A Kiss of Revenge (Entangled Ignite) (22 page)

The airport sat on a rise that allowed them to look down over the town toward the center of the island, which made the teenager’s start an easy one, heading slightly downhill. They passed people wandering on sidewalks past shops and cafés and pausing to look at wares displayed in windows. Those not walking rode bicycles or Segways, and there were a dozen other rickshaws around, some pulled by running men, some by bikes, and a couple by horses. That gave her an idea, but she’d have to wait and see what their destination was.

The rickshaw driver sped down the main road that seemed to circle the island, following Two and Kimmie down the hill, at enough of a distance that they wouldn’t likely be spotted.

“What can you tell me about the island?” Reese asked, once they were away from town and she could hear his answers. He went into tour guide mode, describing its shape and weather and doubtful history as a smuggler’s hideout. She studied the homes and empty dunes they passed and the glimpses of ocean between them.

“That house, right up there,” the rickshaw driver said, pointing up a hill, “was Smuggler Sam’s.” They’d come around a curve that bowed inland. The house looked like an old sea captain’s, complete with turret and widow’s walk.

“Is it a museum now?” she asked, not interested until Two’s bike turned left into the winding driveway, Kimmie following.

“Nah, it’s a private home. You want I should turn in there?” He started a hand signal.

“No!” Reese held her breath as they passed, but no one looked back. “We can just go back to town.”

“Easier ride if we keep going around,” he suggested. “Hill’s less steep going up the other side.”

She guessed he was angling for a bigger fare, but she agreed. They circumnavigated almost the entire island in half an hour. This kid’s legs had to be robotic. And whenever she looked, Smuggler Sam’s was visible, perched on its unbreachable hill.

“Who lives in Smuggler Sam’s now?” she asked when they finally reached the end of the tour. “I’d love to see inside.”

He stuffed her fare and generous tip into his pocket and beamed at her. “Don’t know how you could, seeing as Mr. Kryszka is pretty reclusive. He don’t mix with the locals. Or the tourists.”

Wait.
What?

Reese lost track of what he was saying. The panic she’d felt on the plane was nothing compared to this feeling of being punched in the stomach with an iron fist.

“Mr.
who
?”

“Kryszka. Chris Kryszka.” He frowned. “Why? You know him?”

She sure as hell did.

Chris Kryszka was her ex-husband.

Chapter Fourteen

Reese paced her hotel room, pausing now and then to look out the window at Chris’s house on the hill. She’d had to use her credit card for the room and a new prepaid phone, the clothes she’d also bought, and the dinner she’d carried out from the island’s best restaurant, but it didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t care if Chris knew she was on the island, because soon enough, she’d be right up in his face.

She was dying to call Griff, but every time she opened the phone and thumbed the keys, her own words, her own horrendously cavalier voice came back to her, and she just didn’t have the gall.

So she had a mental conversation with him, instead.

She said something like,
It’s so clear now. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.

He’d reply,
It sounds ridiculous.

So she’d say, Alpine Nirvana?
He always loved the mountains more than anything else. The connection is so obvious.

Right. It’s not at all implausible that your ex—who never gave you a hint that he did anything worse than lose too much money in backroom poker games—would become a kingpin of drugs, porn, and murder.

Okay, that part isn’t so obvious.

Plus, how would husband number three from Colorado have gotten involved with husband number four from DC?

The conversation stalled there, because in her head, he sounded bitter about her many marriages. She had to recalibrate, because this was
her
imaginary conversation, and his imaginary self had no call to be judging her and the choices she’d made.

Recalibration took a little time, because then she got defensive about those choices and went through a short period of self-justification. Four marriages didn’t make her capricious, or a slut. And it wasn’t like her abandonment issues were unique. When she was little, her mother called her “a handful” often enough to leave a mark and convince her that was why her father had left. When she’d met Joey, she subconsciously decided she
wouldn’t
be a handful anymore, so he wouldn’t leave her, too. Thus the chameleon act started. When he died, she told herself it hadn’t been his choice, so it wasn’t her fault. She’d repeated the pattern with Erik. By the time she met Chris, she’d grown a spine and told herself it was all right to develop her own interests. Boy, he’d shown her.

Their divorce only reinforced the idea that men left unless you conformed to their ways.

She hadn’t married Brian to heal herself from Chris’s rejection. She’d understood why being alone felt so wrong, and she’d married him because she loved him. At the time.

Anyway,
she
was in control of this imaginary conversation.

I met them both at the same party, remember? Brian was dating Chris’s sister at the time. He’d always said his partner was an old friend…

The memory arrested her and she stopped pacing to stare out the window, one hand toying with the butterfly pendant. Brian and Chris had been friends. How had she forgotten that? When she’d given Griff a list of Brian’s friends and contacts to investigate, how had she overlooked Chris?

