Ruthless
She sat up even straighter, her shoulders coming off the wall and her hands falling to the floor on each side of her hips. “Okay, Mr. Good Samaritan. How about calling the police … and what do you mean by medic? Call an ambulance. I have customers and employees out front and need to know they’re safe.”
From the clear eyes and stronger voice he guessed she’d found her emotional and physical footing. That likely spelled trouble for him.
“Then there’s the mess back here. That one will wake up eventually.” She pointed at the downed man closest to the back door. “And that one is losing blood thanks to your knife skills.”
Pax hoped she didn’t expect an apology. “Yeah.”
“He’s not dead, is he?
“Unfortunately, no. Unconscious and bleeding.” Pax glanced at the other man. “And that one is lucky not to be bleeding. I’m thinking about stabbing him just because.”
She swallowed and made a face that suggested she didn’t like whatever she’d tasted. “In a few seconds I’ll have to go over there and try to help the bloody one, and the idea of touching him after … well, it makes me want to throw up and kind of furious at you.”
Yeah, she’d definitely moved from scared—and that had been pretty fleeting—to ticked off. As the clear target of whatever thoughts bounced around in her head and put that scowl on her face, he dropped the lighter tone. It wasn’t working anyway. Didn’t take a fancy shoe phone to figure that one out.
He held up his hand in a gesture he hoped telegraphed peace and maybe a touch of surrender. “Everything will be handled, but not in the way you’re suggesting.”
Then it started. She slid her hands closer to her body and shifted in a move so slight he almost missed it. He guessed she intended to struggle to her feet and then make a run for it. He was ready for the bolt. He just wished they could shortcut the disbelief and go right to the part where she got in the car and let him take her to safety.
Not that he deserved that level of trust from her. They barely knew each other. Sure, they’d flirted and he’d benefitted in the form of free bear claws now and then, but doughnuts didn’t change the facts. He was there to watch over her, to see if her missing brother made contact.
It was supposed to be a simple surveillance op, since that’s all anyone at the Corcoran Team thought he could handle post-shooting incident. Little did they know the supposed “easy” job would lead to a backroom shoot-out.
“Don’t even think about it.” When she frowned at him, he filled her in. “Whatever big exit plan is in your head? Forget it. You’re not getting by me. We need to get you somewhere safe, and then we can talk all of this through.”
“We?”
“I think he’s referring to me.” Joel stepped over the man at the back door and moved inside. He hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the alley outside. “Car’s waiting.”
Pax reached down a second time to get her off the floor. “Come on, Kelsey.”
Her gaze bounced from him to Joel and back again as she crowded closer to the wall. “No way.”
“These guys on the floor could have partners,” Joel said.
Pax welcomed Joel’s verbal assist but could do without the smirk. “I can guarantee that’s true.”
“Why should I trust you? I don’t know you.” She peeked around Pax’s legs at Joel. “Or him.”
When she drew in a deep breath, Pax dropped to his haunches again and bit down on his lip to keep from yelling. Ignoring the shot of pain, he held a hand over her mouth, careful not to get his palm too close to those teeth.
“Don’t do that.” She mumbled something against his hand but he ignored it and kept lecturing. “I know you want to yell for help but screaming could bring more attackers. Do you want that?”
She took several breaths before she shook her head.
Pax inhaled long and deep, trying to see this from her perspective and keep his anger in check. With her family history it was no wonder she went with wariness over fear. He knew only the scraps in her brother’s file about a deceased mother, but the background of Kelsey’s criminal father wasn’t a mystery. His name had seen a lot of time in the papers a few years back. The truth, whatever really went on in this family, could be much worse.
“You see me every day,” Pax pointed out as he stood up again. This time it took longer and more energy. Too many more deep knee bends and he’d crash to the floor.
“As a customer only.”
Joel chuckled. “And she lands a verbal blow. I bet that hurt.”
“You’re not helping,” Pax said under his breath and included a string of profanity to make his point.
