The Unlucky Ones, page 24
“I almost shot you, girl.” James tucked the gun back.
“I’m not leaving.” I held my chin up, ignoring James, my attention locked on Lincoln. “Not unless you come with me. Don’t do this, Lincoln. Please.”
His gaze moved over my face, the light illuminating his back-to-blue eyes.
“I can’t.” His features wrinkled in regret. “We already went through this.”
“I don’t care if we have to go through it a hundred more times. I will not stop until you are walking away with me.”
“I made up my mind.” He took a step closer.
“Me too.” I moved in even closer, my hands on my hips. Neither of us backed away. The heat of our bodies warred for dominance with our heavy breaths.
His nose flared and his pupils dilated as they dipped down to my mouth. My breasts tightened in response, igniting the fire in my stomach. “Go. Home. Devon.”
“You first.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” James held up hands between us. “We’re wasting time. Holy shit, did I call it with this one. I knew she was clearly your type, brother.” James pointed at me, then shook his head. “Not the point. Devon, is it? You need to go. And if you know what’s good for you, never speak of this night or ever seeing us.”
“You mean not tell the cops you’re heading to Mexico?”
James swore, stomping his foot. “She knows? Just fucking great.”
“Relax.” Lincoln tilted his head. “She won’t tell.”
“I won’t?” I went back to my standoff with Lincoln, the feel of him gazing at my frame sending heat throughout my body.
“No.” His mouth moved around the word, a smirk lying beneath, his gaze ardent, blistering my heart.
We may have started our relationship in lust, but our connection went much deeper. I had no idea when it happened, but I knew this disemboweled sensation pitting my soul. I was in love with him. Deeply. And I was going to lose him. Again.
Tears stabbed the back of my lids. “Please don’t do this,” I whispered, choking on each word. I took a deep breath, letting the confession tumble out. “I love you.”
Agony strained his face; his hands glided up my jaw, his forehead falling against mine. A sound similar to a hurt animal vibrated in the back of his throat, crushing me against him. His mouth was hot and passionate, burning what was left of me as his lips took mine.
He pulled away almost as quickly as he began. “It will always be you, Freckles,” he muttered against my mouth. His lips pressed against my head, then he shoved away and walked around me, gutting me as if I were about to be thrown on the barbeque.
“Lincoln…” I swiveled around, blinking back tears, staring at the backs of the brothers walking away from me.
A chill ran up my spine. I sensed something in the atmosphere changing. I had sharp instincts. My father always said I’d make a great cop because of my attention to detail, logic, and need to help people.
My intuition knew what it was before I even heard a gun clicking. My world tipped, both slowing down and speeding up around us. My mouth dropped open to yell as a silhouette stepped out from behind the fence.
“No!” I cried at the same time my uncle’s voice boomed through the night air, a gun pointed directly at the brothers: “FREEZE!”
James jolted back, sucking in a yelp of air, his arms going up. Lincoln stopped but didn’t even flinch, an eerie calmness radiating off him. Composed. Detached. Not a single emotion filtered across his face, and this was the man who had been in jail, who had to survive under constant threat and soul-destroying situations.
“Devon, what the hell are you doing here? Move away!” My uncle waved his gun for me to step next to him. I didn’t budge. “I was going to wait until you guys did something stupid, lock you up for good. But…” Uncle Gavin shot a deadly glare at me. I had changed his plans.
“Thought you lost me, didn’t you?” Gavin scooted in, flickering his gun from one brother to another.
“Hoped was more like it.” Lincoln’s voice remained even.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” my uncle seethed. “And here I find you up to your old tricks. Not really a surprise. Stealing from others is the only thing you know how to do. But you involve my niece in your shit? You now made this personal.” Gavin inched even closer, motioning his gun at both guys. “Turn around and put your hands up. Now!” His thumb tapped at the trigger. Lincoln looked at me, his expression almost apologetic before he turned around doing what my uncle asked. James twisted around as if he had all the time in the world, a smug smile on his mouth. Uncle Gavin reached out to pat down Lincoln first. “I’ve done a lot of research on you two. Born Finn and William Montgomery, to a wealthy Texas tycoon, Finnick William Montgomery, III.”
