A Billionaire's Redemption (23 page)

Gabe scrambled off him and leaped for the gun. He snatched it up while Ward screamed curses, but he wasn’t fast enough. Ward rolled to his knees and got an arm around Willa’s throat by the time Gabe turned, brandishing the pistol. Ward laughed, a hyena-like bray that made his blood run cold.

“Take the shot,” Willa begged. “I trust you.”

“Are you sure?” Gabe asked her gently.

“I’m sure. I love you.”

Gabe took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

Chapter 20

W
illa felt James tense as Gabe aimed the
pistol. Ward was going to throw her in front of the shot. But she was okay with
that. Once she was dead, Gabe would kill this monster. Gabe would be safe, and
her students would be safe. Funny how, when she loved a person, she was willing
to sacrifice herself for them, no questions asked. No one had ever told her that
was part of love. Live and learn.

Or in her case, learn and die.

A pair of gunshots exploded deafeningly, one so close after the
other that she barely could tell them apart. Warmth and wetness exploded across
her face as the impact jolted her. But she didn’t feel anything else. That was
nice. She’d hoped death would be like this. Peaceful. Painless.

But then sounds intruded on the moment. Commotion. Someone—no.
Many someones—rushed toward her. Man-shaped shadows shouting. Hands grabbing at
her. Tearing ropes and broken wood away from her. Really. She didn’t care if
they buried her still tied to the chair she’d died in.

“Willa? Can you hear me?”

The voice was familiar. Beloved. Gabe. Oh, no. He hadn’t died,
too, had he? “Are you coming with me?” she asked tentatively. “We can go to
Heaven together. I was hoping you’d survive. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“Honey, what are you talking about? Open your eyes.”

She thought they already were open. She concentrated on her
eyelids and was surprised that they moved. Gabe’s beautiful, worried face swam
in front of her.

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “I’m not in any pain. This
isn’t so bad, really.”

“Baby, you’re alive. I didn’t shoot you. I shot James in the
face. I knew he would move at the last second, so I shot wide the first time,
and then, after he’d jerked in reaction, I adjusted and took the second
shot.”

“What?” She blinked up at him, not understanding.

“James is dead. You’re alive. We’re both alive. You’re safe
now.”

Hands, many hands, lifted her to her feet. But then Gabe’s arms
went around her, crushing her against him and suddenly, her world righted
itself. This was home. She knew where she was now.

“Oh, God, I thought you were going to die,” she sobbed against
his chest. “And James was going to kill my students—”

“Shhh. It’s all over now. He’s not going to hurt anyone else.
I’ve got you.”

“Don’t ever let me go, Gabe,” she whispered.

“I’m not planning on it, baby.”

From the safety of his embrace, she looked around at the dozen
men around them. They wore all-black, military-style clothes and were toting all
kinds of fancy gear and guns. She didn’t recognize any of them. These weren’t
her security guards.

“Who are you?” she asked the nearest one of the strange
men.

“That’s a damned good question,” Cade McGrath, the leader of
her security team, growled from across the space.

She glanced over at Cade, surprised to see him restrained in
plastic handcuffs and guarded by two of the black-clad men.

A man who looked to be in his mid-thirties stepped forward.
“Senator Merris?”

“Yes. That’s me,” she answered cautiously.

“Your father leased this facility to us some months ago. We’ve
been using the Vacarro Operations base to launch various, umm, missions, south
of the border. I’m afraid this is a highly classified military operation.”

“You’re from the Committee for Miscellaneous Affairs, aren’t
you?” she exclaimed.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You were never supposed to find out
about that.”

Gabe piped up. “John Merris was reporting the payments from you
guys as income from his oil wells, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” the spokesman answered. “I suppose he could
have done that.”

“I knew it!” Gabe exclaimed. “There was no way this field was
still producing any oil. I couldn’t figure out where the income was coming
from.”

“So we’re not fracking for natural gas and poisoning the
locals?” Willa asked.

“There’s no drilling of any kind happening on this property,
ma’am,” the man answered.

Well, that was a relief. She would hate to think Merris Oil had
made anyone sick.

“We’re going to need you and Mr. Dawson and Mr. McGrath to sign
security statements agreeing not to reveal anything you saw here today.”

