She started to cry because he was right. But he’d hit the nail directly on the head when he’d shouted at her. Shewasthe target, thanks to Milton Devonshire changing his stupid will. But she couldn’t bear the thought of Mick dying for her.
No, she couldn’t bear the thought of Mick dying, period. The idea of losing him permanently made her crazy. Even more so as she sat here, dressed in the clothes of the dead woman that this quiet man, Rod, had loved and lost, through no fault of his own.
Mick had been right when he’d told her that you can’t fix dead.
“I just keep thinking that maybe if I go there, they won’t kill Mick,” she whispered.
“More likely if you go there, they’ll kill you both,” Rod countered. “And in the chaos, as Jules and Sam attempt to keep you from being shot instead of focusing on rescuing Mick, you’ll probably getthemkilled, too. If Mick’s still alive—” she must’ve made another face, because he quickly added “—and I believe that he is, the best way you can help him stay that way is to let the professionals do the work that they’ve been trained to do, without distracting them with the additional task of keepingyousafe. Can you maybe see, maybe just a little bit, how your being there might be a major distraction? Keeping yourself out of the equation could mean the difference between life and death, and not just for Mick. You said it yourself to Mick, just a few minutes ago:Trust the team Mick hired because they’re very good at what they do.” He met her eyes in the mirror again. “Trust Jules and Sam. They will contact us as soon as they can.”
“You just met Sam,” she pointed out.
“Navy SEAL,” he said. “The reputation is real.”
“And Jules...?”
“I’ve known him since high school and... Well, it’s a long story.”
Emily took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “Well, it looks as though I’m not going anywhere,” she told him. And apparently they had some time to kill here in purgatory as they waited to find out if she, too, had lost Mick forever.
Mick came to in near total darkness, with a head that was pounding and a pain in his back and arms because... his hands were cuffed behind his back with something hard and thin that cut into his wrists...?
And—fuck!—as he tried to sit up, he hit his head on... Jesus Christ, he’d been jammed into the trunk of a car. It smelled like spare tire and ass, and his mouth was painfully dry because, shit, he was gagged and whatever had been stuffed in his mouth was nasty. He tried to spit it out to no avail.
This wasn’t good, in fact it was very, very,verybad, and he juggled his panic at being trapped in such a small, dark space with the shards of memories that were stabbing his brain through the throbbing pain.
Emily. On the phone, begging him to come back.
Harper’s car with its stupid vanity license plate on that pink-pavered drive.
Two men with guns.
His phone breaking on the asphalt beneath a big booted foot.
Emily’s voice:I need you to walk away from the gun on the desk.
Too late.
Except maybe it wasn’t, because as bad as this was, at least he was still alive.
“This isn’t my problem,” a petulant voice said from outside of the trunk, because yeah, Mick was for sure alone in this tiny space, “it’s yours.”
It was Ernest Harper. His reedy voice was unmistakable, but whoever he was talking to, it was surely over the phone because there was silence then, interrupted only by those horrible little sniffing sounds the lawyer made when he was waiting for someone to stop speaking.
Mick’s first instinct was to kick the side of the trunk; to use his body like the beans in a rattle to let the man know he was locked in there, but then Harper testily said, “Your morons broke his cell phone. If they hadn’t, we might’ve been able to use it to find the girl. Who is also, I might add, your problem.”
And there it was. The men who’d hit Mick hadn’t been watching Harper’s house because they’d been gunning for him, too—they’d been guarding the place. Harper was very much involved.
Exactly as Mick had expected.
He heard the sound of the car door opening and Harper’s voice got louder as he said, “Tim and Reilly are bringing my car back to LA. They didn’t want to use the SUV—too many windows—which you need to get rid of anyway. The other two morons went to try to get a van to transport him to you and...” A pause. “No! I’ve waited long enough. Every second he’s in there is... No! This isnotokay. You’d said you’d take care of?—”
He was silent again as the car door slammed shut. “No,” Harper said again but then lowered his voice as he no doubt became aware that he was having an argument on his driveway in the middle of the night. “They’ve been gone toolong—” Mick strained to hear him “—so they’re bringing him to you in my car—which I will report as stolen in the morning, so move quickly and proceed accordingly.”
Mick was thehebeing referred to. Another pause.
“Thatis not my purview,” Harper said, getting louder again in his testiness. “You said you’d take care of it. It’s a little late now to—” He broke off. “He came here tonight because heknows—something, at the very least. So the amputation thing isn’t going to— No! He can’t be able to contest the power of attorney and— No! Killing him also won’t— Not at first, not until we know exactly who’s in his life and... No, it needs to be a brain injury, so figure it out and get it done!”
Holy shit.
