“You want Kate.”
Scott laughed, but his hand tightened around the gun. “Kate. She’ll come to me on my terms.” He cocked an eyebrow at Dillon. “And how well do you know Kate? Hmm? I noticed you just came back from Seattle. Didn’t come back with your poor little sister. Screwing around with Kate, perhaps?”
Dillon would not allow Scott to bait him. “You want Kate because she outsmarted you.”
“Kate is alive by accident. I would have had her five years ago if that guy hadn’t run in and distracted me.”
Dillon shook his head. “Kate is smart. She took down your legitimate business. Forced you into hiding. Cost you money. But that’s not the real reason you hate her.”
“Really?” Scott tried to look nonchalant, but his complexion had reddened.
“You hate her because she reminds you of a woman who humiliated and demeaned you.” Dillon was taking a gamble, but he was ninety percent confident he was right about Adam Scott.
He said softly, “You were raped. Tied down and raped by a woman. The weaker sex. But you were weak. You couldn’t fight back. Maybe you didn’t want to. Maybe you liked it, and you hate that you liked it.”
“Shut up!”
Scott lunged for him. Dillon dove right, toward the breakfast nook. He fell over the table, but tripped Scott. The killer stumbled, but stayed upright. Worse, he kept hold of the gun.
Dillon turned and, using all his strength, pushed the table across the nook and into Scott’s body. Scott grunted, wedged between the table and the wall. Dillon jumped on the table and grabbed Scott’s wrist, slamming it on the table to loosen his hold on the gun.
He didn’t see the knife in Scott’s left hand.
Dillon screamed at the searing pain in his thigh and grabbed at the wound. Scott pulled out the knife, pushed Dillon off the table, and hit him across the face with his gun.
Dillon rolled over, panting, trying to assess whether the knife wound was serious. Hot blood coated his fingers. He tried to force his mind away from the pain and think like a doctor. He didn’t think it was deep.
He got up on all fours and Scott kicked him in the kidney. His vision blurred.
“You fucking shrinks know nothing about me. Nothing. You got that?”
Scott grabbed Dillon by his shirt collar and pulled him up, the gun cocked and touching the back of his head.
Dillon had no choice but to go where Scott led him, through his house and into his bedroom. He pushed him onto the bed and clicked a handcuff onto one wrist. The other end was hooked onto the headboard.
Scott smiled, but there was only sick humor in his face. “We have a call to make.”
“Don’t hang up or your brother dies.”
Lucy started shaking uncontrollably. Trevor Conrad was calling her. Why? Hadn’t he hurt her enough?
“Wh-what?”
“Listen. You have thirty minutes. Leave your house alone. Walk directly to your brother’s house.”
“Which brother?” Dillon, Patrick, and Connor all lived within walking distance.
“The shrink!”
Trevor had Dillon? That wasn’t possible. Why did he want her to come? To rape her? To kill her? She couldn’t do it.
What if Dillon was already dead?
“What do you want?” she asked, stalling.
“That’s none of your business, Lucy. But if you’re not here in thirty minutes, your brother will be dead. And if you tell anyone, he’ll die in extreme pain.”
“Let me talk to him. Please!”
He hung up.
She stared at her phone. What was she going to do?
There was a knock on her door and she stifled a scream. “Come in,” she called.
Jack walked in. “Everything all right?”
“Yes,” she lied. Could he tell something was wrong? She almost laughed at the absurdity of that thought. Wrong? Everything was wrong and had been for days. No one would know why. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Okay.” He paused, looked around the room, and left.
Her phone beeped and she opened it.
New pix message.
She retrieved it.
“Oh, dear God, why are you doing this to me?”
Dillon was handcuffed to his bed, blood on his lip and streaked over his shirt. The message read: Come alone, he lives. Tell anyone, he dies. Could you live with yourself knowing you killed the man who risked his life to save you?
THIRTY-FOUR
QUINN STARED AT KATE across the table of the task force office that had been set up four days ago when the FBI had first learned that Trask had kidnapped Lucy Kincaid.
“Earth to Kate.”
“Sorry. Daydreaming.”
“About?”
“Dillon.”
“Why didn’t you go to his house with him?”
She sighed. “I made a mistake. You have enough people here to go over these records. You don’t need me, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
She gave him a mock frown. “I should be hurt by that.”
“Go see Dillon. It’ll make you feel better. I’ll call you if we learn anything about Scott.”
“Thanks.” She paused.
“What?”
“Can I borrow a car?”
Dillon tore a wide strip off his shirt and, using his free hand and teeth, tied a tourniquet around the knife wound in his thigh. He assessed the damage. Not deep, but it still hurt like hell.
Scott had left as soon as he sent Lucy a picture of Dillon. Dillon wished he could have communicated something to Lucy to keep her safe, but he feared she would walk right over out of guilt. All he could hope for was Jack keeping her under lock and key. He wouldn’t let her just leave the house alone.
Scott came back into the bedroom.
“Leave Lucy out of this,” Dillon told Adam Scott.
“She only has ten more minutes. She didn’t send anyone over. No patrols out front. No one lurking in the bushes. Smart kid. But nowhere near as smart as me.”
“What do you really want?” Dillon asked. It wasn’t money. While money was vitally important to Scott, he wouldn’t risk being caught for it. He had lost a lot to the FBI, but he still had millions squirreled away. Enough to buy a new identity and disappear.
This wasn’t about money. It wasn’t just about the humiliation he’d suffered by having his sick webcam shut down, or even about his father disowning him. In fact, Dillon didn’t think it was about Lucy.
It was about Monique-bringing her back from the dead-and it was about Kate. Lucy was a tool. A trap.
“You really do want Kate.”
Scott stared at him, his hard face unmoving. Shrugged.
“You don’t need Lucy.”
“I need to give Kate proper incentive. And I like Lucy. She’ll be properly submissive once I train her.”
“We’ll never stop looking for her. You know that.”
“Makes it more of a challenge. Of course, I could just kill you all, then no one would be looking for her. In fact, she wouldn’t even try to escape.” Scott seemed to seriously ponder this option.
“Lucy won’t come.”
But Dillon knew she would. The guilt over Patrick’s condition would compel her to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to him. Dillon wished he could have talked to her, but Scott had left the room while making the call, after taking his picture as proof of his words.
“Yes, she will. I’ve been watching your family for the last twenty-four hours. I know she spent hours at the hospital with your younger brother. With your commando brother around her all the time, I couldn’t get her out of the house on my own. I used to have plenty of men who would have stormed the house and taken her for me, but Kate killed them all.” He smiled oddly at Dillon. “You killed one of them, too, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You shot an unarmed man. How does that make you feel, Doctor?”
“I have no feelings on the matter. He was raping my sister.” He did have feelings, strong feelings. He would have done anything, killed anyone, to spare Lucy.