Page 73 of Point Blank

A warm tear slid out of the corner of her eye, and she dashed it away before returning her phone to her bag.

“Everything will be okay, I promise.” He dragged a piece of her hair behind her ear, and she lowered her gaze from that intense stare that both made her heart race and cloaked her in comfort.

“That’s an impossible promise given the circumstances, but thanks for saying it.” She shrugged as if he were offering her a piece of pizza and not speaking about the life of her sister—which would surely come to an end any minute.

“Nothing is impossible. We’re not dealing with rocket scientists here. These are dumb, greedy bastards who fucked with the wrong people.”

She snapped her teeth together and turned in her seat. “What’s your plan?”

He smirked. “Easy. We hand over the diamonds.”

She wrinkled her forehead. “I think they might put two and two together when we don’t produce them.”

His thumb inched across her face and flicked her bottom lip. His gaze stayed trained on her mouth. Heat flared in her cheeks, sending a lick of desire through her core. She pulled her head back, breaking their contact. Now wasn’t the time. His eyes finally met hers, and all the want that had blazed there vanished.

“Trust me.”

Trust him. Well, she didn’t have much choice.

Chapter

Sixteen

“I don’t like this.” Serena splayed her hands across the back of her neck and stretched the muscles that were turning as stiff as the stone wall she’d climbed an hour ago. She needed out of the vehicle to move her legs, but stopping would only make her more anxious. She stared at her phone on her lap. They’d lied and said they had the diamonds. Now they had to deceive the kidnapper long enough to keep Dani alive.

“I don’t like it either,” Peyton said. “But if we’d told them we didn’t have the diamonds, they would have killed her.” The words of reason didn’t help diminish the ball of anxiety winding in Serena’s chest.

“Milo and I paid them all the cash we have on hand, and yours is locked in the bank until tomorrow morning—we wouldn’t have been able to buy more time even if they’d agreed,” Brock reminded her.

“I know, I know,” she moaned. She moved her tongue around the dry cavern of her mouth. How long had it been since she had a drink of water? If her mouth was any indication, several hours. “Milo, I’d really like to hear your plan.”

His thumb rubbed her elbow in a circular motion. “You, Brock, and Peyton will get out before we reach the meeting place and stake out a good vantage point, where you guys can shoot. Once they reveal Dani to me, I’ll give them the bag of rocks, aka fake diamonds. Then we ambush them.”

The hair on Serena’s arms sprang to attention, and she closed her eyes on a swallow. Milo’s gruff cough snapped her eyes open. The air in the tight space became too thick to breathe. She looked at the others in the vehicle.

Brock’s forehead was set in determination. Peyton wrung her hands together at her abdomen, and worry pierced her brows together. Dark circles hung under Milo’s eyes, and the hair on his jaw tangled around his face in the longest mess she’d ever seen on him.

“How do we know they’re not going to have men staked out in the same spot?”

Brock shrugged. “If anyone is there, we’ll take them out.”

Serena exhaled, and her gaze slid to the clock on the dash. She rocked her knee from side to side, turning over the thousands of possible scenarios in her mind, most of them ending with a bullet in Dani’s head—or all of theirs.

“All right, I guess we don’t have many options.” She looked at Milo over her shoulder. “I’m coming with you to meet them.” It wasn’t a question, or even a condition. Milo must have picked up on the challenge in her voice. His jaw moved, as if fighting to hold back his refusal.

“Fine.”

Milo sorted through his bag. Between Brock and him, they had enough guns and ammo for all of them. Each bend and twist in the road led them closer and closer to their fate.

He wouldn’t let Serena die. Taking her to meet the kidnapper would put her life at risk. But keeping her away would be tougher and more dangerous. She wouldn’t stay back, he knew that without a doubt. If he didn’t allow her to accompany him, she’d crash the party anyway. Better to have some kind of control over the situation.

Not that he could control her. He’d always tried to protect her, tried to keep her out of the dangerous side of their heists, but she wanted the thrill, the action. Which is one of the reasons he’d kept his distance over the years. Maybe if he’d been able to talk some sense into her and get her to understand that their career had no longevity, she would have listened. But he’d been young, cocky—and Sebastian landing his useless, asshole father in prison had been the final straw.

Milo checked the safety on the Beretta. Man, life was funny. If someone had told him a week ago that he’d be back in the thick of this shit—with Serena no less, ready to kill everyone who dared to get near her or in the way of saving her sister—he would have laughed his ass off.

He looked up and watched as bursts of light from the streetlamps illuminated Serena’s profile. The slight upturn of her nose accentuated the graceful line of her cheekbone, which led his gaze down to her delicate, but always defiant, jaw. Her small earlobes had once held a pair of diamond earrings he’d lifted for her. She’d probably sold them after he left.

Still so fucking pretty she drove him wild. She turned and fixed her ice-blue stare on him. “Ready? We’ll be there in ten minutes.”