Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You look like you want to rip me apart.”
Esme didn’t speak to her captor. Her hands were cuffed—his mistake—and her feet were bound with thick rope. They’d been traveling for hours. The jackass had drugged her. He’d stopped their van shortly after leaving the motel—mostly because he had to, she’d jumped out the back—and he’d jabbed her with a needle. The next thing she knew, she’d woken beside him in a completely different ride.
How long had she been out?
Where the hell were they going? She’d been trying to keep an eye out for road signs, but he seemed determined to only travel on snaking back roads with zero signage.
Where is he taking me? And how can I kill him?
“It’s really not personal, you know.” He spoke easily. As if he often chatted with women who were cuffed in the seat next to him. “Just a job.”
“I will…” Her throat felt too dry. Raw. “Cut you into pieces at my first opportunity. Je promets. ” I promise.
He laughed.
She didn’t.
Her control was razor thin. She kept seeing this jerk shoot Tyler. Not just once. Twice . Once when Tyler had already been down. She’d needed to get to him, but the monster currently driving the car had taken her away.
“There was a bounty on his head. My employer wanted your U.S. Marshal dead. He had to get shot.”
She didn’t cry. There was no room for tears when rage fueled her. Esme would allow no grief.
Kane had been in the patrol car at the motel. He must have gotten out. Kane would have gotten free and rushed to help Tyler. Tyler could still be alive. No, no, he had to be alive. She wouldn’t even consider any other option. Any other option would lead straight to madness for her.
“Sure looked like a whole lot of violence went down in that motel room.” His eyes were on the road again.
Her eyes were on him. Memorizing every feature. Square jaw. Sharp nose. Slight scar cutting just under his lower lip. Frigid blue, soulless eyes. A tattoo of a snake along his left wrist.
Oh, he was a snake, all right.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he added, all conversational-like. “Provided the perfect distraction for me. Doubt I would have been able to sneak up on your boyfriend if he hadn’t been busy with the two bodies in the room.”
“I am going to make your death hurt.” Another promise.
Soft laughter. “You’re kinda cute when you’re plotting murder.”
She’d already plotted his death a dozen times.
“When did you and the marshal hook up? Did you always plan to use him and did he know just how bloodthirsty you are?”
Tyler knew everything about her. Just as she knew so much about him. Thaddeus hadn’t been making dramatic revelations to her. She’d known already that Tyler’s grandfather had been involved with the mob. But Tyler had no blood on his hands. And I didn’t know his own grandfather had ordered the hit on Tyler’s parents. That part had been news. She’d wanted to rush to Tyler and comfort him. Instead, she’d been dragged away from the man she loved. “Who hired you?”
“Your ex.” An easy answer. “I’m taking you to him now.”
Jorlan. She sucked in a breath.
“He wanted me to kill the marshal. That was step one. Step two is bringing you to him. He wants a personal chat with you. Said you were to be brought in alive.” His hold tightened on the wheel. “Of course, I did promise to kill you as soon as he was done with that fun talk he wanted to have…so, there’s that.”
A lump choked her.
“Want to hear some music?” Her soon-to-be-killer turned on the radio. “I hate silence, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Tyler, be alive.
Be. Alive.
Esme went back to plotting the murder of the man beside her.
“He’s dead. Absolutely fucking dead.” Tyler paced in the hospital. He wasn’t talking about Clay. Clay would live. The docs were working on him now. Thaddeus hadn’t survived the ambulance ride, and Tyler couldn’t give a shit about that traitorous SOB .
All of his focus was on Esme. And on the man who’d taken her.
A man that Tyler knew. Too well.
What game are you playing? Why are you screwing with my Esme?
And where the hell was Gray? He’d tried to make contact, but Gray appeared to have disappeared. What did Thaddeus do to him?
Kane stood at his side, a solid, immovable object. Kane had gotten help at the motel. Contacted authorities who weren’t freaking as dirty as they came.
But he hadn’t gotten Esme. She is gone.
And all Tyler could do was wait on the phone call that had damn well better come.
“ Where is my daughter? ”
His head whipped to the right. Three men marched toward him. Two of the guys he instantly pegged as security. They had that tough-as-nails, I’ll-break-you-in-a-flash look about them. Tyler ignored them because it was the third man that mattered.
The man with Esme’s eyes. Etienne Laurent.
He’d figured her father would show up, sooner or later. Turned out, it was sooner.
Etienne strode straight to Tyler. His goons covered his left and right sides. The light hit her father’s dark hair, with silver gleaming near his temples. His face was hard with intent, and rage shone in the darkness of his eyes as he squared off with Tyler. Only darkness. No faint traces of gold. His eyes weren’t exactly like Esme’s.
“You had one job, Marshal Barrett. Just one.”
“He’s had a really long day, buddy,” Kane began angrily .
Tyler waved him away. He could handle this. Besides, Etienne deserved his rage. “I’m getting her back.”