It had been a long time ago, to be sure. Plus, she and Chris had only been married for six months, and she hadn’t seen any of his friends who weren’t living in Colorado. His sister had dumped Brian shortly after that New Year’s Eve party. Brian and Reese had both been amused by their tenuous prior connection after meeting again in DC, but by then she’d never wanted to think about Chris again.

Clearly, she hadn’t. She hated herself. All of this could have been prevented if she’d just remembered.

Laughter floated up from the street below, snaring her attention. The island’s one deputy stood on the opposite sidewalk, thumbs hooked in his belt, his back slouched. Behind him, a couple of ten-year-old boys tossed water balloons at a store window, then ran, exploding with laughter. The deputy didn’t notice the splash, not even the droplets that splattered his pants.

She sighed. She’d considered reporting Kimmie’s abduction. Even though her evidence was scant, they could check with Andrew to see if she’d been reported missing, and even pay a call to Smuggler Sam’s. But her casual inquiries about the island’s police force had garnered affectionate dismissal of the sheriff and his deputy. Apparently, they were fine for small incidents, but God forbid anything major happened on the island. If they did go talk to Chris, it would just put him on alert and maybe put Kimmie in even more danger.

Plus, a place like this would be immediately suspicious of a stranger making accusations about one of its citizens. Especially the rich guy who lived in the estate on the hill.

So what was the best way to get up there?

In the small stack of tourist pamphlets in her room, she discovered one of the island’s most popular attractions. From there, everything fell into place. She bought a bow and quiver at a small sporting-goods store and, dressed in the black clothes she’d bought, headed out a couple of hours after dark. Downtown was settling as stores closed and people finished late dinners in the restaurants, and the interior of the island was quiet.

Windy Dunes Stables was a fifteen-minute jog along a road bisecting the island. She didn’t see anyone along the way. She had originally considered just renting a black horse, but the issue of witnesses had made that as bad an idea as hiring a rickshaw to take her up to the house. It would have taken some convincing for the owner to let her keep the horse out at night, and the harder she worked to convince the woman, the more Reese would cement herself in the owner’s mind. The fewer people who knew she was here, the better.

She hoped the low crime rate would equal low security. Sure enough, when she arrived at the stables, there wasn’t even a gate across the entrance. After covering her light hair with a scarf, she jogged through the trees lining the driveway and sneaked into the barn.

She stopped at a stall containing a regal-looking black. The sign on the Dutch door said his name was Chevalier Noir—Black Knight. But the feed-and-water clipboard hanging on the inside wall said, “Sin.”

He was perfect.

She found tack and efficiently saddled the horse, who stood quietly, even letting her quickly pick his hooves without a lot of chuffing and shifting. Her heart pounded, pushing her to move faster as she listened hard for any sounds out of the ordinary. Guilt surged with every gush of adrenaline—stealing a horse was the worst thing she’d done yet.
Borrowed
, she corrected, pressing her face against the gorgeous beast’s neck and murmuring a promise to return him unharmed. She breathed in his warmth and the familiar scent of horseflesh and hay, hardened her heart, and unlatched the stall door. Sin’s reins firmly in one hand, her bow and quiver in the other, she opened the door—

And walked straight into a tall, hard body.

Fu-uck!

Before she could do more than mentally scream the curse, she recognized the man in front of her. If her hands hadn’t been full, she’d have punched him in the chest. Then she was immediately glad she couldn’t.

“Griff?” she whispered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He eased her back into the stall and closed the door again. “I’d like to say ‘Saving you from yourself,’ but I know there’s no chance of that.”

“How did you—”

“Seriously? Do you really want to do this now?”

She stared up at him. He was right, she’d been there too long already, but she couldn’t respond, too lost in the joy of his presence. Her throat closed up and tears pricked her eyes, and far from wanting to hit him, she wanted to throw her arms around him and beg his forgiveness.

But apparently, that wasn’t how he interpreted her silence. After a second, he heaved an exasperated breath and answered all her questions at once, his voice barely more than a rumble inches from her ear.

“I found the island address in Missirian’s file. I beat you here by one flight, I think, and probably learned all the same things you did. No vehicles, piss-poor law enforcement, biggest house on the island owned by a guy everyone talks about but no one knows. Pure criminal kingpin stuff. Horses were the most logical way for you to get close to Smuggler Sam’s, so I came here.” His eyes glittered in the dim light from the security lamps. “How can I convince you to let this go? To call the FBI?”

She shook her head. “Not everything.”

“What?” Griff’s face dipped, probably with a frown. “Not everything what?”

“You didn’t learn everything I did. Did you get the criminal kingpin’s name?”

His moment of hesitation revealed his annoyance before he admitted, “No.”

“It’s Chris. Kryszka.”

After a beat Griff cursed, his hand rising to shove through his hair. “Are you kidding me? Your
ex
?”