“What about him?” Willa asked, forcing herself to look toward
the covered lump that was James Ward’s remains.

“We’ll turn his body over to the coroner. The ballistics
analysis will show Mr. Ward was shot with his own weapon. Mr. Dawson, in fact,
rescued you singlehandedly, and your statements to the police never have to
reflect that we were here. After you and Mr. Dawson talk to the police, I’m sure
they’ll rule that the shooting was a clear case of self-defense.”

The next few minutes were a whirl of activity as she and Gabe
and McGrath were hustled out of the hangar and driven to McGrath’s SUV. James
Ward’s body was laid in the back of their vehicle. It was creepy riding back to
town with a dead man in the back, but true to his word, Gabe kept an arm around
her and kept her plastered to his side all the way back to Vengeance. A pair of
similarly black and powerful SUVs accompanied them back to Vengeance and the
police station. But as McGrath parked in the back of the building, the two SUVs
disappeared.

For once, the press wasn’t hovering vulturelike, sniffing for a
story. She and Gabe had to be separated to give their statements as to what had
happened, and the whole time she felt bereft, like part of her was missing.
After she finished that, she had to sign an inch-high stack of papers dealing
with not revealing classified information on pretty much pain of death.

The sheriff surprised her by stepping into the little
interrogation room in person as she was finishing up. He said quietly, “I
thought you might be interested to know what the preliminary examination of Mr.
Ward’s body has shown.”

“The coroner’s already done an autopsy?”

“Not yet. He has started it, though. First thing he did was
x-ray Mr. Ward’s head. Had to locate the bullet to know where to dig, I mean, do
surgery, to remove it.”

She made a face as he continued hastily, “At any rate, it turns
out Mr. Ward had a sizable brain tumor. Right in the middle of his head near
something called the amygdala or something like that. Doc says it’s the smell
center of the brain. Did Ward say anything to you about smelling strange
things?”

“No, but now that you mention it, every time he caught a whiff
of my gardenia perfume he went crazy.”

“Doc said the right scents might have triggered violent,
psychotic episodes in Ward.”

Thunderstruck, she thought back to all the times James had
become violent around her, starting with the sexual assault. Every time, she’d
been wearing her gardenia perfume, and every time, he’d been plenty close enough
to smell it.

The sheriff held her chair as she stood up, stunned. “You were
mighty lucky, ma’am. Next time, call the police. Civilians shouldn’t tangle with
criminals on their own.”

“Believe me, I never plan to do something so crazy again,” she
replied fervently. “And I will most certainly leave it to the police if there is
a next time!”

She stepped out of the interrogation room and was immediately
swept into Gabe’s arms. “You okay?” he murmured.

“Yes. You?”

“Right as rain. Let’s get out of here.”

Someone had brought Gabe’s SUV over to the police station while
they were making their statements, and the sheriff handed Gabe the keys as they
stepped out into the main room.

“Ready to face the press?” she asked as they approached the
front doors.

“Stick with me, kid. I’ll show you how to scare them off.”

True to his word, he put on a ferocious scowl that dared anyone
to get in his way and they swept past the crowd of shouting reporters without
incident. He closed her in the Escalade and guided the vehicle away from the
curb. She was surprised when he didn’t point the SUV toward anywhere that either
of them called home. In fact, he headed out toward the west side of town once
more.

“Where are we going?” she asked in alarm. She had no wish to
revisit the scene of James’s death.

Gabe merely smiled enigmatically at her. “Relax. You’re gonna
like it.”

She trusted him. As they wound into the canyons, she let the
rugged beauty of the Texas landscape wash over her. It was rough country. But
tough. Like her and Gabe. They’d survived an ordeal that would have broken
someone with less courage. With less to live for.

She smiled as Gabe turned the Escalade into the scenic overlook
the local kids called Lover’s Point.

“I thought for once you might like to come up here for more
than the view. Wanna make out?” he asked gruffly.

“With you? Always.”

“About Melinda. I was talking about you with the doctors when I
said I loved you. She misunderstood and barged out to spout all that crap about
marrying me. I’m totally over her,” he finished adamantly. “You’ve got to
believe me.”

