Come Hell or High Desire (21 page)

“—you’re gonna die because he has feelings for you. I’m guessing he’s figured all
this out by now and is on his way back here. But by then it’ll be too late. He’ll
be
so sad.
”

“You sick creep!” She sprinted toward the back stairwell, but he lunged, catching
her by a fistful of hair. Her chin flew up as her head whiplashed back. Turning, she
swung with her injured arm, crying out when she connected with his shoulder. Her head
cracked against the clock with his line drive into the wall. The cloying scent of
his cologne and the damage to her body made her gorge rise again. She panted through
the pain, the fingers of her good arm curling around his forearm to try to dislodge
him. “Zack’s going to…hunt you…like the animal you are!”

He leaned into her, the pressure on her neck excruciating, the warm metal of his watch
cutting into her skin. The edges of her vision flickered. He clicked his tongue like
a parent reprimanding a child, his ragged breath hot on her face. “Such blind faith.
It’s rather admirable. I’m not quite sure how he manages it, but people do seem to
like him.” His voice became hypnotic, like the taint of blood on his starched white
shirt collar. Her free arm fell to her side. She wanted to sleep. Her eyes fluttered.
Snapped open.

Then shut.

It’s coming
.

Suddenly she was moving through a dead landscape. Barren, but for a solitary tree,
a gnarled silhouette on a distant hill. No sounds of birds here. No fragrance of flowers
or odor of decay. Not even the shifting wind to lift tendrils of her hair.

A place of shadows.

She swayed but remained upright, slowly trudging forward in the vision, letting the
gray palette envelop her, sapping the vigor from her legs as though lumbering through
increasingly compacted snow drifts. Past the lone tree. Over another hill.

Then she saw it.

A large, round metal structure.

Her heart knocked against her ribs, fingernails cut into her palms.
Hurry.
She struggled to make her legs move faster.

A Ferris wheel
. She looked up and the air arrested in her lungs. A pale arm hung lifelessly over
the edge of the uppermost seat. As Sloane stood below it, the fist jerked opened,
and a sparkling light floated down to the leaden earth.

She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to look.

Because she already knew.

Beneath the shadow of the joyless Ferris wheel, she crouched to pick up the glittering
cat brooch. The brooch from her first vision only days ago. It singed her skin.

Only then did she hear the ticking. A relentless beat, a herald of death that crept
across her flesh, shrouding her with its horror.

My God, the bomb
.

Ann!

Sloane threw her head back to yell into the endless sea of gray, aware that her logic
was beginning to slip.

Hurts. Too much. Loss. Don’t want to do it anymore.

Soon, she was floating toward a blanket of darkness.
Feels good. No more pain. Leave it behind
…

Sloane!

The deep sound pierced through her psyche like a million finger pricks. She fought
against the pull, wanting to sleep—
sleep
—but the noise wrapped around her, grew louder, an arrow of golden light ever brighter
until the darkness was no more.

From far away, she heard another’s harsh voice. “…a broken man with no choice but
to give me the vault keys. Then I’ll learn where John has hidden Serena. And she will
be mine at last.”
Broken? Who?

Zack! No!

Her eyes opened, and she was momentarily blinded. She blinked to focus.
Killing me. Need air. Weapon.
A gilt-framed oil painting hung less than ten inches away.

I love you, Zack
.

She sagged like a rag doll, her full weight shifting unexpectedly, knocking Ross off
balance. As he tried to follow her down the wall, she lunged at him, teeth tearing
into the soft flesh of his neck above his injury. He screamed, bringing both hands
to his mangled skin. She dodged away, gagging and spitting, and ripped the painting
from the wall with her good arm. She swung for all she was worth, connecting solidly
with his neck. He went down with a sound she’d never forget. She kicked his midsection
before she turned and bolted for the emergency exit.

Make it to the stairs.
She could do stairs fast.

She was going to make it.

Two steps to the door, it swung open. “Stop!” The petite blonde aimed a pistol at
Sloane.

“K-kill her!”

Feverish, Sloane watched Ross, panting, struggling to pull himself upright, bloody
fingers leaving gruesome red tracks on the beige walls.

“Do it! Shoot her now, you s-stupid whore!” he roared.

Sloane prayed.
Lord, send me an angel!

The woman swung the pistol toward Ross. “You rotten motherfucker.” And fired.

Once to the head.

Once to the chest.

Once to the groin.

Precise. Cold. Deadly.

In the echoing silence of the hall, she remembered Ross saying the woman’s name.

Morgan.

