Undercover Attraction (28 page)

"Money, Jake. I have a multi-million dollar
business operating here, and I mean to see it continue without your
interference. Now move away from the door."

Just what he was waiting for. He moved just
enough so she could squeeze through with Jenna, and he met Jenna's
eyes as she was dragged by.

His heart clenched, and he silently willed
her to hear his unspoken promise that he would save her. He was
hoping one of the officers had a good shot at her, but knew it was
doubtful, since Dobbs kept Jenna turned towards the rear, facing
him at all times.

No bullet pierced the glass. They wouldn't
risk the hostage. Nor would they risk his anger by taking a chance
shot.

Dobbs looked at the big guy behind and to
the left of Jacob. "Hand me the disc." She held out a hand and he
placed it in it. "Kill him-" she gestured towards Jacob "-when we
leave."

Jenna started quietly sobbing. Tears trailed
down her cheeks, and she cried out as Dobbs dragged her out of the
room.

The door swung shut, and the two big men
approached him, murderous intent in their eyes. There was no way he
was letting Dobbs get away with Jenna.

The biggest man reached for him first, and
Jacob twisted out of reach, deftly pulling the gun from the waist
of the goon's jeans as he barely glanced by him.

He aimed, and fired twice.

The two men both dropped like weights, and
Jacob ran from the room, tearing after Jenna in a frenzy to get to
her before Dobbs made it to the door.

Dobbs heard him coming, and turned, keeping
Jenna in front of her, dragging her backwards towards her
freedom.

Jacob held the gun in both hands, steadying
his aim, looking down the sights at her, but she was just careful
enough that Jenna would have been grazed by the bullet no matter
where he took aim. They were the same height, so a headshot was out
of the question.

At least until she made it outside. Then one
of his men could take her out, even if he wanted the satisfaction
of doing it himself at the moment.

It didn't matter, as long as Jenna was
safe.

He had to keep his eyes away from hers.
After that first glimpse of pain-lanced terror, he couldn't look at
her again while having to concentrate on Dobbs, or he would lose
it. One mistake, and he would have them both dead.

Not his idea of a good hostage negotiation.
Of course, at this point, there was no negotiating left. Either
Dobbs died, or he and Jenna. He knew the choice he preferred, if
only he could get Dobbs from being so shielded when she cleared the
warehouse.

"I should have known those two idiots
wouldn't be bright enough to beat you." She smirked at him,
taunting him as he tried to keep a bead on her unsuccessfully.

"I thought better of you Dobbs. We were
partners. How could you do this to me? I trusted you with my life
on a daily basis, and covered your back too many times to count.
This is how you repay me? By betrayal?" He tried to do and say
anything that would make her inch Jenna to the side. That was all
he needed- just one inch.

But she kept moving backwards, keeping a
close eye on Jacob stalking her. Every step backwards she took, he
took a bigger step forward, coming closer and closer, until he was
only about ten feet away.

"I'm sorry, Jake. I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings. I didn't know you cared so much for me," sarcasm coated
her voice. "Tell me, Jenna. Did Jacob tell you we used to
fuck?"

Jacob cringed inwardly, but never shifted
his aim, never changed his focus. Never wavered in what he was
about to do.

Jenna's lower lip began shaking, as if she
was about to cry.

Dobbs kept pushing it. "Oh, my, you didn't
tell her, Jake. About how you used to stick your dick in me over
and over as you told me how beautiful you thought I was."

Jenna sobbed again, and began to fight,
twisting in Dobbs's arms, despite the gun, despite the pain
radiating off of her.

His Jenna
. She was a fighter, a
stubborn, dangerous-to-her-own-health, hardheaded fighter. She
refused to go down easy. And he felt his heart swelling with
pride.

Dobbs almost lost her hold on Jenna for a
split second, but quickly regrouped, shoving the barrel of the gun
harder into the soft flesh under Jenna's chin.

Almost to the door
. Why hadn't anyone
taken a shot yet? Was Jenna in the path of a bullet's exit? As
tightly as she was being held to Dobbs, he didn't doubt it. He
understood that his men thought it too dangerous to take a risky
shot. They were ever so cautious, refusing to lose even a single
life in any hostage negotiation.

A bright shaft of sunlight speared through
the door, and Dobbs dragged Jenna out into the rays. Jacob couldn't
see any of his men outside, but then again, he knew he
wouldn't.

Finally, outside, barely past the door,
Dobbs looked at Jacob. "Throw me your keys."

"They're in the car." They really weren't
but he wasn't about to let her escape from his vengeance. Not that
easily.

For what seemed like an eternity, she
dragged Jenna slowly backwards, making a line straight for the
Tahoe. Jenna's whimpers broke the quiet exterior of the
warehouse.

The only other sound was their boots
crunching in the gravel as he stalked them.

J
enna's mind cowered from the sea of
pain. Her body had been fondled, kicked, punched, slapped, beaten,
broken, and abused.

She focused solely on Jacob, trying to drown
out everything but his eyes. She wanted to help him somehow, but
the gun at her throat was already digging into her painfully,
making her have to use her shattered leg to keep moving
backwards.

The damn woman was holding her weight up
mostly around the waist, using her as a shield from any threat of
gunfire. And Jenna hated her. Hated the things she had said about
Jacob. Hated that she had been the recipient of his kiss once. His
touch. She surely hadn't deserved him.

The bitch had made her life a living hell
since she awoke this morning, torturing her sister, then Jenna, and
killing her cat.

