Chapter 21
KARA
Friday evening, I was alone in Shawn’s penthouse. I changed into a purple dress with a plunging neckline and stepped into the tall, matching heels, which I immediately regretted not breaking in. My hands worried the button of my clutch purse as I dialed Laurel.
“You’re still at the theater?” I asked when she mentioned her rehearsal had run long.
“Yeah, the choreographer is having difficulty with his vision,” she grumbled. “I’m heading to the brewery straight from here. What’s up?”
“Tell me I’m a crazy woman for getting involved with him. Be my voice of reason.” Because I was drowning in my feelings and I was going to get hurt. I wanted this rapid descent to stop . . . or at least slow the hell down.
She laughed lightly. “You’re the one who’s practically living with him, and you want me to, what? Talk you out of your feelings? Sorry, I like Shawn. He’s Jason’s brother. And he gave us his house.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”
What I really wanted to say was I didn’t want to know that.
The sprawling and impressive mansion Jason and Laurel lived in was actually Shawn’s.
There wasn’t furniture in this apartment because he’d given it to my pregnant sister.
This further solidified he was capable of thinking of someone other than himself.
That was about the only negative I had left and clung to, to keep me from going under.
“You’re no help,” I said. “That only makes me like him more.”
She seemed to find that amusing.
Shawn had chosen to stay in the office all day since the event would be held on the front lawn of the brewery.
At six-fifteen, I texted him that I was on my way.
The new shoes were a nightmare to walk in as I crossed the apartment lobby, but the goal was to stand as tall as Shawn did tonight. I liked being equal to him.
Markus held the main door open for me, and I stepped out onto the sidewalk, shielding the setting sun from my eyes with my clutch. “Which way is the car?”
“We go now, Frau,” he said under his breath.
“What’s wrong?” My heart beat faster.
His hand on my elbow guided me in the right direction. “Someone waits.”
My shoes didn’t just hurt—they’d be impossible to run in. I hurried along as quickly as I could, letting him lead me down the pavement to a limo.
“Is he following?” I whispered as he yanked the door open.
“Yes.”
It was unbearable, the urge to look for whoever had put my bodyguard on high alert, but I resisted. I threw myself into the back seat, him following right behind and ordering the driver to go.
But before the limo started to move, the door across the way swung open and a dark, enormous figure shoved his way in. The driver yelled at the intruder at the same time Markus drew a gun from inside his jacket—
But the tall man was nearly on top of me as he leaned over, crushing me into the seat with his weight as he disarmed Markus in an instant. It happened so fast, it was shocking, and my heart stopped. I was frozen in place.
The tall man kept the gun in his hand but hid it from the driver’s view, ordering him in German to do something . . . probably to drive.
When the limo lurched forward, the intruder sat up and his weight was gone. Cold, dark eyes swept over me. He had a long face and dark hair, and an expression that said he was deadly serious. I cowered while Markus tried to get in between me and this man.
But the intruder was saying something that gave my bodyguard pause, and the gun that had been taken from him . . . it remained down. Not threatening.
“Ms. Hayward, I’m a friend of the marshal’s.” The tall, intense man’s English was flawless.
“What?” Nerves made my voice shaky.
“My name is Ethan.”
Fear made me slow. This was the CIA agent who’d helped Jason and Laurel escape? “Why are—?”
“It’s complicated, and it’s too dangerous for me to make contact, so I need you to get a message through to him.”
My gut was telling me this man was dangerous but practical and efficient. If he’d wanted me dead, he wouldn’t sit in the back of the car talking to me. He’d have done it already.
This had to be the truth.
“What’s the message?”
His face went hard as stone, and there was an eerie beauty to it. “The Italians never had Juric. It was all a setup. Run.”
Once again, my heart stopped. It resumed at triple speed, pumping adrenaline through my system.
Ethan uttered something else to the driver, and the car eased to a stop. “Tell them I’m sorry,” he said. “We lost control of the situation.”
He pushed the door open and stepped out, leaving the gun on the seat. As soon as it slammed shut, he disappeared into the darkness between two buildings. A man that tall seemed like he’d stand out, but I hadn’t noticed him until he was right in front of me.