Sloane swung away from the carnage that had been Ross when she felt a biting sting
in her neck.
Jesus!
Her hand went to her neck as the syringe thumped softly on the carpet. She met the
blonde’s blazing blue eyes and her stone cold pistol. This ferocious woman couldn’t
be Zack’s friend. “What
the hell
are you doing?”

“Ten…nine…
eight—
”

Morgan suddenly had four eyes. Then six. Sloane’s vision swam.
So fuzzy. What’s…happening…
“Zack?” she whispered.

A smile teased the edges of Morgan’s lips. “
Mine.
”

Sloane’s stomach rose to meet her throat.

Oh fu—

Then nothing.

Chapter Thirty

One way or another, the flames of Hell were coming for him. Zack hung up with Archie
and felt the fire because he was going to murder Ross Julik with his bare hands if
he so much as sneezed on Sloane. Archie’s stunned disbelief had only made Zack’s anger
burn that much hotter.

Rage like a tidal wave moving across acres of water—building, rising, consuming—flowed
through him. A line of cars waited at a red light so he jumped the curb and took the
bike path, turning right at the intersection, cutting off oncoming traffic. Horns
blared, but he stepped on the accelerator and mentally charted a less congested route
to the office.

Until he got behind a line of cars in a funeral procession.

Dammit!
He turned at the next corner, but it was slow going because he was afraid of hitting
a little kid in this residential part of town.

All the devastation…

Ross.
Did everything come back to him?

The inexplicable financial trouble Samuel’s was experiencing. Ann’s disappearance.
Dallan O’Neill’s death. Tori’s horrific ordeal. Sloane’s building fire. The O’Neill
kids…

While he couldn’t connect the dots yet, in a way, some things were starting to make
sense now that he knew Ross’s obsession with Serena was what had forced John to hide
her all those years ago. It was irony of the worst sort because John
hadn’t known
Ross was the culprit, and instead had brought him into the fold.

John had mentioned a long time ago how Ross had all but bullied him to be hired. John
had admired Ross’s self-confidence, and was flattered that such an intelligent, accomplished
man insisted on working for him. The part that Zack didn’t understand was why Ross
had pressed on with his diabolical scheme after John’s death.

And why the hell did he wait so long to unleash it in the first place?

What was the point? Who was supposed to suffer? Ann? Him?

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Ross obviously planned to destroy
the business John had spent a lifetime building. The business that had grown to mean
as much to Zack.

But even more important than the business…Ann. The one person John loved more than
anyone.

And now Ross had Sloane. The one person Zack—

In that moment he felt her.
Sloane!

Or rather, her departure. Like a ripping of his soul. Her essence.
Leaving
. Panic spurted through his veins. He yelled her name. Praying for her to live. To
stay.
She had to stay
. No one like her. Even if he couldn’t have her. She had to live. The world needed
her.

He pressed the pedal to the floorboards and laid on the horn before every intersection
to forewarn pedestrians. Eight blocks from Samuel’s, blaring sirens edged into his
consciousness. He looked at the rearview mirror to see patrol car lights flashing.
Another squad car was oncoming from the left.

He prayed through red lights.

Prayed.

The rubber of his tires flying ahead of the sirens.

Prayed.

For the chance to save Sloane.

To kill Ross
.

The flames of Hell would have to wait.

…

Sloane was floating through a dim tunnel.
Light.
Yes, there was a murky glow far ahead. If she could just—

A sharp thorn of pain brought her back. Her eyes snapped open to a blurry gray. She
blinked repeatedly, struggling against the urge to sleep, somehow knowing she shouldn’t.
After a moment her eyes finally focused to see a small black spider crawling sideways
on a rough concrete wall. She gasped and bumped into something behind her.

“Don’t move.”

A woman? All at once, Sloane remembered.

Morgan. Ross.

Ann!

She must have passed out. Oh wait, she’d been drugged. How much time had gone by?
Panic warred with the nauseating pain in her elbow and the disorientation of the drug
still circulating in her system.

“I said, don’t move.”

Have to get away.
Couldn’t do it if she was freaking out or vomiting. Lord, though, what was that smell?
Like opening a Tupperware container filled with raw hamburger that had been left in
the sun for a week. She gagged, and Morgan chuckled quietly.

There was a brief tearing noise, and she felt warm fingers a few inches below her
wrists. Her eyes reopened. The spider wasn’t really crawling sideways. She was lying
on her side on the floor of a dank and rancid room, her limbs so heavy it was as though
her veins ran with lead instead of blood. She twisted her neck as far as she could
to look behind her at the woman adding another layer of duct tape to her already well-secured
wrists.

