Sweet Seduction Shadow (27 page)

"
What... the... fuck...is... funny
!"

I stopped laughing and stared at him out of the corner of my eye, taking in the sight of Roan Fucking McLaren one last time.

Ah fuck, Abi. I swear I'm gonna kill him.
Ben's voice in my head was as welcomed as his presence - detected through the smell of his cologne. I was not alone.

"Good-bye, Roan. You sick, twisted, son of a fucking bitch," I said evenly and watched his brow furrow in confusion, even as his fist tightened in my hair. "He's come for you," I added.

"
Who
has come for me?" Roan demanded in a low, sinister voice.

My giant. "The shadow man," I whispered, just as all hell broke loose around us.

Several loud cracks rang out through the air, swiftly followed by billowing white-grey smoke. Out of the corner of my eye I saw three small canisters roll across the floor, in three different directions, all spewing eye-stinging vapour. A shout of alarm sounded from Kasey in the corner. Then the sounds of heavy boots on wood as they stormed the room.

I struggled against the suddenly loose hold of Roan at my back, managed to twist free slightly, only to have Roan tug me sideways at the last second, by his excruciating hold on my hair. My hands started towards where he was currently detaching my scalp from my skull - a type of pain I had experience enough for one day - and then I thought better of it, turning in his grasp and starting to scratch at his face and arms and upper chest with my nails instead.

"Fuck off!" he demanded through gritted teeth. "You stupid fucking bitch. Fucking stop!"

I wasn't in the right frame of mind to think that particular instruction through. I started screaming and intensified my attempts to maul his face, with the objective of gouging out his eyes at the top of my list right then.

I think my determination and outright wild assault took Roan by surprise, as it was several seconds of us scrambling against each other; him connecting with the odd slap to my face and punch to my side, me drawing blood on his cheeks and narrowly missing his eyes, before he had the presence of mind to thrust a gun barrel against my temple.

"Fucking stop!" he commanded again, pressing the tip of the gun in harder, just to prove his point. "Or I'll fucking end this right now."

I froze, sucked in a deep breath and then started coughing from the smoke I'd just inhaled. Roan swore, then started tugging me toward an exit at the back of the room - away from the heavy sounding boots - all the while maintaining his grip on the gun and its position against my head.

Chaos surrounded us. Kasey's screams of defiance as the police fought to control her. Shadowy figures in amongst the haze of gas billowing across the room. The smoke making tears run in streams down my face and obscure my vision. The sharp bite and acrid taste making my throat close over and my nose clog up with snot. I could no longer smell Ben's cologne. I couldn't catch my breath, and if I tried to suck in a lungful of air, my chest protested and my body was racked with heaving coughs.

Roan wasn't doing much better, but his determination to escape was probably more dominant than mine. Roan was a survivor to the nth degree. Where I had done my level best over the years to live a life on the run, he had made an art form of avoiding arrest and the bullet of an enemy's gun. Roan was an expert at evading capture. Perhaps I could have learned a thing or two from him.

I recognised Pierce's sharp shouts of command in amongst the strangled and furious noises Kasey was making. Something along the lines of "Police. Freeze!" But not quite as clichéd.

I tried to grab hold of furniture, anything to stop our progress away from the cops. But every time I came close to gripping an object, Roan would jerk me around and half strangle my neck. I kicked and hit, even though the gun was pressed to my temple, reality had shifted and Roan's threats, although still real, didn't register anymore.

I was desperate. I wanted to live, but I wasn't going to make it easy on this man. If he wanted me dead he would have done it already.

And then a gun shot sounded out in the air, so close to my ear it was deafening.

Everything stopped. My heart. My breaths. My attempts to slow Roan down and escape. He hadn't shot
me
, just as I had suspected. Roan, for some inexplicable reason, wanted me alive. Perhaps to torment me further. Perhaps to exact a more cruel fate. He'd never been a normal person; he was psychotic, deranged, unstable. His idea of revenge would not be
my
death, but me witnessing someone I loved dying in front of my eyes instead. But who had he shot at?

