The Guardian
Chapter 28

Delia’s head felt like someone had used it to host an all-night rave. Her tongue was thick and heavy in her mouth—who had given her a shot of Novocain?—and she couldn’t make her thoughts line up no matter how hard she tried to order them.

Sleeping. She’d been sleeping. Then, awake and…wait, scared. Matteo had been there, Roman, too, and then…

The rest came screaming back in a flash. Delia jerked upright—or she tried to, anyway. Her wrists were bound tightly behind her, her body unsteady without the use of her arms for balance, and oh, God. Oh, God.

She was going to die.

“Boss. She’s awake.”

Delia jerked her head in the direction of the voice, the residual effects of whatever her attacker had given her still gumming up her central nervous system. After a dozen slow-motion blinks, the image of the man who had chased her came into focus(ish).

“No,” she whimpered, scrabbling backward until her back thumped against a wall.

“You want me to tie her feet, too?” the guy asked, sending a spear of fresh panic through Delia’s chest.

Another man emerged from the shadows, making her adrenaline rise. “That won’t be necessary, Anthony. Plus, I do like it when they try to run.”

“Nicky,” she whispered, her heart pinballing off her ribs as he stepped across the concrete floor of—where was she? A garage?

“Ms. Sutton,” he said, the ruby on his pinkie ring flashing the color of b***d in the low light struggling to penetrate the grimy windows. “I’ve got to tell you, you’ve proven to be a far bigger problem than I ever anticipated. Not that you won’t pay for it, of course.” He stopped to roll up one sleeve of his expensive-looking dress shirt, then the other, before continuing. “I can’t have you standing in my way. Not when I’m so close to getting everything I’ve worked for.”

Panic flared through her system, paralyzing and bright, and she tamped it back with all her might. “I thought you were going to blame me for all of this so you could get away with it.”

Nicky’s laugh crawled up Delia’s spine. “No, sweetheart. Although, the idea had merit—and you can thank your poor, deceased boss for it, since she’s the one who cooked it up before I killed her—it was really nothing more than a diversion. A means to an end. A solution, if you’d like a mathematical parallel. You see, I needed to get you in a vulnerable position so I could kidnap you. Special Agent Roman was all too predictable in his response to the possibility he’d make a break in this case. Of course, it helped that we alerted him to the wire transfer. Really, he didn’t even make it difficult.”

“You didn’t have to kill him,” Delia said. Her stomach churned at the thought of how he’d told her to run, of the bullet going directly into his chest a minute later. “You already have the money.”

“Christ, but you are naïve,” Bianchi hissed. “This isn’t just about the money! It’s about respect. Do you have any idea how hard I had to work to pull this off? How long it took me to groom Peyton, to get her to figure out how to work the system to steal all that money while escaping notice? But you noticed, and then you fvcked everything up when you grew balls and called the cops. I should’ve had Anthony, here, cut your throat when I had the chance. But I suppose that would take the fun out of the fact that now, I get to watch you bleed myself.”

Turning toward Anthony, he said, “Bring me the knives, please. Oh! And a drop cloth and gloves. This is going to get very messy.”

Delia whimpered, panic freezing her to her spot on the floor. The garage was mostly empty, which gave her zero options to hide. The rolling door had no control that she could see, and the regular door was all the way across the space, a good twenty feet away. She could make a break for it, but Anthony had already chased her down once. This time, her hands were bound. She had no hope of turning the doorknob, even on the Hail Mary that the door wasn’t locked.

She was going to die here. And it was going to hurt.

“Anthony,” Nicky said again, the thread of irritation in his voice capturing Delia’s attention just enough to loosen the grip of her fear. The larger man made a choking noise, then reached for his throat. Delia watched, eyes frozen wide as his mouth began to foam and he fell to his knees.

“What the hell?” Nicky snapped, rushing over to Anthony’s side.

A gunshot exploded, terrifying Delia into a startled scream. She ducked her head and curled into a ball to protect herself as best she could with her hands bound behind her, but it turned out not to matter.

The bullet hadn’t been meant for her. It had been meant for Nicky.

And half the contents of his cranium were now on the floor.

A swift breath of relief filled Delia so completely, she began to cry. But then she saw the man holding the gun, the man walking over to her with nothing but pure menace, so utterly discordant with anything she’d ever seen from him before, and a memory reared up from the drug-induced haze of the side of the road.

“Oh, my God.” She was going to be sick. “It was you. You took my necklace. You brought me here. This whole time, it’s been you.”

Kent pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and smiled.

“Hey, Delia. I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

“Um, d’you think?” she asked, her honesty apparently wanting to make one last hurrah.

