GROOM UNDER FIRE (16 page)

The pain pills must have really kicked in because he felt sleep coming. And he couldn’t fight it off as he had so many times before. The others were in the apartment; if someone else sneaked through her window and she screamed, they would help her. She was safe. So he slept...

* * *

S
HE
HATED
TO
leave him. But it was only for a moment to answer the call of nature. Carefully, so she wouldn’t wake him, Tanya slid out from his embrace and rose from the bed. Immediately she felt empty and cold.

She reached for the robe Candace had left on the back of the bedroom door and wrapped it around herself. Then she slipped quietly out of the room and into the hall.

“Is he in there?” Candace asked.

Tanya jumped and clutched a hand to her throat at the surprise of finding the female bodyguard waiting in the hall. “What?”

“Logan called,” she uttered those words with great relief, “and said that Cooper checked himself out against doctor’s orders.”

Her hand trembled. “How badly is he hurt?”

“Bruised ribs. He hit the asphalt hard when the forklift nearly pushed that car on top of him.”

Tanya shuddered.

“The doctor said the fall alone could have broken his back. They wanted to keep him overnight for observation.”

The darkness in her room and now in the hall had already grown thinner as night slipped away. Daylight would break soon. So maybe he hadn’t left too soon.

“Logan figured he’d broken out to come here,” Candace continued, “to come to you.”

Tanya nodded. “He’s here. He came through the window.”

The other woman shook her head. “The fire escape is a couple of windows over. He must have edged along the window ledges.”

“Tell Logan he’s okay,” Tanya said. “Really. He’s sleeping now.”

“I’ll tell him,” Candace said as she rushed down the hall—probably to wherever she’d left her cell phone.

Tanya made quick use of the bathroom and returned to the bed where Cooper slept. His breathing was too irregular, as if dreams—or more likely, nightmares—disrupted him. She slipped off the robe and crawled back into bed with him. He had turned toward the wall, so she wrapped her arms around his side and pressed herself to his back.

He grunted and jerked, as if in pain. So she pulled away, giving him room. And giving herself enough room to study his body in the gathering light of dawn.

His back was blue and purple in some spots, dark red in others where the skin was raw. And the usually defined and sculpted muscles were swollen. She understood the doctor’s concern now, his reasons for wanting to keep him overnight.

Cooper should have stayed in the hospital. Instead, he’d come to her. Why? It was all her fault.

The car that had nearly crushed him had almost run her over. That wasn’t an accident or coincidence. The killer was sending her a message—that Cooper would meet the same gruesome fate she would.

She shouldn’t have married him. If anyone was holding Stephen for ransom, they would have asked for it before now. She didn’t need the money. She needed Cooper.

But she couldn’t have both.

She really couldn’t have either—not without risking Cooper’s life. He had been risking his life for years, but that was his choice. She didn’t want him risking it for her.

She pressed a gentle kiss to his shoulder. He shifted against the mattress and murmured as if even that soft brush of her lips hurt him. But he didn’t awaken. Maybe they had given him pain medication at the hospital that had finally gotten him to sleep.

Or knocked him out.

She was counting on the latter. She edged farther away from him and then rolled off the side of the mattress. The light of dawn wasn’t bright enough yet for her to find her clothes without feeling around in the dark. So she felt around on the floor, and her fingers fumbled over something cold and hard. Revulsion had her stomach pitching over finding the gun.

She had nearly shot Cooper. Fortunately, she hadn’t known how to aim the thing. She kept her hand on the weapon and considered taking it. But with what she was about to do, hopefully she wouldn’t need it anymore.

If the money was what had put her in danger, she didn’t want it. She wanted nothing to do with it. Or with Cooper’s gun.

Until everyone learned what she’d done, he might need it to protect himself. She passed over the gun and grabbed up her clothes. As quickly and quietly as she could, she dressed.

Cooper was going to be angry over what she was about to do. But she would rather go out alone and risk her life than put him in danger again.

She leaned back over the bed, but this time she pressed her lips to his cheek. He was out, so he probably would not hear her. But she needed to tell him what she’d been too cowardly to declare when he was awake. She needed to know that she had at last said the words. So she whispered them into his ear.

“I love you.”

She waited to see if he murmured anything back—not that she expected him to return her feelings. He’d pointed out over and over again that he was only doing his job. She wasn’t paying him, but she was definitely going to fire him.

She glanced to the door but remembered how Candace had appeared in the hall the minute Tanya had stepped out of the room. She couldn’t go out the door.

So she would have to go out the way Cooper had come in—through the window. He’d left it unlatched, so all she had to do was press her hands against the glass and push up the sash. Cool air blew through the opening, lifting the rumpled sheet that barely covered Cooper’s naked body.

