The Gilded Cage (28 page)

Fear lodged itself in her throat as every instinct inside her screamed out a warning. She tensed, legs tightly coiled, ready to bolt but it all happened too fast. A black-clothed figure launched out of the shadows of the house through the doorway and she fired, the shot missing him by inches. The bullet embedded itself into the wooden frame. The man tackled her and they fell to the ground.

Hayden screamed as she tried to roll before they hit. But the jarring crunch of their bodies, his on top, knocked the breath out of her. Pain and suffocation choked her into silence save for a few gasping breaths. Her ears were ringing from the gunshot, and the back of her head throbbed.

“You bloody fool,” the man whispered, and she knew his voice.

H
ayden blinked, staring up at the man in black, surprised that she could see his face. Why wasn’t he wearing his black mask? He was attractive, perhaps only a handful of years older than she was. He kept her pinned down. His face was hard and his eyes cold, except for the faintest flicker of…regret. No, that couldn’t be right.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said with a little shake of his head. “My contract didn’t include you. I don’t want to do this, but you’ve left me no choice.”

As she tried to digest his words, he acted fast, flipping her onto her belly. Her hands were yanked roughly behind her and the cutting feel of the zip ties bit into her flesh. Then he hauled her to her feet, guiding her inside the house with one hand on her shoulder and the other pressing the barrel of her gun between her shoulder blades.

“Walk.” He jabbed her with the gun and she stumbled forward, through the doorway.

Inside the crumbling structure, dust and dirt coated the floors and the left behind furniture. Beams of muted morning light suffused what appeared to have been a kitchen with light lavender hues. Three chairs had been placed in a row before her. Three men sat in them, bound and gagged, their backs to her, but she recognized them instantly: Hans, Emery, and Fenn.

“Keep walking. Go around them to where they can see you,” the man instructed.

There wasn’t an option to do otherwise, so she did as he said. Her throat was dry as she prayed Fenn and the others were okay. Navigating a wood floor covered in plaster chunks and other debris, she turned to face the bound men.

Fenn’s frantic gaze rocked her to her core, but she gave him a small nod. The lines of tension around his eyes smoothed, and she could read the relief in his gaze. She drank in the sight of him, relieved that he seemed uninjured.

“Sit down,” the man in black ordered, pressing down on her left shoulder hard enough that she fell, gasping out a pained cry. Her knees hurt from the collision with the floor, and she struggled to rest back against the wall and faced the assassin.

“You did not bring a car. Should I assume your brother is on some doomed knight errant mission?” The man crouched down so he faced her. His eyes were so cold and distant.

There was no way she was telling him Wes was going after Emery, not when Emery was sitting right here. At least Wes would be far away. Safe. He’d bring the police back and save them.

“Tell me, love, what is he up to?” The way he said ‘love’ wasn’t an endearment, but a warning. “Talk or I start putting bullets in kneecaps.” He pressed the muzzle of his gun against her knee and cocked it.

Hayden gazed at him in shock, her tongue thick with fear as she tried to decide what to say. Before, in Colorado, she’d scared him off. Would it work again?

“Yes. He’s gone to the police. He’s probably already got the FBI on this, too. My brother doesn’t mess around.” That was true enough.

The man’s hard gaze turned lethal and he stood up. For a second longer, his gaze stayed on hers before he walked over to a small table littered with cell phones and other small electronic devices. He lifted a slim back box with a tiny red switch and faced her and the others.

“I’m afraid to tell you I do not mess around either.” He sighed, as though resigned to some course of action, and then flicked the switch. A split second later the house rumbled with an explosion.

“What was that?” she demanded, her heart lodged in her throat.

“Your brother’s car and unfortunately, your brother.” The man set the device down.

His words didn’t sink in right away. It was only when she glanced at Hans, Emery, and Fenn that the horrifying truth set in. Their ashen faces, eyes wide and shimmering. They grasped more quickly what her mind refused to accept. Emery’s shoulders slumped and Hans made a muffled sound. Fenn was as still as stone.

“I spent a few years in Ireland. Car bombs are useful, especially if the target is still in close range of my trigger.”

“No…no you couldn’t—” Her voice broke, and she closed her eyes, fighting the explosion of anguish and pain that was threatening to strangle her.

“He was careless. No guards on the grounds of his home. I was able to gain access to every car in his garage. They are all rigged to blow if within range of my trigger. I was not sure which car he would take, but it doesn’t matter if they are all set to blow. I would offer my condolences but none of you will live long enough to mourn him.”

