Wire (Pierce Securities Book 2) (23 page)

Evan felt a tingling at the base of his spine, but couldn’t tell exactly what that meant. Only that his body was trying to tell him something. He chose to think it was telling him he was on the right track, looking for Stygman/Koen here, but he was afraid he was all wrong. Calls to Simon were going unanswered, and the tingling intensified.

The neighborhood was upper-middle class and coming awake with the lights and sirens of the police as they arrived and made a general hub-bub in the area. Porch lights were coming on, bedrooms were lighting up, and people were stepping out in their bathrobes to see what was going on. At the sight of so many men, guns drawn, they retreated to watch through windows and stay out of the way.

Evan and Ryan searched, to no avail. A sickening twist in his gut told him he was wrong, but he refused to listen. Koen knew he’d gotten close, but he couldn’t know how close, could he?

He was watching the FBI question the boy in the car, surrounded by lights piercing the darkness, when Ryan and Quinten walked up to him, replacing their guns in their holsters. Evan’s shoulders dropped with defeat. They’d gotten to Miriam in time, but he’d still missed Koen.

Ryan was the first to break into this thoughts. “This is different from the rest, isn’t it?”

Not a street-person was what Ryan meant, but the kid had the count-down items, like the rest. But there was something else; Evan just couldn’t put his finger on it. He watched the FBI agents as they tagged the plastic baggies holding the chess knights.

“Yeah,” Evan agreed with Ryan. “He targeted her to get to me. I still can’t figure out exactly why, though, unless he’s insanely jealous. It just all seems like a lot of trouble to go to in order to get a girl. And not successfully. There’s no way Paige will go for a guy who’s targeted so many innocent people.”

“What if it’s a red herring? To distract you,” Ryan suggested. “What if Paige is the target? Simon’s with her, isn’t he?” Evan’s eyes were focused on the knights as Ryan’s words sank in.

Of course, The Crimson Lady would have set him up. It made perfect sense. His cloaking software had worked too well. There really wasn’t a chance she hadn’t known he would go back and poke around that site some more. She had set him up.

Knights. He was the knight in this case, while Paige was at her home without him.

Evan didn’t answer, his own stupidity at not realizing it muddling his brain. He turned and raced back to his car. He blew through stoplights, laying on his horn, speeding the entire way. He had to get to her.

On his way, he dialed Simon, but he never answered his phone, only prompting Evan to drive faster. The panic he’d felt when he tried to get to Miriam was nothing compared to what was going through him as he tried to reach Paige. Luckily, she didn’t live too far away, and he managed to get to her neighborhood in a matter of minutes.

Knowing Quinten and Ryan were behind him, he left the house to the others and went in search of Stygman, or Koen, whoever the fuck he was. He’d be watching, not an active participant in whatever little game he had going on. Just like in
Realm of Worlds
, he’d be watching, probably eating something. He found the man, sitting in his camp chair in the neighbor’s backyard, watching his Paige sleep through a pair of binoculars.

“Stygman,” he growled as soon as he saw the man.

Dale Stygman, disguised as Neil Koen, sat in his chair, unfazed by Evan’s sudden appearance. Setting down his binoculars, he raised a cup to his lips.

“Nice of you to join me. It’s about to start. I thought you might miss it, but you came through. Finally.” He sneered the last word, and Evan felt the venom in the words cut through the darkness.

“What do you mean? Miss what?” A prickle of alarm crept up Evan’s spine, and he mentally rushed Simon and Ryan to Paige’s side, realizing he should be the one there, not them.

“Well, you saw how I tampered with the alarm,” he mused, as if they were chatting about artwork, not a woman’s life.

“Yeah, and I fixed it,” Evan ground out through clenched teeth.

A smile crept to Koen’s lips. “Yes, you did. But not the actual wiring.” He took another sip of his drink before continuing, “The fire marshal will probably deduct it’s faulty. A product of all the improvements done to it, you know, all the tweaking. Paige was such a tweaker.”

