Cold Midnight (38 page)

“Chase.”

He jerked his head up and met the dark brown eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.

Aw, fuck.

“Give me the phone and put your hands on the steering wheel.”

Chase complied. He didn’t have to see the Glock to know Sam had it aimed at the back of his seat.

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to check the back before you get in the car?”

He’d been so distracted by warning Kylie, and that damn noisy lawn mower . . .

“What’s going on, Sam? Talk to me. Whatever it is, we can work it out.”

Sam’s smile went nowhere near his eyes. It looked as dead as Kylie’s game face. “You shouldn’t have told her.”

“I didn’t tell her anything she can use. All I told her was I had a suspicion. My suspicions about Quinn were wrong. This one can be, too.”

“Nice try.”

“Come on, you heard me tell her I wasn’t sure.”

“This is what we’re going to do,” Sam said as he stashed Chase’s cell in his pants pocket then leaned his weight against the back of the seat and reached around Chase’s chest to the gun in the holster under his left arm. “I know you’ve got one strapped to your ankle, too. Make even a suggestion of a move toward it, and you’re dead.”

Chase nodded his understanding.

“Take out your cuffs and secure one to your right wrist.”

Chase did as he was told, his brain churning out scenarios and discarding them just as quickly. Sam knew his moves. Partners for five years grew to know each other as well as respective spouses.

“Now get into the passenger seat,” Sam said, “loop the free cuff through the handle there by the windshield and secure your other wrist.”

Chase scooted over, maneuvering his long legs over the center console into the other seat. He threaded the manacle through the curved plastic handle where the windshield met the side pillar of the truck’s frame, which was designed to help passengers pull themselves up and into the tall truck, and fumbled to zip-click the free cuff around his left wrist.

“Other drivers are going to see me handcuffed and know something’s up,” he said.

“That’s why we’re driving to Naples with the red light on the roof. They’ll just assume you’re my prisoner. Which you are.”

“This isn’t going to work, Sam.”

“Shut up and don’t do anything stupid.”

While Sam got out of the back, Chase tested the sturdiness of the passenger-assist handle. It gave as he tugged, but it appeared to be bolted onto the truck’s frame rather than glued on, so breaking it off quickly seemed unlikely.

Sam opened the passenger door and removed Chase’s ankle piece, then secured Chase’s ankles with nylon restraints they normally used on combative suspects. “Don’t want you kicking me while I’m driving,” Sam said. “That’d be just like you to try to cause an accident and sacrifice yourself to save your one true love.”

“Don’t do this, Sam, please. Kylie’s innocent. She doesn’t deserve to . . .” He couldn’t say it.

“Die?” Sam supplied with a tight quirk to his mouth. “Maybe I think she deserved to die ten years ago. Ever consider that?”

“But why? What did she ever do to you?”

They both froze as Chase’s phone, muffled in Sam’s pocket, began to ring. Ignoring it, Sam slammed the door shut. As his partner trotted around to the driver’s side, stashing his gun in his under-arm holster, Chase tested the mobility of his legs. He’d be able to snap the restraints with brute strength, but if he did it now, Sam would slap something stronger on him.

Sam stopped in the back for Chase’s portable police light, which he secured on the Explorer’s roof, before he got into the driver’s seat. As he cranked the engine, he said, “Just sit there and be quiet and we won’t have a problem.”

“You’re going to kill both of us whatever I do.”

“True, but it’ll be easier for Kylie if you behave.” Sam shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “If you know what I mean.”

“What? If I don’t behave, you’re going to torture her before you kill her? Is that really who you are, Sam?”

Sam looked at him fully, his dark eyes black. “You don’t know me. You’ve never known me. So shut the fuck up and be glad this parking lot is too public for me to kill you right here and now. If you behave, I won’t make you watch what I do to your girlfriend.”

Chase jerked at the cuffs that were binding his wrists. Couldn’t help it.

“Give it up,” Sam said, voice surprisingly soothing. “You’re not going anywhere.”

