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PART XV

HEATHER

She'd never liked Evan Margolis much and while he'd been outwardly solicitous to her, she hadn't connected with him. She'd barely had more than a few words with him when they had met, but never, in her wildest dreams had she imagined that he would want her.

No, her mind clicked in and reminded her, what Evan had in mind for her wasn't desire, it was domination.

"Don't, Evan. This isn't right."

She'd summoned up as much bravado as she could, but with Tanner standing off to the side, his expression was one of curiosity more than anything, she didn't think he'd be much help. Trying to put as much distance as she could between them, she backed up.

"Evan- shit!"

She stumbled back and almost went down, but she managed to get her feet under her.

He struggled with his belt, and she looked around for something to use as a weapon to ward him off but came up empty. Make-up, the little she used, wasn't exactly threatening.

Her brush? Laughable.

She heard a soft swoosh of sound and turned to see that he'd yanked his belt free of the loops.

Her gasp lifted his head and the look in his eyes when they met hers was almost crazed.

That kind of hate?

She had no idea where it came from.

Heather had no idea how to talk down a man who was likely past talking.

She tried to fight off the panic that was welling up inside of her.

Her nails wouldn't do much damage. Keeping them short to play the violin wasn't any help.

Evan wasn't big, but he was angry and that gave him strength while she could only call up a measure of strength from fear. For once she wished she'd taken Alex up on his offer of self-defense lessons.

She eyed the belt that he was still holding in his hands and pointed at the door. "Evan, you know I have a bodyguard, right?"

He smiled at her. "You have several, but they're behind that door."

Evan kept his eyes on her but turned his head to point his chin at the door. "And our friend has assured me that the door is going to give us our privacy."

She lifted her chin at Evan and nailed him with a look she hoped could cut through the hormones rushing through his veins. "And when they do get through that door, Evan? What are you going to do? Do you think that they're going to be happy if I'm hurt?"

His expression changed for a moment, the cold light of anger flattening as they darted side to side.

Thinking.

He looked up, his gaze moving past Heather to Tanner.

She turned as well, keeping her back to the wall, but leaving some space behind her.

Room to maneuver.

What she'd do with it, she had no idea, but it seemed like a good idea.

Evan took a step toward Tanner, his voice rising as if it was pinched from his throat.

"She's right!" His gaze dropped to the violin and a breath huffed out of his nose. "They're going to get through that door!" His gaze turned to the open doorway at the back of the room. "Even if we go in there, they're going to just take down that door! They're going to get her back and we're both going to jail."

Evan's forehead furrowed. "How... how did you get in there in the first place?"

Heather hoped that the two of them would keep talking while she inched toward the door.

She wasn't very strong but maybe she could undo the lock.

Just another few inches and-

"Heather?" She froze with her arm stretched out along the wall. "What do you think you're doing?"

She looked back at Tanner and saw that Evan was glaring at her again. The look on Tanner's face was still mild, but the look in his eyes was sharp.

Cutting.

She didn't answer him. He knew what she was doing.

He might be an asshole, but he wasn't stupid.

"There's a way out through there, right?" Evan was still wrapped up in his thoughts and likely panicking at the thought of what was behind the first door. He was moving toward the doorway. "You had to have a way out of here..."

Tanner lifted a brow with a slow and deliberate snarl on his lips. "Finally got your head out of your dick, Evan?"

It seemed like the last word was the one that broke through Evan's chaotic thoughts and Heather sucked in a breath as Evan turned on Tanner.

"You... you, asshole! You kept things from me!"

"Of course I did! You're ridiculous. Narrow minded. And you were led like a donkey after a carrot. All I had to do was promise you a couple pieces of wood and a chance to scream at a woman and you didn't think twice. You grabbed at it like a toddler with a fucking candy cane. You didn't ask what I had in mind after and that should have been your clue."

Evan narrowed his eyes at Tanner. "What clue?"

Tanner mirrored Evan's stare.

And then he smiled. "Stupid little man." Tanner shook his head. "I bet you Heather can figure it out. She might be a complete bitch, but she's not a complete nimrod like you are."

Evan swung around to stare at her.

"What?" He took a step in her direction, his fists balling at his sides. "What's the clue I was supposed to get?"

Heather pressed her hand over her heart as she watched Evan's face. "That you're not leaving this room."

Horror.

She saw it dawn on his face.

Saw the way his breath caught in his lungs.

And the blood drained from his face.

Some part of her wanted to help him, but she was at a loss.

She was trapped, just like Evan was.

She had no idea about how to get away so how could she help him?

She could try.

"Tanner, I- NO!"

In a moment everything seemed to coalesce in her head one moment before everything happened.

Evan dropped down to the ground in a heap almost before she registered the swing of the violin. Or maybe it was that her focus was on the violin itself.

The violin that was no more.

Shattered, it rained down on Evan in pieces.

Heather looked up at Tanner, her eyes wide and her heart pounding in her chest. "Tanner? No!"

"No?"

His voice tipped up at the end, almost in a mocking tone.

"Well, since you say so-"

With his gaze fixed on hers, Tanner slammed the neck of the violin against the side of Evan's neck, piercing his skin and sending spurts of blood pulsing from the unconscious man's neck.