Ignoring the reference to Paige in the past tense, Evan growled, “You’re going to burn her?” Images slammed into his brain, but he had to get them to go away. He needed to focus on the piece of shit in front of him. “How can you do that?”

“You try being second best to an idolized asshat for years, Mr. Rocco. Oh wait, you can’t because you
are
the asshat in question.” He idly took a sip of whatever was in the thermos lid, smacking loudly with satisfaction.

“So you’re going to kill her? Burn her alive?”

Koen nodded. “I thought I might,” he said thoughtfully.

“How can I change your mind?” Evan pleaded.

“It’s already set to go off in…” he pulled out his phone and swiped his thumb across it. “Oh. That did it. I just set it off.” His lips curled into a proud smile Evan could see shining in the darkness—damned whitened teeth. Without another thought, he pounced on the man, knocking him over backward in his chair.

Catching Koen off-guard was a triumph, but it didn’t last long. He let out a whoosh of air as Evan knocked it out of him, but regrouped quickly with a punch to the side of Evan’s face. It was a weak one, though, and Evan shook it off.

Shaking his head made him off balance, and Koen rolled until he was on top, trapping Evan’s arms beside him. Using his legs and abdominal muscles, Evan thanked his workout regimen when he easily flipped the man over his head. With a surprised, “Oof,” Koen was pinned by Evan’s forearm to his neck, blocking his airway.

“I should just kill you now, asshole,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

The cocking click of a pistol stilled the writhing tangle of limbs, and Evan found himself on top of a limp Koen. He was looking in wide-eyed fear at the barrel of a pistol aimed over Evan’s shoulder, straight at his face.

“Son of a bitch drugged the coffee. Go, Evan.” Simon’s voice rang in his ears, and Evan had never been so grateful to hear his boss’s voice in his life. Without another word, Evan sprang to his feet and ran full tilt to Paige’s house.

As soon as he got there, he saw the second story filled with smoke and could hear Quinten and Ryan shouting to each other inside the house.

“Clear!”

“Yeah, here, too! I’m going upstairs!”

Evan heard sirens in the distance but didn’t care to wait. He crashed through the door, “She’s upstairs!” He raced up the stairs, feeling the smoke descend as he climbed. The top hallway was engulfed in flames, and Quinten and Ryan stood there, sizing up the fire.

Her bedroom was at the end of the hallway, the door closed. Nobody knew what lay on the other side, but Evan had to find out. The idea of living the rest of his life without Paige was unthinkable.

“I need shirts.” Both men complied willingly, Ryan’s being wet with sweat. He could question Quinten about whether or not he ever felt pressure later, now was not the time. Wrapping the unflappable Quinten’s shirt around his head to keep the smoke out of his nose, he wrapped Ryan’s wet one around his hand and dashed through the fire.

He couldn’t stop. The flames licked at his clothes, searing them, while he kept Ryan’s wet t-shirt clutched to his chest, trying to retain some of the moisture. He could smell his hair singeing but didn’t care. It was all physical pain. The pain at the thought of losing Paige was much worse. It was a bone-deep ache, and he couldn’t focus on it.

The two seconds it took him to travel her hallway took forever, each step giving him the mental image of his rubber soled shoes melting in the heat. Hopefully, the other side of her door would be flameless, because once he got there, he wasn’t sure he could get back.

He felt the heat of the door knob as it twisted in his hands but didn’t acknowledge it. Opening the door, he ducked, aware of some deep, primitive memory of flashbacks. Hoping if there was one, it was high, Evan lowered his body to the floor, ignoring the flames trying to devour his body. He rolled into her room, finding himself in the midst of more flames.

Fuck.

Standing, Evan refused to stop moving. To do so would be the death of both of them. He was sure of that.

Paige’s bed was an oasis from the flames. As he threw himself onto it, he yelled her name, to no avail. She was laid out like an angel, golden hair fanned out across her pillow, her laptop in her arms, where she’d been drugged to fall asleep in the middle of removing The Crimson Lady.