My head jerked to James. Of course James wasn’t his real name.
“Your mother was killed in a car accident when you were kids. That’s when it started. At first just little burglaries. Stealing from your father’s clients. Was this your way of getting Daddy’s attention? But it backfired, huh? You became an embarrassment he couldn’t cover up, so he kicked you out on the street. Disowned you. Got remarried and started a new family.”
Lincoln told me a little about them being on the streets but not why. Shit. They were only teenagers, and their own father kicked them out? Bastard. How could you turn your back on your own children, young boys, who recently lost their mother, and throw them out on the street with nothing?
“Wow, that was a fun trip down memory lane.” James shifted on his feet, his arms lowering slightly. “Is there a point?”
“You guys were smart. Moved around. Only took what you needed from wealthy houses, never used a weapon. Until the last time. Something changed. Your target. Your MO. Why?”
Uncle Gavin didn’t know about Kessley or about James’s need to continually raise the stakes.
My uncle sidestepped toward James, ready to pat him down. While he busied himself with relieving James of the gun tucked into the back of his pants, I saw James reach down his front.
“No!” I screamed, leaping forward, bulldozing into Lincoln’s brother. We went crashing to the ground, taking Uncle Gavin with us. The revolver in James’s hand hit the ground, skating across the concrete into a pole. In a frenzy of yelling and hands clamoring for the second weapon, Lincoln bolted over and plucked it from the cluster of groping fingers.
“Lincoln!” I shouted as my uncle bounced up, pointing his own gun at Lincoln’s chest.
“Put it down, Finn. You do not want to do this.”
“Don’t call me that. That was his name,” he snarled, still clutching the weapon. Getting back to my feet, I took a step toward him, but the slight shake of his head ended my advance.
“I know he beat both of you. Your records are full of hospital visits with mysterious bruises and broken bones,” my uncle’s voice softened.
“When a top client is also a well-respected doctor, funny how much you can spin child abuse as boys being boys.” Lincoln’s face darkened, his fingers strangling the handle of the gun. At the slight movement, my uncle’s arm twitched.
“Put. Down. The. Gun,” Gavin ordered, an edge to it. “Last time I will ask.”
I feared that ever since my father was shot by a man who wouldn’t put down his gun, my uncle’s trigger finger was a bit more fidgety. Panic hammered my heart. In a split second and things could shift so easily. On either side of those two guns were the two men I loved most in the world.
“Lincoln…” I cautiously moved toward him. “Please do what he says.”
“Devon! What are you doing? Stop!” Uncle Gavin cried out to me, terror coating his words. “Devon?”
I ignored him and stared into the blue eyes I loved, my hand gently wrapping around the hand with the gun. He didn’t move or try to stop me as I peeled his fingers away, taking the gun in mine.
“Like I could ever fight you.” A sardonic huff tipped his mouth. “You demand. I obey.”
“If it were true, we’d be home…in bed, not here,” I replied, only a few inches away from him. I tossed the gun to the side, the metal scraping as it hit the pavement. “Instead, I will be visiting you in prison.” Grief bowed my mouth.
Lincoln’s hand ran down one side of my head, cupping my face. “As long as they’re conjugal.” He smirked before his mouth slanted over mine, quickly kissing me.
My uncle gave a small gasp. When I turned around, his face was contorted in disappointment and shock.
“Uncle Gav…”
“You knew he was Finn?” Gavin cut me off, his feet taking him back a few steps. “This whole time?”
I couldn’t find words to speak, just stared dumbly at my uncle.
“Holy shit. How long have you known?” He shook his head but lowered his gun. “I thought you knew him as Lincoln, and he was snowing you, pulling you into his world without your understanding …but…” He trailed off, his eyebrows pinching together. “I mean, you saw him for a brief second…”
Pain flinched in my expression.
“No…no… Were you in on it the whole time?” Uncle Gavin looked as if I had kicked his dog. The image he had of me fractured into a million pieces. “Were you helping him all along? Lying to me? To the entire station from the start?”
