Lucky in Love (22 page)

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the men move closer, grinning like a jackal. I didn
't want to use the gun, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't politely hold still while I stunned him. And then Betty slammed her steel-toed boot down on my pretty yellow shoe.

A bright flash of pain shot through up all the way to my shin and I yelped at the unexpectedness of it, dropping to one knee to clutch at my foot. Two more shots blasted out, followed by two nearly-simultaneous thuds, and when I looked up, Betty was already heading toward the door Dominick had disappeared through. To my right, the giggler was sprawled out on the floor
, unmoving, a dark hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes were wide in surprise and his lips still stretched into a rictus of a leer. To the left, his companion had met the same fate, his arm flung out, fingers curved upward, his gun a few inches away. As I watched, one of the fingers twitched, and I had to swallow back a sudden and serious urge to puke.

Betty Tuttle could have starred in her own freaking Quentin Tarantino movie. She was channeling
Kill Bill
. I scrambled to my feet. Another shot rang out in the hallway. I grabbed awkwardly for my own gun, fingers slippery with sweat as I flicked the safety off, and ran as fast as my crushed toes would let me.

I tripped over Betty, which saved me from getting my head blown off. Plaster chunks rained down from where another bullet had plowed into the wall above me and my forward momentum carried me across the marble floor
and colliding with a pair of beefy knees with brutal force. The owner of the knees crashed down backward, his head hitting the floor with an impact that sounded like a dropped cantaloupe. My gun skittered across the floor to hit the opposite wall and went off. I cringed and ducked back, my ears ringing from the noise, the acrid smell of gunpowder hanging in the air. A quick, panicky check found me free of bullet holes, and when I glanced cautiously over at the fallen man, I saw that he hadn't been as fortunate.

Part of my brain shut down at that point, I think. I turned my back on him and crawled back to Betty. She was curled on her side and I touched her shoulder. Her voice was
thready and breathless. "That's… one way to do it."

She rolled over on her back.

"Where are you hit?" I asked.

"
Chest."

There was a singed hole in the leather of her jacket. I pushed the sides back and saw another blackened mark in the powder blue button down shirt beneath. My fingers flew down the buttons and when I shoved the shirt aside, I let out a relieved breath. No blood. Her black bulletproof
vest had absorbed the impact, but depending on how close she'd been to the gun when it was fired, she could still have broken ribs or internal injuries. At the very least she'd had the wind completely knocked out of her.

Her breathing was shallow and the pink of her cheeks was washed out to paper white.
"I'm going to pull you back into the other room and lock the door," I decided. "You should be safer in there than out here."

She tried to argue with me, and called me some nasty names between gasps, but I blamed it on pain and shock and didn
't take it personally. I grabbed her under the arms as gently as I could and pulled her back into the orchid room, making sure her gun and taser were handy in case anyone else came that way.

I retrieved my gun from the hallway, studiously avoiding looking at the dead man or the blood puddle, and went back to Betty so she could show me how to reload the thing. Stuffing an extra handful of bullets in the pocket of my jacket, I handed her the phone and rattled off Angela
's number.

"
Call her again. Keep trying until you get her."

"
Kill the fucker for me," Betty rasped out behind me as I quietly shut the door.

Chapter 40

I listened at the doorway, but couldn't hear anything over the rush of blood in my ears. Peering cautiously out in the hallway, I didn't see anything, either, except the body. A quick check the other way showed it was empty in that direction, too, and I carefully stepped over the guy on the floor, the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up, going right, because that was the way Dominick had gone. I focused on my breathing, in and out, and kept the gun gripped straight in front of me. Cautiously, I checked each open door I passed, but found nothing but empty, opulently-decorated rooms.

Time had slowed to a molasses crawl, and the hall looked like a mile-long tunnel in front of me, but I finally got to the end without dying. A small victory, I told myself. Now, I thought, I just had to figure out which way to go next.

A wide open foyer opened out in front of me, with an ornately-carved front door, a set of curved stairs that went up to the second level, and another opening into the other wing of the house. I stood uncertainly for a second, straining my ears to catch any hint of footsteps or voices, but there was nothing.

Chance, where are you?
I could've groaned in frustration, but I was afraid to make any noise. Knowing I'd melt into a puddle of fear if I stood there any longer, I crossed the foyer, shoes silent on the cream-colored marble, underneath a glittering gold Art Deco chandelier that probably cost more than I made in a year. On the other side of the hall, I passed a small powder room, a study done in masculine green and burgundy, a few more empty bedrooms, a library and a kitchen. Dominick seemed fastidious enough to not want to do his dirty work in his private living quarters, which it looked like these were, but there were no handy cellar doors anywhere around either.

I backtracked down the hall, faster this time. There was an urgency
pounding at me and a feeling that something really, really bad was happening.

I crept into the office.
A giant mahogany desk in one corner, a flat-screened TV mounted on the wall. Some old-looking paintings of hunting scenes. Bookshelves. Dark wood wainscoting. Gold sconces. A giant oil painting of Dominick himself took up one wall. He was dressed in a crimson velvet smoking jacket, larger than life-size, and had a lanky blonde draped over his shoulder, a la Hugh Heffner. If the crazy blue eyes of the man in the painting hadn't been so creepily lifelike, I'd have rolled my eyes at the clichéd thing.

I thought furiously for a moment. Where would an egomaniacal criminal with an overdeveloped flair for the dramatic keep his secret dungeon?

On the other side of a secret passageway, of course.

I tried moving a few books along the back wall, but no convenient
dias spun around to deposit me on the other side. I tugged on the sconces and pulled up the Persian rug, but there were no hidden trapdoors or sliding portals. I huffed out a breath, cursing. Then my eyes fastened on the painting again. It was big. Almost ceiling to floor, and about eight feet wide. Definitely big enough to hide a doorway.

