Targeted (Firebrand Book 1) (3 page)

She waved her hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve lived here all my life, and there aren’t too many people worth knowing.” Her gaze raked him from head to toe. “Present company excluded.”

Her sincere tone made him smile. What would it hurt if he enjoyed some female company for a change? At least he’d have someone to talk to for a few hours. “Then maybe it’s time we got to know each other better.”

“What do you have in mind?”

He studied her for a moment—long blonde hair pulled into a pony tail, blue eyes that reminded him of summer days, and a body that could easily grace a fashion runway in New York. Getting to know Eve might help keep him from thinking about Lainey tonight.

“What time do you get off work?”

She glanced at the clock. “Actually I was supposed to get off at twelve. I told the boss I’d wait until he had his smoke break before I left.”

He leaned forward. “I hear they have a new band in the lounge over at the hotel. How would you like to mingle with the ski crowd for a while?”

Her eyes lit up. “That sounds great. Let me get my coat and clock out.” She rose from her chair and started to walk away. With a shake of her head she stopped and came back to the table. She pulled her order book from her pocket and tore off the top copy. “I forgot to give you your check. You can pay me at the cash register when I come back.” She cocked an eyebrow at him and leaned over to pick up his coffee cup. She was so close he could feel her breath on the side of his face. “I might even let you have your meal free if the boss isn’t looking. I’m just full of surprises.”

Ash didn’t respond as she walked away, but he watched as she sauntered across the dining room. She stopped at the swinging door into the kitchen and waved. When the door closed behind her, he scanned the room once more. Nothing had changed. He was still the only customer. It had been a quiet night at the diner. He stood, shrugged on his overcoat, and picked up the ticket Eve had laid face down on the table.

He turned it over and inhaled quickly. His fingers tightened on the paper, and he cast a wild-eyed glance to the kitchen door and back to the ticket. The sheet contained no itemized food order. Instead a message written in a scrawling hand filled the page. His heart slammed against the wall of his chest at the words. Lainey is in trouble. Call her right away.

He crumpled the note and stuck it in his pocket. What a fool he was. The diner was quiet, all right. Too quiet, and he should have noticed. He’d been played by a blue-eyed pro in a tight T- shirt. He only hoped Reese and Colt never found out how he’d let his guard down.

But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to find Eve. She had some explaining to do, and he intended to get the answers. He slipped out of his overcoat and hung it on the back of a chair. Keeping his hand on his holstered gun, he stealthily crossed the dining room but stopped before approaching the kitchen door. He stood still and listened for movement. Nothing.

Eve said the cook and the waitress had gone outside for a smoke. But in the weeks he’d been coming here, he’d never seen either one take a smoke break. And there was always the sound of a country music radio station mingling with the rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen.

Tonight no sounds at all came from the kitchen. Something was wrong here. He should have been suspicious from the beginning, but he’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Eve had held out her apple, and he’d taken a big bite. Now it was payback time.

He needed to proceed with caution. There was no telling what he might find in the kitchen. He glanced out the window and noticed the snow was falling harder. Nobody would stand outside and smoke in this weather, which left him dreading the answer to the questions on his mind. Where was Eve? And where were the owner and the shy young girl who’d waited on him when he first sat down at the back table? And the most important one of all—what waited for him behind the closed kitchen door?

Ash took a deep breath and pulled out the Sig.

Chapter 2

Ash didn’t like the situation. The cafe owner and the young girl who’d waited on him earlier were unaccounted for, as was the sultry Eve. He had to find them. But the swinging door that blocked the entrance to the kitchen presented a big obstacle. A door that wouldn’t stay open long enough for him to sweep the room could prove fatal.

He took a deep breath, gripped the Sig with both hands, and eased up to the wall next to the door. No sounds came from the other side. He’d done this hundreds of times in other places and under difficult conditions. But the fact remained all missions were different, and he had to focus on the one at hand.

With one hand he shoved the door enough to allow it to spring open. Now he was committed, ready or not. Before the door had a chance to close he had the gun back in a two hand grip, took a ninety degree step from the wall, and scanned the first slice of the pie, the section of the room he could see. The door started to drift back to its closed position, but Ash was ready.

He took another step and knocked the door back as he moved further into the room and completed slicing the pie. So far so good. No assailants waited in the kitchen, but the missing workers were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Eve.

His gaze drifted to a closed door on the left side of a narrow hallway that led from the kitchen to the outside exit, probably a storage room. He approached the doorway cautiously, stepped to the side, and turned the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. He moved against the wall as he pushed the door open. It drifted back and stopped when it hit a storage shelf.

The instant he moved away from the wall and started his scan of the room, he saw Joe, the cafe owner, and Lisa, the young waitress, on the floor. They lay bound and gagged on their stomachs side by side in the small walkway that ran between the shelves of food and supplies that ringed the room. The blood that pooled under their heads told him there was no need to feel for a pulse. Instead he concentrated on determining whether an armed assailant was still in the building.

Moments later with his sweep done, Ash dropped down between Joe and Lisa and rubbed his hand across his eyes. Why had they been killed? And why didn’t he hear the gunshots? The obvious answer flashed in his mind. The killer had used a silencer.
      

Ash bit down on his lip as he reached down and gripped Joe’s shoulder. Had he and the pretty waitress with the dimpled smile been killed because someone wanted to get to him? He didn’t think he could bear one more death on his conscience. He had  enough of those in his past.

