Holding on Tighter (Wicked Lovers 12)

Together, they walked out the door and headed into the crisp October sunlight, almost blinding in its blue beauty. It would have been a perfect day—warm with a gentle breeze and leaves so green the trees almost glowed—if she hadn’t been so agitated.

And if someone hadn’t chosen that moment to open fire on her in the parking lot.

***

WHEN the first shot rang through the air, Heath reacted instantly. He tackled Jolie to the ground and covered her, protecting her body with his own. Instinct kicked in, shutting down all functions except those necessary for survival. His vision sharpened. His hearing turned keener.

He became a hunter.

“Down!” he barked at the others.

Ten feet away, Cutter had already taken Karis to the blacktop, shielding her.

Heath’s heart thrummed in his chest, amplifying the roaring in his ears. Adrenaline seared him as it jetted through his veins. He scanned Jolie’s face in an urgent sweep. “You all right?”

She looked terrified and at a loss for words, but she nodded.

He wanted her to say something, but if she had taken multiple shots to the head or had concrete embed itself in her skin like shrapnel, as Anna had, she wouldn’t be alive to even give him a bob of her head. Heath tried to tell himself to breathe and climb off the ledge of panic. All was well and he’d saved Jolie in time.

All he could think about was that if he hadn’t reacted quickly enough, he might be burying another wife.

When he looked up, the car she’d been standing beside moments ago bore the indents of bullets in its frame, just above the window. His heart stopped.

Heath fucking well refused to grieve for the woman he loved again.

“Cutter, take the ladies inside.”

“Roger that.”

As Heath made to rise, Jolie grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

But the terror on her face said she knew.

“My job.”

She was going to object. And he couldn’t let her. Jolie had to understand that if something happened to her, it would crush him completely. Anna’s loss had been beyond difficult. At first, he’d had entire weeks when he hadn’t wanted to crawl out of a bottle. He hadn’t been able to loosen the stranglehold of his rage. Finally, he’d found a reason to truly move on. So he’d married her.

The idea that one bullet could wipe Jolie from this earth and leave him to deal with the aftermath again filled him with a dark, icy fury.

Easing from her grasp, he crouched, darting across the lot hidden by shadow and foliage, chasing the glint of metal he’d glimpsed in the distance. The shooter had already likely escaped. But Heath hoped the guy had been slow escaping so he could cut down the bastard.

He pulled his weapon and searched the area, stealthing around the nearby industrial buildings, tiptoeing through bushes, scouting the shooter’s position. When Heath stood in what he suspected was the same spot the would-be assassin had three minutes ago and looked back across the lane, dismay and an anger beyond anything he’d ever felt kicked him in the gut.

Karis’s position had been blocked by a tree. No way the shooter had been aiming for her. Clearly, he’d meant to kill Jolie. An inch to the right, and Heath would be planning another funeral.

When the shooter had aborted, he’d left nothing behind, taking even spent shell casings and eradicating the imprints of his shoes from the dirt.

Professional.

Heath studied his surroundings, trying to decide where the culprit would have run, but once he’d hit concrete, Heath saw too many directions and possibilities to follow. A dead end.

The trained operative in him seethed to hunt this prick down. The man inside him just wanted to reach his wife and hold her close.

“Bloody fucking son of a bitch.” He pounded a fist into the nearby fence and marched back to Betti.

Inside, chaos reigned. The police were on their way—again. Karis was crying hysterically, but Cutter looked calm in the face of her drama. Gerard paced the room with sweeping hand gestures and mutterings in French. Rohan blinked as if he couldn’t believe violence had come to his workplace twice in less than a week. Arthur just sat and stared numbly.

He didn’t see his wife. Heath’s heart stopped. “Where’s Jolie?”

“Bathroom,” Cutter supplied, holding Karis awkwardly while she wailed. “I escorted her there and made sure the coast was clear.”

Heath took off running, slamming his way through the door into the women’s room. Yes, he knew someone else in the building might be using this restroom and he didn’t care. “Jolie?”

He heard the sound of her heaving stomach. She hadn’t eaten since last night so she didn’t have anything to vomit up. The adrenaline crash had clearly imbalanced her system in the worst way. Hearing her suffering tore at his heart.

Without a second thought, he kicked open the door to the wide stall in back and rushed to her. “Love?”

She looked pale and shaky, like she was desperately trying to hold herself together.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he swore.

