Take Me Two Times Page 28

  And Liam? He’d simply have to wait for her. If he didn’t, then she’d know at last what kind of man he truly was. . . .

  chapter 38

  Gwen slowly registered that the man holding the gun was the last person she’d expected. Dante smiled through a sheen of Miami moonlight that refracted from the gun’s barrel to his teeth and back again. “I’m afraid McDougal can’t help you right now,” he said. “He’s indisposed.”

  Gwen gaped at him. “Dante, what are you doing?”

  “Get back into the house, bella; there’s a good girl. Don’t run or try to pull anything, because I will not hesitate to shoot.”

  For a moment she simply could not register what the words meant. Dante couldn’t be doing this. . . .

  She’d been so sure it was Eric. Oh, God, McDougal—she’d misjudged everything.

  “What do you mean, McDougal’s indisposed?” she said urgently. “Is he okay?”

  Dante shrugged, and she stared at him, horrified.

  Think, Gwen, think. She was in such a state of shock that she felt paralyzed. Note and exploit your opponent’s weaknesses. The words came back to her from Avy’s intensive training sessions.

  Broken leg. She eyed it. He was going to have a difficult time getting it through the window. She might be able to knock him off balance. . . .

  Dante followed her thoughts. “Don’t try it.” He lifted his good leg to the sill without any hesitation, keeping the gun trained on her the entire time. He slid his leg inside, bent at the waist, and, with supreme muscular grace and discipline, put his weight on the floor while he lifted the bad leg and brought it straight through, too. Then he reached out and pulled in his crutch.

  Gwen’s SIG was in her shoulder bag, but she didn’t dare try for it.

  “Throw the bag on the floor,” Dante commanded, not bothering to keep his voice down. “Angeline!”

  “Dante?” Angeline called from the patio, panic in her voice.

  “Stay where you are. My friend and I are coming down the hall.”

  “What—”

  “Just stay there!” he barked. “Now, hands on your head and move,” he said to Gwen. He shoved the crutch under his arm.

  Her pulse hammering, blood roaring in her ears, she left the office and walked down the hall toward the living room and the patio doors. Quinn. She was probably dead, but Quinn could still get away. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, think about the baby.

  “Quinn!” she shrieked. “Get out!”

  Dante flung the crutch against the wall and grabbed her by the hair. “Shut up!”

  “Get out! He’s got a gun!”

  The Glock dug viciously into her spine. Where were Dante’s old-world manners now? “Make another noise, Gwen, and I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  She couldn’t nod, since he had her head pulled back. “Yes,” she said.

  Dante let go of her hair and picked up his crutch. He awkwardly propelled her around the corner, and she saw Quinn’s white face, his whole body tense.

  “Jesus God,” he said. “Gwen.” He swallowed.

  He was here only because she’d asked him to be. Why, why had she called him?

  Dante shoved her with the gun and they both stepped over the threshold and outside.

  “Gwen.” Quinn looked agonized.

  “Shhhhhh. Quinn . . .” She might not have another chance to say it. “I love you. Always have.”

  “How touching,” Dante said.

  Quinn’s jaw worked. His eyes flickered from hers to the gun, which was now shoved hard against her back, to the left of her spine, lined up roughly with where her heart would be. “I love you, too.”

  “Dios mio, it’s a regular romance novel around here,” Dante said. “But she won’t look as pretty with a few holes in her, will she?”

  “Let her go,” Quinn said hoarsely.

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Lawson?”

  “Looking out for Gwen.”

  Silence reigned. No script seemed adequate. Finally Angeline said, “He thinks I killed Esteban Velasquez. With Eric McDougal’s help.”

  Dante ruminated for a moment. “A very plausible theory. Yes, I quite like it.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone! That was your idea.”

  “McDougal,” Dante mused, “will work very well. He resents Avy. And I’ve conveniently arranged things so that he has no alibi for this evening. That Scots bastard has been spying on me for Kelso.”

  “All I wanted was the mask,” Angeline insisted, to nobody in particular.

  “Be quiet, damn it!”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. . . .”

  “But you are going to,” Dante said calmly.