Now he faced a new problem. What should he do? The police had to be called, but Eve’s message coupled with two murders told him he had to get out of here and call Lainey. If he waited for the police, he could be tied up for hours and possibly days. The last thing he needed was to be dragged into an investigation.

There was only one solution to his problem.

Ash rose to his feet, walked to the telephone in the kitchen, and dialed 911. When the operator answered, he wiped his prints from the phone and laid it down on Joe’s worktable next to a mixing bowl. He glanced around for his coffee cup, but it was nowhere to be seen. Eve had either washed it or taken it with her. Maybe she hadn’t wanted his DNA found at the scene either.

Then he wiped the handle of the storage room door and checked once more to make sure Joe and Lisa would be visible to the first responders and ran back to the dining room. He jerked his overcoat off the chair where he’d draped it, ran to his SUV in the parking lot, and roared off down the street.

The first flashing blue lights appeared in his rearview mirror as he turned the corner at the end of the block. He could breathe easier for the time being. Now to find a secluded area and pull over to make a phone call. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble and killed two people in the process to get him to call Lainey. It made no sense. Why hadn’t they just told him to make the call?

The answer hit him before the question had finished running through his mind. Because somehow they knew he wouldn’t have called. He’d vowed he’d never speak to anyone in his family again, and he hadn’t in years. Now two innocent people had paid the ultimate price for the anger he harbored toward Richard and Lainey. The thought was like a knife twisting in his gut.

As he approached the outskirts of town, he recalled seeing a sign that pointed to a small park when he’d passed here before. The entrance lay up ahead, and he swerved onto the snow-covered road that led toward a picnic area on the backside of a lake. The vehicle hadn’t come to a full stop before he yanked his cell phone from the clip on his belt.

For a moment all he could do was stare at the phone. He didn’t want to think about Lainey, much less talk to her. He raised his hands and pounded them against the steering wheel. He didn’t want to talk to her, the woman who from the day he’d met her had wanted four things—the DeHan name and money, the house where he’d grown up, and the business his father had built.

Well, she was welcome to it all. It hadn’t taken her long to turn to his brother when Ash left for training with Firebrand. And Richard had been only too happy to oblige her since he’d always been in love with her. With Richard’s death and Lainey the mother of their son and only DeHan heir, she had it made for the rest of her life. If she was in trouble, she deserved every bit of it.

The memory of Joe and Lisa lying in a pool of blood flashed in his mind, and he closed his eyes. The execution style of their murders, a gun with a silencer, and no witnesses left behind could only mean one thing—a professional hit. Was Eve the killer or did she have help? Somebody must really want him to talk to Lainey if they were willing to kill two innocent people to guarantee he’d make the call.

For that reason alone, he would call Lainey, and he would listen to what she had to say before he hung up. But if she thought she could persuade him to give her the time of day after that, she was mistaken.

He lifted the cell phone and punched in the number he’d committed to memory when he’d started kindergarten and had to know his personal information—his home phone number.

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Lainey sat in the big wingback chair in front of the fireplace in the den and sipped a cup of coffee. The flickering flames from the gas logs made her think of Richard. In the early days of their marriage he’d built real fires on cold nights, but she had never mastered the technique of starting a fire. That’s why right before his death he’d had the gas logs installed. He’d tried to think of everything that would make her life easier after he was gone.

The guilt she’d harbored for years welled up in her mind, and she shook her head. Tonight wasn’t the time to think of how she failed her husband. He’d never blamed her for loving his brother first because he’d loved him, too.

She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “No, I won’t go there tonight.”

She set the coffee cup on the table next to the chair and pushed to her feet. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she began to pace back and forth in the room. Why didn’t Ash call? It had been nearly an hour since the men left. They’d said he’d be calling soon. But what did that mean? An hour? A day? A week?

The ringing of the telephone halted her steps as she made her second trip across the room. She only hesitated a moment before she rushed to her desk and grabbed the receiver.

“Hello.” Her heart pounded so hard she could barely breathe.

“Lainey, it’s Ash. I was told to call you.”

Her hand tightened on the phone, and she closed her eyes for a moment. It had been eleven years since she’d heard his voice. Years when she had yearned for just one chance to hear him say her name again, and here it was. But she couldn’t take time to savor the moment. Something evil had entered her world, and somehow it was connected to Ash. She swallowed hard and straightened to her full height.

“Ash, thank you for calling. Where are you?”

“Colorado. I live here now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”

She rubbed her hand across her forehead and frowned. Two men had broken into her house and threatened to kill her and her son, and she was chit-chatting with Ash as if they were two old friends reconnecting.

“What do you want, Lainey?”

The harsh tone of his words left no doubt that in Ash’s eyes they weren’t old friends. She was certain whatever was going on was his fault, and yet here he was on the phone speaking to her in an accusatory tone asking what she wanted, as if somehow she was at fault. He hadn’t changed a bit. He was still just as self-centered and arrogant as ever. Nothing was ever his fault. He thought himself too perfect to ever make a mistake. It was easier to blame someone else. 

Her body shook with anger. “What do I want?” she screamed into the phone. “I want you to come home.”

A chuckle drifted into her ear. “You have to be kidding. Didn’t you see the letter I wrote William after you and Richard married?”

“I did, but something. . .”

His angry voice cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “Then you know that I said I would never come back to that place.”

If she were the only one involved, she would slam the phone down and go to the police. But those men had said they’d come back. And she knew they’d hurt her and Max. She’d do anything to protect Max, even begging on her hands and knees for Ash to return home. Panic surged through her, and she began to shake. “B-but they s-said you have to come home.” The volume of her voice rose as she spoke each word.