In Safe Hands (The Safe House Series Book 1) (10 page)

"What are you talking about?" It would be so easy to fall back into step with the other half of his partnership. This was the man who had protected his life for years, the man who Damian had ultimately failed. "If you're alive, why are you here?"

"Don’t go in there," Paulson said in earnest. "They'll lock you up without hearing you out—or worse, they'll shoot you dead on the doorstep and take the girl. Where’s the girl, Stone?”

"They won't shoot me. Not without provocation and not if Rockwell's in there."

"They have plenty of provocation." A fraction of a second after his temper slipped loose, Paulson reined in his voice, ripcord tight. "Someone has been feeding them lies, man. Someone not me. You know me, Stone. We were brothers, in every sense. In fact, it's in my best interest to
not
be here explaining shit to you right now, but here I am, sticking my neck out for you, like always. Volkov paid Rockwell off to get rid of his own daughter before she could testify. You're being set up as the fall guy."

"What about you?" Damian demanded. His fingers itched to grab the gun out of Paulson's hand. The rest of him wanted to run back to the car, to ensure that Alexa was still safe and out of harm's way, that the father she had sworn herself to protect would never get ahold of her again. "Why are you here?"

"I got a tip you might be in trouble.” Paulson holstered his gun. “Rockwell found out I was sniffing around you and deposited a huge chunk of change into my bank account. Alerted the FEDs. I been on the run since. Same as you."

The house in front of them appeared inactive, silent. They needed to take their discussion some place secure. Some place where he could sort out his thoughts out. Some place where Alexa would be safe…

Movement reflected against Paulson's sunglass lenses. Damon turned, his eyes tracking something in the street—a bright red flash and the skittering cylinder of an ignited flare.

Alexa.

Something was wrong.

"You left her in the car?" Paulson asked in his vintage
what-the-fuck?
tone.

"Another location. Twenty minutes." Damian was already doubling back the way he had come.

"Warehouse!" Paulson shouted. "Volkov's warehouse!"

Damian had scarcely made it back to the car before men in dark suits swarmed the house’s front lawn, evidently alerted by the fireworks. He thought he saw Rockwell's burly figure among them, but he had no time to stop and consider how deep the man's treachery extended.

Damian slid into the driver's seat. Alexa looked pinned to the back of her seat with fright, but there was no time to ask what had triggered her signal. Once he had assured himself that she was safe with a glance, he reversed them both out of the neighborhood with a peel of rubber, hands stroking the wheel into a practiced three-sixty. Paulson followed suit, his Jeep shooting off down the opposite end of the street.

Shots cracked the air. Wheels collapsed on several of the vans as his former partner picked pursuers off out his open window.

Paulson was giving them a head start. Damian hoped it would be enough.

"What happened?"

Alexa pulled her wild-eyed face away from the reflection off the passenger window to witness Damian's equally disarming expression trained on the road. Her heart was lodged somewhere between her breastbone and her throat.

"What happened?" she asked. "Where are we going?
"

"To meet an old friend," Damian said. “My partner. The one I thought—”

A cold, incredulous laugh escaped Alexa’s mouth, so unlike anything she had vented before in his presence. She couldn’t help it. Irony was a rat fucking bastard.

Damian tensed behind the wheel. "Alexa?"

She clutched her thighs, feeling her nails dig into the material of her jeans, until Damian reached between them and forced her to relent with a calming pressure of his hand.

"What is it?” he asked again. “Why did you signal me?"

Her throat closed over the words she knew would destroy Damian.

"Alexa, please, you have to tell me what is going on. It's something, isn't it? Something more than just Rockwell. I'll protect you with my life, but I have to know what I'm protecting you
from."

"Michael Paulson," she said, as if they were speaking about completely unrelated topics. "Michael
Paulson
is the old friend we're going to see?
He
was your partner? The one you thought was dead? I can't believe I didn't realize it before. Did you know he was alive this entire time?"

Damian retracted his hand, stunned. "No."

She understood his thoughts as loudly as if he had just screamed them at her:
How do you know Paulson?
Damian was already receding from her, rebuilding walls he had let her pass through at double-speed. She had to explain herself now or risk losing him forever.