Then he realized she had no reason to believe him. She knew precisely how Anna had died and that he hadn’t saved her.

Jolie blinked at him as she rose and splashed cold water from the sink into her mouth and onto her face. “I know. Cutter dragged me into the office, away from the windows—”

“As he should have.”

“But I couldn’t see you. I didn’t know what had happened. I . . .” She threw herself against him.

Heath wrapped his arms around her, beyond humbled. Someone had shot at her and she had been worried about him?

He cupped her face in his hands. “I wasn’t the target. You understand that?”

“They missed. I don’t know why someone would take a shot at me but—”

“We need to go over potential suspects again.”

“I know. But I can’t stop thinking . . . what if the shooter had hurt you instead?”

“Shh. I’m fine. Remember, this is my job. Deep breath, love. Let’s go.”

“Just a minute.” She panted. “Cutter had to help me here. My legs are shaking.”

Heath felt his heart twist in his chest again as he bent to lift Jolie in his arms, cradling her against his chest.

“I’ll get you out of here.”

“The police . . .”

“Cutter can fill them in. They can call us later. Right now I’m worried about you.”

Jolie didn’t object again, just buried her face in his neck as he carried her through the office. That told him again just how rattled she’d been.

As they passed the reception area, she caught sight of her sister. “You all right?”

Karis was too busy sobbing to answer.

“She’s fine,” Cutter supplied. “Shaken up. As soon as we’re done with the police, I’ll take her home.”

“I’ll text you an address. Bring her there,” Heath insisted. “We should work together, examine this from angles we haven’t considered before and start figuring things out.”

The two men nodded at each other, and Heath left Jolie inside while he checked her car and the lot for anything possibly dangerous before he brought her car around. Though as a good Brit he didn’t relish driving on the opposite side of the road, he’d done it before. He’d manage.

Minutes later, he parked the car by the door, engine idling. He led her to the passenger seat, shielding her from the street and any potential danger with his own body. Then he settled her in the car, jogged around to his seat, and took off down the road.

His knuckles were white as he gripped the wheel. “Someone in your life wants not merely to scare you but to harm you. We need to take a hard look at everyone you know.”

She gave him a shaky nod. “I’m ruling out my mother and sister. Mom is in Kilgore, which is in East Texas. She’s a good three hours away . . . and really, why? She gains nothing if I’m hurt or dead except the loss of emergency cash.”

>

Heath nodded in agreement. “I also agree that your sister has no involvement. She’s not the violent sort, and she doesn’t value money above all.”

“As long as she has a decent roof and enough to eat, Karis is happy. She’s a fairly typical Millennial. She doesn’t care if her accessories are Tiffany or Chanel. She wants tech gadgets. Everything else just needs to be functional and sturdy.”

That was Heath’s assessment as well. “Your father?”

The question had her chest buckling. It was already difficult enough for her to understand how the asshole could tell a young child that she was his stupidest mistake and walk out for twenty-five years, but to imagine that he could want her dead . . . Jolie clearly had difficulty processing it. Still, she tried to be as logical as possible.

“I don’t think so. Mostly because he’s trying to buy the company out from under me and his number one goal is always money. If I died, Karis would get everything, not him. And she knows how I feel. She would dissolve Betti before she sold it to him. Besides, Carrington Quinn isn’t the sort to get his hands dirty. Oh, he likes to attack when there’s financial blood in the water. But I seriously doubt he’d actually resort to anything as physical as murder.”

As much as Heath despised the man he’d never met, he saw her logic. “He could hire someone but that makes almost no sense now. He still thinks he has the upper hand in your negotiations, so resorting to murder could actually undermine his position. We’ll scratch him off the list. We know from Gardner’s sister that the man’s injuries were too extensive for him to be the perpetrator.”

That assessment, however, meant Heath was back to square one.

“Right. And like we said, he’s hardly the sort to throw a rock through my window. Besides, he barely knows Karis, so the strange gifts for her make no sense.”

Heath sighed. “Let’s look at the bigger pattern here. Gifts for your sister, a break-in targeting your computer, vandalism, then . . .” That horrific shot he could still hear echoing in his head making his gut clench with every retort of the sniper rifle. “Then today’s incident.”

They were very different methods, and he couldn’t imagine what her tormenter was trying to accomplish except to confuse him.

“I don’t see a pattern.”

“The notes he left for Karis provided the most information. This man wants to be with her. And seems to think you’ll stand in his way. Enough to kill you, I don’t know.”

