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“Not a fucking chance,” I said, ignoring Max’s look, which was full of pity.
“You sure you don’t want to hold back? Maybe just let this chick hang? The info’s good, I’m sure of—”
“It’s not good,” I snapped, telling him to keep tabs on the other Russian organization’s people who were on the move toward this direction.
“What the fuck?” Max asked quietly when I ended the call. “You think it’s true?”
I was furious, and not at Jenna. This was a ruse to put a wedge between us, trip me up, something. There was no way she would betray me.
But what if she did? The idea that she might be a part of this tore me up to the point I was gripping the steering wheel hard enough to hear a cracking sound. Not sure if it was my bones or the wheel, I forced myself to loosen my hold. Take a breath and think. Could I be walking into a trap set up by the woman I loved?
Even through the heartbreak that thought caused, I still loved her.
And it wasn’t like I’d been completely honest from the start. I’d not only tricked her into believing I was someone I wasn’t, but I’d had her over a barrel so that she had no choice but to marry me. I’d seen her anger on our honeymoon night whenshe found out the truth. Could that have been simmering all this time and culminated in this?
I shook my head, my foot pressing harder on the gas. “There’s no way,” I said to Max as well as myself. “No way in hell she’d do something like this. She’s a good person. The best person I know.”
Max snickered without a trace of humor. “Could that be why she did it? We’re not exactly on her side of the law.”
“Not a damn chance in hell,” I repeated, refusing to glance his way and see more of that pity. He knew me. There was no hiding the pain I felt that it might be true. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Face the music and let it play out however it would. Either way, I had to make sure she was all right. She was mine. No one messed with what was mine. I’d see her again, safe and sound, and then find out if it was true.
Which it wasn’t. But if it was?
I had no idea what would happen then, because I’d never faced true heartbreak before. Going up against something that might end my life didn’t even make me pause. That was part of the game. But something that might shatter my very existence? Finding out that Jenna was working against me would do just that, and it would be something I’d never come back from. A bullet would be easier.
“There’s no fucking way,” I said, positive of it this time. Or so I kept telling myself.
The road turned to little more than a barely wide path for the car to creep along. Unfortunately, by the time I got sight of the small cabin in the midst of the woods, Hardy’s wife was outside, keeping a lookout.
Max jumped out before the car stopped, trying to grab and silence her, but she’d already started shrieking for Hardy as she raced inside. She slammed it behind her, and just as I heard her fumbling with the lock, I kicked it in, sending her flying backward.
I barreled in with Max on my heels, both of us raising our guns. We dropped them to our sides at the same time, freezing when we saw her regain her balance just in time to grab Jenna from where she sat.
She hauled Jenna in front of her like a shield, one arm wrapped around her throat. Rage prickled in me when I saw at a quick glance that they’d dared to tie her hands together. Her wrists were red and raw with smudges of dried blood where the plastic ties dug into her skin.
More importantly than that was, Hardy’s wife now had a gun pressed to the side of Jenna’s temple. Our eyes locked for a split second, and time seemed to stand still. This was the woman I adored and that I’d do anything for. Was this part of the ruse?
“Be careful,” she cried out, her eyes darting to the side.
Hardy had quietly appeared from a back room and was lifting a gun of his own to aim at me. His trigger finger twitched, missing the mark and giving me the split second I needed to put a well-aimed bullet through his wife’s hand. The gun she had pressed to Jenna’s head clattered out of her grasp as she shriveled to the ground in agony, dragging Jenna with her.
Max lunged for the councilman and wrestled the gun from him with ease, then pinned him to the floor and knocked him over the head with it.
“Nice shot,” he said as I rushed to get Jenna free from Mrs. Hardy’s choke hold.
I had to give the old bat credit for her tenacity. Not too much credit, though, as I popped her in the jaw to get her to stop squawking about the tiny gunshot she took through the hand.
“Extra time at the range,” I told Max, grateful I’d been concentrating on my aim lately.
Hauling Jenna to her feet, I took out the knife I had in my pocket and sawed through the zip ties at her wrists. At the same time, my phone rang, and I tossed it to Max in irritation. Jenna’s hands were swollen, and she groaned as I gently rubbed some feeling back into them, dabbing at the harsh scratches on her wrists.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Any other injuries?”
The other questions could wait. Right now, I just wanted to hold onto her, breathe her in, and make myself believe she was all right. And not part of this.
“Other people are coming,” Jenna said breathlessly.