"Michael Paulson worked for my father. A
solvietnik
," she said, trying to keep her voice level. Damian needed her to be strong now more than ever—he needed her to be strong for
him
so they could both see the truth through to the end. "Paulson was on the take while he was in the CPD, playing both sides for money. Rumor had it he was trying to make enough to disappear. He hid evidence, manufactured cover stories—he did everything my father asked him to and more. I learned this all later, of course. But when it looked like the Feds were working up a case and my father was about to be indicted…"

Alexa didn't want to continue, but she knew she couldn't stop now. Damian watched the road, but he had a such white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, she thought the cracked plastic might crumble in his hands and send them both hurtling off course. She wanted to reach out to him, as he had to her, but she knew the folly of trying to initiate contact now.

"… Paulson orchestrated the shootout in the warehouse. He informed the rival gangs separately then went home and put his uniform on like he did every morning. He briefed his fellow officers that he had a lead. He carried you into that massacre, Damian, without a second's hesitation.”

The car drifted in the lane. Engine revolutions slowed, and the breakneck pace they had captured lost speed. Alexa craned her neck to search the road behind them. For now, there was no one.

"I knew Michael Paulson was after my father. I never trusted him. I was with my mother and father when we were trying to escape the warehouse—after we realized the whole thing was a trap. It was just supposed to be a routine visit to the property. Paulson came after us. He was aiming for my father. Instead, he hit my mother."

Damian’s lips were parted, as if he meant to say something, but forgot all language.

Alexa's eyes misted as she fought against herself. She wasn't going to cry about it again—not now, not ever. "Mom went down. Dad stayed with her until help came. I guess Paulson got spooked after seeing what he had done, and he ran back into the warehouse. I followed him."

The car slowed more. She knew they couldn't lose momentum.
She
couldn’t lose momentum.

"I had only shot a gun once before. But even from across the room—even with all the other guns going off and the bullets riddling the walls around me—I had a clear line of sight. I shot Michael Paulson, the man who killed my mother. The man who tried to murder my father."

They had stopped driving now. Alexa broke her promise to herself; hot tears spilled down her cheeks. She did nothing to hide them. Her hands remained where they were, folded in her lap. She would finish what she had started.

"I was in there, Damian. I was in there that day with you. I had no idea until now, but all the pieces are coming together."

His hands loosened from the wheel. He untwisted the wires between his knees, his motion slow, deliberate, stunned. The engine sputtered into silence.

But things weren't going to be all right. Damian Stone was never going to touch her again unless he touched her in anger.
No.
Even now that he knew the truth, Damian would never strike out at anyone or anything around him. He would keep the pain bottled inside until it destroyed him.

"Rockwell…" He said the name as if extracting a painful thorn from his hand. "Paulson…
you…"

"I have never betrayed you." Alexa’s voice was steady, despite the hopeless tears streaming down her face.
"Paulson
betrayed you. He kept the truth from you. He led you through the gates of Hell that day and destroyed your life with one final lie: all this time, thinking you were responsible for his death. You never forgave yourself for it, and all the while
he
lived in hiding. Why would he show his face now if he didn't have something personally at stake? Why confront you after all this time if it didn't have something to do with me or my father?"

"And where do you play into all this?" Damian's face was clenched as if in agony.

Alexa wasn't going to let him deflect his anger onto her. She thrust her chin out and met his gaze unflinchingly. "I just want to protect what’s mine. That’s all I’ve ever wanted."

It was only then that she realized their location. They were parked outside the warehouse. The same warehouse where Alexa had gunned down Paulson. The same warehouse where Paulson had risen from the dead. The same warehouse that haunted Damian's dreams every night. Why had he brought them here?

Michael Paulson.

A figure stood beside a Jeep parked at the far end of the warehouse driveway. Alexa couldn't see a face, but she knew. She had memorized every inch of that body as it crumbled to the ground from her bullet.

Her stomach plunged into a free-fall.

"He's going to kill me." She said it so matter-of-factly that she could scarcely believe the voice belonged to her. "It's true that I did this for my father, Damian, but not for the reason you think. I was never going to testify. If everyone
thought
I was, my father reasoned that people who were disloyal to him would be flushed out for fear of their names being given up. My father never counted on Paulson still being alive."

The figure headed their way. They had moments before Paulson reached them. Alexa turned to Damian, desperate for an acknowledgement of her story.

What she saw shattered her.

Her protector looked at her with dark, distant eyes, brimming with disgust. His mouth pitched downward, as if he had reached his capacity to accept anything further from her—lies, truths, affection. Alexa had never seen anyone so broken, and it was her fault. The plan was to manipulate things, the way her father always had. To tip the outcome in his favor. She never anticipated that someone honorable would ever believe she was so much more than her father’s legacy.

