“Why?” she gasped out.
“Once my buddies in the Bureau told me that you’d broken into Kantor’s office, I knew it was only a matter of time before you figured everything out. You always did well with puzzles.”
“What are you saying?” But Tara had the sinking feeling that she knew.
Her stepfather was everything Logan had claimed. Inside, the fury and betrayal swirled, beating deep. She thrashed and elbowed Adam in the stomach. He grunted but held firm.
“Nice try, but I’m much better at this game than you, princess. I played it for twenty years for the Bureau. I got a lovely watch and a very modest pension as a ‘fuck you very much’ from Uncle Sam. That wasn’t going to do. I had the contacts to go into a very lucrative business for myself, so I did.”
“Selling women and little girls against their will as sex slaves?”
“Stop with the righteous indignation,” he tsked. “You’re young and you have twenty-plus productive, money-making years ahead of you. You couldn’t possibly understand until you get older and your nest egg isn’t enough to really live on. I wasn’t about to suffer the rest of my days in the thoroughly middle class income bracket after risking my life over and over. These girls don’t matter. Most come from poor families who can barely feed them. And the women . . . I’m just giving them a permanent outlet for their kink.”
She gasped, shock like a sledgehammer in her chest, pounding all the air out of her lungs.
Damn it, why hadn’t she believed Logan sooner?
Now, it might be too late. Because Tara knew for certain that Adam had no problem stepping over her dead body to get what he wanted.
Snaring Logan’s gaze with hers, she let the thousand regrets pouring through her show on her face. She might not see him again or live long enough to say it, but she wanted Logan to know how sorry she was. She wished she could tell him one last time how much she loved him and to go on with life if something happened to her. No more hiding in clubs, denying himself the pleasure of laughter, passion, and love.
But she’d run out of time to say anything.
“Another two days—at most—and you both would have known the truth,” Adam said. “Kantor has been sloppy, and left too much of a paper trail to me. But I’m not going down. I just need a little more money and the means to skip this country and live rich. I got both when I found a buyer for you, princess: a Russian businessman with my Swiss bank account numbers, a taste for sadism and redheads, and a private plane waiting to take me anywhere I want to go.”
Terror staked its way through her heart. Adam meant every word of that.
“Over my dead body,” Logan vowed.
“Oh, that’s the best part. You’re going to put your gun down and stand still like a good target, or I’m going to instruct my Russian friend to make the rest of Tara’s life as painful as possible.”
Adam had deceived her, and lately she’d dismissed his odd hours and phone calls as necessary for someone self-employed in the security business. But it was the activity necessary to make money from human trafficking. If he’d betrayed her about everything else, he’d do exactly as he threatened.
She had to keep him talking. The more time she could buy, the more likely she or Logan would think of some way out of this mess, or her FBI backup would find them.
“Why did you kill Logan’s mother?” she blurted.
At the question, Logan jerked as if he’d been jolted with a live wire.
“You finally figured that out?” Adam addressed Logan.
“The necklace,” he choked out.
Adam nodded. “That chain was in my way when I was trying to slash her throat, so I yanked it off. I thought it was a fun little joke that Tara wore it. I knew I absolutely had to separate you then, but even before I killed your mother, I was never going to let you have Tara. I’d already begun plotting ways to separate the two of you, you little prick. Your mother was just another nuisance to be dealt with.”
“Was she your girlfriend?”
“No,” Adam scoffed. “I wouldn’t have minded that. She was one fine-looking piece of ass.”
“I’m going to rip you apart, motherfucker,” Logan vowed.
“No, you’re not. You’re going to shut up and die like Amanda did. She tried to do good when she found out about my business venture. I was just getting off the ground, and discovered the sweetest little fifteen-year-old runaway—one of Amanda’s students. For a few hundred thousand dollars, I found her a new master in Saudi. Your mother somehow caught on, and was about to blow the whistle. I couldn’t let that happen.”
So Adam had ended her life.
The truth crushed her, and she felt so terrible for Logan and all he’d endured.
Suddenly, Kantor limped down the hall behind Logan, who stiffened when he heard the threat at his back.
“You’ve finally arrived,” Adam drawled.
“Your bitch of a stepdaughter took me by surprise and beat my face into a table.” He rubbed at the goose egg on his forehead.
Adam laughed, then tightened his hand on her neck. “I’ll let you repay her back in pain on the airplane.”
“Damn straight, the little cunt. We just have to get rid of Romeo first.”
The last puzzle piece snapped into place. That voice, the reason she’d recognized it when she and Logan had first reached the resort—he’d called Adam hundreds of times over the years.
She gasped. “Kantor is an assumed name. You used to be FBI!”
Kantor smiled, still massaging his forehead. “Agent Stoltz, at your service. Took you long enough. Too bad for you that it’s too late. Did you know that, before I left the Bureau, I was known as the Interrogator. For the last few years, they sent me to Guantanamo to extract information from the detainees. You and I are going to have a lot of fun.” The he pressed his gun to the back of Logan’s head. “Weapon down, and I’ll make this quick and painless.”
Slowly, he lowered the gun to his side. Tara pressed her lips together as terror spiked through her blood and her heart raced. This couldn’t be happening. But she and Logan were outnumbered and outgunned. And she had only herself to blame. If she’d listened to Logan sooner, if she’d trusted what he was trying to tell her . . . if she’d tried harder to retract the shield around her heart, this would have all turned out differently.
Now, Logan was going to die for her mistake.
Tara refused to let that happen without a fight.
“Now put it on the ground,” Kantor instructed.
Locking gazes with Logan, she tried to communicate silently to be ready for anything. He tensed and lifted his chin like he understood.