“What about that other part you told the doctors. That you were
planning to propose?”

“Well. About that.” He got out of the car and came around to
open her door for her. He escorted her to the front of the car where a towering
thunderhead blocked the sun. It was backlit in shades of lavender and gray, with
a corona of sunbeams bursting outward in all directions like the promise of a
new day.

“Are you sure I’m not too old for you, Willa?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you’re a hundred years old,
Gabe.”

He laughed and knelt on one knee in front of her. “Then, if you
will have this old wreck, would you make me the happiest man on earth and do me
the honor of becoming my wife?”

Her heart expanded as big as the Texas sky and filled with as
many colors of joy. “Oh, yes, Gabe. I will. I definitely will.”

* * * * *

Don’t miss the next romance in the
VENGEANCE IN TEXAS
series: Carla Cassidy’s
A PROFILER’S CASE FOR
SEDUCTION
,
available next month.

Keep reading for an excerpt from
Colton
Showdown
by Marie Ferrarella.

We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Romantic Suspense title.

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Chapter 1

H
e wasn't one of those people who had an obsession about cleanliness. Tate Colton had never had a problem with getting his hands—or any other part of him, for that matter—dirty, if the job required it. That kind of dirt he could put up with and ignore.

But dealing with these subhuman creatures who made their living trafficking in human flesh, in destroying young lives and thinking absolutely nothing of it, was an entirely different matter. It made him want to go back to the hotel room where he was registered under his assumed name and take a shower. A long, scalding-hot shower to wash away their stink.

Once he received the assignment from his supervisor, Hugo Villanueva, he knew that going undercover in order to find and save the Amish young women who had been kidnapped would require him to associate with, in his opinion, the absolute dregs of the earth.

Dregs in expensive suits.

You could dress a monkey up in fine clothes, but he was still a monkey, Tate thought. No amount of expensive clothing could change that, or change the fact that the people he was forced to interact with were lower than scum.

He'd think more about stepping on a beetle than he would about terminating the existence of one of these cockroaches.

To look at the man who had brought him up to this particular hotel suite—his current tour guide to this underworld—someone might have thought the man was a successful businessman or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company instead of the utterly soulless lowlife that he actually was.

Impeccably dressed in what was easily a thousand-dollar suit, his guide to this lurid world of virgins-for-sale smirked at him confidently as he opened the door leading into the suite's bedroom.

“I'm sure we can find something to pique your appetite, Mr. Conrad,” he said.

Tate scowled at the shorter man. “I said no names,” he snapped, mindful of the part he was playing in this surreal drama.

The other man laughed, enjoying what he considered to be the display of ignorance on the part of this new client.

“Nothing to be worried about. What are they going to do?” he asked, gesturing at the bedroom and the young women being held there. Each and every one of them were dressed in identical long, slinky white gowns. “Post it on the internet? None of them even know what the hell the internet
is,
” he stressed, jeering at the young women who were virtually prisoners in this suite. “They all live in the Stone Age. Trust me.” He patted Tate's arm and the latter shrugged him off as if he was flinging off an annoying bug—an act that wasn't lost on the man. “Your name—and your sterling reputation—are both safe here,” he assured Tate.

“C'mon, c'mon,” the man snapped at the young woman he was herding into the room for his “client's” final review. “He hasn't got all night. Or have you?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Tate, a lecherous grin spread across his angular face. “You know, if you've changed your mind and want to make your purchase now—” He left the sentence open, looking at Tate expectantly.

“I haven't changed my mind,” Tate answered formally. The deal was that he got to see the young women in person in order for him to finalize his choice, and then the negotiations regarding the pending “purchase” would go from there.

Inside, Tate was struggling to contain his fury. The woman he'd “requested,” “Jade,” was looking at him apprehensively like a mistreated animal afraid of being beaten.

Had she been beaten?

Tate looked her over quickly. “What's wrong with her?” he demanded, channeling his anger into the part he was playing—a man who wanted the “goods” he was considering purchasing to be perfect. He was well aware of the fact that the blue-gray eyes continued to watch his every move. Tate swung around to confront the other man. “She looks like she's been manhandled,” he accused angrily.

