Afterglow (43 page)

Not to mention all the bullshit his mother had fed him, and the proof, impossible to dispute, that he’d seen with his own eyes. What in his life had been real? Rand wondered bitterly. His entire life had apparently been manipulated and twisted to suit Paul’s every fucking whim. He’d thrown away the one truth—Dakota—for his unworthy parents. He
deserved
to be shot for his fucking stupidity. He was in the right place for that to happen.

“Yet another way you failed me,” Paul told him shortly. “I knew she was the love of your life, son. I worked with what I had. I need her to stabilize the formula for mass production, and you were worthless at keeping her in line.”

“Well, you didn’t get that right either. She was the last person I would’ve called, even if it had occurred to me do to so. I didn’t want her anywhere near this clusterfuck. I asked a friend for hel—” His voice choked off as he saw a gleam, a spark of satisfaction flash in his father’s eyes.

Jesus. He stiffened. He’d been keeping Stark apprised of everything that was going on. Was Zak Stark a part of this too? Because if he was, there was no goddamned cavalry charging to the rescue, now or ever. Was the small boat still where they’d left it at the base of the bluff? Hell, could they even get back there in the pitch dark? And that was if they weren’t shot or otherwise rendered fucking dead.

“Yes, Stark,” Paul said with a self-satisfied smile. “I knew our girl had gone to work for him last year. Nothing escapes my notice. I banked on him sending her to you. Either way, I won.”

“Are you deaf or just stupid? Let me repeat this more slowly,” Dakota said, taking an aggressive step forward, and only Rand’s fingers on her wrist kept her from going right up to Paul. Fury made her voice hard as she bit out, “I. Will. Not. Help. You. Or work with you. Or advise you. Or anything else with you. Go. Fuck. Yourself.”

Paul continued to ignore her, but the tic under his right eye got more pronounced. “Since your mother believed
everyone
was out to get her money, she bought into the betrayal story hook, line, and sinker. I knew she’d go running off to show you that carefully constructed dossier, but the PI screwed up and gave it to her too soon.” Paul folded his hands inside his sleeves. “It took a lot of work to get Dr. North here where I need her.”

Rand considered the weight of a calibrator on a nearby worktable as his second weapon. “What do you mean, a ‘lot of work’?”

“You were supposed to go to Paris for your honeymoon after your romantic Valentine’s Day wedding. You would have encountered a tragic accident, Dakota would have gone somewhere to recover from her deep sorrow. Instead, she’d have been here with me. With her help, I could’ve gotten Rapture on the market two years ago.”

“Did you kill Catherine intentionally?” Rand asked flatly.

“She was my final test. Rapture built up extremely quickly in her system. I thought she’d last at least another few weeks. Her premature death was very inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient, you sick fuck?” Rand lunged for him, hands outstretched to grab him by the throat. Creed jumped forward and stuck Rand’s own weapon in his face. Son of a bitch was expressionless unless he had his glowing eyes on Paul.

“The lab’s impressive,” Dakota inserted, drawing Rand back and giving him a moment to assimilate all the information. He kept his fingers more lightly banding her wrist. “How long has this, this abomination—and God, yes, I mean the bunch of you as well as the lab—been in an area that’s counted among the most holy places in the world? Why haven’t the monks shut you down and tossed you into the Aegean?”

“We built the lab three years ago. They have no idea it’s here, and they don’t ask questions. They think we’re here year-round. We come into a small cove under cover of darkness by boat. Our closest neighbor is more than ten miles away. No one comes out to this old monastery. Dangerously unstable, the local residents believe. They think I’m a saint for living in such onerous conditions without complaint. A perfect location, with an abundant natural resource right at our fingertips.”

Dangerously unstable
sounded damned good to Rand. He could work with that—he’d been doing it his entire life.

“SZIK, TAKE DAKOTA TO
her quarters,” Paul told Creed when Dakota yawned—not from exhaustion, which she felt in spades, but from fear. She was too wired to be tired and knew her body just needed the extra oxygen. But whatever delayed the inevitable was fine with her. She yawned again for good measure.

“As impatient as I am to get started, clearly she’s tired and needs to rest before starting work,” he concluded.

