Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement. Garrett whirled around, his hands going to his pants just as Sophie shot past him, one of the grenades from Garrett’s belt in her hand.
And so she’d made her move.
She yanked the pin and clutched the grenade in the same hand as the key. Only the leather tie was visible, squashed up next to the grenade.
Her hands trembled and her eyes were wild and fierce with determination. Her gaze connected with Sam’s, and he saw so much pain and sorrow that it sucked the air from his lungs.
And he knew. Knew in that moment that he’d made a terrible assumption. She hadn’t betrayed him.
SOPHIE couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t process the nightmare unfolding in front of her eyes.
Her father was going to kill Marlene. She knew it without a doubt. No matter what happened, he would make a statement. Don’t cross him. Ever.
She wanted to vomit, but right now she had to be strong. She had to think fast and not betray her gut-wrenching fear. That she could do. She’d hidden her fear and weakness from her father for years. She wouldn’t fail now.
Holding the grenade close to her now that she was sure her father had seen it, she leveled a cool stare at him and voiced her demands.
“Put the gun down and let her go.”
Marlene’s eyes drew up in horror as Sophie walked toward the front steps. Sophie ignored her. She couldn’t think about Marlene or offer her any reassurance.
“Let her go or I blow us all up,” Sophie said in a voice devoid of the horrific fear that rolled through her body.
“You’re bluffing,” her father bit out.
“Am I?” She gripped the grenade tighter, her thumb now numb from the pressure she exerted on the handle. “You think I don’t know that I die either way? If I go with you, you’ll kill me. I have nothing to lose. But you have a choice. You can let Mrs. Kelly go and I’ll put the pin back in the grenade and go with you. Or I’ll relax my grip and blow me and you and the key to smithereens. Either way
I
die. If you let Mrs. Kelly go, you don’t die. Now, what’s it going to be?”
Her father shifted but he was careful to keep the terrified Marlene in front of him.
“Honey, don’t do this,” Marlene said in a scared, shaky voice. “Think of your baby. My grandchild. Don’t do it. Go back to Sam. For God’s sake,
go back to Sam
.”
“Shut up,” Alex Mouton snapped as he angled the tip of the gun harder into her temple.
“Let her go,” Sophie demanded.
She pulled the grenade up her body until the hand holding it and the leather strap rested against the straps of her vest. Then she tossed the pin onto the porch where her father and uncle stood.
Tomas swore and immediately dropped down to retrieve the pin. He extended it toward her, his hand shaking.
“You put it back in,” he said hoarsely. “Put it back in now.”
Her father stared at her for a long moment as if measuring her determination. “All right, Sophie. You’re calling the shots. If you want Mrs. Kelly to be freed, you come to me and make the trade. You for her. She doesn’t move away from me until you’re close enough to dissuade the snipers.”
She swallowed and took a hesitant step forward. She wouldn’t look back. She couldn’t. If she did, she’d only see what she’d never have.
When she was close enough to Marlene, she whispered, “Tell Sam I love him and that I never lied to him.”
“How touching,” her father sneered.
Lightning fast, he thrust Marlene away from him and yanked Sophie to his chest.
“Run!” Sophie yelled hoarsely.
The world around her erupted in chaos.
Marlene fled toward her sons. The two guards standing on the steps fell, blood running from gaping wounds in their heads. Tomas dove back into the house. Gunfire erupted over the compound. A heavy explosion rocked the ground. Sophie held tighter to the grenade as her father backed through the heavy front door, his arm a stranglehold around her.
Her last glimpse of Sam was as he rushed his mother into the safety of the SUV.
She closed her eyes. Thank God.
CHAPTER 29
“MOM, Mom! Are you okay?” Sam demanded as he leaned over her in the SUV. “Get us the fuck to cover!” he yelled at Garrett.
Resnick and Sam’s brothers threw themselves into the SUV and Garrett rocked it over a planter and through a hedge until it dove down a narrow embankment behind a rock outcropping.
“I’m okay, Sam. I’m fine. Just terrified.”