Last thing he needed was a real-time reminder of just how attracted he was to Kelsey and how it suddenly seemed to run in only one direction. Especially since she was scowling at him, looking as if she might be planning his funeral.
“Joel, is it?” She shifted her weight and slid her body up the wall. When her knees wobbled, she reached out for Pax, grabbing on to his forearm and steadying her balance again. Her hand dropped a second later.
“Joel Kidd. Yes, ma’am.” The corner of Joel’s mouth kicked up in a smile when she talked to him.
“Call the police.”
The smile fumbled. “I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Do that. Yeah, I get it.” She stepped away from the wall and inched closer to the far end of the hallway. “Paxton … or whatever his name is, said the same thing.”
“My name really is Paxton. I just prefer Pax.”
But she’d stopped listening. She glanced around the floor and took a wide jump over the bleeding attacker’s body. “I’m going to go out front and check on Mike. I might even scream if it looks like it’s clear and you’re the problem instead of the solution.”
Pax grabbed her arm in time. He had her spinning around and standing only a few inches in front of him. At six feet he loomed over her by a good six inches. All those years playing football and the genes from a father he never knew had gifted Pax with broad shoulders.
His size tended to intimidate people. Using the factor to get his way never bothered him before. If it meant saving her, it wouldn’t bother him now, either.
“No.” Enough talk. He started walking toward the back door, taking her with him. He didn’t squeeze or pull, but with his elbow tucked and her body swept in close to his, he had the balance advantage and moving her didn’t take much pressure against her skin.
“Excuse me?”
He kept the lock on her elbow. “I tried this the nice way.”
“When?”
They blew by Joel, who had dropped to the floor to check the pockets of both fallen attackers. “Uh, Pax.”
The tone signaled caution as much as if Joel had thrown up a flashing red light. Pax shortened his stride and stopped a few steps from the back door.
“We are going to walk out there and get into the SUV.” He lowered his voice, forcing the tension to leave his jaw before it cracked from the pressure. “We are going to get out of here and to somewhere safe. Then we can talk all of this out. But, Kelsey—and you need to understand this—we are leaving. No discussion.”
The muscles in her arm went slack. All of a sudden it was easy to glide her across the floor and direct her where he wanted her to go. Pax knew that was a very bad sign.
This lady had the moves down cold—force your body to relax, and the person holding you will ease the grasp. Pax knew because he taught self-defense classes at the YMCA and had advised more than one class of women to avoid ever getting into a car with an attacker.
As the realization hit him, her body jerked. She slammed to a halt and pivoted away from him as she whipped her arm up, shrugging out of his hold. When he reached for her again, she ducked under the arc of his swing. Doubled over and head down in determination, she sprinted.
With his messed-up leg, she could have vaulted and took off and left him sputtering, but her sneaker snagged on the foot of the guy on the ground and she tripped. Her momentum took her flying and stumbling. She crashed against the wall next to the back door and stopped.
He swooped in before she could take off again. “Whoa.”
He trapped her against the wall with his body, ignoring the uneasy sensation rumbling through him from mimicking the actions of the man who had attacked her earlier. Pax slapped his palms against the uneven cement on each side of her head and rested his body against hers, careful to crowd her but not smash into her.
She clearly saw it differently because the second his body touched against hers, she whipped into a wild frenzy. “Not again.”
She kicked out behind her and raked her fingernails against the back of his hand. With her head shaking and shifting, she struggled and grunted. Energy pounded off her as every limb, every muscle, moved in concert against him.
This time, he threw his weight into the hold. He pressed his chest against her back and grabbed her wrists and stretched her arms out to keep them from flailing. Their heavy breathing mixed together as air pounded in his lungs. Beneath him, he could feel the rise and fall of her upper body on rough gasps.
She turned her head to the side and stared at Joel. Until that moment, Pax had forgotten his partner was even there. So much for calling in reinforcements. He could only hope Ben was having an easier time with the crowd out front.
“You could help me,” she said to Joel.
“If it’s any consolation, I plan on telling everyone back at the office about how close you came to getting the jump on Pax.”
