laid his palms against her shoulders. “Relax,” he said, massaging the muscles there. “You can let your hands rest against the ropes. They won’t give unless you jerk the end you have in your fingers.”
“The dining room is through an arched doorway to the right—east—of the desk. I want you to wait down here until I call you. If you don’t hear anything within a half hour, undo the ropes and run up the stairs. If you see a clear shot to a back door, take it. Otherwise run through the dining room into the lobby and hightail it out the front door.”
“Hightailing is not so easy these days.”
Deke grabbed her arm. “Listen to me, Min. Your life and the life of—” He couldn’t say the words. “Whatever happens, you have to save yourself. Got it?”
She bit her lip and looked up at him. “Deke, I—”
“Got—it?” he bit out.
“G-got it.”
“When you get to my car, you’ll find a spare key and a cell phone under the driver’s seat.”
“Who’s supposed to be there to help—?”
“Drive like hell due east. Call Irina. Her number is first on the call list.”
Mindy stared at him, wide-eyed. On her face was a mixture of trust, fear, doubt and a shadow that didn’t come from the dim light in the room. It came from inside her. Slowly, she nodded.
He turned toward the stairs and stopped.
He was leaving Mindy undefended. Mindy and his unborn child. A strange mixture of pride and abject terror weakened his knees.
He’d saved a lot of innocent lives, and while he understood that underestimating his enemy could be fatal, he’d never once doubted his own ability.
Okay—once. Right now, he felt like a rookie who’d been handed two equally deadly choices.
For the first time in his life, he hesitated over which course to take. For the second time ever, the awful consequences of failure slammed him in the face.
There was a reason Deke Cunningham never thought about losing. Because to consider the results was unbearable.
If he went out there armed with a four-inch switchblade, he had a very good chance of succeeding—against one or two, maybe even three opponents. But if he failed—
If he failed, he left Mindy and his child vulnerable. That was unthinkable.
He turned around. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” he said, stepping over to her and bending down until his lips were next to her ear. “Keep the knife.”
She looked shocked. “But—”
“Shh.”
“But Deke,” she whispered. “That’s your—No. I mean, no, you can’t go out there with nothing.”
He held out his hands in front of her face. “I’ve got these. Now, where do you want me to put the knife? In the pocket of your coat?”
She shook her head. “Everything I put in those slanted pockets falls out. Put it in my bra.”
“Your—?”
“Shh.” She smiled wryly. “It’s not like you don’t know where it is. Do you want me to do it? And then you can retie the ropes around my hands?”
He shook his head, rubbing his face against her silky, tangerine-scented skin. “I’ll do it.” He opened her coat and unbuttoned the three buttons at the neckline of her sweater, then he pulled the knife out of his pocket.
“Okay,” he whispered, feeling like a kid about to cop his first feel. He felt that awkward, that shy, that excited.
Quickly he slid his hand down through the neckline of her sweater. When his fingers slid over the rising mounds of her breasts, he almost gasped. They were so full and round and firm.
Her body was preparing for her child. Awed and speechless, and working as fast as he could, he slid the knife between her breast and the cup of the bra.
“Does that feel okay?”
Her head inclined slightly. “It’s good,” she murmured, sounding a little breathless.
He extracted his hand and rebuttoned her sweater. Then he pulled the lapels of her coat together. When he lifted his gaze, she was looking up at him.
He wanted to kiss her so badly he ached. Not a lover’s kiss. Just a gesture of caring, a promise that he’d do anything to protect her and the child that she sheltered inside her.
But he’d made her so many promises, and he’d broken them all.
So instead, he made a vow to himself. A simple vow. Yet one more difficult to keep than any promise he’d made to her, kept or not.
He vowed that when she was safe, he’d get out of her life and stay out. He grinned as pain stabbed his heart. Leaving her meant leaving his child. Still, she and the baby would be better off if he was out of their lives. And she knew it.
She deserved a chance to make a new life with her baby. The kind of life she’d always wanted but never had with him.
A normal, safe life.
“Ready, Min?” he whispered.
She lifted her chin and her eyes drifted shut. After a second, she opened them again. “I’m ready.”
After one more tug on the lapels of her coat, he left her there and climbed the stairs. At the top, he turned around to check on her. He couldn’t see her. Everything below him was a lake of darkness.
That was good.
He nodded in her direction, knowing she could see him, then reached out toward the doorknob. His hand stilled just millimeters from the knob as qualms assailed him.
“Here we go, Min,” he whispered. “Be ready for anything.” He turned the doorknob carefully, repeating the warning to himself. Then he pushed open the door.
The room in front of him was nearly as shrouded in darkness as the basement below. He took a careful step forward as his eyes sought the source of the faint light he’d seen under the threshold. It seemed to be coming from behind the open door. Probably daylight from the dining room and lobby.
Without moving, he listened. Nothing. Still the uneasy feeling that had prickled his nape—the feeling that someone was watching—wouldn’t leave him.
He took a step forward so he could pull the door shut behind him. A blinding bright light flared in front of his face.
He squeezed his eyes shut and whirled toward the light, swinging his clasped fists like a sledgehammer, hoping to take down whoever was holding it.
Fireworks exploded inside his head, snapping it backward. He grabbed at the doorknob, but his hand barely brushed