For a second Hayden couldn’t breathe, couldn’t digest any of this horror.

Fury burned through her. “You’ll just shoot us and leave us out here?”

The man shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest.

“After the man who hired me has seen the twins, you’ll all be taken to the Lockwood airfield and loaded onto Mr. Lockwood’s private aircraft. After which, a hired pilot will take off and set the plane to crash and escape via a parachute. Quite a clever plan. If you behave, I’ll see to it you are unconscious before the plane leaves the ground. You won’t have to be awake for the crash.”

“How kind of you,” Hayden snarled sarcastically. Pain like nothing she’d ever felt was moving through her like the sulfuric tide of ash after a volcano erupted. “I’m going to stop you,” she vowed.  She couldn’t let him do this: kill them all and walk away.

The man studied her, those cold eyes slicing through her.

“No. You won’t. These two men owe me a blood debt. They killed my father.”

“Father?” Hayden’s focus flicked to Fenn. His mouth was working as though he was trying to dislodge the rag stuffed there. The rag fell into Fenn’s lap, but he didn’t speak, didn’t alert their captor that he could. From where the man stood, his body was angled away from Fenn.

“Antonio. He was my father and they killed him.”

This man was the original kidnapper’s son? And just as twisted, it seemed.

“Like father, like son, then. He was one sick son of a bitch, torturing children.”

The blow snapped her head back and she hit the wall, white spots clouding her vision temporarily. She blinked, in a daze.

“Don’t speak such lies.” The man snarled and gripped her by the hair as he towered over her.

“Andrews, don’t hurt her. She’s done nothing to you,” Fenn warned softly.

Andrews? So the man in black finally had a name. Hayden stared up at him, noticing the slight scruff along his jaw and the way a muscle ticked as he frowned. The shooting pain in her scalp didn’t ease, and it only fueled her anger.

“That’s what he did. He kidnapped and tortured those boys when they were only eight years old. He
hurt
them.”

A shadow of doubt flashed across Andrews’s eyes. Maybe he hadn’t known…

“Did you know that?” She pressed softly, but her voice was still cold. “He took Fenn into another room more than once and beat him.
Tortured
him. It amused him because he and Emery were twins and every pain that Fenn suffered Emery suffered, too. And your father enjoyed it.”

“You lie. My father never had anything to do with these men until he was hired a few weeks ago, but they killed him.” Andrew’s nostrils flared.

“Haven’t you heard of the Lockwood kidnapping?”

The shadow of doubt was clearer now on his face as she spoke. She had found his weak spot. He had no idea what a monster his father really had been.

“Look it up. You have a phone, right? Google it. There’s a ton of news articles on it. Your father was hired to kidnap them and kill them twenty-five years ago. They were innocent children.”

Andrews released her hair and stood up, striding away from all of them, raking a hand through his hair. Then he jerked out his phone and started typing on the screen. Hopefully he was looking at articles about the kidnapping.

Fenn gave a little shake of his head, which Hayden noticed out of the corner of her eye.
Right. Don’t push him anymore
. She’d planted the seed and needed Andrews to find the truth on his own. Still, it was buying them time. Time. Time that her brother would have used to…

Oh God, Wes
. Her brother was dead. She couldn’t afford to face that truth; it would crush her.

But then the
thunk
of car doors being slammed jolted them all into awareness. Hope, blessed hope surged through her. Maybe Wes had—

Two hulking men in crew cuts and black suits strode through the open doorway. Each man had a gun, and their blank dead eyes swept over the group of hostages and Andrews. They broke apart to allow a third man to pass between them.

Andrews stepped back as the third man walked right up to Fenn and punched him in the face so hard his chair toppled backward and crashed to the floor. She jolted as fear stabbed her gut and she was terrified for Fenn. Hayden could only stare in shock. This was the man behind it all? How could she not have known?

“Perfect timing, cousin. Perfect fucking timing,” Brant Lockwood hissed as he removed a white handkerchief and wiped Fenn’s blood off his knuckles.

“I had everything ready to go and you had to show up. You were supposed to be dead. Both of you.”

Fenn groaned and spit out blood where he lay on the ground, still bound to the chair.

“You,” Hayden whispered. “You were behind this?”

Brant turned, one eyebrow raised in surprise.

“Ms. Thorne? What an unfortunate coincidence seeing you here. It’s a pity that I know you cannot be trusted to stay silent, especially since you’ve warmed Fenn’s bed.”