Pax swore under his breath. As if the shot to the thigh wasn’t enough cause for ribbing. Now he’d have to hear about this. “Kelsey, listen to me.”
“Why should I?” The harsh words lost their impact under the weak thread of her voice.
“You’re in danger.”
She turned her head and balanced her forehead against the wall. The position cut off all potential of eye contact with Pax and Joel. “Obviously.”
“Not from me.”
“You’re the one who threw the knife. The same guy who’s holding me now.” She shrugged. “You’re hurting me, by the way.”
He eased his stance, shifting his weight to his heels and thinking to move away. Then he stopped. In addition to the sweet face and impressive legs, she was smart and skilled. He wouldn’t put it past her to use guilt to break free.
He tried logic one last time. “There are men after you.”
“Why?”
Pax glanced at Joel. The slight shake of his head mirrored Pax’s feelings on the subject. It was too early and they had too little information on Kelsey to dump the truth on her. They needed to press her for information on her brother. But not here. Certainly not now.
Joel cleared his throat. “That’s what we’re here to figure out.”
“And you two just happened to show up—”
“Three,” Pax said.
“What?”
He didn’t see a reason to hide the team. “Ben’s out front.”
“How comforting.” She wiggled and pushed until he let her turn around. Anger and confusion battled in her eyes. “You understand why I’m confused. You guys all conveniently show up, claiming to be the good guys.”
Pax knew he’d never used those words. “I get it.”
“And?”
She deserved points for good questions and intelligence. The instructor side of him would pass her without trouble. In real life, her discomfort meant danger. And facing him, she had a clear shot at using the first attack move he taught women to use against men, and he had no intention of falling to his knees in pain.
That meant the conversation was over and he would end it. Right now.
“We’re done with this.” Her breath hiccupped and the sharp intake echoed in his ears as he bent over and lifted her off the ground. She landed on his shoulder with her head at his back. “Let’s go.”
Joel shook his head. “Man, this is a bad solution.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Kelsey stammered and spoke in half sentences. She finally got out a string of words. “What are you doing?”
“Since you want to do this the hard way, we will.”
Then he walked out the back door as she started to scream.
Chapter Three
Kelsey stopped kicking and squirming as her brain rebooted. She looked down and saw his jeans and back, an odd from-above shot of his butt and the ground racing by beneath his feet. Being upside down with his fat-free shoulder digging into her stomach, she didn’t have a good angle to nail him in the back. That was okay. She needed to save her energy and come up with a plan to get off this guy and out of there.
She also had to beat back the wave of disappointment swamping her. The wounded military hero backstory she’d created in her mind and spun into interesting tales didn’t fit the real man at all. She’d secretly declared him a hottie and thought about him far too often once the workday ended and she lay in her bed.
Now she knew she’d picked the wrong description. Something that summed up a bossy, manhandling secretive liar would have been more appropriate.
Paxton or Pax or whatever he wanted to call himself carried weapons and got all grumbly and demanding when he wanted something. The idea she’d once thought of him as sweet and had piled all those free doughnuts on him … she wanted every delicious calorie back. The least he could have done was gain weight because really, she needed something to slow him down.
Even with the slight limp—an injury she now totally viewed as an act—he’d stalked down the alley with only the barest crunch of gravel beneath his shoes to give away his position. The bouncing steps continued as they rounded the car and walked within a few feet of the SUV’s back door.
Once he got her in there, breaking free could be impossible. No way was she going anywhere with two men she didn’t know. She’d taken the lessons and listened to the lectures. She’d already lived through an attack once in her life, years ago.
She would not be a victim again.
She’d be smart, pick the exact right moment and then run in the direction of the nearest person or telephone, screaming her head off as she went.
The door on the opposite side of the car opened. Twisting around on Pax’s shoulder, she looked through the window and spied Joel sliding across the passenger side of the backseat. She could only guess he was her assigned babysitter for their ride to wherever.
Just as she saw the gun in his hand, her butt smacked against the side of the car as Pax balanced her weight. Keys jangled and the world spun around her, the clear blue sky whizzing by, as her feet finally hit the ground.