The man shrugged indifferently. “Don't worry. Nothing happened that would have left a visible mark on her.” His flat, brown eyes raked over Hannah from head to toe, as if to reassure himself that she wasn't displaying any sign of bruising in plain sight. “That's the one rule—other than payment up front—the boss won't tolerate any visible marks left on the merchandise.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tate saw Hannah flinch at the label the man had contemptuously slapped on her.
Merchandise.

His anger flared.

“She's a person, not merchandise,” Tate retorted, glaring at the guard.

“Hey, at the price you're going to pay, she's anything you want her to be. You want a person? You got it, she's a person.” He turned to look at the redhead he'd led out of the bedroom for Ted Conrad's perusal. “A soft, sweet-smelling person, aren't you, honey?”

Smirking, he slid his hand along her cheek and down the side of her neck.

It was obvious that the guard didn't intend on stopping there.

“I'll thank you to take your hands off her,” Tate warned darkly as the man's hand just grazed the swell of her breasts.

Anger flashed in the other man's eyes, but just as quickly, it subsided. The main reason he'd been told to bring this client here was to get Conrad to make his final decision so that the deal could proceed.

Apparently, it looked as if the deal was about to be sealed. The bottom line was, and had always been, money. So, much as he would have personally rather shot out this client's kneecaps, the guard raised his hands in the air in mock surrender.

“They're off,” he declared dramatically, wiggling his fingers in the air to underscore his point. The smirk on his face deepened as he looked at Hannah knowingly. “So, this is the one you want, eh?”

“She's the one,” Tate replied, his tone scrubbed free of any emotion.

The other man nodded his approval. “Gotta say, you've got good taste. She's a beauty.” With hooded eyes, he looked her over again. It was obvious that he was putting himself in the client's place. “She also looks like she might last you awhile.”

Hannah drew in a breath. They'd given them all some sort of pills, but she had managed to fool her captors into thinking she'd swallowed hers when she hadn't. Each word from the guard felt like a dagger, stabbing into her heart.

Her eyes swept over both men. “Please don't do this,” Hannah pleaded.

It was impossible to know which of them she addressed her plea to.

For his part, though he took care not to show it, Tate felt terrible. He could certainly imagine what was going through Hannah's mind. What Caleb's sister was anticipating. He would have given anything to comfort her, but that wasn't what was going to save her.

In order to accomplish that, he had to be convincing in his role. Which meant that he needed to go on with this charade, continue to maintain this facade so that he could, ultimately, get her and her friends away from these men.

If he went about it the traditional way, pulling out a service weapon and threatening to shoot the other man if he got in his way, Tate knew that he might—or might not—be able to get out of the hotel with Hannah. Most likely, they'd be stopped before they ever made it to the street level.

No, this way was more effective. It just required a great deal of focus and an iron will—and the ability to block out that look in her eyes to keep it from getting to him.

“What did I tell you about opening your mouth?” the guard was demanding angrily. He pulled back his hand, ready to bring it down on her face.

Hannah's alarmed cry tore at his heart.

“If she has one mark on her, the deal's off,” Tate warned him in a voice that was deadly calm, belying the turmoil that lay just beneath.

The guard stopped in midswing. The expression on his face told Tate that the guard was getting fed up with what he undoubtedly considered a high-and-mighty client. The man let his guard down for a second, the sneer on his face telling Tate that he thought he knew his type. Not just knew it, but hated it because he felt inferior to the supposedly rich client.

“You don't buy her, someone else will,” the guard jeered contemptuously. But he dropped his hand to his side nonetheless. “Sit!” he ordered Hannah with less compassion than he would have directed to a pet dog. Only when she complied did the guard finally look his way. “So, I take it we've got a deal. You're interested in acquiring this tasty morsel?”

Tate's expression gave nothing away, including the fact that he could easily vivisect him without so much as a thought. “I might be,” he replied after a beat had gone by.

“Might be,” the man echoed with contempt. He was at the end of his patience. “Look, the man I represent doesn't like having his time wasted. We're alike that way because neither do I.”

Tate slowly walked around the young woman, deliberately pausing and taking a lock of her hair between his fingers. He made a show of sniffing it. “That goes both ways.”

Suspicion immediately entered the guard's eyes. “So what do you have in mind?”