She held her breath, afraid that he would wake up and stop her. But he didn’t move—not even to cover himself. Was he really all right? He’d left the hospital against doctor’s orders. Maybe she shouldn’t leave him...

But then her leaving him was exactly what she needed to do in order to keep him safe. She lifted one leg over the windowsill, but her foot met only empty space. Candace had said there was a ledge. She drew her foot closer to the brick wall of the apartment building, and she found it—six or so skinny inches of concrete. She turned her foot sideways and set it firmly on the ledge before crawling out through the window.

She clutched at the brick wall as dizziness overwhelmed her. She shouldn’t have looked down—because now she could look nowhere else. Her knees trembled and her heart raced.

The apartment was on the third floor of the building. Until then—staring down into the abyss of the alley—Tanya hadn’t realized how far up three stories was. Nor had she considered how far she would fall if she slipped.

Hitting the asphalt from the height of a loading dock could have broken Cooper’s back. Hitting it from this height would probably break every bone in her body.

Already bruised and wounded, Cooper had sidled across this ledge to get to her. Why? Only to protect her?

Just how seriously did the man take his job?

Too seriously—when it was likely to get him killed. She had to do this, had to save him from saving her. Because she didn’t want to wake him with the cool breeze, she maneuvered around on the ledge enough to push down the window. She couldn’t lower it completely—not without bending all the way over, and if she did that, she would fall for certain. But crouching down strained the muscles in her already shaking legs and her feet began to slip.

Clutching at the wall again, she regained her tenuous position on the ledge. And inch by inch she sidled across it toward the fire escape. It was exactly three dark windows over—probably twelve feet. But to Tanya, who was freezing with cold and fright, it may as well have been a mile. She panted and shook as if she’d run twenty.

Her hands were cold and nearly numb from scraping across the brick wall when she reached out for the railing of the fire escape. Her fingers slipped, knocking her off balance so much that her foot began to slide off the ledge.

Had she made it all those feet only to fall now—when she was so close to the fire escape? The killer would be thrilled—he wouldn’t have to try to shoot her or poison her anymore. Tanya was going to kill herself with her probably misguided attempt to save the man she loved.

Chapter Sixteen

Cooper hated sleeping because usually his dreams haunted him with memories of things he had seen or done, things that he was almost able to forget when he was awake. But now he awakened with a smile and a good memory.

Of making love with Tanya.

And of her saying, “I love you.”

He must have dreamed that—must have imagined her whispering those words into his ear. Until a few days ago, she had been engaged to marry another man. It didn’t matter that Cooper was the one she had actually wed; he was only a substitute for the man she really loved.

The smile slid away from his face, and he forced open eyes that felt gritty with sleep and probably the aftereffects of the painkillers.

The meds had worn off, because his back ached like hell. And his ribs protested every breath he drew into his lungs. And he sucked in a deep breath as he scanned the empty room.

She was gone. Had someone grabbed her while he slept? The window was open a few inches—more than he’d left it when he’d come inside that way. And the gun was still inside its holster next to the bed. He reached for it.

If someone had broken in while he slept, wouldn’t she have used it just as she’d tried using it the night she’d almost shot him? Tanya was tough; she wouldn’t have survived all the attempts on her life if she wasn’t.

Maybe she had opened the window for air. Or because he’d gotten too hot sharing the only full-size bed with her. He wasn’t hot now, with the cool wind blowing over his bare skin. He hurriedly dressed, ignoring the twinges in his back and ribs, as he pulled on the clothes he’d discarded so quickly the night before.

Her clothes were gone—just as she was. But with the sun only just streaking between the buildings and shining across that open windowsill, it was early yet. Not much past dawn.

He hadn’t given her much choice last night before jumping into bed with her. But she had seemed willing then. His skin flushed with heat and desire as he remembered how thoroughly she had made love to him. She had definitely been willing.

So where was she? He opened the door and stepped into the hall. Voices drew him toward the kitchen, where he hoped to find her with the others, sitting around the small round table or leaning against the cabinets. Nikki sat at the table staring at the screen of the laptop in front of her, while Parker leaned back, the chair on two legs, against the wall, with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

Logan reclined against the cabinets, his arms crossed over his chest, like a teacher surveying his class. As the oldest, he’d always thought he knew more than the rest of them. But that was probably just because he kept what he knew secret—like the death of their father’s killer.

Cooper would deal with that later, though. He was more concerned with who wasn’t in the kitchen than who was. Candace was missing, which was odd since this was her place. But she could have been in the bathroom or her bedroom.

Tanya was gone. And he knew it because of how empty and alone he felt even with his family present. They glanced at him in the doorway, but there was no surprise on their faces. They’d known where he’d gone after checking himself out of the hospital.

What about Tanya? “Where is she?”

