One more glance at her hot, burning eyes, and I’m positive I’ve accomplished that.
“She’s as stupid as her brother,” Rich finally says, shaking his head. His expression goes hard almost immediately, any laughter he had an instant ago vanishing. “As we agreed, this was your last job. Now that Banner won’t have any other choice but make the drop, I’ve got no more use for you. A deal is a deal.”
Panic lights in my gut. No. “You don’t need help with the drop?” I ask, before I realize my mistake. Shit. He didn’t tell me about changing the date, did he?
Rich’s eyes darken. “That’s not your concern any longer, Stone.”
“No. You’re right.” It will look suspicious if I beg him to let me stay on this job. Not when I’ve spent years making it perfectly clear exactly how little I think of him, or how ready I am to throw this job and his fucking insanity behind me. “I just want to see it through,” I say. “Make sure you’re not going to pull me into anything last-minute, unprepared because you’ve changed your mind. Our deal still stands, does it not?”
He’ll pull the plug on my mother after all these years. Leave her to gasp out her last breath alone, because this motherfucker sure as hell wouldn’t tell me when he planned to cut funding. I’ve said my goodbyes—I know that she’s gone—but it still doesn’t stop the ache that spans my chest.
“Our deal stands, Xander.” He offers me his hand. “Thank you for your service.”
I never thought this day would come. I never thought that when it did, the last thing in the world I would want to do would be to walk out of this office once and for all. But I have no other choice right now. I grasp his offered hand, shake once, hard, and force myself not to look at Skye as I turn and leave her behind.
28
Skye
I can’t believe what I’m watching. I sit on the couch, my hands wrenched unceremoniously behind me, this fucking foul-tasting rag stuffed in my mouth and bound around my face, making it hard to even swallow, and I watch the fucking bastard I thought I loved shake hands with my captor.
This was such a huge mistake. I realize that now, too late. After I’ve already set this whole thing in motion. I stole the wire Ian had in his car from the FBI guys, hid it inside the wiring of my bra, and took a cab down here to the location Stone and my brother had discussed earlier.
I thought I was saving them both. My brother, yes, but also him. Rich would have killed him if he didn’t bring me in. Rich would have done something terrible to whoever it was he was holding over Stone’s head right now.
If you want me to keep her alive, I can still hear Rich saying over the phone, and I can vividly picture Stone’s shocked expression, before he laid eyes on me and schooled his face into anger instead.
Who is she?
Probably his girlfriend, the sarcastic, hurt part of my brain tells me. The woman he loves, since he clearly never gave a shit about you.
And like an idiot, I walked right in here to save him and her and Ian, and now I’m fucked.
At least I’ve saved my brother, I tell myself. At least there’s that.
I left the audio box recording this whole thing in my motel room, where Ian will find it as soon as he discovers me missing. Even if I hadn’t left a note, he’d be able to guess what I’ve done because he knows me so well. And hopefully, when he finds that recording, by then I’ll have convinced Rich to confess to something worse. Something that will force the FBI to just arrest him here and now.
A girl can dream, right?
I think all this, but I can’t stop the fierce churning in my gut as the door shuts behind Stone, and I’m left alone with these men. Two of them plus their boss, a muscular-bordering-on-fat man who screams underground crime boss. When the door closes, he turns to me. He’s grinning again, a dark glint in his eyes, and every inch of my body clenches in fear.
It doesn’t help that I already feel more broken than anything this man could do to me. Hearing Stone say he used me, made me love him, so I would do this. Watching him leave without so much as a single look in my direction. It feels like having my already-busted heart torn out of my chest and stomped on.
I have only myself to blame. Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, well, I should have fucking seen that coming.
I swallow hard as Rich approaches the couch. Time to face the music. He rips the cloth from my mouth, and I can’t help but gasp in a grateful breath of untainted air.
He laughs. “How are you feeling, Ms. Banner? Comfortable?” He nods at one of the men standing around, who bends over at the gesture and grabs the rope binding my hands. A few rough jerks later and it falls away.
I grit my teeth and resist the urge to spit out the rest of the bad taste in my mouth. Preferably straight into his face. “I told you when I came in here, I’m surrendering of my own free will.” Which I did. I let him know that Stone had kidnapped me, but that he’d made me see sense, and realize I needed to turn myself in to save my brother.
At the time, I thought I was saving Stone too. Now the betrayal stings.
“Oh, I know you did.” His gaze wanders over my body as he says this, taking his time to linger on my chest, my legs. I suppress a shudder, because I don’t want to let anything show to this bastard. Not how much I hate him. And certainly not how much he terrifies me.
“Thank you for doing that,” he continues, his eyes not quite making it back up to my face, locked on my breasts instead. “I’m glad that you, at least, see sense. I’ve told your brother a dozen times by now; all I need is my money back and we can all move on our separate ways. There’s no need for this situation to get ugly.”
“You mean any uglier than it already is?”