Etienne swept him with a judging glare. “Why would she choose someone like you? All you will do is disappoint her.”
“I’m getting her back,” he said again. It was a vow.
“But will you get her back alive? Or will my Esme come home in pieces?”
Tyler could have sworn his heart stopped.
“You have no clue how to find her, do you? She was taken while you watched.”
While she screamed for me.
Pain nearly blinded him.
“You looked at her and saw a villain. You never knew her.” Disgust tightened Etienne’s face. “ I will get my daughter back, and I will make sure she never sees you again.” He whirled from Tyler.
“She starts each day trying to do something good.” The words were pulled from him.
Etienne had begun to storm away, but he stilled.
“She wakes up so happy—the brightest morning person you have ever seen—and she tries to do good.”
Etienne glanced back. Tyler could have sworn the other man’s lower lip trembled. “Esme’s mother taught her that. Her mother…” He swiped a hand over his face. “She wanted Esme to be different than she was. Better than us both.” His hand fell. “Esme was always the best thing in our world.” His head turned away. He started to march away once more.
“She’s the best thing in my world,” Tyler said. He made sure his voice carried. Esme had thought this man was a killer, but it hadn’t been him. “You tried to protect her, didn’t you? Because you knew Esme was in danger. All the way back in Paris, you knew.”
Etienne whirled and was back in front of Tyler in a blink. “That bastard Louis was using her! Lying to her about me. He was working with Thaddeus, and that piece of scum was always trying to blackmail his way into my life. I was not going to let them use my Esme. I told her to stay away from Louis. Not to meet him anymore because the game was too dangerous. I saw Louis with Thaddeus that day in the café. I knew trouble was coming.” He straightened. “I just didn’t realize how close it was. Not until my daughter was pulled from the rubble.”
I pulled her out.
“You think you know Esme?” A hard, negative shake of Etienne’s head. “You have no clue who she truly is.”
“She bakes the best chocolate chip croissants in the world.”
Etienne’s stare sharpened on Tyler.
“And when she lies, her voice gets all arrogant. Haughty. That’s how I know she’s pretending. Because the real Esme isn’t like that. The real Esme is warm and caring. She’s the kind of woman who will risk her life to save a child. She’s the kind of woman who will fight like hell for someone she loves.” He remembered her flying out of the motel bathroom and attacking Thaddeus. “She can’t follow orders for shit. And she always hides when she sheds real tears. But that’s stopping. Because she’s not going to cry any longer.” But she’d been crying when she was taken away from me.
Etienne watched him with glacial eyes of black ice. “You made my daughter cry?” Anger. Nope. More like rage.
Tyler got it. He’d want to kick the ass of any man who made his daughter cry. I’m going to find Esme. We’re going to have a future together. And if any fool ever makes our daughter cry, I will destroy him. “Maybe you should go ahead and take a swing at me.” He motioned to the two silent goons. “Or let them do it. I deserve a punch.” More than that because Esme had been taken.
Etienne rubbed a hand over the bridge of his nose, as if considering something, then he said, “Esme loves silence.”
Tyler could feel Kane watching them. “She hates it. Comes from all that time when she couldn’t hear a thing.”
Etienne’s hand fell. “Why in the hell would she choose you?”
“Because she mistakenly thinks I’m some kind of hero.”
“Esme doesn’t like heroes. Mostly because she doesn’t believe they actually exist.”
“I pulled her from the café in Paris.”
Etienne backed up a step.
“She mistakenly thinks I’m a hero,” he said again. “But I’m about to show her that I will do things no hero will ever do.”
“Uh, Tyler…” Kane edged closer. “Public place. We should probably not be saying?—”
“I am going to find the man who ordered Esme’s abduction—the same man who put a hit on my life—and I am going to kill the bastard. There will be no escape for him.”
Kane coughed. Then, for the nurses who were side-eyeing them, he blustered, “Nothing to see here! Just a little theater work!”
Etienne rolled back his shoulders. “You know that Thaddeus put a hit on my daughter.”
“Yes. The original one. But I’m pretty sure Jorlan Rodgers is the prick we can blame for what happened at the motel. He’s the one behind her abduction. ”
“Jorlan?” Surprise flickered in Etienne’s eyes. “Jorlan wants to marry my daughter. He’s been obsessed with her for years.”
“He’s a twisted monster, and his obsession is over.” Because Jorlan was about to be over.
“If you know he’s responsible, then why are you here?” Etienne gestured to the hospital.
He was there because Jorlan was in the wind and no one could find him. But Tyler had an ace in the hole. A very unlikely ace. An ace that he did intend to beat the hell out of later, but an ace nonetheless. “I’m waiting for a?—”
A phone vibrated.
Not his phone. Tyler didn’t have a damn phone at the moment.
Kane’s phone.
Kane glanced down at the screen, then he handed the device to Tyler. They both knew this ace in the hole.
Ace. Asshole. Same thing.
