Saved By A Stranger (4 page)

Angelo led her through the foyer and into an
elevator, unlocked it with a keycard. “I’m sorry, Liz. There was a
minor disturbance today and my men are still trying to fix
that.”

She nodded, an uneasy feeling rising in her
stomach, and she doubted it came from the fast-rising elevator. Why
was the man who’d chased Ben working for Mr. Fuentes?

At the top floor, they stepped into a narrow
hallway with only two doors at each end.

“
My guests expect to be
treated royally,” he said, heading toward the door to his
left.

When he opened the door, she sucked in her
breath. The room was cavernous. She ran her hand over the dark
wooden furniture and admired the high ceilings. “I happen to think
your baked goods might be a great addition to the usual champagne
and fruit basket. I want an extra treat, as so many of my guests
expect.”

She cocked her head, listening to his near
silent laugh as if he’d made a joke only he understood.

“
If you want success,
you’ll have to make big plans.” He sat down at a round table in the
middle of the room, opening his folder. “Let me show you the
contract.”

He had the contract already drawn up? “I am
not sure I can move this fast—”

“
You’ll be an independent
supplier of all my twenty-two hotels in the States. You’ll get a
low rate loan to expand. You’ll be in total control over your
business, I’ll have no hand in it. Please understand that this
isn’t a big deal for me, but I like to take care of the small stuff
as well. And helping promising startup entrepreneurs is one of my
passions.”

“
What about
the—”

“
Money?” he said, smiling.
“That’s the easy part. I have accepted the terms you outlined in
your business plan.” He leaned back in his chair and placed a pen
next to the contract. “Take a few minutes to read through it, but
I’d like to hear your answer tonight.” He checked his
wristwatch.

She settled down at the table, taking the
contract with shaking fingers. It was only two pages, the language
simple, no fine print. She’d be supplying her goods and get paid
accordingly. As hard as she looked for it, she couldn’t spot a
caveat.

“
I’m a bit overwhelmed by
the chance you offer me,” she said, the pen poised over the
contract. “And it might sound over melodramatic, but she’d like to
thank you for the trust you’re placing in me and my
business.”

He held out his hand and she shook it. “To a
successful partnership.”

Hands embarrassingly sweaty, she shook his,
wondering why she still felt like a mouse caught in a trap.

Heart racing, she lowered the pen to the
paper to sign her name on the dotted line when she paused, to
consider what she was about to do. Should she really just sign on
the spot?

She glanced up to see if Angelo caught her
distress. He hadn’t because he was writing and drawing something on
the front cover of his paper folder.

She leaned closer, breath caught in her
throat. Elegant flowers wound its way up on the side of the white
folder. Angelo’s face was relaxed as if he’d forgotten that she was
present.

She cleared her throat. “You have quite a
knack at drawing.”

“
There’s something relaxing
in such a mindless activity such as drawing, don’t you
think?”

Her throat was too tight to answer. There
was no way in hell this was a coincidence. If she was wrong, no
harm done. If she was right, she’d know in a few seconds. She
opened her bag, deciding to put it to the test.

As soon as she pulled out the black book,
she almost felt how the static changed in the room. When she
glanced up, Angelo’s dark gaze was glued to the notebook.

“
How did you get
that?”

“
I found it lying on the
street while I headed toward our meeting.”

“
Is that so?” he said
quietly, retrieved a slim cell phone from his jacket and punched
numbers. “Drake, I want you to abort. Return
immediately.”

When he hung up, he held out his hand.
“Thank you for your help, Liz. If I may have my book back.”

“
Of course,” she said, but
curled her hand around the book’s spine, fighting the feeling that
she made a mistake. She hadn’t ratted Ben out and wasn’t planning
to. But surely it was the right thing to return something to its
rightful owner.

* * * * *

Ben approached the hotel in long strides,
still clutching the part of the letter of invitation he’d wrestled
from the laser printer. At least he knew where to find her; how he
was going to retrieve the book without causing too much fuss was
the problem.

He snapped open his cell phone and hit speed
dial.

“
What now, man?” Drake
bellowed into the phone.

“
How well-stocked is the
hotel?”

“
Badly,” Drake answered
quietly. “Everyone is looking on the streets for you. So don’t hang
about tonight and stay clear of the airport, rail and bus stations.
And don’t fucking call me.”

He hung up.

Ben stored the cell phone away, crossed the
street to the hotel’s lit entrance, and kept his head down. He
ducked away when one of Angelo’s guys all but stormed outside.
Great. He briefly touched the gun hidden in its ankle holster and
entered the hotel.

He scanned the lobby as he entered. Business
as usual apart from the buzz around the hotel bar. About to
advance, he took another step back, hiding behind an oversized
flower arrangement. Liz walked next to the Writer, apparently deep
in conversation, and vanished behind elevator doors with him.

He gritted his teeth, followed on their
footsteps, watched how the elevator stopped at the top floor.
Greeting a couple waiting next to him, he called the elevator down
again and stepped inside, hoping against hope the couple would
travel up to the top floor. They did not.

When the couple exited, he pressed the
twenty-eighth-floor button and was prompted for an access code.

Pondering his options, he took out his cell
phone.

“
Drake,” he said as the
other man picked up, “elevator code.”

“
This is the last time,
Ben,” he said. “You know I risk my ass by helping you.”

“
Your ass would be pushing
up daisies if not for me,” Ben reminded him quietly. “Besides, do
you really mind if you need to look for a new employer?”

Drake swore and gave him the
combination.

Ben punched in the numbers and the elevator
whisked up. Unbidden, Gabrielle’s ashen face turned up in his mind,
how she had clutched at the gun wound in her stomach. He had come
too late that night, but not too late to call an emergency
ambulance.