“That’s what they tell me. And there’s more. Griff, he’s got Kimmie.” She didn’t wait for his reaction this time, but rushed to convince him not to try to stop her. “I don’t know why, but she didn’t look like she wanted to be here, and I have absolutely no basis for going to the police with that. Chris must not have considered me and Brian a threat after the accident, so my quest for revenge probably triggered everything.” Her voice cracked, even at a low hiss, and she swallowed before it rose too high and caught someone’s attention. “He for damned sure thinks so now, or he wouldn’t have killed Brian. But the FBI has nothing on him, no connection to any of the crimes, so the only threat is me. He won’t stop until I’m dead, too. And I don’t even care, if—”

“
I
care.” The words burst fiercely out of Griff, his hands coming up to grip her shoulders tightly. He pulled her forward and leaned to meet her body. “I’m not stupid, Reese. I know what you were doing the other night. Yeah, I reacted badly, but—”

“You reacted the way you were supposed to!” Alarm raised her voice again. “You can’t be involved in this. Just knowing I’m here is compromising your career, your—”

“Just shut up a minute, will—”

She ignored him and raced on. “—Values. I could go to the FBI, help them run a sting, or hope they get something on Chris for a different crime, but I can’t live like that! Always knowing he could be right behind me, that he could kill the only man I lo—”

Griff’s mouth came down on hers, unerring in the dark, and his arms wrapped around her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. Or maybe that was the power in his kiss, the desperation he poured through it, full of all the love she’d always wanted and had never, ever, in her whole life, received like this.

When he pulled a scant breath away, she could feel his next words more than hear them.

“I would kill for you, Reese. Break the law, end this bastard and all of his people, if it would keep you safe.” He stopped her murmur of protest with another kiss, this one tender and tinged with amused sorrow. Her surge of terror faded under it, as no doubt had been his intent. “So how can I blame you for doing the same?” he whispered, his lips brushing hers, his hand pushing the hair back off her face. Her scarf must have fallen off when he first kissed her, she thought dimly, focused completely on him. “I understand you,” he murmured. “What you need. So I’m not going to stop you. But I
will
have your back.”

She went into free fall. For a moment, the rest of her life ceased to exist. All the baggage she carried from trying and failing to keep the men in her life, all the hatred for Chris and what he’d done to her—even the need to please Griff by saying okay, forget it, she wouldn’t go after Chris…none of it had any hold on her.

“I love you.” She mouthed it more than said it, but he hugged her closer, and she knew he’d heard. She rested against him, eyes closed, breathing him in, wanting to freeze this moment forever, but knowing nothing had really changed. She still had to go after Chris. Had to stop him from hurting anyone else, especially Griff.

And in the end, she wouldn’t be worthy of his love.

“So what the hell?” She stepped back, out of his reach, and sniffed hard, once. “What have you been doing all this time? I could have been out of here already if you’d helped me saddle Sin.”

“I was saddling Halo.” His teeth flashed in a grin as he slid the stall door open again. He crossed the aisle and led a bay out of the opposite stall. “Let’s go.” He turned Halo to the far end of the barn, the end farthest from the house on the other side of the compound. She followed with Sin after snatching her scarf from the ground and re-covering her hair.

They were silent until they reached the road and mounted up.

“Sin was a good choice,” he told her in a normal, albeit low voice. “He’s the most sure-footed of the stables’ horses, and he sees exceptionally well in the dark.”

She paused in checking her equipment. “Okay. How—”

“The horses don’t mind cross-country, but the dunes near Smuggler Sam’s are riddled with burrs, so we’re not going that way. Stay on this side of the road until you get past the house, then work your way up the hill from the other side. There’s an old servant’s road, unpaved and overgrown, that should get us there with no trouble, and more quietly.” He grinned again. “I had a busy afternoon.”

She blinked. “Thanks, Griff.”

He patted her thigh, then the horse’s rump. At her command, the big black started forward, his clomps dulled by the sandy shoulder. Any jitters she might have felt if she were alone were soothed away by the motion of the horse and her awareness of Griff behind her.

The darkness on this side of the island was nearly complete except for the light of a half moon and the yellow glow within houses they passed. They kept the horses deep in the shoulder so their hooves wouldn’t echo and they wouldn’t be easily seen, and once they were less than a quarter mile from Chris’s house, they moved farther off the road. No one would be able to see them here among the sea grass and scrub brush.

This section of the island was undeveloped. Either Chris owned a lot of acreage, or there was some kind of ordinance against developing this close to the island’s main historical landmark. Her vote was on the former.

She pulled up on Sin’s reins once they were directly in front of the house, and studied it. A few lights shone from each of three floors. Questions paraded through her mind—how many people were inside, which room Kimmie was in, what was the best way to find Chris, and how to get him to confess to everything before she killed him.