shook his head, but before he could defend himself, Stacy pulled free of Garek and whirled toward Milek, who must have sobered up, because his eyes were clear now and his face pale. She poked his chest with a finger.
“You should be thanking him for saving my life again!” she shouted at her brother. “If Logan hadn’t stopped that bomb from going off, it would have killed us!”
“Stopped the bomb?” Garek scoffed. “Your damn stairwell has been blown off the building! You could have been killed.”
“The ATF agents set it off when they were moving it,” Logan explained.
“My stairwell is gone?” Stacy glanced back at the building and shuddered. “That could have been us...”
“It was supposed to be you,” Logan said. “The bomb was set inside your apartment.” And it was impossible that the bomb was intended to harm Logan because no one—not even her brothers—could have guessed that he would have driven her home. Stacy hadn’t announced their fake engagement until that afternoon. And even if they’d known he might step foot inside her apartment, he doubted that they would have risked her life even to take his.
So he wasn’t the only one someone was trying to kill. Apparently, someone wanted Stacy Kozminski dead, as well.
* * *
STACY SHIVERED. SHE wasn’t cold even though goose bumps lifted on her arms and the back of her neck beneath the heavy fall of her hair. Her skin was tingling because of Logan Payne’s stare. He stood several feet away, deep in conversation with the ATF agents, but his gaze was on her, as if he was reluctant to let her out of his sight.
She had already spoken with them, answering all their questions the best that she could. Given that she hadn’t been home since her dad died at the prison, she’d had no idea when or how someone had broken into her apartment to set the bomb. And she had absolutely no idea why.
Logan conversed with the agents now. He was probably the one asking the questions instead of answering them. But as he talked, he watched her. While his stare unsettled her, it also—oddly enough—reassured her. He had already saved her life once. Maybe twice if those shots at the cemetery had actually been intended for her.
But why would someone try to shoot at her? Or worse yet, blow her up? Unable to comprehend why anyone would want her dead, she murmured, “Why?”
“That’s a damn good question,” Garek replied as if she’d asked it of him.
Maybe still in shock over nearly being killed, she just shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“Then why would you agree to it?” Garek asked.
Even further confused, she turned toward her brother and asked, “Agree to what?”
“You and Logan Payne,” he said. “Why are you claiming you’re engaged to the guy?”
She glanced to Logan again. At least he was too far away to hear her lie again and contradict it. Yet. He would eventually deny their engagement, but until then she intended to perpetuate the lie. “It’s the truth.”
Garek shook his head. “You hate the guy’s guts.”
“That was once true,” she admitted. Even that morning it had been true. But she didn’t hate Logan anymore—not after he’d saved her. That would have been ungrateful or, at the very least, stupid. She owed him her life. And maybe she could repay him with his. “But my feelings for him have changed.”
Milek snorted. “Yeah, right...”
“Even if your feelings for him have changed,” Garek allowed, “his feelings for you couldn’t have. He’s hated all of us for years because of what our father did to his.”
“Our father didn’t do anything to his,” she insisted. Why was she the only one who believed in his innocence? How could his own sons doubt him?
Garek nodded sharply as if he was only humoring her. “Yeah, right, but Payne doesn’t believe that.”
That was definitely true. “But he doesn’t hold us responsible,” she insisted. Weakly. She really was a lousy liar.
“He always thinks the worst of us,” Milek said. “He actually believes we’ve been shooting at him.”
Despite Mrs. Payne’s warning about hurting their feelings, Stacy had already accused them of shooting. But then they’d been drunk and she’d been angry. So now she kept her voice low and her gaze steady as she asked, “Have you?”
Garek sucked in a breath. “I guess your feelings for him really have changed,” he said, “because you never would have listened to his suspicions before.”
She might have listened, but she would have ignored them—even though she had never been able to ignore him. Even when she’d hated him...
Fully aware that her brother hadn’t actually answered her question, she persisted, “Are they only suspicions?”
“Of course,” Garek replied—as offended as she had been afraid he would be. His mouth pulled into a tight grimace of disgust, and he swallowed hard. “I can’t believe you’d fall for Logan Payne...”
If she had, she would have been as disgusted with herself as her oldest brother was with her. But she couldn’t let him see her true feelings, so she buried them deep and plastered on a dreamy smile.
“Why not?” she asked. “He’s an amazing man.”
“Amazing that he’s still alive...” Milek murmured.
She shivered at her brother’s ominous tone. Maybe he was just still drunk. He couldn’t mean that he actually wanted Logan dead. But then maybe he did...
“Milek!” she admonished him. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
He shrugged. “All I meant was that if someone has tried to kill him as many times as he claims, then it’s amazing that they haven’t succeeded.”
Garek nodded. “It is amazing. But then we actually only have his word that these attempts were made on his life.”
“I was there when he was shot at in the cemetery,” she reminded them. And she had been so furious over it that she’d already accused them of being involved. They’d been drinking then and confused, so they probably hadn’t realized that she’d already had her own suspicions.
“But was it really him they were shooting at?” Garek voiced her earlier fear. “Or was it you?”
She shrugged now. “I don’t know about that, but I do know that Logan wasn’t the one shooting at me. He saved me at the cemetery like he saved me just now when we discovered the bomb in my apartment.”
Her legs began to shake as she remembered that mess of wires and pipes sitting in the middle of her kitchen table where usually she displayed a crystal bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers.
“Has it occurred to you that he was able to stop it from going off so easily because he’d concocted the damn thing?” Garek