Tyler read the text. His breath shuddered out. “Any chance you happen to have a private plane I could borrow? It would really speed up the rescue process for your daughter.”
“ You know where she is?”
He did now. He and Kane had just gotten the message they’d been waiting for. An old friend—and sometimes enemy—had sent the information he needed. “The thing about me…” Tyler shoved the phone back at Kane. “I have friends in all sorts of places.”
Etienne pointed toward the operating room. “Like your friend Clay Banks?”
“Clay fired the shot that took out Thaddeus. He saved my life.”
Etienne did not respond to that news .
“Yeah, this talk is fun and all, but I’m getting to Esme. Come on, Kane.” He brushed past Etienne and his goons.
“Your friend Clay did not set the bomb in Paris,” Etienne revealed.
That stopped him. For just a moment. This time, Tyler was the one who looked back. “How the hell do you know that?”
Etienne smiled. It was not Esme’s brilliant smile. It was cold and calculating and deadly. He crooked his finger at Tyler.
Tyler edged back to him.
“My daughter was nearly killed in that bombing. The person I love most in this world.” Etienne’s hand gripped Tyler’s shoulder. “You truly think I did not immediately use every resource I have to uncover the real mastermind?”
He thought Esme’s father might just be one dangerous bastard.
“Louis Turner was not the man he appeared to be. He wanted to take his betrayals and make them all disappear. He thought the best way to do that was by staging a very public death.”
What. The. Hell?
“He’d been trained. The gentleman had quite the background in detonations. Not that most people would know that. The CIA and the FBI hid his real past. But I discovered the truth. That man even worked for the bomb squad once upon a time, under a different name. In a different life.”
“You trade in secrets,” Tyler murmured.
“Just like my daughter.”
I need Esme.
“Louis realized that Thaddeus intended to eliminate him. What Thaddeus didn’t know was that Louis was one step ahead. Louis was a tricky sonofabitch. Wearing wires with everyone. Always making videos. Trading secrets left and right. When Louis realized he was a target, he simply eliminated the bomber that Thaddeus had hired in Paris…and then Louis finished the job.”
Tyler’s stomach knotted. “So he never intended to turn information over to the right hands.”
“There was nothing right about Louis.” Bitter laughter. “Louis knew that Thaddeus was waiting for an explosion, so he gave the bastard one. Louis knew exactly where to put the bomb and exactly where he should be positioned, so that he would escape injury.” His voice lowered even more as he asked, “How was it fair that he got to escape injury when my daughter was driven into a world of silence? She had to undergo multiple surgeries for her face and for the injuries to her body. She had to suffer while that monster thought he could just slip away? No, not on my watch.”
Tyler understood that Louis Turner was truly dead. Now. He might have slipped from the wreckage of that café, but he hadn’t started a new life anywhere. “She never knew.”
“I don’t always like to shatter my daughter’s illusions.”
“Louis left a video saying you were guilty as hell. Basically pointing the finger at you for the bombing. And for the murder of my parents.”
Etienne’s brows rose. “I know nothing about your parents.”
“Yeah, turns out, Thaddeus Caldwell killed them.” He couldn’t touch on that pain. Not now. He had to focus on Esme. “Jorlan got hold of that video.”
“Jorlan gets hold of many things he shouldn’t, it would seem. ”
He won’t keep Esme. “Why did Louis leave the video calling you out?”
“Because my Esme had to make a choice. He wanted her to choose between him and me. She chose me. Over and over again. She did not truly love him. He hated that. I suspect that, in the end, it made him hate her. So he did one last thing to try and wreck her.” His hand released Tyler. “I do not think she would choose me…over you.”
“She won’t ever have to do that. I would never make her do something like that. I want Esme happy. I want the people she loves in her life.” Questions slammed through his head. “What about the ones convicted of the Paris bombing? Esme said they confessed.”
“Not all confessions are true. Those individuals set other bombs. They killed other people.” Anger twisted in his words. “And they made deals with Thaddeus and his international cronies. Deals that we will never fully unravel.” Etienne inclined his head. “I have a private plane at the small airport thirty minutes away. Take it. And any weapons that you need. They will be waiting inside the hangar.”
“Thank you.”
“You will find Esme. You will take out any threats to her.”
Hell, yes, he would.
“And you will love my daughter for the rest of her life?”
“I’ll love her until I take my last breath.”
“Then go save the day, hero . My daughter is waiting on you.”
She wasn’t going to get a hero.
She was going to get the bastard who would tear apart anyone who dared to hurt her.
Tyler headed for the elevator. Kane was right at his side. And before those elevator doors closed, Kane said, “Your future father-in-law is slightly scary. I think I could like him.”
“Kane…”
“Who are we going to kill first?”
“Jorlan Rodgers. The hitman he hired has to deliver Esme directly to him. And we’re going to be there for the exchange.” He couldn’t wait to see Jorlan’s face when a dead man interrupted his private meeting.
Surprise, surprise, asshole. I’m still breathing, and I’m here to send you straight to hell.