” Robyn asked as she met the other woman at the back of the golf cart.
Poppy’s giant brown eyes flashed and then softened. “’Cause it’s the right thing to do. You need help, and the good Lord landed you in my lap, so I suppose He’s telling me to get to work on you.”
Robyn stood there, the heat blasting her, making a trickle of sweat roll from under her bra over her expanding belly. “I don’t believe in God,” she finally said, turning to the cart to grab the rags and mop, since Poppy wouldn’t let her even touch the buckets full of cleaning solutions.
“All t
he more reason He sent you to me.”
She snorted softly. “Trust me, Poppy, I’m not on God’s radar.”
“Well, you’re on mine, child, so don’t you be worrying about nothing now.”
She hiccupped in response, fighting a smile. “It doesn’t mean he has hair,” she told Poppy. “I hiccup when I’m tired.”
Poppy eyed her, then put a gentle hand on Robyn’s shoulder. “Can you drive the golf cart?” When she nodded, Poppy continued, “Go down to the resort building. You know where that is? In the way back, on the far side away from the beach, is the laundry loading dock. The towel truck is due in any minute, so you get a stack of fresh towels—I love ’em right off the truck—and put them on the cart, and come right back here. Will you do that for me?”
“Sure.” She walked by Poppy to get behind the wheel.
“An’ child?”
Robyn turned to her.
“Don’t you be talking to anyone about anything, you understand? Towels and back here. Can I trust you?”
Who would she talk to? Where would she go? For the moment, she was here, in this swanky resort with people who wanted to help her and asked for nothing in return. “I won’t, Poppy,” she promised. “You can trust me.”
A few minutes later, Robyn was rolling down the wide path that curved through the resort property, the deep blue water on her right, jungle-thick trees on her left, and sun bouncing off the palm fronds, making her feel like she was living in a postcard.
“The scenery certainly doesn’t suck, little dude.” She patted her belly and let out a noisy hiccup. Maybe he would have a lot of hair, she mused. Curly blond hair and light brown eyes like Cole’s.
The thought of her baby daddy, as Poppy had called him, made her heart drop hard into her stomach. She didn’t miss him, but driving down here, guilt had gnawed at her gut. A man had a right to know when he had made a baby.
But everyone else could tell when they looked at her now, so hadn’t Cole noticed she was fatter when he was at her apartment? Wouldn’t he ask? Wouldn’t he want to know if his girlfriend was going to have a baby?
Coming around the side of the building, she squinted into the afternoon sun to remember where she was supposed to go, when suddenly a large van pulled up to a loading dock in the back, the words Gulf Coast Industrial Laundry painted on the side.