Her 24-Hour Protector(70)

Too long.

Especially if Perez was still hanging onto life, needing medical attention. Lex had to move. But if he did act now, without backup, he could cost Jenna’s life. He peered up again.

The man tilted Jenna’s chin up with the hooked blade of his knife. Fresh tears shimmered down her face. Lex saw blood on her dress. Was she injured? Was it Perez’s blood?

The man began to trail the blade back down the column of her throat, moving his body closer to hers. Jenna tried to shrink away from him, arms straining visibly above her head. But the man hooked the knife tip into the top of her dress and jerked it down hard. The fabric split in a ragged gash, flaying open at her sides to reveal bare breasts and her skimpy scrap of a silky G-string. The man touched her nipple with his knife.

Blinding rage erupted in Lex.

He launched up, shouldered through the door. It smashed back with an explosive crash as he barreled into the room, his weapon aimed at the man. “Get back from her, now, you bastard, or you’re dead,” he growled, shaking inside, his arms steady as granite.

“Lex! Oh, God…” Tears poured down Jenna’s face. She began shaking. Perez still lay lifeless in the far corner, blood congealing dark under her head, glistening in the lamplight.

The man swiftly pressed his blade to Jenna’s neck. “Put the gun down,” he ordered, a faint hint of Spanish accent coming out under stress. “Or I will cut her throat before you can squeeze off a shot.”

Lex swallowed, the shaking inside turning his gut to jelly, but he remained calm on the outside—as controlled as he could possibly be. He stared into the man’s eyes, dark-brown like Smythe’s. “I brought the ring,” he said quietly. “I have The Tears of the Quetzal. I think you want that diamond more than you want her.”

Agitation rippled visibly through the man. He pressed the knife tighter against Jenna’s throat, sweat glistening around his eyes. With his free hand he slid a handgun out from the back of his jeans and aimed it at Lex. “Put the ring and gun on the table.”

“Easy, buddy. Release her first, and then you get the ring.”

His eyes narrowed in his balaclava slit. “How’d you find me? How’d you know to bring The Tears of the Quetzal? I didn’t give you directions yet.”

“I tracked Agent Perez’s vehicle,” Lex said coolly, forcing himself not to look at his partner lying in an unconscious heap in the corner. He needed to get her to a hospital. The seconds were ticking down, time running out. Yet he had to stretch time out perhaps until backup arrived, in order to save Jenna. Tension cinched like a vise inside Lex. “Now, why don’t you step back, put your weapons down, and like I said, I will give you the ring.”

“No, you put your gun down, and place the ring on the table.”

Lex could hear the nerves increasing in the man’s voice. Warning bells began to clang.

“That’s not how it’s going to work,” said Lex. “And don’t think of pulling that trigger, because you’ll be a dead man before I even hit the ground.”

The man pressed the blade of his knife tighter against Jenna’s throat. She whimpered, shivering, half-naked, tears streaming all the way down her breasts now. Lex trembled with bottled rage inside.

“If you hurt her—” Lex said, voice ice cool, his mind racing and thinking of what Jenna told him about the death threats her father had hidden “—then I will kill you, and you will get nothing. No ring. No revenge for the old deed you mentioned in those notes to Harold Rothchild.”

The man wavered.

Good, this was his guy, Smythe, and Lex had made a connection. “That’s why you want the ring, isn’t it? To fix some past wrong. The ring that is more important to you than the ‘Rothchild trash,’ am I right? You need that ring first. Without the ring, you have nothing.”

The man’s dark-brown eyes flickered. “Just…just put it on the table.” The Spanish accent that had crept into his voice as tension and fear got to him was thickening. His hands were beginning to shake. The warning bells in the back of Lex’s mind clanged louder.

“Something happened back in South America didn’t it…an old deed that needs to be avenged?”

“The Rothchilds must pay!”

“Harold Rothchild? Or someone older perhaps? Like his father, Joseph Rothchild, maybe?”

Agitation suddenly grew very marked in the man. Sweat began to pool around his eyes. Big damp patches were forming under the arms of his black shirt. “Just put the damn ring on the table!”

“And if I do, what guarantee do I have that you won’t do something stupid, like try to kill us both once you have The Tears of the Quetzal?” Lex kept repeating the name of the cursed stone. It clearly had an effect on Jenna’s assailant.