The drug in her system made Jenna feel as if
she were watching everything from someone else's point of view.
Somewhere else inside of herself. It was a dreamlike state, which
she was sure somehow had begun and would end in a nightmare.

Her heart pounded inside her chest, trying
to escape from the nightmare, trying to tell her to wake up, but
she couldn't bring herself to do it.

They were almost to Jacob's SUV, and she
tried to think through the fog in her brain of something she could
do to help hm. She could trip, giving him that one shot he needed
to pull the trigger. She knew that she was the reason he had yet to
do so.

His eyes met hers, and she arched a brow,
trying to tell him to be ready. She saw fear cloud his dark eyes,
as if he were trying to tell her not to do anything stupid.

Hey, she had already been tortured. If this
didn't go according to plan, how much worse could a fatal gunshot
wound be? She had already been shot once, so no biggie.

"I love you" she mouthed, hoping he
understood.

They were at the SUV, and the hand around
her waist disappeared for a second while the woman opened the door.
She let herself go limp, as if the she couldn't stand without
support.

But Jenna had underestimated the woman.
Before she had dropped more than a few centimeters, she was pushed
from behind, right onto her injured leg, and she tumbled towards
Jacob.

Two gunshots rang out in the sunny gravel
parking area, and fire seared her under the ribs.

She heard Jacob yell as the area exploded
with gunfire, and she felt Jacob's arms reach out to catch her,
under her arms, cradling her close, just as she sank into
oblivion.

#

He had barely caught her. His weapon fell
forgotten at his feet when he had jumped out to catch her.

Jacob's hands were shaking as he lifted
Jenna as gently as he could, cradling her in his arms. He saw Alex
running towards him, a vehicle already racing up to them, and
numerous men securing the area.

She's been shot.
Again.

The blood had already left his head, and he
was purely acting on instinct. Fear clogged his throat, threatening
to break him, take him to his knees.

He couldn't focus on what Alex was saying,
just following him as he opened the door to the car, and climbed
in, silently praying that Jenna would be okay.

He held her against his chest as Alex closed
the door, Alex's face grim as he watched Jacob in the backseat drop
his forehead to Jenna's as they drove away.

Dust and gravel flew up as they sped off,
and sirens split the air as two police cars escorted them.

Jacob was almost in a state of panic. He
pressed his hand against the bullet wounds, knowing that she could
easily fade away with the blood she had already lost, not to
mention the pain she had already been in.

It was probably a blessing that she had
passed out, but he grudgingly admitted to himself that he wanted to
see her beautiful green eyes as she said the words to him. The
words she had mouthed just as she tried to save them both.

And he wanted her to be awake to hear him
say them back to her.

The closer they got to the hospital, the
paler she became.

He was talking to her, ranting that she
couldn't leave him, that her damn cat wouldn't tolerate his
presence without her, mumbling words that welled up from somewhere
inside of him until he didn't even comprehend what he was saying
any longer, he just heard his own voice.

Her breath became shallow, and his heart
clenched, his eyes weeping great tears of sorrow, his brain telling
him the inevitable outcome just as his heart refused to acknowledge
it.

She began to shake, just as they pulled into
the ER.

A stretcher and surgeons were already
waiting because of the call ahead.

His arms felt bereft and empty when they
took her from him, rolling her directly away from him, leaving him
to deal with his feelings on his own.

What would he do if he lost her
? No,
he couldn't think like that. She was strong. Too stubborn to give
up on life. Too stubborn to give up on them.

But the forbidden thought kept making its
way into his mind, and he was surprised to reach up and still feel
wetness on his cheeks. He hadn't cried since his mom had left them
as teenagers.

The abandonment paled in comparison to this.
That had simply brought about anger, and confusion, and he had
wondered why she hadn't wanted them, what they had done to make her
stop loving them. It was something he had never gotten over, but
his dad had just loved them all the more, taking up his mom's
slack, and being both a father and a mother with an iron will.

Jenna, though. Oh God, if she left him, he
knew he wouldn't survive with his soul intact. It already felt as
if it had split in two, one small part his, and the rest lay with
her, in her hands, her heart.

His own heart was beating slowly,
constricting, as if it just wanted to give up, to quit beating
right there, knowing how badly Jenna lay hurting on that hospital
bed. And he understood now the depth of love.

He had always thought love was just an
emotion, something that could easily be walked away from, just as
surely as his mother had left them. But now, he saw the difference.
His mother hadn't truly loved them or she would have never left. It
would have been unbearable to her had she even thought about
abandoning them.

She would have been left a shell of a woman,
her heart breaking every step further away she took from them,
until she no longer had a heart.

He hated his mother even more now, knowing
that she hadn't loved them, knowing that she had walked away
without even a backwards glance. That wasn't love. Had she felt the
same thing he was feeling at the moment, she never could have left
them.

Moments later, Alex and his father found him
there, still standing there, alone. They didn't speak, just stood
there in silence until Jacob finally took a step forward, then
followed through the sliding doors, after Jenna.

He was still wearing his vest, and Alex
helped him remove it as they entered the waiting room. The same
blasted room he had sat waiting on news from her doctor weeks
ago.

Alex mumbled something about Amy and ambled
off to find her, to check on her. She had been brought in as soon
as she made it out of the warehouse, one of his officers wrapping
her in a blanket and racing her here.

Jacob couldn't see her yet. He wouldn't be
able to bear the accusation in her eyes, nor the question about how
her sister was.

It was his fault. Guilt ate at him,
threatening to destroy him. Had he not asked Dobbs to come to
Jenna, she never would have been taken. Had he trusted someone
else, this wouldn't have happened.