Kent rolled his eyes. “Okay, but come on. It’s not like I could tell you what I’d been up to. Sorry you had to see that, though.” He gestured to the spot where Nicky lay, face-down and slumped over Anthony’s unmoving body. “I didn’t want to do it, really. But logic dictated that Nicky never had any intention of letting me live. Not with the power I held over him, simply by knowing what he’d done, and not when he could have the full share of the money he’d stolen. Well, we’d stolen, I suppose.”

“So, you were in on this whole thing?” Delia asked, battling her shock.

Kent’s expression—God, how was this even Kent, who traded geek jokes with her like baseball cards and was always so excited about the latest smartphones—grew wistful. “You’re surprised. I guess I can’t blame you—Nicky wasn’t wrong. You seriously are naïve. But don’t feel bad. I used to be, too. Kent, who lived over his parents’ garage. ‘Such a nice guy’,” he mimicked. “But women always passed me by, and other men always dismissed me as harmless. Boring. Nothing. Until I started making money.”

Delia’s brain spun. The only way she had a chance to get out of this was to keep him talking, so she said, “You’ve done unbelievable things with Cromwell A&M. The company is very successful.”

“Success.” Kent smiled, waving the gun slightly as Delia forced herself not to flinch. “Do you know what it’s like, after not being seen by anyone for so long, to get that first taste of power? To finally understand how much money there is to be had, and how many people replace you fascinating once you have it? All those men who ignored me before, they suddenly wanted to know me, and all those women? I practically had them lined up around the block just for the privilege of sucking my d**k.”

Delia’s heart pounded at the glint in his eyes. Surely, by now, someone had realized that she and Roman hadn’t reached their destination. Think, think. “If you had all that money, why did you need to steal more?”

Kent threw his head back and laughed. “God, you really are a breath of fresh air, you know? I didn’t steal the money because I needed it. I stole it because I could. Buying all these companies, liquidating and merging…it showed me all the places money could be hidden. No one ever suspected nice, boring Kent of skimming from his own company.”

He looked at her, then, and she fought the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. “It was hard to hide it from you. You’re really smart. But you’re also afraid of your own damn shadow, just like I used to be. God, the way Peyton manipulated you. But I did it, too, even if I was nicer about it. Still, I knew geeky, sweet, timid Delia would never rock the boat. So for years, I took. A little here. A little there. And it was glorious.”

Delia tried to appeal to his sense of logic, as fvcked up as it was. It was her only weapon. “I could see that. Wanting to stick it to everyone who’d ignored you. After all, the company was successful because of your hard work. Why shouldn’t you reap the benefits?”

His eyes lit. “Exactly! But then, I caught Peyton skimming. God, Peyton.” A noise of disdain puffed from his lips. “Greedy bitch. She’d do anything to save her own skin. I told her I wanted a buy in, in exchange for my silence. I’ve been honing my surveillance and tech skills ever since I started all this. Geeky Kent, loves his gadgets, you know? Plus, I had to stay under the radar, somehow.”

He paused, just long enough to laugh. “I brought a lot to the table, so Bianchi agreed to cut me in. Dumb bastard.” Kent looked at Nicky’s lifeless body, shaking his head. “But it didn’t take me long to figure out how to outplay him. How to get him to take care of Peyton. How to replace a way to take care of both him and Anthony. How to assume the identity of Taylor Anders, sole owner of Silhouette, LLC, and wire all the money—the real money—into an account in the Seychelles.”

Delia listened, stunned, as Kent continued. “Nicky never even saw it coming. People like me and you, we mean nothing to them. Peyton, Bianchi, God, everyone. They don’t see us. They don’t hear us. But that’s fine, because guess what? They’re dead, and I have all the money.”

“I hear you,” Delia whispered, her pulse pitching at her throat. The glint in Kent’s eyes had grown into a darkness that made her want to run. She was going to need every ounce of her smarts to keep him talking. “I hear you, and I understand why you did it. People don’t see us. Or they do, and blow us off. I don’t…” She took a deep breath, and please, God, let this strategy work. “I don’t have to tell anyone what you’ve done. I’d keep it a secret, if you want.”

Sadness clouded his features, tugging his glasses downward over his nose as he gripped the gun. “I don’t think I can do that, Delia. Nicky was an egomaniacal jackas*s, but he had the right idea about loose ends. I really like you, but I’ve got to protect my interests. I’ll make it quick. You probably won’t feel anything at all—this gun doesn’t really leave anything to chance, obviously.”

He shrugged, and Delia realized she was out of time.

“The only way I can get away with this is if I kill you. And truth be told, I’ve waited long enough.”

Garza had never once losthis shit on the job. He’d been tempted to, plenty—people trying to use a bullet to make pizza out of your gray matter tended to rattle a guy. But he’d always kept his cool. Always known how to program his brain and body to give the exact response needed. Always acted precisely, methodically. Calmly.