And a better question, why were they all there when the person they were supposed to be protecting wasn’t? What kind of bodyguards were Payne Protection?

“Did somebody—” his voice cracked with emotion “—take her?” While he’d slept peacefully in the same bed with her? What the hell kind of bodyguard was he?

“Nobody grabbed her,” Logan assured him. “Candace saw her leave of her own accord.”

“Maybe she got sick of everybody babysitting her,” Nikki suggested. “I know how frustrating it is when nobody trusts you to take care of yourself.”

“You didn’t see her leave,” Logan pointed out. “You’re not ready to be a bodyguard on your own yet.”

Cooper couldn’t defend her any more than he could defend himself for having let Tanya slip away.

“She didn’t come out of the door,” Nikki said in an attempt to defend herself. “She went out the window.”

He cursed under his breath since he’d given her the idea. And because he could envision her precariously balancing on that narrow ledge. “She could have fallen...”

And that fall would have killed her. His heart lurched with pain and loss. Was that why they were all here and not out protecting her? Because she was really gone?

“She didn’t fall,” Logan assured him.

The pain in his chest eased slightly. She wasn’t dead. She was just gone.

“You could have fallen, too, when you sneaked in that way,” Nikki said, her eyes wide with fear. “You could have fallen
again.
” Obviously their brothers had filled her in on what had happened at the warehouse.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You should let the doctor determine that,” Nikki said. “You should go back to the hospital.”

“Hell, no,” he replied. “The only place I’m going is to find Tanya—which all of you should be doing instead of standing around
here.
”

“Candace is following her,” Logan explained. “She’ll make sure Tanya stays safe.”

He wasn’t so sure about that. “She’s not as good as you think she is. She let me slip into Tanya’s room—”

“She knew it was you,” Logan replied. “I warned her you were coming when I’d discovered you’d snuck out of the hospital.”

“But she let Tanya sneak out...” So had he. His gut churned with guilt over having fallen asleep when he should have been protecting her.

Logan nodded. “She saw her on the ledge, but she didn’t dare risk startling her and causing her to fall.”

It was a risk she’d been wise not to take. But Cooper suspected there’d been another reason—like her boss’s orders. “You wanted to see where she’d go, didn’t you?”

Logan nodded again.

“You can’t suspect her of being involved in this,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s nearly been killed time and again.”

“Nearly,” Logan pointed out.

“You suspect Rochelle,” Nikki reminded him with a trace of resentment. “And even Stephen...”

A pang of guilt struck him. The blood he’d found in the trunk of that car proved a body had been moved in it. Stephen’s? He may have even been inside it when Cooper had fired those shots at the car to stop it from running down Tanya.

“Not Tanya,” he insisted. “She has no motive...”

“She has the same motive everyone else has,” Logan said. “The money...”

He shook his head. “She couldn’t have acted alone. She wasn’t driving the car that chased her down. She wasn’t firing the shots into her apartment.”

Logan nodded. “She didn’t act alone.”

“That’s why you let her go, to see not only where she’d go but who she would meet.”

Logan nodded again.

“It’s not Stephen,” he said. “They would have just gotten married...”

“But maybe he got cold feet,” Nikki said.

Over marrying Tanya? Cooper doubted it.

“And she got mad at him,” Nikki continued.

Mad enough to hurt him? He doubted that even more. “You’re wrong about this.”

“Probably,” Logan agreed.

“Where is she?” By now his brother, who thought he knew everything, probably knew.

“She took a cab to her grandfather’s house.”

She’d hated that place nearly as much as Cooper had. “Why?”

“It’s hers now,” Nikki reminded him.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to her. That house—the money...”

“Then why did she marry you?” Logan asked.

“In case there was a ransom demand made for Stephen,” he reminded them. “This was all about Stephen.” It hurt remembering that the woman he loved—the woman he’d married—was in love with another man.

“There was no ransom demand,” Nikki said quietly, as if she knew how badly he was already hurting.

His head throbbed along with his back, pain pounding at his temples, as he tried to process what his family was telling him. To doubt Tanya? And now he knew how she’d felt when he’d tried to make her do the same with Stephen. He knew exactly how she’d felt because he loved her.

“How long have you been thinking this?” he asked Logan. He wasn’t above lashing out at him when he was in pain. He’d done it when their dad had died. “And keeping it to yourself—like you keep everything!”

Parker clicked off his cell phone and slid it into his pocket. “What are you talking about? What’s he keeping to himself?”

Cooper turned on his other brother. “You know that Dad’s killer died in prison.”

Parker shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him, and it didn’t matter to any of them as much as it did to Logan. “Not because he told me.”

“Candace just told me,” Nikki chimed in.

That must have been how Tanya had learned about it. He asked his brothers, “Why didn’t either of you tell me?”