Pax kept a steady hand on her arm as he reached for the door handle. “We’re done with the nonsense, right?”
Whatever that meant. She nodded, trying to look obedient and terrified, though that last one wasn’t much of a stretch for her limited acting skills. If the blood pounding in her ears and wild flip-flopping of her stomach were any indication, she registered pretty high on the terror scale.
He ducked his head and stared straight into her eyes. “Kelsey?”
“Fine, yes.” She just needed him to shift an inch or two to the side, move a little out of the way, and she was out of there.
With a click, the door opened. He pulled it toward him with slow precision, coaxing her into the small space he created. Inch by inch she crept closer to being penned in and vulnerable.
No way was this happening a second time. The first scarred her, left her sleep tortured and her trust in tatters for years. The seventeen-year-old version of her made a vow never to go back to that dark place, to fight no matter what, and she intended to honor that promise.
Angling her body, she turned to get a better position and set her weight so she could spring off her back leg and race down the alley to the open street beyond. She launched and miscalculated the opening. Her hip banged off the edge of the door.
Red lights danced in front of her eyes and her leg went numb. Then the pain came roaring on, pulsing and knee-buckling in its intensity. Her mouth dropped open to yelp but no sound escaped.
He threw the door open wide and put his hands on the sides of her waist in a gentle touch that somehow managed to hold her upright. Concern showed in his narrowed eyes. “Are you okay?”
“That hurt like a—”
“I bet.”
He touched his fingers against the throbbing spot on the side of her leg. The rubbing eased the burning enough for her concentration to rev up again. She pushed out all sense of comfort and lowered her head, getting him to look down.
With her hands on his arm, she shoved with all her strength and bolted. She heard him swear as his body thudded against the side of the car. But she was gone. She sprinted down the alley, glancing around for any sign of life or a place to duck and hide. The wind whipped around her as footsteps thudded behind her, growing louder with each step.
“Kelsey, stop!” Pax’s husky voice, fueled with fury, bounced off the brick walls, magnifying the sound.
She saw the bright light at the far end of the alley and headed for it. Thirty feet away, half the distance between the SUV and freedom, a shadow moved in. She opened her mouth to scream for help as she heard the skid of stones and felt a muscled arm band around her waist. The smell she associated with Pax—a mix of citrus and pine—fell over her.
She tried to wrestle away from him until she saw the familiar black suit on the stranger at the end of the alley. And the gun he held in his hand.
“Get down.” The heat of Pax’s body enveloped her the second before his words sank in.
The air rushed out of her and her footing failed. Pax’s legs tangled with hers as his body wrapped around hers from behind. His weight pummeled into her and they both dropped through the air. She raised her hands and closed her eyes, waiting for her face to smack against the hard pavement and hoping her fingers could somehow minimize the painful blow.
Noise thundered around her until she couldn’t tell the sounds of her screaming from the other shouts filling the air. Her legs took flight behind her. One minute she saw the ground racing up and the next they twisted and she landed with a hard smack against Pax’s chest. He grunted and swore as his hand curled around her head and his body absorbed most of the impact.
They’d barely landed when he rolled and tucked her under him. In a continuous move, he came up over top of her and swung out his arm. One, two bangs boomed above her. She smelled a faint scent of burning and heard people yelling at the end of the alley for someone to call 911.
Pax’s hand dropped and his body grew limp, pressing deeper against her. “Got him,” he whispered.
In her head the whole scene took an hour, but she guessed it was less than a minute in real time. She let her head drop against the ground as she watched a puff of white cloud shift as it skimmed the blue sky. It took another second for her breathing to return to normal and her heart to stop knocking against the inside wall of her chest.
Her head fell to the side and she glanced back at the SUV. Joel lay stretched out on the seat with his hands still fixed on the gun with the weapon aimed. That fast, she remembered the suited man, and her gaze flipped back to the opening to the street where people now gathered. A man was down with a gun visible by his hand.