“Wherever Dakota goes, I go.” Rand wrapped his arm firmly around her waist, pulling her tight against his side. Very helpful, since Dakota’s knees were decidedly shaky. She felt as though she’d been dropped into a bad play and someone had forgotten to give her the damned script.

“And we’re not staying,” she added for those who hadn’t got the memo.

Paul withdrew his black-framed glasses from his pocket, unfolded them, and, in no damn hurry, put them on his nose. His chest rose and fell with a soft sigh as his magnified eyes gave her a steady look. “I’m afraid I must insist.”

“I’m not afraid to decline,” she countered. She had no idea how they were going to get the hell out of there. None. Before Rand was able to get off five shots from her little gun, the men would shoot him on the spot. He was redundant now. They all knew it.

“Stalemate, Paul,” Rand told him. “I know her well. Once Dakota makes up her mind, you might as well give up.”

Maintaining eye contact with her, Paul told Creed, “Shoot him.”

She stepped in front of Rand, her body blocking his. “Go ahead. If you shoot him, you’ll shoot me.” Rand’s big hands closed in a punishing grip around her waist. She stood her ground, on her tiptoes to cover as much of him as possible. “We’ll die together and you still won’t get your damned drug stabilized. Save the blood and gore, and let us go.”

Paul gave a small signal, and the four men rushed forward to block her and Rand’s movements. Boxed in, they had no options. Dakota stayed where she was, despite Rand’s painful grip on her hips as he tried to move her out of the way.

“What kind of father are you that you’d kill your own son?” she demanded, digging her shoes into the ancient stone floor for purchase.

“The kind who never wanted a dependent, but caved because the bitch wanted a kid, and she held the purse strings. The more she loved him, the less I could tolerate either of them. Szik, come here,” Paul said without a hint of inflection, yet the hair on Dakota’s body rose and her blood ran cold.

Seth Creed, powerful, award-winning Hollywood director, dropped to one knee beside Rand’s father. He started unbuttoning his shirt.

Rand’s fingers gripped her waist so hard Dakota could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips. She could hardly breathe as she stared, transfixed.

“Jesus,” Rand whispered as Creed’s shirt dropped to the uneven stone floor. From below his collarbone all the way into the waistband of his khaki slacks, his pale, hairless torso was covered with scars. Neat, systematic. Straight lines and small circles. Some old, some fresh.

Paul had played a cruel, macabre game of tic-tac-toe all over him.

Bile rose in the back of Dakota’s throat as Paul removed a lighter from the pocket of his robe and brought it to the tip of the cigar she’d forgotten he was holding. Rand’s hands slid from her waist, his arms circling her body, holding her hard against him. She strained to get free, to help Creed. To beat the living crap out of Paul. To puke. “My God! Don’t—”

He lit and puffed. Lit and puffed. Checked the tip, then nodded to Creed.

Head bowed, the director extended his left arm, palm up, bracing it on his bent knee.

Rand’s arms were a steel corset around her ribs, cutting off her circulation and restricting her breathing. Nevertheless, she wasn’t capable of taking in air anyway, her vision reduced to a pinpoint on the tableau of the two men just feet away.

Head cocked slightly, Paul looked down, clearly searching the mess of angry red and white scars before firmly applying the red-hot tip of the cigar to the inside bend of Creed’s elbow.

The director neither flinched nor made a sound as his flesh sizzled. The sweet, sickly smell of burning flesh made Dakota gag. Black snow obliterated her vision, and she sagged in Rand’s grip. One second she was limp and nauseated; the next she was shoved hard, propelled toward Paul and Creed without warning. She crashed into them, landing hard in a tangle of arms and legs.

One of them was heavy on top of her, and she lay on a man’s leg or arm. She couldn’t see anything, but all hell was breaking loose—shots fired, men yelling, the pounding of running footsteps, chaos. She didn’t know whether to cover her head, run and hide, or find her .38 and use those five damned bullets.

She struggled to break free, shoving at Creed’s bare shoulder, seeing the deep slices and cigar burns on his skin up close and horrifyingly personal. “Get off, get off!” She shoved at his chest, trying to roll him off her midriff. He was a deadweight, and heavy as hell. Nearby she saw Paul’s broken glasses and his outflung arm. He wasn’t moving.