Except now.

“Can’t you go any faster?” he asked Hale, who was, admittedly, already decimating, like, fifty different traffic laws.

“Nope,” she replied smoothly, her eyes never budging from the road in front of her. “Not unless you want them to hear us coming.”

F**k, she had a point. “Okay. When we get within a half mile, we’ll have to roll in slow. Capelli, what are we looking at for the house?”

Capelli’s voice sounded over the radio. “Small. One story. It’s vacant—foreclosed on six months ago. Looks like it’s been empty ever since. Satellite images show a pretty large offset garage on the property, though. Kent’s car is parked in front, and so is a Rolls Royce registered to Bianchi.”

“Damn it,” Garza muttered.

“We can’t just go in like gangbusters, G,” said Maxwell from the back seat. “Bianchi’s too smart for that. We need a plan.”

“He’s right,” Roman agreed. “We need to know what we’re dealing with if we want to get her out of there unhurt.”

“She might already be hurt,” Garza argued, and no. No. Motherfvcking nope. He could not think it.

“Sinclair and Hollister are only five minutes behind us,” Maxwell said, so calm and cool that Garza’s nerves dropped a notch by default. “We can do twice as much recon, twice as fast with all of us. We’ll get her back without a scratch, Garza. I promise.”

If it had been anyone else, Garza would’ve told him to pound sand.

Maxwell, he believed.

“Copy that,” he said. The handful of minutes it took to quietly roll up to the bank of trees lining the yard beside the farm house took a month, then another as they waited for Hollister and Sinclair. But as soon as they were all properly armed and Garza had shouldered into his body armor, Sinclair sent Hale and Roman to do a perimeter search, turning toward Hollister.

“Talk to me,” he said, nodding at the thermal scanner Hollister had just flipped to life.

“Nothing in the house,” he said, frowning at the monitor.

“What?” Panic rose in Garza’s chest. “But their vehicles are here. Did they—”

“Wait.” Hollister lifted a hand, and—bingo—smiled. “They’re in a garage. Four heat signatures. But wait…” He squinted for a beat before his auburn brows popped. “Two are down. Not moving. One on his feet. The other is lower, seated, maybe. Close to the floor.”

“We need to move,” Garza said. Please let her be okay. Please, God, let her be okay.

“Perimeter’s secure,” Hale said, jogging back to the group with Roman on her heels. “Looks like everyone here is already inside.”

Sinclair nodded, his eyes flashing over Garza. “Okay. We need eyes on whoever’s in there. Maxwell, let’s see if we can use that window to our advantage.”

“Copy that, Sarge,” he said, falling out.

Garza stared at the building, burning every last ounce of his willpower trying to stay calm. Finally, Maxwell’s voice cut a quiet path over the radio. “I have eyes. Delia’s okay, but bound, and…whoa. Bianchi’s down. Unknown man is down. Kent’s standing. He’s armed. Pointing the gun at her.”

What. The. F**k. Kent had taken down Bianchi? And now he was holding Delia at gunpoint?

“Do you have a shot on him?” Garza asked, his heart lodged in his throat. He could process all that holy shit later. Right now, he couldn’t let it throw him. He had to focus.

“Negative. He’s too close to Delia. Not budging.”

God damn it, they needed to make Kent move. They couldn’t risk a bullet going through him and hitting her, especially with the firepower Maxwell was packing. “I’m going in there.”

“Garza,” Sinclair bit out, but no. Delia was in danger. He needed to get her, and he needed to do it now.

He f*****g loved her. Christ, he was so in love with her that it hurt.

He couldn’t let her die.

“Just trust me, Sarge,” Garza said, every one of his thoughts crystallizing. “We’re going to get Delia out of there. Here’s how.”

A minute later, Sinclair nodded. “That’ll work. You sure you’re okay with it?”

“Positive,” Garza nodded, looking at Hale, Hollister, and Roman, who all nodded back.

“Alright. Let’s not waste any time.”

Garza checked, then double-checked his weapon, then his backup before turning toward the garage. He fell out, moving toward the door with Hollister at his side, measuring each breath to slow his heartbeat.

“Ready?” Hollister whispered, hefting the battering ram into place.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. This was a job. The job he’d been made for. “Affirmative.”

Everything happened in slow motion. Hollister breached the door in seconds, calling out “RPD!” in a rapid-fire holler. Garza’s eyes adjusted to the dim light of the garage in a blink, his weapon up and trained on Kent in an instant.

Kent, who had always been in the background, behind Bianchi’s shadow. Kent, who it seemed, had been far slicker and far dirtier than any of them had realized.

Kent, who had his weapon pressed directly to Delia’s temple as he swung her in front of his body to use her as a shield.