They kissed for what felt like hours, neither pushing the intimacy to the next level, as if they just wanted to stay lost in the moment, until exhaustion finally claimed them. They slept in a tangled knot, his palm resting against the center of her chest, as if he could hold the rhythm of her heart in his hand. He slipped his other hand under her hair and curled it around her nape, as if he could hold her forever.
But their time was already running out.
TEN
RYDER WASN’T SURE WHAT IT WAS THAT HAD WOKEN HIM. He’d heard something, but it hadn’t been loud. Maybe a creak in the hallway or the rasp of a door being opened. But it’d been enough to catch his attention.
He woke Lily up as he pulled out of her arms, throwing his legs over the side of the bed, careful not to make a sound.
“Scott?” she whispered groggily, lifting up on her elbow.
“Shh.”
“What’s going on?”
Though he didn’t have any proof, he listened to what his gut was telling him. If he was wrong, then he’d let her and Mike have a good laugh at his expense about it later. But he wasn’t going to second-guess his instincts. Not when Lily’s life was on the line. “It’s Rado,” he told her. “He’s here.”
He heard her stifled gasp, but she was too smart to cry out. They both got to their feet and silently dressed. He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket, only to find that the battery had died on him. Shit. And there wasn’t a landline in the room. Grabbing his gun from the bedside table, he checked the clip, then curled the fingers of his free hand around Lily’s wrist and motioned for her to stay behind him as he made his way over to the door. There was a soft scrape of sound as he started to pull the door open, his hand now gripping her arm as he positioned her against the wall. If someone was in the hallway, he didn’t want them getting a clear shot at Lily when he opened the door.
Forcing himself to stay loose and calm, Ryder took a quick look around the edge of the doorway. The hallway was clear in both directions, the low glow of a light in the living room relieving the shadows. He listened for any sounds, but the house was silent, and he wondered where Mike was. If Rado and his men had found the safe house, the odds were high that they’d followed them from the club, which meant they already knew about Mike. It also meant they’d probably been watching him and Lily in the parking lot, and his gut cramped, his lips pulling back from his teeth as he choked back a snarl. He should have never put her in that position, damn it. He’d let his jealousy overrule his common sense, and had failed to protect her. Jesus. He was such a fucking jackass!
And this is not the time for this shit. Not if I want to keep her alive.
Taking a deep breath, Ryder shoved the fury back and focused instead on the problem at hand. He was about to let go of Lily’s arm and step into the hallway, when he heard a deep voice say, “Drop the gun and kick it over to me or I shoot her.”
Fuck! The gritty, accented words had come from across the hall, where Yuri Radovich was now standing in the open doorway to Ryder’s room, gun in hand. The sound he’d heard had probably been when his door was opened, and he thanked God the asshole had chosen to search that room first.
“You can’t shoot her if you don’t have a shot,” Ryder replied, tightening his grip on Lily’s arm. But the monster wasn’t fooled. With a low laugh, Rado eyed the position of Ryder’s body and the visible portion of his arm, then shifted his aim. If he fired the powerful 9mm now, the bullet would go right through the wall and into Lily.
Son of a fucking bitch.
As if she could read his mind, Lily said, “Don’t.” Her low voice vibrated with anger. “Don’t you dare do it, Scott. You know he’s going to kill me anyway. Don’t you dare give him your weapon and leave yourself unprotected!”
“Smart girl, your Lily. But do you really want to stand there and watch her bleed out, knowing you could have prolonged the moment?” Radovich murmured. “Maybe have even given the men who will no doubt be rushing to your rescue a chance to get here in time? We disabled several of the alarm systems you had in place. But who knows if we got them all, eh?”
The bastard was right. He had to buy them more time. Dropping his gun to the floor, Ryder kicked it across the hall, Lily’s shocked gasp echoing in his ears as he watched Radovich squat down to retrieve the weapon.
With a gun in each hand now, Radovich moved forward, nearing the doorway to Lily’s room, and Ryder yanked her behind him, using his body as a shield as he backed away from the door. With Radovich standing in the semi-lit hallway, he had a clearer view of the terrorist, and the man was just as ugly as he remembered. Tall and bulky with an oily head of thinning hair and jowls like a bulldog, he had a crooked nose that sported red veins from too much vodka over too many years. He smelled like sweat and smoke and something sour, the combination enough to turn your stomach if you took too many deep breaths.
“I know what you were trying to do at the club tonight, Mr. Ryder,” Rado drawled with a gloating smile, his Slavic accent adding a guttural edge to his words. “You wanted to draw me out. And it worked.” His smiled widened. “Just not quite the way you wanted, eh?”
“You came alone?”
“Of course not. My men are dealing with the sheriff’s brother as we speak. So I’m afraid he won’t be much help to you this evening.”
Ryder shoved any worry about Mike to the back of his mind, knowing he couldn’t let it get to him. Not now, when he had to find a way to get Lily through this alive. Stalling, hoping like hell that Mike had gotten the chance to call Ben, he asked, “How did you know where to find her?”
Rado’s heavy-lidded eyes glittered with triumph. “Given what I know about you, I thought it a safe bet that she would run here for help. Who better to protect her than the man who would die for her?”
“What do you know about me?” he demanded, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as dread slithered through him like a knife. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Radovich glanced at the right side of his face, then smirked. “The night I gave you that pretty scar, Mr. Ryder. The night you and your men destroyed nearly everything I’d built before you were captured. You made your feelings regarding the girl painfully obvious.”
He shook his head, trying to remember, to understand what the jackass was talking about. He remembered Rado’s threats . . . but not what he’d said in response. Only what he’d been willing to do in order to stop him.
Obviously relishing the sound of his own voice, Rado said, “I was enjoying myself that night, telling you about your friends who had already died, then promising you that I would take out Heller and everyone that you had ever cared about in this world. That’s when you came at me like a rabid dog, screaming the name Lily as you tried to kill me. You had so many injuries you could barely stand, but you kept coming, somehow staying on your feet, swearing that you would gut me before ever letting me touch her. When you were close enough I slashed your face. I just wish I had taken the time to kill you then, instead of leaving you half-dead on the floor to deal with later. I’d wanted more time to properly see to your torture.”
Ryder tried to remember, but his memories were hazy. He just recalled being driven beyond sanity by Rado’s threats, knowing he needed to kill the bastard before the terrorist harmed Lily. He’d been fueled by raw emotion, rather than tactical skill, and it had nearly cost him his life. In his blind rage, he’d allowed the bastard to cut him. But like Radovich had just said, he’d been left alone when something had drawn the terrorist and his men to another part of the building. When Ryder had finally pulled himself back to his feet, he’d almost done the unthinkable and blown up the entire city block using the explosives that were stored in the room just to ensure that the bastard was killed. But then Rado had returned. And he’d been alone. Knowing he had only moments before the rest of Rado’s men arrived, Ryder had shoved the knife that’d been hidden in the sole of his left boot right through Radovich’s heart. The terrorist had collapsed, blood pooling beneath him as more bubbled on his lips, and Ryder had escaped out the second-story window, managing to make it to the safety of his team’s mobile command center by sheer force of will.