“You monster!” Hayden tried to rise but Brant backhanded her. Somehow his blow hurt more than Andrews’s had, as though he desired to hurt her, not to simply warn her not to push his temper.

“Lockwood, I need a word with you.” Andrews took a step between Hayden and Brant, blocking her from further abuse.

“You’ll be compensated for the extra bodies you have to dispose of, if that’s your concern,” Brant assured him coolly.

“It isn’t. I want to know when you hired my father to do the Lockwood job.”

“When? Why do you want to know?” Brant’s eyes narrowed. His two bruisers beside him shifted restlessly on their feet.

“Is it true that you hired him to kidnap the twins when they were children? You would have been a young man yourself then.”

“I was eighteen, man enough to know what I needed to do. So what if it is true? Why does it matter? They still killed your father. You have every right to end their lives.”

Andrews shook his head. “Not if my father tortured them and planned to kill them as children. There are lines even I do not cross.”

“You have a problem, Andrews? Need I remind you what is at stake here?” Brant folded his bloody handkerchief and tucked it into the pocket of one of his men’s suits, then turned to them. “Put Fenn’s chair back up.”

The two men moved to do as he asked. Hayden peered around Andrews’s legs, watching Fenn. His mouth was a little bloody, yet it didn’t compare to the bloodthirsty look in his eyes as he stared at Brant.

“I will go no further than this. My father’s sins were his own, and I will not finish any grand plan of yours if it includes killing these two men.”

Andrews reached behind his back, the movement apparently casual, almost as though he was going to rest his hand on his hip. Hayden’s gaze darted to his hand, and she saw the butt of a gun at Andrews’s back tucked into the waistband of his pants. Every instinct in her screamed to move, to hide, but she was frozen in terror and shock.

Brant was quick, though, and didn’t miss Andrews’s subtle movement. He reacted a second faster, drawing a gun and firing at Andrews. A red mist exploded through Andrew’s back, covering Hayden with the spray.

Blood. A man’s blood. The world spun around her and she blinked as black dots spotted her vision. She was going to be sick…

Andrews crumpled to the floor, face down. Hayden scrambled back, colliding with the wall again. Brant stared at the body for a moment, seemingly unconcerned that he’d just killed a man in cold blood.

“Well, that satisfies one loose end. Now to deal with the rest of you.”

“Why did you do this to us?” Fenn asked. “Before you kill us, we have a right to know.” He shifted in his chair and licked his bloody lips, scowling at his cousin.

Brant handed his gun over to one of the two men flanking him and then checked his wristwatch.

“I suppose there’s time enough. No one is looking for you, after all.” He picked up the collection of cell phones from the table and handed them to one of his men, who dropped them into a plastic bag, then slid it into his coat pocket. Once this was done, Brant turned his focus back on the four hostages. He studied each of them in turn, a cruel little smile twisting his lips.

“The bodyguard…A pity, Mr. Brummer, but you seem to have failed to do the one thing you were hired to do. And Ms. Thorne, an unfortunate casualty, but that will teach you to spread your legs for the wrong man. Too bad you won’t be alive to learn from your mistakes.”

Hayden curled her lips back in a silent snarl, but the bastard only laughed.

“As for you two…” Brant crossed his arms and faced his younger cousins. He smirked when Emery jerked against his bonds, but the duct tape silenced his growls.

“You two were only eight when my father died. I was eighteen. My
entire
world was destroyed. And you were both living in your little castle, spoiled rotten, while I was all alone. My father didn’t even leave me his half of the company. Your father bought it from him right before my father died. I had
nothing
. I had to work hard for years to earn enough money to buy back what was rightfully mine. Do you have any idea what that was like? The humiliation, the expense?” He answered his own question seconds later. “No, of course you don’t.” A bitter laugh escaped him, and Hayden shivered.

“So you had a shit life,” Fenn replied sarcastically. “Why ruin ours?”

Brant tapped his chin thoughtfully, a devilish gleam in his eyes. “Why indeed? It was so easy. Have you kidnapped, then killed in an apparent ransom situation gone wrong. You wouldn’t be there to inherit the company or your father’s wealth. Then I would swoop in and comfort dear Uncle Elliot. It would only be natural that he would view me as a replacement for his lost sons. I would have him to replace the father I lost.” Brant paused in his grand narration to smile coldly. “And then, what a horrific thing, to find that Uncle Elliot and Aunt Miranda died in a car accident, or perhaps a plane crash. And I would have full control of
everything
, just as I deserved.”