“No,” Lincoln said from behind me. “She had no idea who I was until a few weeks ago, and that’s because she has good instincts. She sensed something was off. Started to put the pieces together. She’s completely innocent.”
Not completely. He left out a big chunk of our meeting to protect me.
“But still…Devon.” Uncle Gavin’s eyes pleaded with sorrow. “You knew what the right thing to do was, and you protected him instead. Aided a criminal.”
“I did.” I didn’t try to deny it. “But you don’t know the whole truth. You asked what made their last job different? Why it changed?”
“Devon,” Lincoln growled from behind me.
I didn’t respond, needing my uncle to understand.
“You only see it changed, but you didn’t look deeper, as Dad did. He always looked into why a behavior shifted.” I stepped closer to my uncle. “Lincoln stole from the hospital because he had a little girl dying of leukemia.”
My uncle’s body went stiff.
“He was her match. Bone marrow which could possibly save her life, and he was in jail. The reason he was a model inmate was to get out quickly. But she was dying, and he chose to be with her on her last day, to kiss her for the last time before she died…”
“Nine months ago.” My uncle finished for me, putting the puzzle together. His Adam’s apple bobbed, his gaze darting around to all of us. “It’s incredibly sad, and I’m sorry. But it doesn’t take away the fact you have robbed people, broken out of jail. Held up the hospital at gunpoint.”
The police had the gun, but I knew there were no prints on it. Because he was caught with it, they had linked them wrongfully to Lincoln.
“Wrong brother.” I nodded to James. “He’s the one who held up the gift shop. Lincoln was protecting him.”
My uncle snapped to James, raising the gun again. In a blink, everything transformed, blurring the lines of comprehension.
James bolted forward, grabbed me, and yanked me in front of him. Tugging a blade out of his boot, he whipped the blade to my neck, its edge piercing the tender skin of my throat. I barely dared to breathe, terror turning my limbs to liquid.
“William, no!” Lincoln yelled, the gun I tossed to the side back in his hands. My uncle snapped his weapon between the two brothers, a wild look flicking his finger on the trigger, not knowing who was the real threat, forcing Lincoln to respond in kind.
A slip of the finger or an adrenaline surge could lead to catastrophe.
“You’re fucking talking, brother? Spilling our secrets? Was she worth breaking our number-one code for?” He jerked me farther back, digging the knife in deeper.
“Will. Stop.” Lincoln’s blue eyes looked like ice. Cold. Ruthless.
“Oh, we dropping pretenses now, Finn? What happened to brothers above all? Brothers and thieves. Always first, always together,” James sneered, his voice frantic, angry. Unstable. On more than just pot. “How dumb did she make you? Now I get it. The same girl from before. She’s a cop’s niece. Fuck… Is her pussy that miraculous?”
“Drop the weapon and let her go. You’re just making this worse.” My uncle shuffled forward.
“No. You are,” James growled. I gasped, the blade puncturing my skin, a groan of pain escaping my tongue as I felt tendrils of blood slide down my neck. “Back off!”
Gavin halted, his chest rising with anger and panting heavily, eyes creased with concern and fear for me.
Lincoln’s shoulders rolled back, his jaw cracked down, rage flaring in the set of his face. “You hurt her, brother, and I. Will. Kill. You.”
“Ooooohhh… Damn, girl, you must be special.” James’s sardonic laugh crackled in my ear, his grip cranking down on my arms. “This guy hasn’t committed to any girl in his life. Fucked a shitload, but not one did he give a rat’s ass about, even his baby’s momma. But you see, this is where it becomes a problem for me and for him.” James shuffled me back toward the car. “He should know better than to let anyone in. Nothing good ever comes of it. Accidents happen.”
“Don’t,” Lincoln snarled, his finger sliding over the trigger, countering our steps.
“You take one more step. You shoot me and I will make sure the knife slices her neck. Even think about shooting at the tires, and I will kill her.” He was jittery and slurring.