The same night he first met Liz.

The phone call had reached him too late to
prevent the hit on his brother-in-law—and then they had shot his
sister instead. Inside sources—not worth a damn most of the
time.

When Simon arrived just a few minutes after
him, he had found his bleeding and passed out wife on the kitchen
floor. With Ben at her side, gun in hand. Of course Simon had drawn
the wrong conclusions…as always.

And Ben had known if he wanted justice, he
couldn’t rely on Simon and his straight-laced ways. So, he had run
from Simon and his useless procedures and questions, and sworn he
would bring down whoever ordered the hit.

That was almost a month ago.

The elevator stopped, and when he stepped
out on the top floor, his steps quieted by the deep carpet, he
immediately heard Liz’s voice. He advanced to the ajar door and
paused to listen while he fitted the silencer to his gun.

“
Thank you for your help,
Liz. If I may have my book back.”

“
Of course,” Liz answered
with a rasp in her voice.

Ben curled his lip, pushing away the loving
feelings he had for her. If she worked for the Writer, she wasn’t a
woman he’d ever touch again. But did she work for him? It just
didn’t seem to add up.

He quietly nudged the door wider with his
knee, creeping inside the suite, and his gaze fell on them sitting
at a table, paperwork scattered across the polished wood.

Lifting the gun, he aimed.

Chapter Six

Next to her, Angelo let out a surprised
yell.

She glanced over her shoulder.

For the second time that day, she stared at
him holding a gun. And she knew that in her next intake of breath,
he would shoot her last chance at a secure future.

“
This is for Gabrielle,”
Ben said.

She jumped up. A scream shot from her mouth,
ringing in her ears, and then a black nothingness erupted before
her eyes.

Ben gripped her chin and turned up her head.
He stared with hard eyes down at her, his face ghostly white. “Can
you get up?” he asked, and then his gaze shifted on something
behind her.

Great, she’d fainted.

She turned, the movement making her catch
her breath. she found Mr. Fuentes lying on the thick carpet, a hole
punctured in his shoulder. Blood bloomed like a flower on his white
dress shirt. Yet, she thought she saw his chest rising and falling,
ever so slowly.

Not dead.

A phone rang in the silence, and then she
heard Ben saying, “Thanks, Drake.”

“
Who is Drake?”

Strong fingers dug into the flesh of her
forearm, making her wince.

“
Did you work for the
Writer?”

“
Who is the
Writer?”

He yanked her to her feet, grabbing the book
from the table with his other hand, and dragged her after him.
“Move, we can’t stay here.”

Anger crawled its way to the surface of her
mind, numbing the throbbing pain in her head. “You shot him! He
needs an ambulance,” she said, grounding her heels into the
floor.

“
Don’t care,” he replied.
“Walk.”

She did, didn’t know how not to obey him.
When they left the room and entered the hall, she jabbed her elbow
into the glass of the fire alarm enclosure and pulled the lever. A
siren broke the silence, making her want to cover her ears.

“
That was stupid,” he
pressed through his teeth, pulling her close to his face, and for
the first time since she met him he scared her. “Do you want to get
us killed?”

“
He needs an
ambulance!”

“
He’s fine.”

“
He’s not!”

He swore. “It wasn’t a shot to kill, just to
take him out for now.”

“
I want an
explanation
.
” She wouldn’t let him drag her off as if she
had done something wrong.

“
Later.” He wound his
fingers into her hair, the expression in his eyes changing, when he
leaned closer still and brushed his mouth over her lips.

“
In a few moments, this
place will be swarming with his thugs. What do
you
think
they’ll do to you when they find you here?”

She bit her lip, feeling every hard ridge of
him pressing into her while her head was throbbing, and remembered
Mr. Fuentes cold-eyed bodyguard. What would
he
do if he
found her next to the shot hotel owner?

Ben gave her a small shake. “I don’t want
anything happening to you. So,
honey,
I’m going to get your
sweet ass safely out of this hotel now, understood?”

He accepted her silence as agreement and
wound his fingers through hers. He pulled her toward the fire exit
and through two heavy steel doors.

Above the sound of the siren, she heard
voices and footsteps as hotel guests, mindful not to use the
elevator, filed into the concrete staircase leading out of the
hotel.

She was shaking, her nerves getting the
better of her. Ben shrugged out of his leather jacket and cloaked
her in it as a lover would. By the time they reached the first
floor, she was in a group of morose-looking people who clearly
thought they were caught up in an unexpected fire drill.

Taking a deep breath as she stepped into the
alley behind the main entrance of the hotel, she heard fire trucks
liven up the night with their horns.

Ben wrapped his arm around her, and led her
away, making slow steps that nevertheless ate a lot of ground.

The back alley grew narrow and deserted,
dumpsters lining the house walls to our left and right, the perfect
playground for rats and drug dealers. When he stopped, she realized
that he wasn’t looking out for an attack, but for a fire escape
ladder.

“
Up,” he said, letting her
lead the way onto the first metal mesh landing.

“
What are we doing here?”
she followed him up two more flights, wondering if he lived
here.

“
We need to get off the
street tonight.”

When he pulled open a half-closed window and
disappeared inside, curiosity won and she followed. As soon as she
stepped inside, lavender wallpaper greeted her gaze. Clothes
littered the floor around the bed and the kitchen was well-stocked
with cereal boxes. A faint smell of perfume lay in the air. He took
a chair from a desk and crammed it under the door handle.

Not his apartment.

“
In case the woman returns,
we have enough time to leave,” he said with a nod to the open
window. “But I need to stay put, at least for a few hours.” He
walked up and down the small apartment, five long strides and he’d
covered the expanse. He looked just like he had in her store a
couple of hours earlier. It was as if he was checking for booby
traps.