Challenging Gabriel (Knight Security 2) (18 page)

How did she feel about that?

She had never loved Clive, but she had trusted him as a friend of her father’s. She wouldn’t have married him if she hadn’t.

She had trusted him up to the point she had discovered what sort of man he truly was.

Until he took Daniel and used him as a way of trying to control her.

She knew Clive would continue to be that danger, a dark shadow over her own life as well as her son’s, if he wasn’t stopped.

A shudder ran the length of her spine. “Clive is a monster who has to be stopped.”

Lily gave her arm another squeeze. “We all make mistakes, Angel.”

She gave a watery smile. “But mine was
huge
.”

“Can you believe I tried to resist Jonas initially?” Lily confided as she moved into the kitchen area and began to make a pot of coffee. “All gorgeous six and a half feet of him. He annoyed me intensely, reminded me too much of my overbearing brothers. I made his life hell for several weeks.”

“Ah, but I very quickly wore you down with my lethal charm,” Jonas drawled as he and Gabriel came back into the house and through to the kitchen area.

“Don’t kid yourself, big guy.” Lily snuggled against him. “It was this gorgeous body that seduced me into surrender.”

Gabriel winced as Jonas chuckled. “I’m really not sure I want to hear about Jonas seducing you.”

“We didn’t find Amelia under a gooseberry bush!” his sister teased.

Gabriel had barely glanced at Angel when he came back into the house. He was almost afraid to, when he knew the moment had come for them to say good-bye. Again. But this time, he had every intention of coming back. “Would you take a walk outside with me for a few minutes?” he invited softly.

Angel looked momentarily startled by his request, that uncertainty darkening her eyes as she glanced at Daniel playing on the floor with Amelia.

“Daniel will be fine,” Lily assured her.

Her nod was abrupt as she answered Gabriel reluctantly. “Okay.”

Not exactly an auspicious beginning to their conversation, but Gabriel would take what he could get after the way he had spoken to her on the plane. There was no excuse for how he had behaved and the things he had said to her. “I owe you an apology for how I was on the plane earlier,” he said as soon as they were far enough away from the house.

Angel glanced up at him quickly and then away again. “I deserved it.”

Anger surged through Gabriel. “No, you fucking well didn’t!” He clasped her chin and lifted her face up to his, forcing her to look at him. “Angel, you have done nothing to deserve any of this. Do you understand?”

“If I hadn’t married Clive…”

“You did what you had to do.”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t like this when I married him. Arrogant and powerful, yes, but I truly believe he’s now insane.”

Gabriel grimaced. “It’s usually the way with megalomaniacs. More wants more, until eventually they believe their own distorted view of the world. Make no mistake, I will stop him, Angel.” He gazed deeply into her eyes. “By whatever means are necessary.”

Angel knew that, had known it before she had her conversation with Lily.

“Are you going to be okay with that?”

Her eyes widened incredulously. “Am I okay with you removing the threat to Daniel’s future, possibly his life?”

“And your own.” Gabriel’s hand moved to curl about her nape. “Sinclair made it clear in Majorca that he still considers you his property.”

She gave a shiver, and the warmth burned her cheeks as she remembered what else Clive had told Gabriel in Majorca. “I’m no one’s
property
.”

“No,” he acknowledged tautly. “Angel—” He broke off at the sound of a call coming in on his cell phone. “I have to answer this…” He released his hold on her nape as he took his cell phone from his jeans pocket before turning away to take the call.

Angel couldn’t hear the conversation, but she guessed from the tension in Gabriel’s back and shoulders that it wasn’t good news.

“That was Caleb,” Gabriel told her as soon as he had ended the call. “My two men followed Sinclair to London.”

“He’s at the apartment?”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“Is Caleb there now?”

“On the roof of the building opposite.”

“How many men does Clive have with him?”

He grimaced . “To quote Caleb, ‘a shit load.’”

Angel pictured Clive’s fortress of a penthouse apartment in her mind. Situated on the sixtieth floor of the building, with its own private lift, it was the easiest thing in the world for Clive’s bodyguards to prevent anyone from entering the apartment of five en-suite bedrooms, Clive’s study, the dining room, the kitchen, the three sitting rooms, and the gym.

However, the same couldn’t be said for the suite of rooms used by the housekeeper and her husband, who was Clive’s chauffeur.

She focused on Gabriel. “There’s another small private lift at the back of the building. It’s used by the staff of the people occupying the apartments. I used it a couple of times myself when I felt the need to get away from my own bodyguards for a while,” she admitted ruefully. “The security code for the lift is 1234. I know it’s a long shot, but Clive might not have thought to safeguard that way into the apartment.”

“Good to know.” Gabriel nodded. “You and Daniel will be safe here.”

“I know.”

“I have to go now.”

She knew that too. She also knew there was a chance Gabriel might not come back this time. Tears blurred her vision at the thought of never seeing him again.

“The files on the memory stick have been decoded,” Gabriel said. “But the past few weeks are obviously missing.”

“Lena?”

“Yes.”

“Do what you have to do, Gabriel.” She nodded. “When you come back, we’ll tell Daniel the truth. He already hero-worships you and will no doubt be thrilled to know you’re his daddy.”

“And you?” He grimaced. “What do you now think of the man I really am?”

She gave a puzzled shake of her head. “You’re Gabriel. You’ve always been Gabriel.”

His jaw was tight. “I’ve killed people. Lots of people. Until it sickened me.”

She wasn’t about to deny that side of Gabriel made her a little uneasy, but it didn’t change the love she felt for him. “Isn’t that the reason you left the army and chose to sit behind a desk instead?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “I’m sure the people you’ve killed were all bad people the world is better off without.”