No one would answer their goddamn phone, and my hands shook as I typed out the texts. Those went unanswered, too.
In a blink, we were at the brewery.
My stomach knotted and twisted as I climbed from the back seat. Not safe. Run. The word repeated, making me nearly hysterical with fear for my sister.
As soon as I reached security, I asked them to get Jason, but I was too impatient to wait. I dialed Laurel again and let my trembling legs ascend the lawn toward the crowd of partygoers.
It was too loud. No one could hear their phone over the roar of laughter, music, and conversation going on between people gathered at tables. I scanned the faces in vain. Too loud and too many people.
That was when I saw him.
He stood at a cocktail table, a glass of wine in one hand as the woman beside him tried to have a conversation.
He could not look more disinterested. If I weren’t so panicked, I might have enjoyed this moment.
The woman beside him was attractive and young, and Shawn couldn’t be bothered to maintain eye contact.
My heels sank into the soft grass as I hurried to him. I was two steps away when he noticed my approach, and the warm brown eyes lit up when they connected with mine.
“Where’s your brother?” I said. Not ‘happy birthday,’ or even ‘hello.’
“You’re here.” The different versions of Shawn battled for control. His gaze drifted down my dress, and it was obvious he liked what he saw, but then he remembered he was at a company event and schooled his expression. I could feel his employees’ attention on us, judging me for being near him.
“We have to find Jason. It’s urgent.” Whatever expression was on my face, it did the trick. It communicated that everything else needed to be put on hold.
“This way,” he said, striding away from the woman at the table like she’d never existed.
I followed him through the crowd, his hand on my wrist, pulling me along. I bumped into Diana, the woman I would have reported to, had I taken the job he’d tried to set up. She looked stunned to see me, the snotty American, and that I was holding hands with Shawn Fucking Dunn.
We snaked up to a side entrance and through the double doors into a corporate-looking hallway, and the slightest bit of relief coursed through me when we found Jason. He was alive, and okay, and waited beside a door to a unisex bathroom.
“Hey. I think we’re going to have to leave,” he said when he spotted us. “L’s not feeling well.”
“You’ve got to get the hell out of here,” I blurted.
Both Dunn men straightened, going on alert, and Jason’s eyebrows tugged together. “What?”
“Ethan found me on my way here,” it poured from me in a panicked rush, “and asked me to give you a message. He said he’s sorry, but they lost control of the situation.” My voice lost all its strength. “It was a setup. The Italians don’t have Juric.”
He jolted like I’d shot him in the face.
As soon as my words registered, he turned and threw open the door to reveal Laurel.
She wore a sparkling black dress and was hunched over a toilet as much as her pregnant belly would allow.
Her husband had burst into the bathroom without warning, and her gaze snapped to him, irritation slashing across her face.
“Jason, which part of ‘stay out’ was unclear? I don’t like throwing up with an audience.” Then she saw Shawn and me beside him, and her tone was dry. “Great. You’re here too.”
Jason ignored that. He raced forward, bent, and swept her up into his arms without a word, which was stunning and only made her angrier.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
He barged out of the bathroom so quickly, I had to step back to stay out of his way. “We have to go,” he said urgently. “Juric’s in the open.”
Her understanding of the situation was immediate, her face going white, and she struggled in his hold. “Put me down. I can walk.”
It made my heart hurt. My sister lived in constant fear of this moment.
There was a dull ache in my fingers from how hard I was squeezing Shawn’s hand.
We trailed behind our siblings, following them out onto the lawn and the party there.
Everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves, oblivious to the danger my sister faced, and it only illustrated how unfair this all was.
“Where are we going?” Shawn asked. “Should I activate the flight crew?”
“No,” Jason said. “That’ll take too—”
There was a rumble in the distance, too loud and unnatural to ignore.
A pod of semi-trailers, each with an Osterh?gen logo branded on its side, sped toward the brewery. They didn’t use the service entrance. Instead, they came single-file up the front drive, and their growling engines were loud enough to bring the party to a grinding halt.
The trucks pulled into the circle drive, trapping the party on the lawn between them and the brewery behind us. There were two on each side, leaving a small gap between them at the center of the U they formed.