The smoke was settling, but it was still so hard to see details other than shapes. The cops were all shouting, "Cease fire! Cease fire!" And "Take cover!" Or "Don't shoot!"

I could feel them retreating. I could feel the reassurance of their presence being stolen like a blanket from a corpse. A chill seeped into my flesh, sunk deep down to my bones. I couldn't escape Roan. And the police couldn't get to me either. I was stuck, a prisoner, and my
guard
was fuming mad, fucked in the head and holding a smoking gun.

Silence followed the sound of the SWAT team's boots shifting on the wooden floor as they took up positions just outside of the room. No one said anything for what felt like an eternity, but was probably just a few seconds.

The smoke billowed and swirled, and then slowly dissipated into nothing but a slim layer of wisps against the floorboards. In its wake was a crumpled form of a man, between us and the cops hiding outside the main door to the room. Blood seeping into his T-shirt at the shoulder, spreading out towards his chest.

For a split second his true features evaded my conscious mind. All I could see was dark hair and skin, a tribal tattoo snaking down that muscular arm. But the image of Ben unconscious on the floor was replaced with reality, that it wasn't him after all, when a cop shouted from the doorway, "We have Kasey. We're prepared to do a swap. Our guy and the girl for her."

Our guy
. I suddenly realised it was Detective Pierce on the floor before us. Flack jacket covering his chest, but obviously the bullet had found his shoulder. Pale skin, brown curly hair and goatee beard. His eyelids fluttered and then opened. His gaze landing on me and flicking over Roan at my back, taking in his arm around my throat and the gun held stiffly at his side. He didn't move otherwise and he showed no signs of being in any undue pain.

"I'd listen to them, if I were you," Pierce pointed out casually, from his position on his side on the floor.

Roan lifted his gun to aim at the detective, then thought better of it and returned it to my temple instead. I'd seen the targeting laser of one of the SWAT team rifles, at the door to the room, move on Roan when he had shifted the gun onto Pierce. Clearly Roan had figured that out just in time to avoid a bullet in the head.

We were at a stand off. If Pierce moved, Roan could pull the trigger. If the SWAT team moved, Roan could pull the trigger. If I moved, Roan could pull the trigger. We all knew it. We all stood - or in Pierce's case, lay - immobile.

Then a dark shape shifted through the shadows at the side of the room, where the smoke from the gas canisters still clung doggedly in the air.

"Fuck!" Roan swore under his breath, turning us to face the new threat.

He'd removed the gun from my temple and now pointed it at the new threat. But he'd also shifted me into a position to act as a shield against the SWAT guys and Pierce.

Ben stepped out of the shadows, revealing where he had been hiding all this time. He just stared at Roan for a long moment, his dark granite-chipped eyes peering right inside Roan's rotten soul. Roan took a slow step back, seeing the menace, seeing the threat that Ben Tamati was.

Ben had been many things since the first time I laid eyes on him. There were times when I had feared what he meant to my freedom, to my life. But within hours of our first meeting I saw behind the mask. I was able to penetrate the shadows and see the real man.

And never once did I behold what graced his face right now. If I had, there's no way I would let him in behind my walls so readily. He was incredible in his rage. He was beautiful in his anger. He was magnificent in his steadfast lethal look.

His jaw was set in a firm, unforgiving line. His brows were down over the darkest, pitch-black, narrowed eyes I had ever seen. His full lips were moulded into a staunch scowl. And the Māori Tiki tattoo on his arm set the entire image of a fierce warrior off to perfection. There's something altogether frightful when faced with a Māori warrior. Even though Ben did not wear his
Moko
on his face, or have a feathered cape draped over his shoulder, or hold a
Pounamu
club in his hand, he was, in that moment, a true Māori warrior.

I was awed by his presence, humbled by the power he wielded without even having to lift a hand. In love with the man who stood before my nemesis without flinching, without an ounce of fear. In that moment he was my courage, my strength of conviction, my freedom from Roan McLaren and the life I had tried to evade for five years. In this man's eyes I saw what beauty lay ahead for me. I saw myself flying free in his arms.