  She stared at him.

  “Get the mask,” he said. “And apply the nicotine. I want a little insurance, Angeline, that you won’t talk to the police. You’ve been very vocal just now about your limited role, and I don’t like that. You’re about to put a little more skin in this game.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Dante just raised his brows. “Get the mask, Angeline, or I will shoot these people and arrange for your fingerprints to be all over the gun.”

  “It’s still registered to you.”

  “Get the fucking mask or I’ll shoot you as well. I am losing my patience.”

  Angeline ran from the room.

  Quinn said to Dante, “Don’t do this. I will transfer every cent I have into an offshore account for you. Just let Gwen go.”

  “Believe me, I would like to. I once had hopes of getting to know you better, bella. . . .” Dante shrugged. “But it wasn’t to be.”

  Ugh. The thought made her skin crawl. Gwen watched a struggle take place on Quinn’s face, and closed her eyes, knowing what he’d say next.

  He cast her an agonized glance, as if to apologize. “Then kill me and take her with you.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. Oh, Quinn. Oh, my love . . .

  “I’m afraid that I cannot do that. She knows too much.”

  “She can forget it again. Can’t you, honey?”

  Gwen hated the pleading look on Quinn’s face. He’d never begged for anything in his life.

  “Why, Dante?” she asked. “For God’s sake, this doesn’t make any sense. Why would you want to kill Avy?”

  “I’ve been engineering this for some time now. It’s what you Americans like to call payback. You remember a recovery she made from a certain ambassador’s home three years ago?”

  “Tzekas,” Gwen said slowly. “There was a scandal; he was deported from the U.S. in disgrace.”

  Dante smiled. “My mother’s brother. And that’s all you need to know, bella.”

  “I can’t believe Kelso missed that when he hired you.”

  Dante shrugged. “The names are different, and Kelso is not Superman. If it’s any consolation, we didn’t originally mean to kill Avy . . . only to destroy her reputation and disgrace her. But because of you, cara, all that has changed. Things are now too complicated; she must die. And you, too.”

  Gwen seethed. They were in this mess courtesy of her. She had confided in Dante; relied upon him. She’d gotten them into this, misread the whole situation.

  Now it was time for her to somehow get them out. If she could only get to her SIG . . .

  Angeline returned with the mask. She held it by the edges with two facecloths.

  Dante nodded curtly. “Give it to Gwen.”

  She held it out, and Gwen eyed it as she had the python in the warehouse on the Miami River. At least she’d had a fair shot at the python.

  “Take it,” Dante said.

  Quinn lunged forward. “She’s pregnant, you bastard!”

  Dante dropped his crutch and grabbed Gwen’s hair again with brutality, jabbing the gun into her ear. She saw Quinn’s expression and bit down on her scream, which would torture him.

  Dante said one word in lethal tones: “Don’t.”

  Quinn stopped, his hands opening and closing helplessly, his eyes never leaving h
er face. “Pregnant,” he whispered again.

  Dante had the grace to look regretful. “This I am sorry to hear, but it makes no difference in the end.”

  “God in heaven, you can’t do this!” Quinn shouted.

  “Take the mask, Gwen.”

  Sweat soaked every inch of her body, perversely chilling her in the night breeze off the water. Dante tightened his grip on her hair but used his fist against the back of her skull to shove her forward. Strangely enough, the pain gave her something to focus on besides fear. Gwen stretched out her still-gloved hands and took the mask.

  Angeline stared at her through those dark gray, Borgia eyes of hers.

  She stared right back, concentrating on the pain at her scalp because it made her angry. Angry in a good way: a calculating kind of angry, not a blind rage.

  “Put it on and say good night, bella.” Dante’s café-cubano voice and his hot breath gusted against her bare, vulnerable neck. “It’s time to end the charade. You’re lovely, but you’ve been a lousy recovery agent.”

  Fuck you.

  “Put it on!”

  She brought the mask up inches from her face.

  “Don’t, Gwen!” Quinn said. “God, don’t do it!”

  “Enough!” Dante jerked the gun out of her ear, aimed it at Quinn’s thigh, and pulled the trigger.