Alexa hated herself for what she was about to do next. She couldn't leave Damian, not like this. She leveraged one final moment of shared weakness, maybe the only opportunity she would ever have again to be with the man she loved.

She threaded her fingers through Damian’s hair and pulled him into her. His lips welcomed hers, slick with tears.

"I love you," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

Alexa gripped his hair and butted his head against the steering wheel, knocking him unconscious.

***

Alexa ran for the warehouse. To keep the man she loved safe, she had to leave him behind, far from the mess she had created. Better to live with a hole in his heart than a bullet hole through his body.

I'm sorry, Damian, but it's better this way.

He might not ever understand what she had just done—how could he? His heart was full of betrayed friendships and promises, and now she was another hole that he would never find a way to fill. Maybe she would be his new nightmare, the worst betrayal of all.

Damian had vowed to protect her. Now it was her turn to protect him.

The approaching figure saw her detach from the vehicle and froze; then, Michael Paulson followed her. A dark object shadowed his right grip.

She didn’t need a second glance to identify the object.

Alexa sprinted around the side of the warehouse and found a metal door near the loading dock.
Please be open. Please be open
. The handle of the entrance gave way under her grip. She let loose a gusty sigh and slipped inside.

The interior of the building was dark. Moldering wood crowded her nostrils and brought her instantly back to the moment of her mother’s death. A wave of nausea gathered in her stomach. Dust motes danced in the faint beams of light that filtered down through the stories-high windows. Alexa avoided these light shafts, skirting along in darkness as soundlessly as she could. Her heart struggled against her ribs. This was
not
good. She had just trapped herself with a vengeful gunman on her tail, with nowhere else to run. Too horrified at what she had done to Damian to think rationally, she had failed to grab his weapon. Alexa felt like a mouse that had scurried into a deadly trap.

But she knew the layout, she reasoned. If she could shake Paulson off her, maybe she could still escape with her—

Two powerful arms grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms, limiting her reflexes.

“Going somewhere?”

Alexa twisted and writhed, attempting to drop from her assailant’s grip and lift her arms in one, swift, evasive maneuver. Paulson shoved a knee between her thighs, effectively blocking her only option to break free of someone with far more strength. She thrashed at his eyeballs, solar plexus, groin, leather lapels—anything she could find purchase against, including his lips. When that didn’t work, she inhaled deeply and screamed in his ear.

Her agonized cry echoed through the largely-empty warehouse, loud enough to render the sonofabitch deaf. Even if she couldn't fend off Paulson from this position, she could fight back her fear. She would not be reduced to a raving, sobbing animal in her final moments. She would never regret the decisions she had made to protect her family. To protect Damian.

"Get off me, you
snake!"
She rebelled as Paulson lugged her toward the center of the room. She kicked and dragged her feet, but her attempts to dislodge him prove futile. Her heel finally connected with his in-step.

Paulson grunted and threw her against an abandoned shipping crate. She landed with a sickening pop of her shoulder joint. Raw, untreated pine boards scraped her forehead and right cheek. Blistering spikes of pain seared her face and neck. She slumped, her head spinning, before dragging herself to her feet with the support of the crate.

"On your knees, mob whore." Paulson sounded out of breath.

Inwardly, Alexa smiled. Two years ago, she had been naïve, unprepared. At least this encounter, he got the shit-end of her martial arts training. She squeezed his pathetic face inside her glare. “No.”

He squeezed the trigger.

The shot racked her eardrums. A corner of the crate beside her exploded.

She shook off her cringed reflex, this time full smile.

“On. The. Floor.” Paulson’s face glistened sweat. When she didn’t respond, his hand shook with the magnitude of a stroke, and he shouted, “Now,
you fucking waste of oxygen.
”

“I guess that makes us the same, then. A stone’s throw from Nico Volkov. Nothing at all like your partner. Neither of us deserves that kind of loyalty.”

Alexa didn’t move. She refused to breathe. If this man wanted to murder her in cold blood, he could do it right here, right now.

Paulson trained his gun directly at her.

Alexa closed her eyes and waited…waited…waited.

Cha-clik.
Another bullet loaded.

Different gun.

"Drop the gun, Paulson." Damian’s meditative voice filled the warehouse.

Alexa’s eyes charged open. Her heart ricocheted like a pinball around her rib cage. She wanted to turn, to make eye contact with Damian, but the sudden realization that he had come for her, that there may still be a chance to end this all with hope for the future, streaked panic through every part of her body. Now, she had something to lose.

Paulson gave an incredulous laugh.