Suddenly, she went completely limp in Adam’s grasp. Unprepared to hold her dead weight, he stumbled forward and lost his grip on her. As she went down, Tara shoved her elbow in his balls. Predictably, he grunted and doubled over. Then she reached in her pocket, grabbing the gun she’d stashed there, and pointed it straight at Adam with one hand. With the other, she surprised him by misting the pepper spray in his eyes. As he coughed and struggled, she kicked his weapon out of his hand.
Behind her she heard the blast of a gun, and whirled with a shriek to find plaster flying from the wall beside Logan’s head. Kantor had grabbed the barrel of Logan’s gun and shoved up, forcing Logan’s finger away from the trigger. With his other hand, Kantor was lining up his kill shot.
Tara didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate; she pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Kantor right between the eyes.
Logan turned back to her, and his eyes grew impossibly wide, fixed behind her. She whirled to see Adam with a wicked blade raised, coming straight for her.
She threw herself against the side wall, then gained her stance to fire. But there was no need. A heartbeat later, Logan squeezed off three rounds. The first two hit him right in the heart, the third dead between the eyes, each shot’s retort deafening in the low-ceilinged hallway.
Adam slithered down, dead before he hit the ground.
Then she stood alone with Logan, their enemies vanquished. The enormity of the night hit her immediately. The adrenaline racing through her blood began to drain, making her cold and shaky. He stood, staring at her, not moving, not speaking. A look of such anguish crossed his face that Tara’s heart wept for him.
She ran to him and threw herself in his arms, praying that he could still love her, even though she’d waited so long to trust and believe him. If Logan let her, she’d spend the rest of her days making it up to him.
He hesitated, breathing so hard, his entire body so tense. Tara stiffened. Did he resent her? Had she killed his affection?
“Logan?” she touched his arm, her eyes searching his wild blue stare.
Finally, he wrapped two steely arms around her, dragged her body against his, and buried his face in her neck, their hearts beating as one. “Thank God you’re okay.”
A long moment later, he pulled back enough to stare straight into her eyes, and she was shocked to find her tears mirrored in his.
As she opened her mouth to ask him why, Bocelli came running down the hall, gun drawn with a team of agents at his back. And Darcy, wrapped in a blanket, brought up the rear, hair matted, cheeks smudged, ankles and wrists bruised and screaming red.
“Oh my God! Are you all right?” Tara asked her friend.
Darcy nodded mutely, shivering.
There was no way Tara could not hug her. Darcy sobbed on her shoulder, and Tara let her cling. No doubt, her friend had been through a terrible ordeal, but she vowed to be with her during every step of her recovery, both mentally and physically.
Bocelli broke them apart, then gently cupped Darcy’s shoulder. “Now that you’ve seen Tara is okay, cooperate with medical, Miles. That’s an order.”
She nodded and allowed an agent to take her away.
Her boss turned back to her. “Good work, Jacobs. We’ve already arrested Jordan, the little slime.” Then he spotted Adam’s body, and a scowl passed over his face. “Are you all right?”
Tara gave him a shaky nod. “I’ll be fine, sir.”
He took her by the elbow. “Let’s go, so you can tell me what happened.”
Bocelli nudged her forward, and she looked back to find Logan watching, staring. With all the evidence and the carnage, she knew it would be long hours, maybe even days, before she saw him again. She wished she knew what the hell he was thinking. Logan was glad she was still in one piece, but as long as it had taken her to really listen and trust him . . . could he still love her?
Chapter Twenty
LOGAN paced outside the quaint white gazebo at one of the parks in Tyler, Texas, as the small crowd chatted, awaiting his brother and sister-in-law’s vow renewal. Hunter and Kata had been married one year today. The sun was shining and the birds were singing. He was damn happy for them both.
But misery tore at his insides. The ceremony started in ten minutes, and Tara hadn’t yet appeared.
Kata’s saucy blond friend, Hallie, winked at him. Whether flirting or trying to cheer him up, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. And yeah, he could probably be more gracious, but it was fucking hard when his heart was breaking. The rest of his life stretched out as bleakly as the twelve years before, with only one brief week of paradise between.
And now, paradise was gone.
He replayed those events on Fantasy Key in his head, over and over. Tara had eventually trusted him, come to see that he was right about her stepfather. Hell, they’d saved one another’s lives that day. She’d trusted him with her safety, her body. Even her heart . . .
Or so he’d thought.
Was she angry that he’d killed her stepfather? Sterling had been a crappy excuse for a human being and deserved to be six feet under. The world was better off without him. With a few bullets, Logan had erased him. But Adam had been a father figure to her for many years—the only one she’d had. The fact that he was a class-A scumbag didn’t mean Tara had been ready to see him dead. Or have her fiancé put him there.
Or did that last battle at Fantasy Key put him into the ex category again?
Logan clutched the box in his pocket, looking again and again toward the parking lot, willing her to show up.
“You’re going to wear out the grass if you keep pacing over the same spot.”
Logan turned. Hunter looked happy, far more relaxed than he’d ever been before marriage. He was happy for his brother—but he wanted that for himself.
“Is it time?”
“Almost. Don’t worry; she’ll show.”
Logan had to face facts. “She won’t. I’ve been calling and texting for two days. Not a single reply other than ‘We’ll talk soon.’”
“Tara will make good on that.”
“Maybe too much has happened.” Logan paced again.
“Maybe the only thing that’s too much is your worrying.”
Just then, Kata wandered over, looking absolutely gorgeous in a white sundress that was cleavage central. Her sable hair was piled in an upswept do with baby’s breath. A simple veil hung halfway down her back. She glowed with happiness, all but floating into her husband’s arms, who cuddled her close and pressed a tender kiss on her lips.