There was no hesitation on Tate's part. “A man doesn't buy an expensive car without taking it on a test run, seeing how it handles,” he pointed out, his voice continuing to be flat.

It killed him to see that Hannah had winced again in response to his words, and he saw real fear in her eyes as she watched him.

How did he get it across to her that he was one of the good guys without blowing his cover?

“Go on, I'm listening,” the other man said.

“I'd like a private session with her, to see how we ‘get along,'” Tate proposed.

“The boss doesn't deal in damaged goods,” the other man snapped.

“I have no intentions of ‘damaging' her. Just ‘sampling' her,” Tate informed him. “There are a lot of ways a man can see if he likes the goods he's getting.”

He was standing in front of Hannah now, looking into her eyes, wishing there was some way to set her mind at ease. His back was to the other man and he smiled at Hannah. The smile was kind, devoid of the lust that had supposedly brought him here. Lowering his head so that his lips were right next to the young woman's ear, he whispered, “Caleb sent me,” before straightening and backing off.

Her eyes widened, but she held her tongue.

Tate said a quick, silent prayer of thanksgiving to whoever it was that watched over law enforcement officers.

“What did you say to her?” the guard demanded. There was no arguing with his tone.

Tate turned to look at him, emulating the latter's previous smug look. “I told her that paradise was at hand.”

As he said that, Tate slanted a look toward Hannah, hoping she would put two and two together and take some comfort in the covert message. He couldn't tell by her expression if she'd believed him—or even understood what he was trying to tell her. He wasn't even sure if she'd heard him say that Caleb had sent him.

Terror, he knew, had a way of blocking out everything else.

The man relaxed a little, then laughed. “Good one,” he pronounced. “That's where she and some of those other girls come from, some backward hole-in-the-wall called Paradise Ridge.”

Tate tried to sound casually uninterested. A man making small talk, involved in a meaningless conversation that would be forgotten before he walked out the door. “Is that where all the girls are from? This Paradise Ridge place you just mentioned?”

His question was met with a nod. “This batch is. They picked up others from—” He abruptly stopped his narrative. His eyebrows narrowed over small, deep-set eyes. “What's with all the questions?”

Tate shrugged. “Just trying to find out how big a selection you've got—in case things don't work out with this one,” he explained.

“Oh, it'll work out,” the man promised. There was no room for argument. He looked at Hannah pointedly. “She knows what'll happen to her if it doesn't. Don't you, honey?” The smile on his lips was cold enough to freeze a bucket of water in the middle of May.

This time, instead of fear rising in Hannah's eyes, Tate thought he saw anger. Anger and frustration because, he guessed, there was nothing she could do right now about the anger she was feeling.

The other man was apparently oblivious to her reaction. It was clear that fear was all he looked for, all he valued.

“Don't want to wind up like your girlfriends now, do you?” he taunted her.

Things suddenly fell into place. The annoying little troll was referring to the two dead girls Emma and Hannah's brother had initially discovered. Solomon Miller, a so-called “repentant” Amish outcast had brought them straight to the bodies, hoping to use the fact that he was informing on his “boss” as a bargaining chip.

Initially part of the group of men involved in the sex trafficking ring, Miller had become the task force's inside man, trading information for the promise of immunity once all the pieces of this case came together and they got enough on the men running this thing to take them to court—and put them away for the next century or so.

If they didn't wait until they discovered exactly who was behind all this and bring him—or her—in, if they just grabbed up the two-bit players they were dealing with in this little drama, the operation would just fold up and relocate someplace else.

And Amish girls would continue disappearing as long as there were sick men to make their abductions a profitable business.

No, they had to catch the mastermind in order for this operation to be deemed a success.

“Don't threaten her,” Tate warned. When the guard shot him a malevolent look, he told him, “I want her to be willing to be with me, not because she was threatened with harm if she wasn't.”

The guard looked at him as if he wasn't dealing with a full deck. “Hey, man, don't you know? It's better when they fight you.”

The world would be a much better place if he could just squash this cockroach, Tate thought, struggling to hang on to his temper. With no qualms whatsoever, Tate would have been more than willing to put everyone out of their collective misery—himself included.