Her hands on his face penetrated some of his red haze. He was furious, and he was scared out of his mind.
“We have a hostage situation,” he barked into his mic. “Sophie’s inside the building. Proceed with extreme caution.”
Marlene tried to sit up, but Donovan shoved her back down, his body covering hers. “Stay down, Ma.”
She looked up at Sam, torment crowding her tired eyes. “Sam, you have to get her out of there. She thinks she’s going to die.”
Sam closed his eyes.
“She told me to tell you she loves you and that she never lied to you,” his mom said in a tearful voice.
“Sweet mother of God,” Garrett said in a strained voice. “Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Sam demanded as his head swung in his brother’s direction.
Garrett held up the key. It was missing the leather tie, the one she’d held in the same hand with the grenade.
“She must have slipped it into my pocket when she nabbed the grenade.”
Sam’s gut tightened. He remembered well her determination that Tomas never get his hands on the key. How much more determined would she be to keep it from her father?
“Oh dear God,” he whispered. “He’ll kill her.”
Ethan picked himself up off the floorboard of the third-row seat and grabbed at his mom’s hand.
“Ethan,” she murmured in surprise. “What are you doing here? Where is Rachel?”
“She’s safe, Ma,” Ethan said gruffly. “Thank God you are too.”
Marlene looked anxiously back at Sam. “Are you going after her? You won’t just leave her there, will you?”
“Sam, I’ll radio for a helicopter. I can have your mom out of here in minutes,” Resnick said. “You go. I’ll stay here with her.”
“I want the rest of you to go with Mom,” Sam said. “This is my fight. Your job is to make damn sure Mom gets out of here alive.”
“Bullshit,” Marlene snapped.
Five pairs of eyes stared at her in surprise.
“Your brothers would never let you go back in alone. Your father raised you all better than that. You get back there and save my grandchild. You save that young woman who just traded her life for mine.”
“Don’t worry, Ma,” Donovan said. “We weren’t going to let the dumbass go anywhere without us.”
“We’re taking heavy fire,” Steele said in Sam’s ear.
The others turned to Sam, their worried gazes finding his.
“Let’s go,” Sam said. “I’m not letting this bastard take even
one
of my men’s lives, and I’m damn sure not letting that fool-headed female of mine get herself killed.”
SOPHIE wrenched herself free of her father’s grasp as soon as the doors closed. It felt like the stone being rolled over a tomb. Damn if she’d let fear paralyze her now though.
Her thumb was slick over the lever of the grenade. It would be so damn easy to let go. But she had no intention of dying, no matter what she may have said.
“Put the pin back in, Sophie,” her father said.
Tomas stood, hand outstretched with the pin, sweating profusely and shaking. Alex stared at her through the narrow slits of his eyes—cold eyes that betrayed no fear. Was the man made of stone or was he just that convinced that he was indestructible? For that matter, she’d shot him and yet he’d survived. Maybe he
was
invincible.
“I s-shot you.”
The corner of his mouth lifted into an almost smile. “So you did. You impressed me. I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
Then his eyes changed, growing cold as anger flared in the depths.
“You put me in the hospital for months. I lay there seeing you pointing that gun at me, an arrogant little bitch who thought she’d won. You can’t kill me, Sophie. I can’t die.”
She lifted the grenade again when Alex moved in her direction. Her hand shook, but at the moment she didn’t care if she concealed her fear from her father. She was done with it. She was done with him.
“Stay away from me and my baby.”
“Give me the key and I’ll consider letting you live long enough to give birth to your brat.”
A burst of hysterical laughter escaped her. He didn’t realize yet that she didn’t have the key.
Tomas moved, and in that small lapse of attention as she glanced in his direction, Alex rushed her. He grabbed her wrist and twisted painfully until the grenade dropped from her hand to the floor.
The leather tie drifted downward, and both Tomas and Alex made a grab for the grenade. Alex reached it first, snatched it up and hurled it through the doorway and down the hall.
Sophie hit the floor, her arms covering her belly protectively.