“You’ve been a little preoccupied getting married and all,” Logan reminded him. “And truthfully, I didn’t know if it would matter to any of you.”

Like it mattered to him. They had all been content with the man being sent to prison. Logan was the one who hadn’t been able to let go of his anger. Maybe he could now...

Cooper shrugged off the slight much easier than he could shrug off his brother’s doubts about the woman he loved.

“Doesn’t anyone want to know why I was on the phone?” Parker asked. With a grin he announced, “We got a real lead this time.”

“You thought that last one was a real lead,” Cooper reminded him, flinching as his ribs ached.

“We found the car,” Parker reminded him.

He’d nearly wound up with it on top of him, but they had found it. “Have the crime scene techs processed it yet? Have they found any prints?”

Logan nodded. “The blood in the trunk matches the blood from the church—same type, at least. DNA is still backlogged.”

“What about prints?”

“The steering wheel was wiped clean on the car and the forklift, too,” Logan replied. “Stephen’s never been fingerprinted, so we don’t know if the ones inside the trunk lid are his.”

Someone had been alive inside that trunk—had been banging and trying to get out. Cooper’s stomach tightened with dread. “We gotta find him.”

“We may have,” Parker reminded him. “One of my informants spotted that car at another warehouse before it wound up where we found it.”

Another warehouse. Cooper’s ribs throbbed as if in protest and he groaned.

“You stay here with Nikki,” Logan ordered.

“Of course I don’t get to go,” Nikki resentfully grumbled.

Logan ignored her and continued, “Parker and I will check it out alone—like we should have last time.”

Cooper shook his head. “I’m going, too.”

“You’re already hurt. Want to finish yourself off?” his oldest brother challenged him.

“I want to finish this,” he said. “I want to nail the bastard who’s responsible for all the shooting and stuff.”

“What if that bastard’s Tanya?” Logan asked.

God, the man was more paranoid than Cooper was. “It’s not.” And he had a feeling it wasn’t Stephen either—that he had misjudged his friend. He just hoped he had a chance to make it up to him. “Let’s stop wasting time and follow up this lead.”

He just hoped it didn’t lead them to a body.

* * *

T
ANYA
SHIVERED
WITH
cold and dread. The house—or mausoleum as Cooper had called it—had been closed up for years. So it was freezing inside, with no heat or electricity, and it was musty smelling—exactly like a mausoleum.

Her lungs strained for breath, and she wished she’d thought to bring along her purse with the newly prescribed inhaler inside. But the extra weight of her bag might have been enough to make her lose her balance off the ledge entirely.

She’d barely caught the fire escape in time as it was. Her palms still stung from how hard she’d gripped the cold and rusted metal. She’d had to hang on tightly while she’d swung herself over the railing. Her legs had been shaking so badly it was a wonder she’d made it down all the steps to the alley below.

Her legs still shook a little now. But all the furniture was covered with heavy plastic, leaving her no place to sit down. The floor was hard marble and probably like ice now; she couldn’t sit on it either. Only faint light filtered through the thick drapes pulled across the windows. It was so cold and dark and creepy.

It was truly like a mausoleum, just minus the wall of drawers containing urns of ashes. Her grandfather’s urn was here, though, sitting on the mantel with a fine coating of dust covering the brass. Was he really in there? Or was he behind all the horrible things that had been happening to her?

She wouldn’t put it past him to try to kill Cooper. It was bad enough that he’d spoken to him the way he had all those years ago, telling him that he wasn’t good enough for her.

She was the one who wasn’t good enough for him. He was a fearless hero and she had been a coward, hiding behind his protection.

A door creaked and she jumped—every bit that coward yet. Should she hide until she was sure it was who she’d called to meet her? Should she grab that urn to use as a weapon? She shuddered at the thought of touching it.

“Tanya?” a male voice called out. “Ms. Chesterfield?”

She wasn’t Ms. Chesterfield anymore. She was Mrs. Payne. But she hadn’t had time to legally change her name, which was good since she wasn’t going to keep it anyway. “I’m in here, Mr. Gregory.”

Footsteps pounded on the marble as he headed down the hall toward her. “It’s quite early, Ms. Chesterfield,” he protested. He looked tired with dark circles rimming his eyes, and his gray hair was mussed as if he hadn’t bothered to comb it. “We could have scheduled a meeting later in the day.”

“Thank you for meeting me now,” she said. And for meeting her here, so she knew exactly what she was giving up: nothing. “It really couldn’t wait.”

“If you want to collect your inheritance today, that’s not possible,” he said. “It’s too big an amount to be easily liquidated. And of course it needs to be divided, with half being held in trust for your sister in the event that she marries before she turns thirty.”

“She can have it all,” Tanya said. Then and only then did Tanya suspect that the attempts on her life and Cooper’s life would stop.