Chapter 17
17
A lex steered his truck through the darkening streets of Manhattan with his mind unusually distracted. But of course he was fucking distracted. He was on his way to Leslie’s, dead set on turning down her offer to be her friend with benefits for a month. He didn’t relish disappointing her or hurting her again.
Story of his life when it came to her.
He was close to her place when a call came through and he glanced at the digital screen on his dashboard.
Luke was calling.
Alex had assigned him the role of security manager for the night so he would be at headquarters, watching the screens and checking in intermittently with the bodyguards. If Luke was calling, that meant there was a problem. One Alex hoped could be solved quickly and without bloodshed.
When he flicked on his Bluetooth, Luke’s voice filled the car. “Alex, we have a problem.”
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
“It’s Leslie.”
Alex’s heart thudded heavily. Leslie’s name coming out of his second-in-command’s mouth wasn’t what he expected or wanted to hear. “What happened?”
“I lost contact with the bodyguard assigned to her.”
First Elvis and the sex club, now another bodyguard leaving her vulnerable. He was going to have to do some serious training and rehiring. Of course, he couldn’t just assume Leslie’s bodyguard was being derelict in his duties.
“Give me a sec.” He put Luke on hold and called Leslie, but was met with no answer. He whipped his truck hard to the right and hit almost sixty going down a back alley, trying to get to her faster. He switched the call with Luke back to live. “She didn’t answer my call. I’m headed to her place already. Almost there. Tell me what you know.”
“Baylor is the one on guard tonight. He’s supposed to check in every fifteen minutes but he didn’t. I called but got no answer. I also looked at the video feed outside her apartment building and didn’t see him, but there’s a strange lump on the sidewalk. It looks like a pile of snow on the camera, but Alex, I can’t be sure. I tried Leslie, too, but got no answer.”
A strange lump in the snow could very well mean Baylor had been incapacitated.
Alex turned back onto the main street and illegally passed three cars. He gripped the steering wheel tight, until his knuckles turned white. “Did she hit her panic button?”
“No.” Luke’s voice was flat.
“That means if someone’s after her, they either haven’t gotten to her yet or…” He couldn’t finish his statement because his throat was closing up on him. He told himself to remain calm. Even though he was armed, going into a rescue situation without recon could not only be deadly for him, but for the victim, too.
For Leslie .
The thought that she might be a victim at this point sucked the air out of his lungs. He steadied himself, focusing on regaining complete control.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Focus.
Clear your mind.
His military training took over, and his mind grew clear as a plan began to form.
He put his earpiece in.
“I’m on her block,” he told Luke. “I’m going to pull into the alley behind her house and park there. My lights are off.”
“Got your earpiece in?”
“Yes. Stay silent until I tell you otherwise.”
He slowed down, then flicked off his truck’s lights just before he got to the alleyway. Without hitting the brakes, just in case someone was watching the street, he whipped the car into the alley. He turned off the interior lights, then slipped out of the car, gun in his holster.
He stayed low as he made his way to the front of her brownstone. He pressed his body against a wall, then took out his phone and turned on the front facing camera. At the corner of the building, he held the phone out until he could see down the sidewalk that led past her house.
There was a body lying in the snow, but on the screen Luke was looking at, it probably did look like a pile of dirty snow. He pulled his gun out of the holster, scanned the area to make sure it was clear, then made his way over to the body.
Baylor.
His eyes were closed. A dark stain marred his dress shirt, and a viscous, dark puddle slowly grew under his chest.
Alex knelt beside him and checked for a pulse. Nothing.
Fuck!
Alex pressed his earpiece and connected with Luke. Speaking quietly, he said, “Baylor’s dead. I’m going in.”
“No, Alex. Wait for back up.”
“I’m fully loaded, with eleven in the barrel and one in the chamber. I’ve got thirteen and one extended magazine. Leslie’s in danger and I’m not fucking waiting for backup.”
“Damn it, Alex, you’d order your men to wait, and you left me in charge. So I’m ordering you to stand down until backup arrives. I’m on my way with two more men.”
