Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Angelo’s lungs burned as he glanced up once, seeing the vague outline of Kara’s body in the murky depths as she shot out of the window and vanished into the lake beyond.
She was going to make it. She had to.
He knew he had no more than two minutes before the carbon dioxide accumulation triggered the involuntary urge to breathe.
He had once held his breath for three and half minutes in high school during a breath holding competition.
If he made it out of this, he’d pay a visit to his old coach and thank him for running breathing drills.
He yanked out the seat lever, and suddenly the seat gave way, letting his legs slide free. The fire in his chest was so strong, so distracting it cost him precious seconds to get to the passenger window and swim out.
Have to make it… can’t… stop…
The dark water started to tunnel around his vision as he swam for what he prayed was the surface. But his limbs were leaden and his chest was in agony.
Don’t… breathe…
His fingers brushed against more water. The surface was too far… too far.
He was sinking… and then his body failed him. His lungs seized and he sucked in water. Lights flashed across his eyes his eyes, and visions danced before him in the gloom of his watery grave.
He peered over the edge of a gently swinging bassinet to watch his little brother Dante sleep…
He scampered around the playground with his other brothers, laughing and playing tag…
He stood tall as his mother kissed him goodbye before he left for the preparatory high school…
He shook hands with the young man with golden hair who stepped into his dorm room…
“I’m Thad… I guess we’re roommates…” Thad grinned and pointed to another boy carrying a duffel bag who followed behind him. “That’s Jared. He’s our third…”
“Like the musketeers,” Angelo said. “You guys like spaghetti? I can make us dinner in our dorm room tonight.” He’d been excited to find out their rooms had a small kitchenette and he planned to make the most of it.
“I can’t cook to save my life,” Jared laughed as he joined Angelo and Thad.
“Don’t worry, I can,” Angelo assured them. Just like that… he was home… or almost home.
His stomach twisted with nerves as he opened the door to his restaurant for the first time and thought of how proud his grandmother would be. He’d hugged his uncle Luigi, and they had polished off an entire bottle of wine after the closing of the restaurant’s opening night.
A blur of other memories all sped up quickly before they stopped at one memory. One face.
Her face… She was a flame flickering defiantly in the eye of a storm. Kara.
Her silken hair against his fingers, the pedals of her lips soft against his own, her blue eyes full of grief and yet when she smiled?
It was rare and precious, and he managed to make her smile more and more…
Shadows of them played like an old movie before him.
They spun and danced, bodies touching, mouths whispering words that held the power to turn any dream into reality…
sparkling glitter rained down around them…
Kara in his arms, in his bed… in his heart.
“You are a giver, Angelo…” his Nonna’s voice drifted up to the fading memories… the last thing to reach him as darkness closed in.
“You are a giver… but even givers must fight.”
Pain shot through his chest like a bolt of lightning that seemed to have blasted down from the heavens themselves, striking his heart.
“Come on… breathe!” A harsh shout close by… Another blow of agony to his chest.
Agony… air… water… It all blurred together as Angelo jerked and suddenly he was rolled onto his side as water expelled itself from his lungs.
“About damn time…” someone growled. “I thought you given up.”
He knew that voice. How did he know it?
Asher. The name drifted across Angelo’s pain-fogged mind.
“Come on… let’s get you up.” Hands pulled Angelo to sit up, and his eyes opened. Fresh, stabbing in his hands made him flinch, and he realized he’d been laying on a bed of rocks on the bank.
“What… happened?” His voice was a choked rasp.
“You drowned for a minute,” Asher said. “I couldn’t find you right away.
I dove down to the car but you weren’t inside.
With the storm, the water visibility is shit.
” Asher was sitting beside him, wiping water off his face.
Angelo was drenched, and his body shuddered with the cold as a stiff wind cut across his body.
He was alive. He’d made it out of the car. Kara and he could—
Kara wasn’t there.
“Where’s Kara?” His voice was still hoarse as he glanced around the embankment. He spotted the lights of Asher’s SUV which was parked right on the edge ,and they cut across the night sky. Surely she was in Asher’s vehicle warming up. But he didn’t see any movement inside.
“Gone.” Asher coughed, got to his feet and held out a hand to Angelo who took it and let Asher pull them up.
