BIG: (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (37 page)

“Oh! Oh, it’s okay. I need to stay busy. It’s just a few papers Anders drew up that need signing. You know, standard stuff, giving the chairman control. I’d... uh... I’d feel better knowing it was done and I can uh... you know... go home,
relax
.”

Annalesa met Ric’s eyes for a split second before he raced across the den to the study. She didn’t need instructions from him to carry on the call and tried to put as much force in her voice as she could while still sounding fragile.

“Okay Alan, I need you to listen to me. Are you at the Ryker offices? Because it’s not safe right now, after what happened this morning. I think you need to tell Anders that you’ve done your job and that you’re going home to your wife. Okay? Got that?”

“Yeah, sure, I—” There was the faint sound of a stifled shout at his end of the line, then a drawn-out groan.

Alan’s voice trembled. “I wanna go home.”

“Take care, Alan.”

She hung up as Ric marched back from the office, his Brann Jotun in its holster at his hip. He put a spare magazine into his jacket pocket. Annalesa shoved the lawyer’s letter and opener into her leather jacket pocket, following him to the door.

“Ric, what the hell are you going to do?”

He stopped, then turned back to look at her, his expression unnaturally calm.

“I’m going to rip my
old friend
into a hundred fucking pieces, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Ric stalked out into the night towards Brad’s Jeep.

“Ric, wait!” Annalesa rammed her bare feet into her shoes, snatched her keys off the hall table and pulled the door shut, sprinting after him. “What the hell do you think you can do?”

Ric didn’t answer her. He just ripped the door open on the driver’s side and got in, slamming it behind him.

“Bollocks!” She darted round to the passenger side at the rear, staying low, knowing he’d try to lock the shotgun seat if he saw her coming. As he gunned the engine, she yanked the door open and leapt inside, holding the headrest of the seat in front as she leaned out to pull the door shut.

“Holy fucking hell, Leese! You trying to get yourself killed?”

“I could ask you the same thing!”

Ric slapped the steering wheel with the flat of his hand and stopped the car so she could climb through to the front seat. He glared knives at her as she buckled up.

“What do you think you’re doing, coming with me?”

“Stopping you, I hope.”

“No hope.” He stepped on the gas and the Jeep lunged forward into the darkness, almost hitting the auto-open gates, he approached them so fast. “You heard Alan—he was scared shitless.”

“I know—” She winced as the insane rocking of the car made her bang against the center console, bashing her gun against her hip. She leaned forward to slide the holster around to the small of her back.

“Did you hear that yell in the background? Now we know where Henrik probably is too.”

“I know! Look, would you listen to me? It’ll take five minutes for the Feds to work out Anders is behind all this. Please, turn around. Leave it to them to bring Arensen down.”

“I drove out of our property doing seventy and they’re supposed to be guarding it. Do you see any Feds behind us right now? No! I’m not leaving this to them. If the Feds demand to know what I was doing going after Anders—I look after my own.”

“At least slow down—you’ve been drinking!”

“Yep.”

“You’re scaring me!”

“Well I didn’t ask you to play stowaway,” he snapped. “Why do you have to be so frickin’ stubborn?”

Annalesa gritted her teeth and suppressed the urge to snap her hand out sideways and slap him. A half mile turned over on the odometer before she’d calmed down enough to keep her voice level.

“I need you to think about this. If you go after him and he gets killed, you’re going to be facing a self-defense case. If you go to prison, we spend years looking at each other through a sheet of glass. If the Feds go after Arensen, he’ll get twenty-five-to-life—and we get our lives back.”

“That’s not good enough!” Ric’s hands twisted the leather on the steering wheel until it creaked. “He had our parents
killed
, Leesa. He might have given himself an alibi, but he had those guys kill Brad and Elsa! I’m sure of it!”

“I know—”

“Stop saying that—you
don’t
know! You cannot know how fucking furious I am that I spent even five seconds worrying about being disloyal to him! I spent a year nearly worshipping that asshole and defending him to everyone who mattered to me, and I nearly let him fuck up the most important thing in my life.”

Ric slowed as they approached the Ryker Arms compound and switched the headlights off, using the dim moon to navigate his way around the back of the kill house. Annalesa felt her heart beating overtime as the wheels crackled and crunched over gravel and squeezed her eyes shut, like this would somehow reduce the giveaway noise of their arrival.

Behind her lids, she saw a vision of Ric stepping out of the car and then lurching back against the frame with a grunt, holding his bloody chest and sliding to the ground.

She slammed her fingers over his hand as he yanked up the parking brake, letting her rising sobs escape, not caring how needy she looked.

“Please,
please
don’t. I can’t lose you too. I just can’t.”

“Leesa—”

“Listen, if you go out there right now and confront him, you
will
be letting him fuck up the most important thing in your life.”

“Is that an ultimatum? Right now? Seriously?”

“No!” She roared, punching his arm—it as like hitting sheet rock—infuriated. “It’s not an
ultimatum
, it’s a
fact!
There will be no ‘us’ if someone kills you!”

“Hey!” Ric glared at her, then shot an anxious glance out the window in every direction, groaning as a light flicked on in the main building behind the kill house.