  Quinn went down.

  Gwen screamed, and Dante released her hair to clamp a hand over her mouth. He shoved the gun back into her ear. “I’ll shoot him again if you don’t put on that mask.”

  Quinn struggled to sit up. “No! Gwen—”

  She held it up to her face.

  Three inches until death.

  Two.

  Dear God.

  One.

  No. She wouldn’t let this happen. The bastard wasn’t killing her baby. He wasn’t killing Quinn. And she wasn’t about to let him get Avy in the end, either.

  Gwen stomped her heel into Dante’s instep and slammed her elbow into his stomach. She sliced the edge of the heavy mask down onto his wrist. The Glock hit the ground, and she kicked it into the pool.

  Quinn came flying past her and knocked Dante to the patio. His fists were a blur. Gwen heard sickening sounds of flesh and bone being pulverized.

  Angeline whirled and ran.

  And then the latch of the garden gate rattled. “There you are, my beauty!” Sid Thresher called. “At last, I’ve found you. Been driving all over this bloody, godforsaken island—” His eyes bugged out as he took in the scene.

  “Sid!” Gwen screamed, launching herself at the Borgia bitch and taking her down. “Call an ambulance!”

  chapter 39

  “’Ere,” said Sid, “I’ve got a perfectly good limo out front. Why wait for a bloody ambulance?”

  So they took Sid up on his offer of a ride to the ER, declining his generous offer of Bloody Marys for all.

  Dante lay on the floor, shackled with clothesline and unconscious, while Angeline sat hunched in the corner with a split lip and a filthy face, her hands manacled. Sid had just happened to have a pair of mink-lined handcuffs in the “boot.”

  There were also fishnet stockings, a black leather shorty catsuit with cutouts in inappropriate places, and spike-heeled, shiny patent thigh-high boots in Gwen’s size.

  A phone call to Sheila yielded the information that McDougal was bloody and concussed, courtesy of Dante, but alive and cranky as hell, thanks to Cato. He was pissed that he’d “let down” Kelso, who’d smelled a rat and sent McDougal to investigate—though not to sleep with one of the objects of said investigation. McD simply had his own way of doing things.

  Gwen stripped off Quinn’s shirt and fashioned a tourniquet from it for his leg. He wouldn’t let go of her, which made things difficult. She pressed her lips to his. “Quinn, sweetheart, let me do this. It’s going to hurt, though.”

  “I don’t care. You’re alive. You’re alive. And the baby . . . ” To her shock, he broke down. “My people,” he said. “My people.”

  Tears came to her own eyes. “Stop it. You’re getting me all emotional. Now let go, so I can try to stop the bleeding.”

  “I’m never letting you go again,” he said. “I love you. More than anything. Marry me, Gwen. Make me happy.”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “This isn’t how I’d planned it,” he continued. “Brancato hasn’t sent the ring yet, but he’s working on it.”

  No wonder Quinn had looked smug that day. She kissed him and he tried to pull her on top of him, then hissed in pain as his leg informed him that was not a good idea.

  “I have to warn you,” Quinn said when he could speak again, “your dad’s gonna be livid.”

  “We knew that.”

  “No, I mean about my new job.”

  “When have you had time to find another job?” She stared at him, incredulous.

  “I don’t have it yet. Serious inside track, though. I know the director of operations.”

  “So don’t keep me in suspense! What’s the position?”

  “Mr. Mom.”

  Gwen’s jaw dropped open. He put his finger under her chin and gently closed it again. “Well, for a few years, anyway. I know you don’t want to quit your job, honey. And I’ve made enough money. . . . Hey, my mouth is gonna fall off if you keep kissing me that hard.”

  “’Ere!” Sid said irritably from the front seat. “Gwendolyn, me beauty, may I point out that snogging the shirtless, shot-up bloke with the shiner in the back of my limo is in very bad taste?”

  Gwen ignored him and took the opportunity to tighten the tourniquet.

  Quinn erupted into foul curses.

  “That’s much better,” Sid said in tones of approval. He scowled, though, when Gwen kissed Quinn again to distract him from the pain.

