Private Affair(95)

“Yes,” she managed to say before she began to sob.

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her, stroking her and rocking her, feeling her shoulders shake and feeling his own relief like a burst of sunlight after a terrible storm. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay now. You’re safe.”

“Yes, safe.”

When she raised her hand and tried to clasp him, he realized that her wrists were still tied together.

“Christ. Sorry.”

He also had a knife in his pocket, and he pulled it out. Opening the blade, he carefully cut away the bonds. Then he leaned back against the wall again, wanting to hold her forever but knowing that they had to get out of there. She snuggled against him for a few moments, then lifted her head and gave him a critical look.

“Max. Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to get you out of here,” she murmured.

He laughed. “I was about to say the same thing.”

She swung her head toward Masters. “What about him?”

“I’m not sure. Let me call Shane and Jack. They’re waiting to hear from me.” She nodded, still looking at him with concern. “Did you talk them into discharging you from the hospital?”

“That would have taken too long.”

“Then…”

“I’ll get checked out,” he said, glancing at his arm, glad to see no blood seeping through the bandage, partly because he didn’t want to leave any evidence that he’d been here.

Olivia still looked dazed.

“You’d better put on your pants before we go up.”

“Pants. Yeah, right. And my front.”

She pulled her bra down over her breasts and seated them in the cups, then reached for her panties and slacks, pulled them on and then put on her shoes.

While she was putting herself back together, Max turned to the dead man, who was lying with his pants open and a condom on his cock. Max looked around, found an old hamburger wrapper on the floor, and used it to pull off the condom. Then he wrapped it up and shoved it into his pocket before stuffing Masters’s dick back into his pants, closing the zipper, and fastening the button.

When he looked up, Olivia was watching him. She made a disgusted face, and he shrugged.

“Are we going to tell them what I let him do?” she asked.

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I knew that if I let him fuck me, he’d be too distracted to know I was going to whack him with the chain.”

“Yeah. But nobody needs to know about it.”

“Thanks.”

He reached for her and pulled her close. “What matters is that you’re alive, and he’s dead. And he was counting on it being the other way around—when he finished with you.”

He had put that in stark terms to make sure she didn’t forget how high the stakes had been. She answered with a grimace.

As Max got to his feet, the top of his head scraped the ceiling, and Olivia was in almost the same boat.

“Do you remember coming down here?” he asked.

“I was unconscious. He used chloroform or something like it in the hospital parking lot.”

“Yeah, we smelled it in his car.” Pulling out his phone, he called the surface. “We’re coming up.”

“Olivia’s okay?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. I’ll fill you in when we get there.”

“Okay,” Jack said before his voice turned strange and muffled as though he had shoved the phone into his pocket. “Trouble.”

“Huh?”

Through the muffled effect, Max heard a harsh voice saying, “I’m tired of chasing around all over Maryland. Tell me where to find Lyon, or I’ll kill you.”





Chapter 29


Max cursed under his breath, then put a finger to his lips.

Olivia nodded.

He left the phone line open, and they made their way as quietly as possible down the tunnel.

“I said, where’s Lyon?” the other man demanded.

“He’s in the hospital,” Jack answered. “You cut him, remember?”

Which told Max that Jack was talking to Damon Davidson, the bastard who had been stalking him. Just what they needed at the moment. Or any moment, come to that. Max remembered cutting Davidson as well. Apparently it hadn’t been bad enough to put him out of action.

The lowlife laughed. “I cut him, yeah. But he’s not in the hospital now. I know he discharged his ass out of there.”

“Maybe,” Jack conceded. “But what makes you think he’s here?”

“Because I hung around, and I knew where the ambulance took him, so I could watch the hospital. I saw you and your friend go in and out, and I put a tracker on both your cars. You went somewhere else first. Then you came here.”