She flinched as shots were fired; a man screamed. More shots. More shouts. Glass breaking. Metal hitting metal.

She used every ounce of strength she had, and finally Creed flopped over like a dead fish. Panting, Dakota came up on her elbow beside him. She tried to make sense of what she was looking at. There was a large, gory hole where his head should be. She tasted bile and tried to scramble away backward like a crab. “Oh, my God, oh, my God!”

Something incredibly loud exploded out of sight, and she flinched as she staggered to her feet. She slipped, righted herself, and saw that she was crouched in a glossy pool of bright red blood, which was spreading on the stone floor.

HIS SICK FUCK OF
a sperm donor wanted Dakota alive. Rand was expendable. Rand almost missed the subtle order to take him down as Paul and Creed performed their bit of theater.

He’d seen a movement out of the corner of his eye and shoved Dakota the hell out of the way as one of Paul’s men tried to separate them. It was a split-second decision to get her away from him before he was attacked or shot at point-blank range. A through and through would seriously injure her, if not worse. He wasn’t taking any risks with her life.

He’d thrown her a lot harder than he intended in his haste. With a shriek of surprise, she went barreling into Paul and Creed like a bowling ball into two pins. They all crashed to the floor.

As the first guy reached for him, Rand grabbed the muzzle of his Uzi with one hand and shoved his palm directly up and into the man’s nose, wrenching the weapon out of his hands and breaking his nose at the same time. With the element of surprise on his side, he swung the butt of the submachine gun and used it to deliver a swift uppercut to the jaw. His opponent went down without a murmur.

The next guy, big and rock-solid, grabbed Rand around the waist and tried to squeeze the life out of him. As he felt a rib crack, then another, Rand head-butted him. The guy just squeezed harder. There went another rib.

Number three came up beside them, hit him on the side of the head with something fucking hard, and made him see stars. Rand fumbled the automatic into position in his numb fingers and popped him. At this close range, it was a very effective deterrent. Blood splattered on his face and chest. Three dropped to the floor. Out of the game.

The man holding him in such a tight embrace stumbled over the body, and he was free. Rand stomped him. Not very effective in running shoes, but the man stayed down, looking dazed. Rand bent and grabbed his weapon.

He heard the shot, felt something icy cold then fiery hot on his upper arm, and knew he’d been hit. Didn’t hurt.

There were a hell of a lot more men in the room now, as the ones outside poured in to see what the commotion was about. Several converged on him at once, firing wildly. They were piss-poor marksmen, but even bad marksmen eventually hit what they were aiming at. The next man was firing as he ran. Number six came in from the left; number seven and eight discovered pretty damn fast how inaccurate the shots were when they were in motion.

Shit exploded as they converged across the lab, firing wildly. Fragments of smashed glass flew, instruments clattered to the floor, and a stained-glass window shattered, rainbows of glass splintering once more on impact with the hard stone floor.

Flashing a glance at Dakota, who was tangled up with Paul and Creed, Rand opened fire with his newly acquired Uzi. Six hundred rounds a minute. Range two hundred feet. He could take them all out in seconds. If the fuckers weren’t shooting back. He spun, squeezing off a barrage of bullets, attempting to drop as many as possible before they shot him.

Number eight fell, eyes staring sightlessly at the domed ceiling. Six crumpled and lay still.

His weapon was out of ammo. Rand tossed it aside and brought up the second. But before he could squeeze off a shot, there was a round of weapons fire from the sidelines.

He brought the automatic up as more black-garbed men appeared out of nowhere. He was only ten feet from where Dakota had just struggled out from under the weight of Creed and Paul.

He ran, yelling her name. Skidding to her side, he grabbed her arm and hauled her closer. Her clothes and hands stained with shiny red blood. “Are you hurt?” he demanded, even as he pulled her behind him, his attention fixed on the new arrivals.

She was breathing hard. “Blood’s not mine.”

“Good, that’s good,” he said, relieved, but now concentrating on the new threat. This batch looked a damn sight more professional than the others; this was serious firepower in the hands of men who knew what the hell they were about. Six of them, dressed from head to toe in unrelieved matte black.

He squeezed off a shot.
Click
. Fuck.