“Why would I stand . . .” She trailed off. “Okay, I have chased off several of Karis’s would-be boyfriends in the past.”

“Maybe it’s one of them?” He frowned. “But you said yourself that you haven’t brushed any aside recently.”

“Right. So why now? And why push his agenda violently? Maybe someone is pissed about my anti-dating policy among the staff. If that’s the case, I know who’s responsible.”

“Arthur? Do you think he’s actually unstable enough to resort to attempted murder?”

“I don’t know. He comes off socially awkward but does that mean he would try to kill me?” Her mind seemed to race, then she sighed. “No. Can’t be him. He was inside the office when the gunfire started from across the street.”

“Even if Arthur hadn’t been standing in plain sight, I would already know he hadn’t pulled the trigger. I doubt he’s capable of the cool head and skill required to handle a weapon of that caliber. But it’s possible he hired someone professional.”

“How? I doubt he has either the money or the connections.”

“Maybe he knows a guy,” Heath tossed back ironically.

She scoffed. “Seriously.”

“All kidding aside, perhaps he found someone online willing to do it for cheap. Or in exchange for another favor.”

“Like doing their taxes? Beating their video game?”

Heath nodded. “No, you’re right. It doesn’t add up.”

“Besides, if he wants to date my sister, let’s face it . . . Killing me isn’t the way to her heart.”

“Unless Arthur is more twisted than we imagined, you’re right. Let’s keep thinking.”

She still looked white and shaky, and Heath resented every one of the twelve miles he had to drive between Betti’s offices and Axel’s house. He reached across the console and took her hand in his. She gave him a weak squeeze in return.

“In all the excitement, we never had the chance to tell my sister our news.”

“We will,” he promised.

He understood why that was important to her, but keeping Karis in the loop on their romantic life was the least of Heath’s concerns now. The only thing that mattered was figuring out why someone wanted to hurt Jolie, why they’d stepped up their game to attempted murder today, and how to keep her alive so they could have a chance to live happily ever after.

***

HEATH forced her to drink water and lie down once they reached Axel’s house. He spooned her, made sure she took some deep breaths, and held her until the doorbell rang.

At the sound, he sprang up. His heart revved as he withdrew his gun from his holster and dashed through the house to peer out the front window.

He sighed, his tension bleeding out. “It’s Karis and Cutter.”

His wife was right behind him and reached for the knob. Heath beat her to it and nudged her behind both the door and him, scanning the street as the duo filed in.

“Anyone follow you?” he asked.

Cutter shook his head as he ushered Karis inside and followed, blocking her body with his own. “All clear.”

“Jolie.” Karis rushed at her, and the two women hugged with great love and relief.

Twice in the last five days the sisters had been in danger. That was two times too many, in Heath’s estimation.

“Are you okay?” Jolie stepped back enough to scan her sister’s face.

“Fine. No one took a shot at me,” Karis pointed out. “I’m worried about you.”

Heath locked the door and eased the women toward the living room where no one could have possible sight lines inside unless they prowled around the backyard. But then he would see them, as well. “Let’s not linger near windows.”

They filed deeper into the house and everyone sat, Karis and Cutter on the two oversized chairs. Jolie sank onto the sofa and Heath sat beside her, reaching for her hand. He had scarcely known her for a week. Already he felt as if he had a place he belonged in life, a partner by his side. She glanced his way, and for all she’d been through today, her expression still said that she felt safe with him. She glowed with trust.

That both slayed and humbled him.

“Did you take care of the police?” Heath asked.

“Yeah. They haven’t been able to figure anything out. And of course it’s not related to the break-in at Jolie’s office last week or the rock that went through her window on Saturday.”

“Of course not.” Heath rolled his eyes. Imbeciles. “If they’re going to be more hindrance than help, I’ll simply go around them.”

“No one was hurt, and they didn’t find enough physical evidence there was even a shooter. One of the suits suggested that Jolie’s been through a lot lately, so she may be a little . . . excitable. It was probably something else, like an older car backfiring.”

Heath clenched his fists. “That’s utter shit. I know the difference between those sounds.”

“So do I, and I argued.” He shook his head. “But they don’t agree there was an incident at all, so the case isn’t high on their totem pole.”

“Bloody hell.” Heath held his wife closer, vowing to keep her safe from the would-be assassin—and anyone else who meant to harm her.