What if she never again had a chance to tell him she loved him?
“Come on, Donovan, surely your men mean something to you.” Ray laughed. “I heard you were all about your friends and family.”
Jacob lay perfectly still, as though Ray wasn’t discussing the murder of the men who worked for him.
“You know,” Ray continued. “You’re fast. I should have been able to put a bullet in you before you got behind that bed. But you know you’re pinned down, your men out of commission. Come on out, and we can discuss this. I’ll even let Kyra go now that I have you.”
Kyra. She’d almost forgotten her mother’s insistence on calling her Kyra. Sallie had chosen her name because she knew her father often called her Sallie before his death, so long ago. She’d been four when he died, but her mother had told her how he would sing to her, how much he loved her. For all her cold, unfeeling ways, Megan had her moments of softness.
Her mother had hired Ray though, Sallie knew. She’d often wondered how the weaselly bastard had managed to fool Megan Dougal as well as Rance.
“You’re dead, Jacob. You know that. I’m not alone. You won’t get out of here alive.” Ray’s voice was harder, colder.
Did he sound closer somehow?
She risked a glance at Jacob, uncertain what he was so focused on as he stared at the end of the bed.
Sallie felt silent tears fall from her eyes despite her determination not to shed them. She kept her head down on the floor, turned away from Jacob so he wouldn’t see them.
“Tell him, Kyra.” Ray’s voice was a blade, sharp and cutting. “You know me well enough to hate me. You think he’s going to survive this.”
She didn’t have a choice but to trust in Jacob, because she damned sure didn’t trust Ray.
“I think I changed my mind about letting her go,” Ray announced then. “I think after I shoot you a time or two, let you bleed some, I’ll let you watch when I tie her to the bed and give her to my friends. They get inventive when it comes to their women. Especially when I give them permission to hurt the little bitches.”
Sallie felt her stomach clench sickeningly but managed to keep her lips pressed together, her cries from escaping.
She was terrified Jacob would be hurt, killed. Dying herself didn’t seem nearly so bad as the thought of losing Jacob.
She should have kept running. She should have never stayed here where she’d bring the danger to him. He was right, they wanted him and she’d been used to draw him out. Except she hadn’t drawn him out, somehow, by coincidence or Rance, she’d ended up beneath his nose, endangering him.
What was he doing?
Looking up, Sallie watched as the muscles in his back shifted, flexed, though she couldn’t see his hands or anything else. The motion beneath his shirt indicated he was doing something, though.
“Come on, Jacob.” Ray was growing angry now. “If I have to risk my men to rush that bed, then she’ll be the one that pays for it. I’ll make her beg to die and I’ll make you watch. You remember those women in Switzerland? What my people did to them? You really want to watch her hurt like that?”
Sallie could feel Jacob’s tension now. The muscles had stopped moving in his back, he lay as still as death, waiting on what, she wasn’t certain.
“That was my sister you killed in that warehouse, you fucker!” Ray suddenly snarled, fury erupting in his voice. “My only blood. You’ll pay for it.”
Still, Jacob didn’t speak, he didn’t move and Sallie made certain to follow his lead. She capped one hand over her mouth and fought against the tears, the sobs. She couldn’t distract him, wouldn’t distract him. Not when she could feel his focus like a heavy weight against her, urging her to caution.
“I thought for sure when I killed the bitch’s mother, she’d run to you,” Ray suddenly said, his voice gleeful as shock resounded through her. “Your momma cried for you, Kyra. Did you know that?”
Cried for her?
Megan would prefer torture to crying for anyone, Sallie thought. Her mother wouldn’t have thought to cry for anyone, she would have cursed Ray, insulted, and reviled him until he killed her to shut her up.
Still, Jacob didn’t move.
If she couldn’t see he was breathing, she’d have thought him dead.
What was he doing?
Silence filled the house then, overwhelming and heavy, pushing at her, choking her with the insidious evil that seemed to move through it, searching, hungry for a victim.
A murmur of sound reached her then. Whispers, almost like the deadly hiss of a serpent from beyond her bedroom door.
Was he arguing with someone?
She looked at Jacob again. No movement. No sound.
He was waiting on something, she could feel it, certain that whatever it was, or whatever he had planned, would work.
The hissing sounds became more imperative, a sense of anger filling them before they stopped for long moments.
God, what were they doing? She would have never been able to wait like this on her own, to stay still and in place without Jacob there.
The room was darker on this side, the heavy curtains closed over the window, whereas they were partially open on the other side, allowing a bit of sunlight in. It kept the side they were hiding on in deep shadow, lending a sense of security she knew wasn’t really there.
The whispers began again, once again, softly at first, then with that sound of anger, like a cat denied a mouse that stayed just out of reach.
* * *
Jacob listened closely. He could hear two distinct whispers, one male, Ray Masser, the other female. He stayed perfectly still, his heartbeat steady, controlling the impulse to rush, to get Sallie out of there and safe.
For the moment, they were as safe as they could be. Masser and whoever his accomplice was evidently weren’t certain of their location. The bathroom was on this side of the room, the door partially open, and he knew Sallie kept the shade closed on the small window there. Masser didn’t want to take the chance that Jacob was behind the bed because to do so would leave him vulnerable if Jacob were in the bathroom instead.
The platform bed with its under drawers provided relative safety while keeping bullets from being fired from the doorway beneath the bed. It was darker here, shadowed. As long as they stayed still and silent, and waited, then Masser would mess up.
The furious whispers coming from beyond the doorway almost made him smile. The woman was more impatient, and she was making Masser impatient as well. The woman didn’t have the sense of self-preservation Sallie seemed to have. Despite the tears he knew she was shedding, there weren’t sobs, not a single cry. She was perfectly still and silent, following his lead. Just a little longer, he predicted. If they could ensure Masser didn’t pinpoint their exact location, then he’d mess up. He’d let the woman convince him they were in the bathroom, or push him to make a move. And if he was lucky, real damned lucky, Justice would realize Jacob hadn’t checked in when he arrived at the house as he was supposed to.
He’d nearly sent the text, had even reach for the phone, when he’d stopped. Staring at the door from the truck, he’d given into the impulse to wait. If the text didn’t go through, Justice would call and when the call didn’t connect, the other man would be on his way with reinforcements.