He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her up against him.

She looked him in the eye, feeling that her own life hung in the balance of the next few moments.

If he could kill a man just to get his hands on her, what was she worth?

Next to nothing.

He lifted a hand and ripped the mask off her face.

Smiling, he looked her over. “I’d like to say it’s nice to see you again, but it’s rare that I don’t have lie right in someone face, so I won’t. But it will be great to look at you without that… without that lacy shit on your face.”

He was close enough that she could feel some spittle on her face. She cringed, pulling away slightly.

"Don't worry, Heather. I'm not killing you, yet."

His smile didn't do anything to ease her worries when his words held a promise of death in them.

She felt him grab her ass with his right hand and drag it up and around her hip, before he lifted it off of her and held it up near her face.

She saw drying streaks of blood on his skin.

He'd dragged Evan's blood all over her dress.

She had to swallow the bile that spilled across the back of her tongue. She was barely able to keep the bits of food she'd consumed earlier in her stomach, but she did. She had to keep herself together as long as she could.

Mark was coming.

His team was hard at work trying to get to her.

That was the only thing she was sure of, and she was holding onto that feeling for dear life, because she knew that Mark and his team were her only chance to get out of this alive.

"Let's go."

Before her brain could wrap itself around his words, she was being half-dragged across the floor.

"We'll go somewhere and sit down. I have a lot of things to talk about while we're waiting for company."

She tried to resist for a moment, but Tanner leaned in and hissed his warning in her ear.

"You can come with me of your own free will, or I could kill you here and let him find your bloody and eviscerated body if he makes it through that door. Or you can come with me and satisfy my curiosity, and I'll only kill you when we're reunited with our old friend."

She was about to agree with Tanner and go, but he made his point again. Lifting a foot, he kicked the table over and it shattered against the door.

Tanner looked at her with a big, easy grin on his face. "There. I've made my point. Let's go."

MARK

He heard a crash on the other side of the door and knew it had to be the table in the room. The table where Heather kept the violin. Whatever was happening in that room, the violin was likely lost. Some tiny part of his brain acknowledged that he'd lost the very thing he'd been hired to protect, but that meant nothing to him if he lost Heather, too.

Badger's voice came over the comm.

"News crews are pulling up outside the theater."

Mark nodded. "It's to be expected. You don't kick out society people and not expect someone to call the news before they call police."

Hanson looked up for a second before he went back to his torch, working on cutting through the metal door. "Society types. No doubt aggrieved beyond belief."

Gunny appeared at the end of the hallway. "The blueprints held by the government are the same as the ones we have here at the theater office. Nothing new."

"You mean that the only thing between us and Heather is a fucking door?"

Mark understood Hanson's frustration. He was barely holding onto his sanity.

For years they'd been separated and while he had to no idea what had happened to her, not being able to find a record of her death had kept him hoping. Now she was on the other side of what amounted to a vault door.

If he had his way, he'd get some C4 and blow a hole in the wall.

He wasn't exactly thinking logistically.

He wanted to kill Evan Margolis.

And he wanted to hold Heather and make sure she was alive and well. Not in that order.

But his anger was satisfying him. It was focusing his energy, so he didn't do something stupid.

After this was over, he didn't know what his position would be with Big Sky Bodyguards. He hadn't followed the rules. Or fucking good sense.

Hell, he'd take any job after this as long as he had Heather back.

She was all he needed to be happy.

Crouched beside the doorway, Hanson Upton, Mason’s brother, was still cutting through the massive metal hinges. The torch was nearly white hot, but his progress felt as if he was walking underwater with hundreds of pounds strapped to his back. Plodding along. Tiny step after tiny step.

Almost as if Hanson knew how close Mark was to losing his hold on his sanity, Hanson looked over his shoulder. "This isn't what you want to hear, Ares, but whoever built this damn door is either the constructions version of the second coming of Jesus... or the fucking devil."

Mark swallowed against the tight knot in his throat. "If he was here, I'd put a bullet in his head."

The comm link clicked, a sound that sounded like an old-fashioned phone line when someone picked up a handset in another room to listen in.

"Uptown? What's going on with the comm system?"

"Not Uptown, but I can fill you in."

Mark went still when he heard a woman's voice come through the line and before him, Hanson's hold on the torch slipped.

"What the fuck?"

Mark narrowed his eyes at the wall and touched his hand to the earpiece he was wearing hoping to hear something, anything, in her voice to decipher the reason that they'd had a new addition of another person in their private communications. "What do you have to contribute if anything? I don't have time to entertain you if this is just a joke."

"This isn't a joke. I'd like to help you if you'll let me." Her voice had a soft contralto sound to it.

Mark knew he'd never heard the voice before.

"What kind of help can you give us? Who the hell are you?"

He felt like he was looking a gift horse in the mouth but what else could he do?

" What kind of help can I give you, Ares? "

There was a hint of an edge in her tone.

" I've got a certain set of skills. Skills that you need. And who am I ?" He heard a sigh clearly though the piece in his ear. " I'm a fan of Nix and I'm pissed off ."