  “You’d better not be wearing the bustier I sent for that rotter.”

  “Bustier?” said Quinn against her mouth.

  “Nor the diamonds, neither! I should bloody well ask for them back.”

  Gwen raised her head. “What?! I returned everything to you.”

  “In a pig’s eye, you did,” Sid said in tones of indignation.

  “He sent you diamonds? Gwen, I think you have some ’splainin’ to do,” growled Quinn.

  “Sheila,” Gwen uttered, her wrath rising. “Sheila kept everything! She was supposed to send it all back. I’m going to kill her.”

  “Fine,” Quinn said, his voice soothing as he placed his hand on Gwen’s belly. His fingers crept under her top and played with the diamond at her navel. “You can kill her after we get married again, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “And from now on, nobody gets to give you another diamond except for me, understood? It may take me two times to make you mine, honey, but after fifteen years I’m a little stubborn.”

  Read on for a special preview of

  Karen Kendall’s next novel,

  Take Me for a Ride

  Coming in November 2009 from Signet Eclipse.

  Manhattan, September 2008

  Some people stole money. Others stole cars, liquor, or big-ticket items like jewelry. Art recovery agent Eric McDougal stole women.

  He did it with wit, style, passion . . . and guile—since they never knew they were missing in action until he returned them to reality.

  McDougal took his women for a ride and a good time was had by all. Afterward he set them down gently on their own two feet, gave ’em a sweet smile, a wink from his Newman-blue eyes, and a swat on the backside. How they handled things from there was not his problem. Well, not usually.

  This evening as he trained his gaze on the pretty target two blocks ahead, McDougal contemplated the horrifying memory of what a tasty, busty little psychopath had done to his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14. He’d almost bitten through his own tongue when he saw it. Even now, three days later and a thousand miles from Miami, he winced.

  Pink. She’d painted the Ninja pink. His jaw worked.

  Why? He’d taken her to nice
places. He’d never made any promises. He’d given her—if he did say so himself— the mother of all orgasms. And just because he hadn’t called afterward . . .

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t much of a gentleman. He’d never advertised himself as one. But . . .

  Pink.

  It was cold. Beyond cold. Vicious, conscienceless brutality was what it was. Carnage.

  He was tempted to press charges. But then he pictured the cop’s face as he filled out the report, and he deep-sixed that bright idea.

  Focus, you bonehead.

  Natalie Rosen, his mark, had nothing to do with the destruction. An art restorer and probable thief, she lurched left on the crowded Manhattan sidewalk between Ninety-second and First. The door of Reif’s opened and swallowed her.

  Reif’s? She didn’t look the type for a seedy old neighborhood bar run by three generations of Irish. Reif’s was a blue-collar place in a now-affluent neighborhood. North of Ninety-sixth got dicey as it eased into Spanish Harlem, but south of Ninety-sixth had become gentrified. Still, there were a few old holdouts like Reif’s, where electricians and plumbers mingled with white-collar yuppies and argued politics over cheap beer. The Yankees, the Mets, the mayor, the weather—those were typical topics.

  Reif’s was situated on the ground floor of a six-story apartment building. It smelled like beer and dust, but it was also homey and offered a sort of tobacco-stained comfort that suited McDougal . . . but not a girl like Natalie Rosen.

  Natalie had dark, glossy, straight hair and dark, serious eyes that looked a little at odds with her snub, lightly freckled nose. She was cute in a repressed, academic sort of way. Not tweedy or preppy—more earnest and artsy. The chick wore a lot of black, but there was a difference between severe New York black and sultry Miami black.

  New York black covered while Miami black revealed. New York black involved tights, turtlenecks, scarves, and coats. Miami black involved thongs, skirt lengths just shy of illegal, spike heels, and fishnets—particularly on some of those little Brazilian hotties, with their bras clearly showing under skimpy tops . . . oh, yeah. McDougal was a big fan of Miami black.

  Focus. He frowned. What the hell was a girl with an art degree from Carnegie Mellon doing in a beer-sodden joint like Reif’s? Surely not unloading a $2 million necklace.