“You had to yell at me?” He gave a heavy sigh. “Punch me all you want. That doesn’t make any damned noise.”

“Fuck,” she whispered, mortified, looking at the light that had switched on.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She’d pretty much just committed Ric to going out there now.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice came out nearly silent. Pathetic.

“You’re scared. I get it.” Ric reached over and stroked the back of her neck.

That was the understatement of the millennium.

“I’ll get him into Dad’s office somehow. There’s CCTV in there. I have to find Henrik, all right? If he’s even alive, he’s gonna be in bad shape. And I promise...” He punched the inside of the car door with his other fist, making her jump. “I promise I won’t set out to kill Arensen. If it happens, it happens. But I
will
hit him hard enough he pisses blood for a month.”

Another light came on and Ric fumbled in the glovebox for something. He produced a pair of binoculars Annalesa could only assume had night-vision. He scanned the perimeter and the roof of the kill house.

“Fuck. Okay, we need to get indoors—but right now, stay still.”

She did a world-class statue impression as he pushed around between the front seats and lifted a central panel under the middle seat behind him. He twisted back, holding an assault rifle and a full-size Brann Jotun, which he pressed into her hand.

She shook her head. “No, I’ve—”

Suddenly, there was a high-pitched whine combined with the smash and shattering of glass. She felt Ric’s weight as he hurled himself sideways over her for protection. A second shot ripped another hole in the roof of the car, this one taking out the rear passenger window. Ric lurched back into his seat, cupping the back of her neck so she was looking at him.

“Fine, be a nutjob. Refuse the gun—but you’re sure as hell not staying in the car. I’m going to get out my side—backwards, where there’s more shelter. You climb over my seat to get out and stay inside my outline, do you hear me? On three, we’re going to sprint through the alley to the side of the kill house where we’re harder to reach. The door code’s my birthday, MMDDYY. If I get hit, you take my weapon and you fucking use it. You leave me—”

“No!”

“You
leave me
, get inside, find shelter in a locked room and call every law enforcement agency you can think of. Got it?”

Even in the darkness, there was no mistaking the intensity in his eyes. They were narrow and uncompromising—and hell, she’d gotten them into this situation by yelling at him and alerting all of Anders’ men to their presence. She had to make good on her stupidity now. She felt weirdly calm as hot blood flooded through her.

“Got it.”

“Good girl. I’m getting out.”

She pulled herself over the middle console as he got his door open. She shifted into his seat, sliding herself out as quietly as possible. He stepped back a pace as she hopped down to the ground between his feet and then there was another shot and an explosion of movement as Ric slammed her down to the grit, his body over hers. The combination of Ric’s full weight from above, and the pressure of her handgun into the side of her spine, made her see stars. She registered another couple of shots ringing out and then silence.

“Leesa?” he whispered.

She tried dragging a breath in but he’d knocked it clean out of her.

“Leesa!” Ric pushed up onto his forearms, one hand digging between the back of her head and the gravel, the other cradling her jaw, turning her head from side to side, his thumb stroking her lower lip. His voice hissed low into her ear.

“Say something, swear at me, anything!”

With his weight gone, she sucked a breath in. “M’okay. Wha-winded.”

“Thank... fuck.” He breathed hard against the side of her face. “Sorry, but you’ve got ten seconds to play dead while you get your breath back. Then we’re going for the alley.”

She nodded, willing her body to ignore the bone-deep ache in her back from the impact of her gun butt. She took a few quiet, panting breaths, then squeezed his hand to indicate she was ready to move.

You’re on a running machine, going your fastest. Just run like all the hot guys in the gym are judging you.

The moment Ric’s full pressure released, she pretty much threw herself onto the balls of her feet and sprinted with him as they darted between loud spots of light along the wall of the kill house perimeter, lunging down the alley to the side door.

He pushed her in front of him, spinning around to fire at two guys running in after them, then picked a third off the roof. She hung back, planning to cover him with her Lady Sif while he got the door open, but he yanked her hard against the panel, his broad body over hers, protecting her from immediate shots as he punched the number in.

A shot rang out right behind them and she saw a bullet hit dust, scattering it. Ric aimed up to the roof and picked off the sniper, holding the rifle in one hand while pushing the door with the other.

It fell open behind her and she staggered back, taking a couple of stumbling steps before hitting the floor. Ignoring the reignited burn from the sore spot on her back, she yanked her knees up to her chest so her feet wouldn’t get caught as Ric slammed the door shut behind them. She reached her hand up automatically so he could help haul her to her feet.

“Well done,” he murmured. “Quiet as you can, in my tracks. We just need to clear three hallways and one flight of stairs, then we’re into the main offices.”

Oh, is that all?

Her adrenaline did all her nodding for her.

The first hallway was clear, as was the second, but just as they were heading for the stairwell, a shot rang out.

Ric grabbed her arm so hard she slammed face-down on the ground along with him. At least this time, she landed on her forearms to keep from getting the wind knocked out of her again.

She raised her head an inch to see a blossom of red over the bottom of Ric’s right shoulder. Another half-inch rise showed legs storming towards them, and then the descending barrel of a gun.