Frantically, he searched the room. There was sort of a path to the window; he thought he could make it there. Gathering Paige into his arms, he cradled her close to him.

“It’s okay. I’m going to get us out of here. Just wake up, Baby. Please?”

Nothing.

Stripping random bed sheets from his grip to keep the fire from getting more fodder, he clutched her as close to his body as he could, finding a pillow case to wrap around her face. Then he raced to the window across the room, frantic to get her out of the flames rising around them.

He got there, and to his immense relief, a fireman’s bucket was right outside. There was nowhere else for him to go. Evan’s feet were burning, and he would be surprised if there were any shoes left on them when this ordeal was over.

The roar of the fire was too loud to hear, but when he saw the fireman’s axe held back to break the window, he ducked down as much as he could to protect Paige from flying glass. A loud whooshing noise sounded as the glass broke and fed the fire more of the oxygen it needed to thrive, and a pair of strong arms gripped Evan, pulling him up. He handed over Paige, reluctantly, before climbing over the window sill into the waiting bucket lift that would take them all to safety.

He allowed the firefighters to give him oxygen, but he never took his eyes off Paige. Even as they loaded her onto the stretcher and took her by ambulance to the hospital, Evan held her hand, refusing to leave her side. She remained unconscious, whether from smoke inhalation or the drugs in her coffee, Evan didn’t know. Some part of him acknowledged that Koen had indeed loved her to try to kill her in such a way so she wouldn’t suffer, or ever even know. He was lucky Evan couldn’t get his hands on him again. He regretted not snapping his neck when he’d had the chance.

Evan dozed in the chair next to Paige’s bed in the hospital while Ryan and his girlfriend, Krista, sat outside the room. His hand clasped loosely in Paige’s, Evan dreamed restless dreams—smoky, dim rooms with panic-inducing heat he couldn’t get around. It was all vague and hazy, but he couldn’t manage to wake himself from the twilight of near consciousness. He was on the cusp between wakefulness and sleep, his body’s insistence he rest while his mind wanted to be awake. His feet hurt where his shoes had burned, but they were dressed, and against the wishes of the nurses and doctors, he was with Paige instead of a bed somewhere else in the hospital. Evan would be fine just as soon as Paige woke up.

He didn’t stir until he felt Paige’s hand tighten around his in a vise-like grip. He peeled his eyes open to find a nurse wearing too much perfume, brash blonde hair in a bun on top of her head, scrubs too tight for polite company, holding a pillow over his woman’s face.

Jerking himself into wakefulness, Evan leapt on the nurse, wrapping his bandaged forearm around her thick neck and pulling her away with a yell. Ryan burst into the room while Evan wrestled the nurse to the ground. When he rolled her over, self-loathing rose in him with the bile he tasted.

He’d forgotten all about Peggy.

He held the woman easily, looking over at Paige to see her eyes open, finally, looking at him with relief. Hauling the woman outside the room, he snarled at Ryan.

“Thanks for letting her in to kill Paige.” Evan knew his anger was misplaced, and Ryan took it with aplomb as Evan threw Peggy into the chair in the hallway. Ryan fumbled wordlessly for zip ties he kept in his pocket, ever the Boy Scout. After securing her to the chair with little effort, Evan sent Krista for a real nurse to check on Paige before settling in the other chair, opposite Peggy.

He didn’t say anything, mostly because he didn’t trust his words. But also because he knew silence was the most integral part of the interrogation process. He was content to shoot daggers at Peggy from his glare, hoping he could kill her that way.

She just sat there, silent tears streaming down her cheeks, jaw jutting forward in determination.

He’d never considered himself a violent person. He was more of a behind-the-scenes player at Pierce Securities. But this case, and his possessiveness he felt for Paige, made him want to hurt the people trying to hurt her. And he didn’t regret any of the emotions swirling through him right now. He was angry. More angry than he could ever remember being.

People had messed with his career, his livelihood, his passion. But having people mess with his woman was a different caliber of emotions altogether.