“ETA?”
Silence met his question, then, “Traffic’s snarled in a few places. I’m twenty minutes out, and the other guys are at least fifteen.”
What Luke said about waiting for backup made sense. And Luke was right. If Alex were at the helm, he’d give the same order to his men. But Luke wasn’t the boss. Alex was. And this wasn’t any client. This was Leslie Duke. “I’m not waiting. I’ll call when it’s done. If I fail, you fucking save her, Luke.”
“Alex, no!”
He hung up.
He was about to move out of his crouch when something cold and hard met his temple.
A sense of surrealism swept over Leslie as she struggled to fight against the rising bile in the back of her throat. She had to stay alert, aware, ready to act at a moment’s notice. But the gun at the side of her head didn’t help matters much. Panic rose again, and again, she ordered herself to remain calm.
She had no idea who these men were, or what they wanted with her. All she knew was that her security detail, a nice guy named Baylor with a fiancée in nursing school and a propensity for bad dad jokes was probably dead. Because how else had these men gotten in?
Alex will be here soon , she mentally whispered. He’ll save me.
If he made it in time and got past these men, that is.
Trying to distract herself from Alex’s impending visit, she’d been working out to a new YouTube yoga video in her studio when three men had suddenly barged in, somehow getting past not just Baylor but her state-of-the-art security system. One man grabbed her and immediately carried her upstairs, as if they’d known the layout of her place ahead of time. The man shoved her onto her couch and held a gun to her head. He spoke in a foreign language to the two other men, then asked her in heavily accented English if she was Leslie Duke, which had seemed silly. If they knew the layout of her place, wouldn’t they know her face? And by the way, was that a Slavic accent she’d heard? But that meant the men could be speaking any number of languages: Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Slavic, Romanian…
Wherever they were from, maybe criminals were just extra cautious, she’d thought hysterically, wanting to be certain the person they killed was their intended target.Her shock was affecting her, and when her shock kept her silent, the man slapped her across the face.
Her eyes stinging and her ears ringing, she distantly heard one of the other men say something that made her assaulter back off.Or was this when he was going to shoot her?
Fear flooded her.
Oh God. Oh God.
She didn’t want to die.
Didn’t want to leave this world, her family, Alex .
But instead of shooting her, the man spoke again. “Stupid little cunt,” he said, sneering at her. Shockingly, he grabbed her breasts, leaning into her so close she gagged at the fetid scent of his breath. Snapped out of her paralysis, she struggled. He responded with another slap.
The acrid taste of bile filled her throat yet again. How had things gone so wrong so quickly? She’d been on excited pins and needles after Alex had texted saying they needed to talk. So excited, she’d gotten careless, leaving her panic button out of reach.
As the men started speaking again, Leslie tried to get as much information as she could from their looks alone. All three were large—broad shouldered and muscular, with thick necks and small shaved heads, as if they’d built their bodies on steroids alone. They wore jeans, military style black leather lace up boots and black leather motorcycle jackets.
Their guns gleamed in the low light of her living room, a deadly threat.
One of the men who wasn’t holding a gun to her head went over to her purse and pulled out her wallet. He held up her driver’s license to the man with the gun, pointed at her head and grunted what Leslie thought was an affirmation.
Bingo. Leslie’s Duke’s identify confirmed.
“Put your shoes on,” the guy with the gun demanded, his accent thick.
“M-my shoes are over th-th-there,” she said, pointing to the entryway. “B-b-but I-I-I c-c-c-can’t walk,” she stuttered, acting more afraid than she felt. Screw that, she was petrified. But she could still put on an act. Bethany might be the thespian in the family, but she’d taught all her sisters some of the tricks she used on stage, and Leslie planned to make use of all those tricks tonight.
“Get up,” the man demanded, his voice rising in anger.
She held up her hands, making them shake violently. “I’m telling you, I can’t w-w-walk. My l-legs are too shaky. I’m so scared.”
The man smacked the side of her head with the butt of his gun.
Pain exploded in Leslie’s head, and for a moment, the room went black.