I tucked the gun in the front of my pants, making sure that the safety was on first so I didn
't shoot myself in the leg, and grabbed hold of the painting with both hands. I was going to try and pull it outward, but as soon as I touched it, it slipped silently to one side, apparently riding on well-greased rollers. I pushed it the rest of the way to reveal a steel door recessed into the wall by a few inches.

Not wanting the painting to slide back again, I quickly deposited a nearby bust on the floor and dragged the heavy wooden pedestal it had been sitting on over to hold the painting in place.

Holding my breath, I grabbed the handle and turned it. As it swung open, I heard screaming. It was Addy. And then Jack's voice, yelling hoarsely,
"No, no, no!"

Before I even finished whispering
"ohmigod," I was at the bottom of the concrete steps in front of me. The narrow stairway opened into a long basement room that kind of looked like someone's garage workshop. There were no windows, fluorescent shop lights overhead, wooden tables with what looked like tools on them, a utility sink, concrete floor and white-painted cinderblock walls. The difference was that this workshop had cages built into one side with thick metal bars, like jail cells out of the old West, and the tools on the table looked pretty standard for woodworking, but probably had never been used to build birdhouses.

There were six cells. Two were empty, except for small cots, and toilets bolted to the wall. A third cell held my brother, his faced bruised and furious, gripping the bars in front of him. He also looked terrified which scared the crap out of me. He might be an ass in general, but he was no coward and I
'd never seen my big brother really afraid of anything. Addy was in the next cell, sobbing, her dress torn and hanging from one shoulder and one shoe missing. In the other two were blonde women, one standing stiffly in the center of her cell and the other cowering back against the far wall, hiding her face.

Time had slowed to a crawl again, and I took in the scene in about a millisecond. In the center of the room with his back to me was Dominick, holding something that whirred like a dentist
's drill. In front of him, shirtless and hanging by his wrists from shackles bolted to the ceiling, was Chance. His dark head was hanging limply and I couldn't see his face. For a second, I thought I was too late and froze as a crushing pain gripped my chest. But then his body jerked and twisted convulsively as Dominick moved closer with the thing in his hands. Addy let out a keening wail and fainted, crumpling to the floor, and Jack roared.

My own fear crystallized into pure murderous rage as I raced silently across the floor and launched myself at Dominick
's suit-clad back with every ounce of strength I had. I hit him with a force that clacked my teeth together, and we went flying past Chance, my arms wrapped tightly around Dominick's throat and my legs gripping his waist. We hit the floor with a bone-jarring impact and all the air left my body, leaving my lungs feeling like empty plastic grocery bags. I didn't slacken my grip, though, and even though my chest was screaming for air, I held on to Dominick like grim death.

He made a choking, wheezing sound and struggled fiercely, but I didn
't let go. My vision started to dim from lack of oxygen, and I could hear Addy yelling something, but my brain wasn't processing language. I was focusing everything I had on squeezing the life out of the bastard. He was trying to climb to his hands and knees, but my weight was too much for him. Whatever he had in his hands was still buzzing beneath us and I felt a burning pressure on my arm, but I kept my arms and legs locked into place, concentrating on getting my breath back.

And then he sent a flailing fist backward and caught me hard in the nose
. I loosened my grip involuntarily at the flare of pain. At the same time, he bucked hard, and I flew off his back, hitting the ground and rolling over onto my stomach. The concrete floor beneath my face was cold and hard and my dazed consciousness registered crimson drips on the immaculate white surface and a drain next to me.
That's convenient
, I thought stupidly. Wouldn't want to get the floor all messy.

Hearing Dominick cursing, I coordinated my l
eaden limbs and fuzzy thoughts enough to flop over onto my back. He'd gotten to his feet and his handsome, urbane features were contorted into a snarl of rage. His formerly-immaculate suit jacket was ripped at the shoulder and hanging open. The white dress shirt beneath was torn and bloodied at midchest, probably from where he'd fallen on the jigsaw that was still buzzing away in one hand. The other hand was pressed to the welling wound. He must've fallen on his own torture tool.

Good
. I felt a venomous satisfaction.

"
You bitch," he bellowed. Dropping the jigsaw, he picked up a hatchet from the table next to him. He raised it above his head and the wickedly sharp steel glittered in the light overhead. I went tense as a bowstring, and struggled to free the gun still tucked into my waistband. Suddenly, there was a rattle of metal on metal, as behind Dominick, Chance gripped the chains that strung him up. His biceps corded and bunched and he swung his legs up to deliver a brutal kick to the back of Dominick's head.

Dominick collapsed heavily
—right on me. What really sucked was that the hatchet he'd been holding had embedded itself in my thigh, helped along by Dominick's weight. I shrieked at the pain in my leg and tried to wriggle away from it, but I was pinned. Dominick groaned and pushed himself up on his hands. I couldn't scoot away, though, since his weight was on my bottom half now, grinding down on the hatchet and sending white-hot licks of hellfire through me.

In seconds, his eyes focused, and his face twisted again. He grabbed my thrashing arms and pulled them up over my head, holding them in a
pitiless one-handed grip that ground my wrist bones together. I wanted to whimper, but I did not want to give him that satisfaction.

And then, to my horror, his eyes lit on my gun, which had been knocked to the side. He grabbed it easily, and just as easily, kept my imprisoned wrists in place when I went back to fighting him frantically.

His cool smile had fallen back into place as he cocked the gun and his blue eyes glittered feverishly as he pressed it almost tenderly to my forehead. "Now that was the fight I was hoping for. I had a feeling you wouldn't disappoint me, Lucky."