Her gaze slowly drifted up. And when her chocolate irises locked on his, it was like looking into his past. At a lifetime of things he shouldn’t have done and wished he could change. And being hit with the knowledge there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it now. Especially anything that had to do with her.
She was gone before he could respond.
Pete stood in the same place, on the end of the bridge in the cool December breeze, watching as she and Halloway climbed the path on the opposite side of the small creek and disappeared over the knoll. She didn’t bother to look back again, and part of him didn’t really blame her. Over the past twenty-four hours, he hadn’t done one thing to see her side of the issue. Sure, he’d listened to her story, but then he’d mocked her motives and made it clear he didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Yeah, he’d driven her to Philadelphia, even engaged in a little chitchat, but when she’d clammed up, he hadn’t pressed her to open up so he could understand what she was going through. And he hadn’t offered her a single thread of help.
When he couldn’t hear their voices or footsteps anymore, he took a deep breath. And knew what it felt like to be filleted from the inside out.
He headed back the way he’d come. Head down to block the bite of wind, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of jeans that weren’t his. When he reached the rental, he slid behind the wheel, closed the door and just sat in the silence.
Kat’s scent lingered in the interior of the car, and for some insane reason he had a memory flash. Her naked, fresh from the shower, sitting at the little vanity in her apartment, slathering that purple, jasmine-scented lotion she’d always loved all over her skin. Smiling at him over her shoulder when he offered to help. Turning and handing him the bottle with a sultry grin that did wicked hot things to his blood.
Did she still use it? Did she think of him when she rubbed it all over her body?
He glanced at the empty seat where she’d sat and noticed her backpack. In her rush to meet up with Halloway, she’d left it behind.
Giving it back to her wasn’t an excuse to see her one more time. There wasn’t anything he could say to her to change anything anyway. But at least it was one way he could make up for being a total ass this whole last day.
He leaned over and lifted it. Then paused as a thought occurred to him.
How many women would think to grab their purse when they were being chased by psycho killers? When had she slipped it into the truck? And why had she clutched the damn thing to her chest like it was her last vestige of hope?
He pulled the top flap open and peered inside. Then lowered his brow in confusion. Two wigs. One blonde, another a dark auburn. A small container of colored contacts. Passports, three different ones, all with her picture and different aliases. A series of driver’s licenses from various states that looked like her but had different names. And a gun.
A Beretta.
He lifted the firearm, turned it to check the magazine. When he replaced it, he felt something hard brush his fingertips.
The crouching pharaoh he withdrew from the pack was one he’d seen a hundred times before. Because it was his.
Gold. Egyptian. Small enough to fit in a coat pocket, but intricate and ornate. It had been part of the auction.
She’d stolen it. That was what she’d been doing in New York. But why?
His confusion was interrupted as three motorbikes jerked into the empty parking lot. Out of their line of sight, he eyed the trio as they parked near the playground. When the first driver removed his helmet, light glinted off his shaved head.
Busir. Here. Already. He watched as another man dismounted and tugged off his helmet. A fall of dark hair reached his shoulders and hid his face from view.
This one had to be Minyawi.
Pete’s adrenaline jumped. His brain clicked into gear as another man dismounted and a fourth bike pulled in behind them. Somehow he and Kat had been followed. Or someone Kat was with right now had ratted them out.
The four men ditched the bikes and took off at a slow jog across the park. When they reached the trees on the far side, Minyawi pulled a gun from his back pocket and checked the magazine. Busir and the other two did the same.
Suddenly the whys didn’t matter. Pete closed Kat’s pack. In a matter of minutes neither of them would need protective custody anyway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Hold on. I left my backpack in the rental car.”
Kat paused on the path to look back over the two
small hills that hid the parking lot from view. Would
Pete have left already? She needed that pack. She had to
go back.
“We don’t have time, Ms. Meyer.” Halloway gripped
her arm at the elbow.
“It’ll just take a few minutes, I promise.” Kat lifted her arm to free his hold but discovered his grip was solid. What was this?
“I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation.” His fingers dug into her arm. “We don’t have a few minutes. Now let’s go.”
Kat looked up into his very hard, very black eyes as his words on the bridge filtered through her mind.
It wasn’t so much what he’d said as how he’d said it. His tone had been laced with anger and very, very personal.
And he’d called Marty Martin. No one called Marty Slade by his given name.
Now we take you in, put you in protective custody. Your location will most likely be leaked so they can draw him out.
Not they. Him.
Oh, God. She wasn’t walking out of this park.
The tree trunk to her right splintered into a dozen pieces as a bullet whizzed by and struck with a resounding thwack. Kat yelped and jerked to cover her head when she realized what was happening. Before she could dart out of the way, Halloway had an arm around her waist and was yanking her down behind a collection of boulders just off the path.
“Stay down!” he yelled, bracing his arm on the top of the boulder to return fire.
A series of bullets ricocheted off wood and rock around her. Trembling, Kat scooted as close to the shelter of the rocks as she could to protect herself.
But as quickly as the gunshots started, they stopped.
“We want no trouble with you,” a heavily accented voice finally yelled. “Just give us the girl, and you can walk away!”