“I thought so at the time… Angel, you have to know, I will kill Sinclair if I have to.”

She knew that, had seen Clive’s death sentence in the coldness of Gabriel’s eyes. “Which proves my point.”

“Does it?” he muttered self-disgustedly.

Angel stepped forward and placed her hand against the side of his cheek. “You’re still the man I fell in love with eight years ago.”

Gabriel flinched beneath the touch of her hand. “Are you going to be waiting for me this time?”

Her heart surged as the hope she hadn’t dared to feel flared into life. “Yes,” she assured him huskily.

His hand curved about her nape as he pulled her into his body and his mouth took possession of hers. They kissed long and deeply, Gabriel eventually breaking the kiss to rest his forehead against hers. “If I don’t come back—”

“You’re coming back!” A sob caught in her throat as she kissed him this time. Hard. Possessively. Hands gripping the front of his T-shirt as she ended the kiss. “You’re coming back, Gabriel.”

“Take good care of our son.” He stepped away from her. “Tell Lily and Jonas I said good-bye.”

Angel didn’t move, couldn’t move as Gabriel strode to the shadows of the tree line before stepping into those shadows and disappearing completely.

Chapter 11

“I want details of what you did with Lena and any other women these past three weeks.”

“Go to hell!”

“Been there, done that, not going back again,” Caleb assured him grimly.

Getting into Sinclair’s apartment had proved easy with Angel’s knowledge of the servants’ lift. It was doubtful Sinclair had even bothered to know where or how his housekeeper and chauffeur entered the building, as long as they did their job. His mistake.

The housekeeper and chauffeur had something of a surprise when Gabriel and Caleb stepped out of their lift. Gabriel left Caleb to speak with them, his brother giving a grim nod at a doorway down the hallway when he joined Gabriel a few seconds later.

Ironically, there were probably half a dozen bodyguards outside the apartment, but they found only two inside, both standing guard outside what proved to be Sinclair’s study. It hadn’t taken long for them to disable the two bodyguards before entering the room to find Sinclair sitting in the chair behind his imposing desk.

The older man’s hands were now tied at the back of that chair with the thin twine Caleb carried with him in one of the many pockets in his black combat trousers. So far, Sinclair had refused to answer any of their questions.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Caleb now warned him. “I don’t have a problem with killing you if it comes to that.”

“How about you?” Sinclair sneered as he turned to look at Gabriel leaning against the side of the desk, watching the proceedings through narrowed lids. “Do you have a problem with killing the husband of the woman you’re fucking?”

Gabriel resisted the urge to place his hands about the other man’s throat and squeeze until the life went out of him. “None whatsoever.”

“No?” Sinclair taunted. “Angela may not be in love with me, but I very much doubt she will find it easy going to bed with the man responsible for killing me.”

He eyed Sinclair pityingly. “You have no idea what Angel would or wouldn’t do, because you never really knew her.”

“And you think you do?”

“I know I do.”

Sinclair shook his head. “Every time she looks at you, she’ll see the man who killed her husband.”

That was what Gabriel was afraid of…

Oh, Angel might have said she was okay with it, but that was because she was still distraught over Sinclair taking Daniel from her, as well as terrified he might do it again in future. But when this was all over… Angel might feel differently about it then. Might look at Gabriel in exactly the way Sinclair described.

“She won’t need to,” Caleb taunted. “Because if you don’t tell me where Lena and the other women are in the next minute, I’m going to be the one who puts an end to your miserable existence.”

Sinclair’s contemptuous gaze remained on Gabriel. “Time for the two of us to make a deal, hmm?”

Gabriel’s top lip curled back. “I don’t make deals with rapists, or drugs-and-arms dealers.”

The older man’s eyes widened. “I didn’t rape Angela—”

“You would already be dead if I thought you had,” Gabriel snapped. “But I’m sure an egotist like you must have occasionally tried some of the female ‘merchandise’ for himself?”

Sinclair smiled. “Only the ones who were stupid enough to think they could seduce me into keeping them.”

“Lena?” Caleb rasped softly.

“Unfortunately, no.” The older man sighed his disappointment. “As a virgin, she was far too valuable. Pity, really, because I had always wanted to try her.”

Caleb’s eyes gleamed dangerously. “Where is she now?”

“I have no idea.”

“You have my permission to kill him, Caleb.”

Sinclair looked stunned for several seconds, and then the sneer returned to his lips. “Idle threats don’t frighten me.”

Gabriel leaned over until his face was only inches away from the older man’s. “My brother is something of a crusader, if you hadn’t noticed, which means you would be very wise to be frightened of him. It would be so easy to make it look as if you had hanged yourself. We might even manage to provide a suicide note explaining you could no longer live with the knowledge of all the terrible things you’ve done, the lives you’ve stolen or taken. We’ll even leave a memory stick with the note for the police to conveniently find, listing all those atrocities.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Gabriel smiled coldly. “You have ten seconds to start talking. After that, I’m letting Caleb have you.”

“Then you will never know where Lena is.”

“Oh, I’ll find her, with or without your help.” Caleb eyed the light fitting overhead as he slowly began to unwind a length of the twine. “What do you think, Gabriel? Will it hold the bastard’s weight long enough to make his death slow and painful?”

Gabriel stood up and tested the wire and chain attaching the light fitting to the ceiling. “Feels sturdy enough.” He nodded, watching disinterestedly as Caleb cut off the length of twine before twisting one end into a noose.

“Ten seconds are up,” Caleb announced with satisfaction as he looped the twine over the light fitting.

“You won’t do it,” Sinclair scoffed.

“Oh, he will.” Gabriel nodded. “It’s because of bastards like you supplying illegal arms to rebels that he went through two months of torturous hell. He has the scars to prove it.”