Morgan was attractive in an edgy way with her textured blond mop and pert nose. What
was she to Zack? She’d blown Ross to bits, and she’d certainly had time to kill Sloane,
too, but she hadn’t. Maybe there was still hope. “Please don’t do this. We need to
get to Ann. It’s not too late. She’s at the mall, isn’t she? On top of one of the
rides? We can save her. I’ll tell the police you were defending me.”

Another hunk of tape peeled from the roll, Morgan’s bow-shaped lips pursed, eyes squinting
as she focused on wrapping the tape tightly around Sloane’s legs.

You’re lying here just letting her tie you up. Get up!

Her heart accelerated. She must outweigh the petite woman by at least thirty-five
pounds. If she could catch her unaware, she might be able to overpower her.

She scanned the wall and floor as far as her prone position allowed. Even a sharp
fragment of concrete could do some damage. When she looked up, the single exposed
light bulb illuminated pockmarks on the rough concrete wall and ceiling.

Concrete ceiling?

She forced herself to look at Morgan again and saw a pair of scissors next to her
knee.

“How’d you get me down here?”

Morgan didn’t respond, continuing to wrap layer after layer down her legs.

“Where am I?” This time she didn’t even expect an answer.
I’m a mummy in a concrete coffin. This can’t be happening.
“Zack wouldn’t want you to—”

“Don’t you dare tell me what Zack wants!” Morgan scooted up to glare at her, the sudden
fury in her eyes making Sloane’s stomach turn over. “No one knows him like I do!”

“You made a deal with Ross, didn’t you?” Sloane’s mind spun with possibilities. “With
Ann out of the way, you get Zack all to yourself. That’s it, isn’t it? But you’re
wrong, you know. He doesn’t love her like—”

Morgan slapped a length of tape across Sloane’s mouth. “He’s been burned so many ways
by so many people, and now it’s my turn to punish the haters. I’ll make sure he’s
never hurt again.” Morgan whipped her head to the side as though addressing someone
else in the room. “Stop crying! Stop it!”

Now
.

Sloane rolled onto her back and thrust her legs out in an explosive rush. The blow
came sideways at Morgan’s shoulders, her head whiplashing, then bouncing against the
concrete wall. She brought her hand toward her temple, but before she could recover,
Sloane jabbed her with her bound legs again. This time a direct hit to the side of
the head.

Morgan collapsed to her side, her mouth slack.

Sloane lay silently for a moment, shaking, wanting to scream but couldn’t for the
tape. She scrunched her eyes for a second to gather her wits.
The scissors.
She needed to use the scissors.

A whimper behind her.

She scooted her body around, trying to avoid jarring her injured elbow. But the pain
faded away as a new horror revealed itself in the shadows some fifteen feet away.

Oh. My. God
.

Two children. Glassy-eyed. Pale-faced. The younger boy curled as closely around his
sister as their gray bondage would allow.

The O’Neill kids
.

Still alive!
Thank you, Lord. Help me keep them that way
.

She pushed her bound hands into the floor for leverage until she was sitting upright.
She waited for the lightheadedness to pass, then scooted toward them until they recoiled,
their muffled screams making her want to die. She looked at the ground helplessly,
and then saw what had been making her gag.

A darkened pool of what looked like blood clots on a once gauzy, white skirt. A one-of-a-kind
skirt with rosettes embroidered around the border.

Purchased at Skinny Dipping.

By Ann
.

Sloane scrambled away from the mess of Ann’s skirt, her breath coming fast. Oh, sweet
Jesus, had she lost the baby in this Godforsaken hole?
No time to think about the horror
.

Have to get the kids out.
If what Ross said was true and he wanted her dead, too, there must be a bomb around
here somewhere. Sloane turned back toward the scissors when she caught a movement
from the corner of her eye. A second later, a gust of air pushed through the room.
Morgan stood framed in the doorway, her eyes glowing. “I don’t hold that kick against
you, Amazon. Woulda done it myself. I like girls who know how to take care of themselves.”
She frowned at the O’Neills. “Stupid Ross, getting kids involved. But then, that wasn’t
his only mistake. He was going to renege on his promise to help me. I just know it.”
Then her eyes met Sloane’s once more, and she smiled. “But that’s lucky for you, I
guess. You would’ve suffered worse at his hands. Don’t worry about Zack. I’ll take
good care of him.”

Sloane threw herself at the door, screaming behind the tape. But it was too late.
The light flicked off a heartbeat before the door slammed shut in her face.