“No deal!” Halloway yelled back in a very definite British accent he hadn’t had before. “You want her? You’re going to have to come and get her yourself!”
A low chuckle came from what seemed like only yards away. “Well now, Bertrand, I never expected to run into you here. With her.”
Bertrand? Sweat broke out on Kat’s forehead. Just what in the name of God was going on?
Brush rustled to her right. In the waning light she couldn’t see anything more than trees and shrubs. Could she make a run for it while these two duked it out with words and bullets? She looked back at Halloway…or Bertrand…or whoever the hell this man was and knew with a sinking reality she wouldn’t make it very far. For whatever reason, he was here because of her, and he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.
“You underestimated me, Minyawi!”
Another chuckle. Followed by footsteps. Close. Closer.
The brush rustled mere feet from her. Kat sank back against the rocks.
Out of nowhere Bertrand whipped around and fired into the brush at her side. Kat jerked and shrieked. Her ears rang from the popping sounds. A man she hadn’t seen approach fell to the ground at her feet, his wide, lifeless eyes staring out at nothing.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Bertrand whipped back and fired again over the rock. “One down! How many more you got, Minyawi? We can do this all night. But I guarantee I’ll kill the girl myself before I’ll give her to you!”
In the distance there was a low rumble, like thunder, though the sky was clear.
More laughter, this time from a different location in the trees. “She begged me to kill
her. Did you know that? She’s one I will never forget.”
Bertrand went rigid all over. His face morphed in rage, his hands tightening on the gun as he searched the park with lifeless eyes. And for a second, Kat was sure she’d heard that voice before. But where?
“Go ahead, kill the girl,” Minyawi yelled. “You save me the trouble of having to do her myself. It makes no difference to me.”
Kat tensed.
“You son of a bitch!” Bertrand started firing rapidly into the brush, and Kat took that as her cue to cut and run.
She jumped to her feet and ran at breakneck speed through the woods. The rumbling grew louder, but she didn’t pause to look back, couldn’t because she knew she’d fall and didn’t want to see if they were closing in on her. Her heart pounded in her throat, echoed in her ears. At any moment she expected to be gunned down, but she wasn’t going out without a fight. Not after all this time.
She ran hard, darting around trees and rocks and skidding in the dirt. Shouts and voices and an eruption of gunfire echoed behind her, but she kept running. The thunder was now a resounding echo in her ears that she couldn’t get away from, until suddenly she thought she heard her name being called on the wind.
“Kat!”
Stumbling over rocks that seemed to come out of nowhere, she fell, took in a mouthful of dirt, rolled quickly and jumped to her feet again, ready to tear off into the trees. Until she realized the rumbling wasn’t thunder or a helicopter, but a motorcycle rushing toward her. And driving? A big blond hulk of a man she never thought she’d see again.
She was too scared to spend much time thinking about the reasons Pete had come back. She simply leapt off the path as he approached to make room. He didn’t stop the bike, and she didn’t wait. With one swift move as if they’d practiced it a hundred times before, he grasped her arm in one hand and pulled her onto the back of the bike as she jumped with all her might.
“Hold on!” he yelled.
She did. Finding the footrests on the axle, she wrapped both arms tight around his waist and buried her face against his strong, muscular back. They sped off into the depths of the park with the wind whipping her hair, away from Minyawi and their second brush with death in only a matter of hours.
And it wasn’t until they reached the parking lot on the opposite end of the park that she realized her hands weren’t clenched tight around Pete’s belt buckle, but around the base of a backpack he was wearing backward against his chest.
Her backpack from the car.
Pete revved the Honda’s engine and sailed through the streets of Philadelphia. At his waist, Kat’s fingers dug into his skin through his jacket. He knew they were being followed. The last two times he’d checked there’d been a motorbike hanging with them some distance back.
Weaving in and out of traffic, the bike hiccupped, and he glanced down, realizing in a rush they were almost out of gas. Didn’t it just figure the bike he’d picked to lift was now operating on fumes?
When the bike coughed again, he turned onto a side street and quickly darted into an alley. He parked behind a Dumpster as far out of sight as he could, killed the engine and hit the kickstand.
Kat let go of his waist and sat up. “What happened?”
“Out of gas.” He climbed off the bike, switched the pack to his back and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t argue, instead gripped his hand in hers and ran with him. The alley spilled out onto a dimly lit street. Darkness was just settling in as they wove through pedestrians on the sidewalk. They kept close to the buildings in the less-than-desirable neighborhood and tried to blend in.
Didn’t work. Minyawi’s muscle was still behind them and closing fast, so lollygagging down the sidewalk wasn’t gonna cut it. When Pete heard the rev of a motorbike behind them, he didn’t bother to look back. He clenched Kat’s hand hard and pulled her into the first open door he could find.
Smoke and darkness surrounded them. Kat coughed in the thick haze as Pete’s eyes and ears adjusted to the pulsing lights and rhythmic bass echoing out of speakers hidden in the walls. His first thought was nightclub. Then he took in the surroundings, the hour, and knew he wasn’t so lucky. And that speculation was confirmed as he pulled Kat behind him down a long dark corridor and they were met by a scantily clad woman in a rhinestone-studded halter top, black skirt that barely covered her ass and eight-inch spike heels.