James poised the blade at the side of my neck, cutting in deeper, showing he had no problem slicing it. I tried not to cry out, but tears of pain leaked down my face. Lincoln stopped where he was. For a moment Lincoln’s steel eyes met mine, terror drenching them, before they went back to his brother, where they filled with wrath. I could see the man who had to fight every day for life, to protect or kill if he had to. Palpable anger shook off his magnificent body like a wild animal trying to free itself from a trap. He’d had his own neck slit in jail. Would it be some sick poetic justice for the same to happen to me?
My body trembled with fright, pain and blood loss spinning my head, but I tried to keep breathing, keep thinking. Assess the situation. What would my dad do?
“Shoot me,” I mouthed to both my uncle and Lincoln. Best way to render a hostage useless was to get them out of the way. Shoot them in the leg. I remember one time my dad told me he had to implement that strategy. Of course, the bank teller sued the police station, but she was alive.
The area around Lincoln’s eyes tightened, a nerve in his jaw twitched. But Uncle Gavin’s head shook, telling me there was no way in hell. My father had made the call, but it was something my uncle never liked. It wasn’t by the book; it bent the rules.
“Well, this night didn’t go as planned.” James dragged us back more, the pain in my throat now throbbing, making me cringe. Tears mixed with the stream of sticky blood soaking into my shirt. “I am not going to jail. Remember, you are forcing me to do this. She could have stayed out of it. It’s your fault she’s involved.” James opened the driver’s side door. “Devon is coming with me. If you follow, it’s your responsibility if she dies.”
My gut told me I was going to die anyway. He would let me bleed out.
“Do. It.” I choked in a hiss, trying to swallow over the hunk of metal cutting deeper into my throat. Soon he would have me in the car, and it would be too late.
My uncle and Lincoln exchanged a look, desperation crimping Gavin’s features.
It happened in an instant. One beat of my heart.
Uncle Gavin darted out to one side, while Lincoln went to the other.
Boom!
A single shot exploded into the calm sky, the bullet cutting through its victim.
A scream tore through the night.
“Fuck!” James bellowed as I fell against him, tumbling onto the pavement with agony, grabbing at my leg. Pain detonated through my calf and up every nerve.
Holy shit…it hurt.
James screamed again before another gunshot rang in the air. Out of my periphery, I saw James drop next to me, groaning and shrieking.
“Devon!” Lincoln’s voice boomed as he scrambled down next to me, pressing his hands to my face and searching my neck for the wound. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hell.” I gulped. “You really shot me.”
“It’s a graze; it didn’t go in.” He ripped off his jacket, peeled off his shirt, wadded it into a ball, and pressed it to my throat, wrapping his coat around my leg. “And you told me to.”
“This time you listened?” I struggled with every word, trying to talk through all the pain.
“I told you, Freckles. You demand. I obey.” He tried to smirk but worry streaked his features.
“Dev? Are you all right?” Uncle Gavin came down on my other side, his gun still pointed on the moaning James behind me.
“Feel awesome,” I wheezed. “See, my neck is smiling.”
Both Gavin and Lincoln groaned.
“Tough crowd,” I mumbled softly. I felt light headed and dizzy, the world going hazy at the edges. I was losing too much blood.
From the distance I heard sirens, like warning bells tinkling in my eardrums. Gavin’s head bolted to pinpoint the alarms heading our way. He turned back, licking his lips.
“Get her out of here.” He met Lincoln’s gaze. “They don’t have to know. My gun only fired on him. I can say he was alone in this.”
“What?” Lincoln’s mouth parted. “You’ll lie?”
“Don’t make me rethink this,” Gavin growled, rubbing at his head. “She has no reason to be involved.”
Between the blood loss and my shock at Uncle Gavin, I felt as though I would pass out. Mr. Black and White, By-the-Rules Cop, was bending them to the breaking point.
Lincoln looked as if he were about to say something else before my uncle yelled, “Go! They’re almost here.”
Lincoln didn’t hesitate, scooping me up in his arms, his warm chest cocooning me. I shut my eyes. He hustled across the lot, digging the keys out of my jacket pocket. The click of doors unlocking set his course to Nat’s car. Flinging the back door open, he lay me in the backseat, forcing a cry out of me. Fire also raged down my leg, and I struggled to take full breaths.