When she looked up again, Pax loomed over her, staring down. “I had to.”
She tried to raise her hand and put her palm against his cheek, but her arms suddenly weighed a ton each. “You shot him.”
Pax winced as if she’d struck him. “He was going for you.”
She didn’t understand the look of pain in his eyes. Who he really was and why he’d walked into her life were still parts of a greater mystery, but this time she didn’t doubt his protection.
Maybe it was intuition or adrenaline, or just the shock of so much violence on the quaint streets of Annapolis. “Right.”
His eyes narrowed as he struggled to sit up and help her do the same. “This is about your brother.”
“I … wait, what?” Of all the things she expected him to say, that wasn’t even on the list. “What are you talking about?”
“Your brother ticked off the wrong people and now someone wants to bring you in to flush Sean out.”
The words pelted her. They scrambled and unscrambled, but she couldn’t put them together in any logical way in her brain.
“Talk later. We need to get out of here.” A shadow fell over them. Joel bent over with his hands on his knees. His voice wobbled a bit on each word. “Ben’s handling things out front, but the police are coming and we need to be gone.”
She nodded because she had no idea what to say. This, like so much in her life, was about the men in it. First her dad, now Sean. Their choices. Their actions.
Pax grimaced as he stood up and stretched his legs. When he reached down to her, this time she grabbed his hand and jumped to her feet. Standing in front of him, her fingers speared through his, an odd calm blanketed her. They weren’t out of danger and none of what had happened made sense, but for the first time since Pax walked through her door this morning, a sense of safety radiated through her.
He gave her hand a squeeze. “No more running.”
“I don’t trust you, but I’m not stupid. You always go with the guy who saved your life.”
“Smart woman.”
But she wasn’t ready to turn to mush and follow every order he threw out. “I want answers.”
“Then get in the car.”
BRYCE KINGSTON BALANCED his palms against the sill and looked out his office window. His fingers tapped against the glass as he watched the steady lines of traffic move in each direction and with amazing slowness on the highway sixteen floors below.
After a quick glance at his watch, he shook his head with a harsh laugh. Never mind the hour of the day, barely lunchtime and nowhere near rush hour. The close-in proximity of Tysons Corner, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., meant cars idled and passengers baked in the burning sun and claustrophobic humidity as they tried to go anywhere in the summer heat.
The high-rise space, with its soaring windows and plush carpet, telegraphed the business image he wanted. The granite lobby and bank of security monitors, all designed by him with a team of high-priced architects, created the desired public impression of safety and wealth. He didn’t have a fancy water view or the prime location near the Kennedy Center, but he had the end of the cul-de-sac spot in a business park within a reasonable drive of the airport.
Then there was the real-estate advantage in terms of the clients, and that’s all that mattered to him as the founder of Kingston Inc. One division provided high-speed communication services to the government, ensuring continuous service and functioning networks.
But the new division would be the key to the company’s future. He was sure of it. The high-tech division dealt with top-secret electronic surveillance and assisted the intelligence community and military in collecting and relaying information.
Not bad for a guy who spent most of his youth getting beat up on the school bus for spending so much time in computer class.
After a few years of leaner times and financial insecurities, the business plan was back on track. Well, not all of it. Sean Moore proved to be a wild card. Bryce never expected a low-level computer programmer to sit at the heart of potential corporate-ruining disaster.
“Sir?” Bryce’s assistant, Glenn Harber, stuck his head in the small space he made when he opened the door.
Bryce didn’t hear the knock, but he knew Glenn didn’t skip that requirement. Tall and lean and still an expert rower and member of a team of young businessmen who met on the Potomac River well before dawn twice per week, Glenn knew about structure. He was not a man who shortcut the rules or invaded privacy without a care.
Four years out of business school and loaded down with two master’s degrees and a host of other useless academic information, Glenn had demonstrated his commitment to the company. He came in early and left late. He often flew on the corporate jet for meetings and visits to military bases for demonstrations. And right now he looked as if he’d eaten a heaping plate of rotten conference food.