I glanced at Shawn. Was this part of the event, perhaps some sort of presentation or birthday gift for him? Everyone around us eyed the trucks, curious.
But he looked confused. Suspicious. Whatever this was, he wasn’t in on it, and that made my heart vault into my throat. Dread rolled through us both, and his hand tensed on mine.
The angry hiss of the trucks’ air brakes was almost simultaneous, and the drivers opened their doors, stepping down out of the cabs.
Guns.
Scary, deadly-looking automatic guns were clutched in their hands. The drivers didn’t have to fire a single shot to stir people into a panic. All they needed to do was descend rapidly on the crowd. One of the biggest gunmen leapt up on a table, kicking a flower arrangement out of his way.
“Frau Hayward!” he yelled, making time stop.
My sister was ten feet away from me and frozen in place. When I tried to move toward her, Shawn’s arm locked tightly around my waist. He crushed me against him to stop me, to try to keep me safe.
“Nein?” the driver said.
He smiled and produced a small device, perhaps a phone, but it was difficult to tell. His hand moved as if pushing a button.
The ground rocked beneath my feet and a tremendous boom struck my body like an enormous fist. Air and heat blasted from behind me, making my hair blow forward. Glass and debris from the windows of the brewery shot out and rained down on the lawn.
My lungs refused to work. My mind couldn’t process what had just happened or—
The next explosion was like nothing I’d ever heard or felt. It came from all around, knocking everyone to the ground with either its concussion or their own fear. My legs buckled and I buried my knees into the thick grass.
All four trucks exploded in the moments after the eruption from inside the brewery. Even after the initial blast was over, there were secondary explosions inside the building that rumbled and groaned with catastrophe. Not more bombs, but unavoidable explosions caused by the deliberate one.
The trucks were engulfed in searing flames, so hot that it scorched the earth beneath them. Even from fifty yards away I could feel the heat. The building behind us, the brewery Shawn and Jason’s great-grandfather had built, sounded like it was collapsing on itself.
There was nowhere to go; everything was on fire. The gaps between the burning semi-trucks and brewery were blocked by the gunmen.
People lay stunned on the ground, some wounded and others hysterical. Through the smoke that made my eyes water, I spotted my sister shielded by Jason, his arms wrapped around her and concealing her face.
Another explosion from inside the building drew my attention momentarily, and then I turned to see Shawn. The headquarters of his empire was burning. This was a new Shawn I hadn’t seen before, or maybe it was the real Shawn stripped bare of his disguises by the emotion of what had happened.
A woman in the crowd screamed.
One of the gunmen had pulled a blonde from the crowd and examined her critically. The gun was shoved in her face and the loud crack of it going off was just audible over the burning carnage around us.
The woman collapsed and was shoved away, lifeless, as people screamed.
My heart pounded like a relentless hammer against an anvil. There was no choice to be made.
I knew how this was going to play out. Laurel wouldn’t let another person die in her place. She’d go to this team of gunmen, and they’d either kill her now or take her. And Juric would eventually kill her, or even worse, he’d kill the child inside of her.
I couldn’t have children, and I’d be damned if I’d let someone take that from my sister. Laurel and Jason deserved their happiness, had earned it with all they’d survived.
My sister struggled against Jason’s hold. Her hands clawed at his arms to release her, and his lips were moving, probably pleading with her to stay quiet. So the men wouldn’t take her.
I wouldn’t let that happen any more than he would.
And I had something that might actually prevent it.
I could give them a chance to escape. I owed Laurel after what I’d said to her that dark afternoon after our mother’s death.
Those hurtful, untrue words had driven my sister away for six long years.
“Look at me,” I whispered to Shawn, whose focus was on the gunman who had just killed the blonde woman. His gaze turned to me, and it brimmed with chaos.
I couldn’t go to my death without him knowing.
“I told you I wasn’t capable of giving you what you wanted. Everything.” My voice broke on the word. “You were proving me wrong.”
It only added to the chaos in his eyes, and then there was a different horrified scream as another woman was plucked from the ground.
Time was slipping away. I couldn’t waste any more of it saying goodbye.
I gave a strangled cry before letting go of his hand and launched to my feet. This time I moved out of his reach.
“Stop!” I yelled. “I’m Laurel Hayward.”