The blast rocked the house, and plaster and wood rained down on her head. Recovering fast, she got to her hands and knees and crawled across the debris-covered floor.
A hand circled her ankle and yanked her back. She rolled defensively and came face-to-face with the furious eyes of her father.
Dust and bits of the ceiling plaster covered his hair, and he held up the leather tie with his free hand.
“You fucking bitch, where is the key?”
Self-preservation kicked in, and she struck at him with her other foot. Struggling wildly against his hold, she fought to gain purchase with her hands, pushing against the floor in an attempt to gain leverage.
Hope bloomed when she saw him drag his left leg in an effort to keep up with her. His pants leg was ripped from the knee down, and blood dripped onto the floor.
With another desperate kick, she managed to free her ankle, and she turned, scrambling over the floor toward the doorway on the other side. He was on her in two seconds, his body landing clumsily against hers. The sound of his breathing filled her ears as his hand curled into her hair. He yanked viciously, and when her head came up, he slapped her across the face.
Stunned, she hit the floor again, only to have him haul her up and drag her toward the opposing hallway. Tomas was down, pinned under part of the doorway that had fallen in the explosion.
Sophie fought back wildly. She wouldn’t die. Not now. And she damn sure wasn’t going to die at her father’s hands. She aimed a kick at his injured leg.
Cursing, he struck her again, this time with his fist. The cold metal of a gun brushed across her cheek before he lowered it and dug it painfully into her belly.
“Be still and cooperate or I’ll shoot you and leave you to bleed out like a gutted pig,” he hissed.
“Give it up,” she gasped out. “You can’t win. Sam and his men have you surrounded. You can’t possibly think you’ll make it out alive.”
“Watch me.”
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded as he dragged her through the house. The sounds of gunfire surrounded them, distant, but growing closer. What if Sam got killed? Or his brothers? What if they couldn’t get Marlene to safety?
God, there were so many what-ifs. Sam thought she’d betrayed him. Would he really put her above the safety of the people he cared most about? She wasn’t as sure as her father that he’d come for her, even if it was his child he was most interested in saving. In the face of her seeming betrayal, it didn’t seem a stretch that he wouldn’t even believe the baby was his.
Her father shoved her into the library and toward a wooden panel in the center of the room. The doors slid open, revealing an elevator. He forced her inside, then withdrew a key from his pocket and inserted it into the slot below the button for the floor.
The doors swooshed shut, immersing the interior in darkness. The floor lurched below her and they began their descent.
All the while, he held her arm in his bruising grip. Her face ached and her mouth had swelled and was split in the corner. The metallic taste of blood hovered on her tongue, but she was alive. She wouldn’t give up hope yet.
Please, Sam. Find me. Save our child. Save me.
I love you.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened to more darkness. Had they descended to hell?
Her father thrust her forward, and she clumsily stumbled along the hard floor. He’d slowed now, and he limped heavily, his body bobbing into hers.
She faked a stumble, then let out a cry of anguish. He fell into her, recovered and let out a hiss of pain. But she’d slowed him down.
Her brain short-circuited. She could only slow him down so much in hopes that Sam came for her. She babbled out the first thing that came to mind in a desperate bid to distract him, make him talk, all the clichéd things someone did when she was fighting for her life. What else was there left for her?
“How did you survive? I shot you. You should have died.”
Probably not the best thing to do. Remind him of the fact she’d shot him down like he’d shot her mother.
He remained silent, refusing to be drawn into conversation. His only response was to kick at her ankle to spur her movement. She went forward, pretending to fall. Her hand groped for the wall so she didn’t go down hard.
“You’re trying my patience,” he snarled. “Get moving or I’ll shoot you and leave you here.”
Like a flame to a dry fuse, fury caught fire and burned hot and wild through her veins. “Why don’t you then? You’re a coward who preys on women and those weaker than you. You shot my mother at the dinner table. What kind of sick fuck does that?”
He actually paused, his fingers still on her arm. She felt a betraying tremble surge through his body. The cold bastard had reacted? To the mention of her mother?