“Ten-dollar cover,” she announced. Her dark hair was piled high on her head, and her silver top formed a revealing vee all the way to her naval.
Definitely not your local nightclub.
Kat’s eyes widened as she too realized where they were. But when the door around the corner was jerked open and a blast of frigid air swept into the lobby, she pushed Pete forward. “Pay the lady already.”
The three-hundred-pound bouncer built like an Eagles linebacker eyed them as if he had a sixth sense about their situation. No doubt he’d seen everything working in a place like this. “We don’t want no trouble in here.”
Pete nodded, pulled a twenty from his back pocket, thanked his lucky stars the guy wasn’t going to frisk him and slapped the money on the high counter. “We’re just here for the entertainment.” He didn’t wait for the woman to stamp their hands, instead grabbed Kat and pulled her around the corner into the heart of the strip club.
They paused long enough to get their bearings. The smoke was thicker in here, the music a body-thumping beat that made it impossible to hear conversation going on around them. Neon lights pulsed across the club’s floor, spotlighting the three elevated stages where girls in various states of undress were grinding and gyrating for both men and women seated around them.
Kat’s fingernails dug into his palm, and Pete darted a look her direction. Her eyes were wide as she took it all in, and he knew if he didn’t do something quick, she was going to attract unwanted attention real fast.
He gripped her hand and pulled, knowing there was one place they could blend in that might just save their asses. Skin joints all around the world were the same. He’d been in enough of them, cutting deals with seedy dealers he’d never look twice at back in Miami.
The VIP area was one floor up, set back from a balcony that overlooked the action below. He led Kat up the winding stairs and tried like hell to stay close to the wall and in the shadows. When they got to the second floor, he pointed at the first dancer walking out the door and said, “You’ll do. In there.”
She eyed him up and down as she pulled her glove-fitting, siren red dress back into place. Then she shot a quick glance in Kat’s direction, and a knowing smile slid across her heavily made-up face. “Sure thing, big guy. You watching or is she?”
Kat tensed at his side, and she opened her mouth to protest, but her words were cut off by a ruckus going on below them.
Pete eased close to the railing to look down. His adrenaline spiked. “Fuck,” he muttered.
Alarm spread across Kat’s face, and she stepped closer to look over the railing herself. Her pulse jumped in the skin of her hand still pressed tightly against his when she spotted the burly-looking, dark-haired man below arguing with one of the bouncers they’d passed on the way in. Not Minyawi or Busir, but definitely one of their cronies from Slade’s property.
Before he could react, Kat pulled him back from the ledge and made a beeline for the private room. “Him. I’ll watch.”
Pete nearly tripped over his feet, both at her command and the way she was tugging him like a woman on a mission, but he managed to shake his head at the dancer as Kat pulled him into the room. “No, you dance for her.”
He figured all around that was safer. He wouldn’t be distracted that way, and he could keep an eye on the door just in case. Plus, he didn’t want the stripper inadvertently finding the 10 mm lodged in the waistband of his jeans.
Another NFL-worthy bouncer closed the door behind them and slid into the shadows. The blonde in the skintight number pointed toward a plush couch in the far corner. Two
other dancers were earning big bucks as they shook their hips and naked breasts at the men seated in front of them. No one seemed to notice they’d come into the room.
To her credit, Kat managed not to look shell-shocked, but she did shoot Pete a big what-the-fuck over her shoulder before she parked it on the unoccupied couch and stared up at the dancer following closely at his back.
And Pete’s brain took that opportunity to throw a big ol’ what-the-fuck at him then as well. Twenty-four hours ago he’d had a pretty ordinary life. Work and the occasional date. A party here and there. Nothing overly exciting except for a few work-related overseas trips he took each year. But even those had tamed down, spread out as he’d cleaned up his act.
Now he was on the run from a homicidal maniac, about to watch the girl of his dreams, who he’d thought was dead, get a lap dance from some anonymous blonde he could care less about. Holy shit, this was so not what he’d envisioned when he’d climbed into that limo last night, closed his eyes and wished for something different.
Nerves thumping as the music changed tempo, Pete sat on the couch, close enough to keep up their ruse as a couple simply out on the town for a good time, but with enough distance so he could see around the dancer toward the door. He dropped the backpack at his feet and heard Kat draw in a sharp breath as the blonde leaned forward and whispered something in her ear he couldn’t hear.
He looked her direction, caught Kat’s eyes widen as she gave her head a small shake in response and darted a quick look his way. But the dancer only smiled a knowing grin and eased back. Then the woman licked her lips and winked at Pete as the show started and her hips began to move to the beat of the drum.
His blood warmed. He knew a possible killer was just downstairs, but seeing Kat’s reaction to what the dancer had whispered made his groin tighten. Obviously, it had something to do with him from the way she’d looked at him, but hell if he could imagine what the woman could have said to put that color on Kat’s cheeks.
Or maybe he could. His blood went white-hot at the erotic images suddenly kicking off in his brain.