And then Ben began to swing the baseball bat in hands, the one he had been hit with when we first entered the building. It came slicing through the air, like a
Taiaha
, straight for Roan's torso. Roan moved. It was so fast, so unexpected. I'd been immobilised by Ben's appearance as much as Roan had. But Roan recovered too quickly. Probably a reflex from years of facing off against other bad-ass criminals.

The sound of Roan's gun firing sliced painfully through my reflections and right into my heart. I still blocked the SWAT team's and Pierce's line of sight from the door and floor, so no one fired back. But the sound of Ben's bat connecting with Roan's chest, intermingled with that crack of Roan's gun firing.

A splash of red on the side of Ben's neck took all my attention, as blood sprayed out coating my vision in a deep crimson.

In a fraction of a moment my world,
my future
, evaporated. Gone in the blink of an eye.

How could I glimpse the splendour of my freedom and then have it so cruelly taken away in the next breath?

I reacted automatically, taking advantage of Roan's distraction at the pain of having his ribs fractured by a metal bat. I didn't think of my own safety. I didn't think of the fact that Roan still held a gun. My desire to get to Ben's side was so all consuming that nothing else registered in my mind. No finely honed sense of survival. No hint of hiding in plain sight. I was not acting as
any
of my disguises would have behaved.

I was acting as a woman in love with the man she'd just seen killed.

All reason left me at the knowledge that Roan had succeeded in the end. He'd punished me by murdering someone I loved in front of my eyes.

I was halfway across the space between the monster and my fallen giant, only to have a solid form knock me sideways and bang my head down on the hardwood floor. Stars sprang up before my eyes, a table tipped over sideways in front of us, as a hand at my throat ground my face into the wood beneath my cheek. I spat blood and saliva out of my mouth - must have bit my lip during all of that - and waited for the barrel of the gun to return to my temple.

It didn't. So, I opened my clenched shut eyelids and took in what I could see of the scene.

The table blocked my view towards the doorway where the cops and Pierce must still be. I couldn't see Ben's body from here either, but I could make out Roan above me; shaking, sweating, rasping for breath, eyes wide in fear or madness, I was unsure.

The situation was desperate, but all I could think of was Ben dying, or dead, on the floorboards on the other side of this upturned table in front of my face. I reached up a hand and rested it against the underside of the table, knowing Ben's body lay less than a metre away on the other side.

He'd done it. Roan had done it. But not without help from me. I was the one who led Ben into this trap. I was the reason behind him being involved in this operation at all. I may not have pulled the trigger, but I might as well have.

A pain filled sob wrenched from deep inside my chest and tore from my trembling lips.

I'm yours, red. Totally fuckin' yours. You have given me more than I could've ever thought possible. So, babe, you're stuck with me.

And this is how I repaid him. This is Ben Tamati's reward for loving me.

"What now, McLaren?" came Pierce's voice; strong, steady, unaffected.

I hated him for his ability to go on. To still be standing after such a devastating loss.

"I will kill her," Roan hissed from behind his makeshift hide.

Go on. Do it. I dare you.

"Think this through," Pierce replied calmly. "Once she's dead, how do you get out of here alive?"

"I'll hand her over once I get through that door and into a car," Roan snarled in reply, rethinking his strategy on the go, like any hardened criminal would.

"You doing OK, Abi?" Pierce asked, ignoring Roan's comeback offer.

"Peachy," I replied, noting the flat, desolate tone of my voice.

Roan stiffened. No doubt ready to hit me with the butt of his gun.

"Is he hurting you?" Pierce pushed.

"Hand to throat, nothing I haven't experienced before," I said dully.

"Shut up, bitch!" Roan hissed down at me.

"Make me," I taunted. I was really starting to think he didn't have the balls.

"Well, what's it going to be?" Roan asked, returning his attention to Pierce, his voice more ragged than I'd ever heard it before.

My eyes flicked upwards and noted he hadn't gotten any colour back in his cheeks. He was still sweating, looked clammy and dark smudges had appeared beneath his eyes. His breaths were laboured, as though each inhalation and exhalation were the epitome of agony right then. He coughed, and a small speck of frothy bright red blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.