56

KYLIE CHECKED HER WATCH FOR THE EIGHT-
MILLIONTH time. Thirty minutes had passed since Chase called. He must have hit traffic.

The security guard pacing the dining-room floor, hand on the butt of his gun, paused to give her a sympathetic smile. He looked no older than twenty, with sandy brown hair, sky-blue eyes and a deep, dark tan. Chase had introduced him three days ago as Brian. “He’ll be here soon,” Brian said.

She returned his smile as she folded her nervous hands on the table. She’d tried Chase’s cell phone five minutes ago, and it had rung until she got voice mail. He must be in a dead zone, she thought. Relax. Take a breath.

“Thank you for . . . protecting me,” she said, and almost winced. But he was. He’d insisted she sit in the only room in the house that had no windows, while he paced back and forth between the entrance to the kitchen and the arched doorway that led to the living room.

“It’s no problem, ma’am.”

If she hadn’t been so freaked about Sam, she might have felt old at the “ma’am.” Instead, she searched for something to say, to ease the anxiety that kept trying to grow behind her eyes. “Are you from this area?” She guessed Boston from his accent.

“No, ma’am. I’m from outside Portland, Maine.”

“Ah. It’s cold there.” Duh. God, she was bad at this when she was distracted.

Brian smiled at her again and nodded. “A lot colder than here. The beach here is a lot more fun.” He flashed her a devilish grin. “Especially at spring break.”

She laughed. A heartbreaker. He actually reminded her some of Chase when they trained together.

Come on, Chase, where the hell are you? She reached for the cell phone on the table. “I’m going to try him again.”

She pressed redial and held the phone to her ear, surprised when she heard the phone ring in the living room. “He’s here,” she said and jumped to her feet just as the guard, hand tightening on his weapon, turned toward the arched door and blocked her from racing into the other room.

She started to demand he get out of the way, but then his body jerked and he reeled back into her, the violent force of his body slamming her back against the dining room table. She landed on the floor beside him, ribs smarting where she’d hit the table’s edge, and stared at the dark stain spreading over the front of his white security-guard shirt. He gazed at her with dazed eyes the color of a storm-darkening sky. His lips moved as he tried to say something, and a thick stream of blood trickled out of the side of his mouth.

“No!” Kylie shouted, and scrambled to her knees to grab his limp hand.

His eyes started to roll back, and she jostled his hand and arm. “Don’t do that, Brian. Stay with me.”

“Kylie.”

She shook her head at Sam’s voice, wanting to deny what had just happened, refusing to look up and acknowledge him, acknowledge that Chase had been right. Right now, though, all she could process was that Sam had shot Brian, and blood already saturated the security guard’s shirt. She needed to stop the bleeding, needed to help him.

But before she could place her hands over the bullet wound, his body went deathly still, and his fingers slackened between hers. Too late. Oh, God, she’d let shock waste too much time. And now it was too late.

She’d known him for three days, but a fierce grief nearly blinded her. That bastard Sam killed Brian. A sweet security guard with his whole life in front of him. Who lived far away from home and loved the beach and pronounced “car” as “cah” and “drawer” as “draw.”

“Kylie.”

She coached herself to keep a clear head. Chase would be here any minute. All she had to do was stall. All she had to do was keep her eye on the ball.

Raising her head, she met Sam’s eyes and hoped all the hate she felt at that moment didn’t shine through. The expression on his face—cold determination—chilled her almost as much as where he aimed his gun. Her right knee.

“I need you to get up,” he said evenly. “If you want to keep all that hardware in your knee working, I’d advise you to do as I say. Nice and easy.”

She pushed herself to her feet, hoping her wobbly legs would support her. Hurry, Chase, hurry. But then it hit her that she’d heard his cell phone ring earlier—

Her heart jolted as her gaze locked on Sam’s. “Where’s Chase?”

“You don’t need to worry about that right now.” He gestured with the gun. “Turn around.”

She obeyed, closing her eyes against the sight of Brian on the floor, trying to close her heart to the possibility that Sam had done the same to Chase. But she failed—Chase could already be dead—and black spots splattered across her vision like paintball bullets striking a target. No. Oh, God. No, no, no.