“Gone? What the fuck do you mean ‘gone’?” Angelo choked on his own words, and started coughing again.
“Gone, but not lost.” The personal protection specialist said as he whipped out his phone and turned on an app showing Angelo the screen.
“She made it out of the water just as I got here. She told me you were still underwater. When I got you out of the lake, I realized she was gone. I was tracking the both of you. Just like we planned. And I’m still tracking her now.
” He pointed to a red dot labeled ‘Kara’ that was swiftly moving.
“We’ve got to go.”
Asher turned to climb the rocks back up the road, and Angelo followed him.
They had agreed that if Kara decided to run, Angelo would go with her.
Asher was supposed to track them and watch for Cormac to make his movie.
They both knew Cormac would strike at some point and they would finally have their showdown as Asher had called it; but the plan hadn’t worked exactly like they’d hoped.
Kara was gone.
“What do you think happened?” Angelo asked.
“I think they grabbed her while I was in the lake with you. We aren’t far behind based on the tracking signal. We just need to get the car and catch up.”
Angelo felt so damned weak but he moved on pure adrenaline as he reached the top of the bank and saw Asher’s SUV.
“Where’s Colton?”
“Headed the same way we are…” Asher studied the tracking app again as they both got into the SUV. “To what looks like a private airport. We have to reach them before they take off.” Asher glanced his way. “You okay? You were dead for a minute. We can take a second if you need it.”
Angelo buckled himself in to the passenger seat.
“Just drive,” he rasped.
Asher turned his focus back to the road and threw the SUV into reverse.
Angelo didn’t dare let himself think about what would happen if they didn’t catch up to her in time.
A man like Cormac Callahan would know how to take her away, hide her…
hurt her. All Angelo wanted was to have her in his arms, kissing her forehead and knowing she was safe.
Fists clenching so tight his knuckles turned white, he stared into the dark, his mind racing wildly with thoughts.
But one thing was certain. He would kill anyone who stood in between him and Kara.
Kara massaged her wrists after the rope was removed from them.
She shot a hard, defiant look at Jim O’Leary who tossed the rope into an empty chair nearby.
The pilot had come out a moment ago and told Cormac he refused to take off until he performed safety checks and only after he could see that all passengers were seated and unrestrained.
The pilot’s eyes had cut to Kara’s wrists with a nervous look as he’d given that order to the men who had hired him to fly the plane.
Kara had breathed a sigh of relief as Jim cut her free.
Then she’d been shoved into a seat by Cormac and buckled in.
Now she twisted Angelo’s grandmother’s ring on her finger, hiding the pearl and diamonds against her palm.
Touching it gave her a small level of comfort.
When she glanced up, she saw Cormac watching her, his eyes dark with obsession, so different than the sensual possessiveness she adored seeing in Angelo’s eyes.
“What’s that?” Cormac demanded. His tone held a level of violence that terrified her, but she didn’t dare show it.
When she didn’t answer and kept her face neutral, he bent over from the seat next to her and jerked her hand toward him.
She kept her fingers curled into a fist, desperate to protect the ring but he pried her fingers apart to the point of pain.
Before she could stop him, he sharply twisted the ring off her fingers and held it up into the light.
She pulled her stinging hand back to her chest, cradling it.
“What is this?”
Kara was sick to her stomach as she watched Cormac hold something that mattered to her, mattered so much it nearly made her cry. Then it gave her an idea; but it likely wouldn’t make a difference. Still, she had to try.
“That’s my wedding ring. I’m already married, Cormac.” It was a lie, but it didn’t feel like one right then. She felt in her heart that she and Angelo had made vows, ones that ran deeper than any ceremony. Vows bonded by blood, by love, by loyalty.
It was strange to think that on some level Cormac had lived by a similar code, but his carried dangerous rules and fatal consequences.
Cormac flung the ring across the plane and it hit the back wall with a plink!
and disappeared onto the carpeted floor.
Then he turned on her, pressing her back against the seat, grasping one of her arms and twisting it tightly as if he needed to cause pain to drive home what he was about to tell her.
“It doesn’t matter now, does it? Vertucci is dead. My men said he didn’t make it out of the lake. Only ye did.”
Only me.