“Hands behind your back.”

She didn’t ignore the command. She just couldn’t follow it as her brain focused on one thing and one thing only. “What did you do to Chase?”

Sam seized her right wrist and jerked it behind her, followed by her left, where he bound them tightly together with plastic restraints. By the time it occurred to her that he’d had to holster his weapon to do that, he’d grabbed hold of the back of a dining-room chair with one hand, and steering her with the other, dragged it into the kitchen.

After situating the chair in the middle of the kitchen, he forced her around so that her back was to the seat, as if preparing to sit, and walked behind her. He grasped her bound wrists and drew them up and back. Her shoulders protested the unnatural position, and she bowed forward with a pained gasp.

“What are you doing?”

“Just relax and work with me.”

He pulled her back by the wrists until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the chair’s seat, and she had no choice but to sit. When she did, her arms were draped over the chair’s back, and she realized his intent. With even minimal movement restricted, getting up, especially quickly, would be next to impossible. There would be no way for her to charge him or otherwise try to disarm him.

He didn’t glance her way as he started going through cabinets, searching for something with desperate determination. Sweat had plastered his green cotton polo to his sculpted back.

“Finally,” he muttered as he withdrew a bottle of Jim Beam left behind by a previous renter. About four inches of whiskey sloshed around in the bottle as he spun off the top and tipped it back for a long swig, his hand visibly shaking.

Kylie, watching his throat work as he gulped the cheap bourbon, tested the security of the plastic straps around her wrists. So tight that slipping free wasn’t an option, and she wasn’t strong enough to break them.

With less than an inch of booze left in the bottle, Sam dragged the back of his hand through the sweat dampening his flushed brow. “Almost there,” he murmured, eyes red and watering. “Just hang on.”

Almost where? Oh, God, what had he done to Chase? “Where is he, Sam? Where is Chase?”

He slammed the bottle onto the counter. “Just shut up.”

She tensed when he pulled the gun out of his holster and aimed it at her. “I should have killed you back then. We wouldn’t be here now if I’d just gotten it over with. But that pussy Mark ran away, and I had to stop him before he could rat me out.”

Full realization clicked, like a whoosh of flame in her face, singeing and airless. “You were one of them,” she whispered. “Ten years ago . . . you . . .”

Turning his back to her, he set the gun on the counter, within easy reach, and stared down at the oven as though trying to figure out how it worked.

“Why?” she asked faintly.

“Don’t talk to me.”

But she had to do
something
. . . stall him, distract him, convince him that whatever he had planned was a very bad idea. She couldn’t just sit here and let the growing fear take over, let Sam do . . . whatever he was going to do . . .

“I’m sure you had a good reason, Sam, so I want to understand. Please help me to understand.”

He gave his head a curt shake without looking at her. “Stop talking to me like you give a shit. You’ve never cared about me.”

“Of course I care about you. We’re friends.”

“Friends!” He whirled around and advanced on her, his fingers curled into claws in front of him, like he wanted to grab her by the throat and throttle her. “You were never my fucking
friend
.”

If she could have backed away, she would have. This furious, red-faced Sam screaming in her face frightened her more than the gun. “I . . . what . . . I don’t know what . . .” She trailed off and said the only thing she thought might help: “I’m sorry.”

He pivoted away from her, lowering those clawlike hands to his sides and making fists as he took three strides back toward his weapon on the counter. But when he got there, instead of the gun, he snatched up the whiskey bottle and hurled it at the wall.

Kylie closed her eyes, thinking he’d take his frustration out on her next. When nothing happened, she opened her eyes to see that he had his head tilted back, the heels of his hands pressed to his temples as though trying to hold in something that was burrowing its way out of his skull. The man was coming apart right in front of her.

And she knew without a doubt that when he finished—or maybe during—he was going to kill her.

“Where’s Chase, Sam?” she asked, trying to inject strength into her trembling voice. “What did you do to him?”

He lowered his hands and stared at them as if he’d never seen them before. “I killed him. I killed my partner.”