The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) (33 page)

I glance at the house cameras again. The FBI agents are going room to room, making sure the house is clear of shooters. Interestingly enough, there are a few dead bodies along the way.

Nice work, Dominique.

The FBI guys point their rifles at the corpses, kick away their guns, check their pulses, and then continue. The entire time, Dominique is sobbing as they half-drag her, half-shield her from potential attacks.

While I’m watching the screen, I get Mailin’s gun out of the backpack, along with an unused tube of superglue. I pop the orange top, puncture the seal, and make sure I can squeeze goo out of it easily. Then I put the orange top back on.

I also click the safety on my other gun – the one I ran across the property with – and tuck it into the back of my jeans. I definitely do
not
want it going off when I land and shooting me in the ass. If everything goes as planned, I won’t need it – but when does anything ever go as planned?

“What are you up to, Eve?” Epicurus yells as he picks up a scalpel and moves next to Grant. “Tell me where you are, NOW, or I cut his throat.”

My heart skips a beat, but I press a button on the laptop keyboard.

Digital me sounds cool as a cucumber.
“I know you won’t do that.”

My intonation is off – I sound weirdly flippant, given what Epicurus is threatening – but what the hell. This charade is only going to last another 30 seconds.

On the monitor, the FBI and Dominique are right outside the library.

Time to go.

I just hope that my ‘sudden arrival’ doesn’t make Epicurus jerk in fright and accidentally cut Grant.

I hold my breath in anticipation and press the three pressure plates on the hatch.

The hatch swings open, and I push myself through feet first.

As my body emerges from the ceiling, I hear Epicurus’s high-pitched shriek of surprise.

I grab onto the edge of the hatch with one hand – the hand not holding the gun and superglue – and dangle for half a second before I lose my grip.

It’s a long way down – over ten feet from the soles of my shoes to the floor.

This is gonna hurt like hell.

I drop to the floor and try to absorb the impact by buckling at the knees.

An electric zap of pain still shoots from my feet all the way up my back.

Then I crumple backwards onto the tile. WHAM.

Ow, ow, OW

I still have enough sense, though, to uncork the superglue before I point my gun in Epicurus’s direction. I make sure he can’t see the orange tube, though.

“NO!” the serial killer screams, and darts behind Grant like a coward.

“Eve?!” Grant says, his eyes wide in disbelief.

I grimace in pain as I yell, “Put your hands up, Dieter!”

Metal flashes from behind Grant’s head, and the scalpel is suddenly at his throat.

“No, YOU drop the gun, Eve… or I cut his jugular.”

The key to this next part is making it convincing.

Which I have no idea how to do… so I just play it like every action movie I’ve ever seen.

“I’m not kidding, Dieter!” I shout.

“Neither am I!” Epicurus screams, and presses the tip of the scalpel into Grant’s throat. Not enough to cut him, but the indention in his flesh is enough to legitimately scare me.

“Okay – okay, don’t hurt him,” I yelp, and put the gun on the ground.

I hover my hand over the pistol and squeeze a nice dollop of superglue on the handle, all of which I keep hidden beneath my outstretched fingers and palm.

“Slide it over to me,
now,
” Epicurus commands.

I give the gun as hard a shove as I can. It slides across the tile floor and ends up about eight feet to the right of Grant.

Pick it up fast,
I plead silently in my head.
Pick it up fast, pick it up fast, pick it up fast –

Epicurus magically complies. He drops the scalpel as he rushes over and bends to pick up the pistol. “Ha – you’ve given up your
only
advantage, you stupid little fool! What did…”

One second after he stands back up, Epicurus gets a look on his face like he’s stepped in a pile of dog poo. He looks down at the pistol and opens his fingers.

The gun doesn’t fall out of his hand, because it’s super-glued to his palm.

Meanwhile, I’m up on my feet and hobbling towards the door.

“STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!” Epicurus shrieks as he stomps towards me, the gun pointed at my back.

I press the code on the door’s numerical pad: 619382#.

Beep
.

“IDIOT!” Epicurus screams, and pulls the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happens.

That’s because I super-glued the slide on the gun, too, back at the McMansion.

Epicurus looks on in amazement as he pulls the trigger again and nothing happens.

Click.

He keeps pulling the trigger angrily and getting the same lack of results.

I was right:
a genius at all the digital stuff – but real world stuff, not so much.

I yank the handle on the door and simultaneously drop to the ground.

As the door swings open, the FBI agents at the threshold are presented with a man pointing a gun at them and repeatedly pulling the trigger –
click click click
.

There’s not really a whole lot they can do.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!

It’s all over in a matter of seconds.

The first thing I hear after the ringing in my ears subsides a little is Grant’s frantic voice.

“EVE! Eve, are you okay?!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” I yell back at him from the ground.

The FBI agents swarm in, hollering at everybody to drop their guns. Since Grant doesn’t have one – and since he’s obviously strapped down to the bed – he’s safe.

As for me, I tell them right away about the pistol in the back of my jeans. I also make sure my hands are high in the air when I do it.

“GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!” they scream. “HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”

I move very slowly into position, careful not to spook them. Once I’m spread-eagle facedown, they slip the gun out of my waistband, then zip-tie my wrists and hoist me roughly to my feet.

I try not to look at Epicurus’s dead body. I feel bad, though God knows there’s no reason to. He was a serial killer. He was going to torture Grant to death, and he would have happily done the same to me. He was a deranged psychopath, a nightmare wrapped in human skin.

But no matter how much he deserved it, I still hate to have been the Angel of Death.

I basically forced him into ‘suicide by cop.’ It was justified, it was necessary, and it was the only option I had to save Grant’s life. At least, the only one I thought would work. But that doesn’t mean I’m proud of it.

There is one darkly comic moment, when the FBI agents try to kick the gun out of Epicurus’s hand. It’s obviously no use because of the superglue, but they don’t know that. So they kick it again, and again, and again, until they realize something’s wrong.

That five seconds of violent, futile repetition seems aptly symbolic of my entire life for the last week.

Two FBI agents are leading me out of the room, and two more are unbuckling Grant’s arms and legs, when he yells, “Wait! Bring her back!”

Normally, I doubt FBI crash teams pay much attention to people when they say things like that at crime scenes – but there is something especially commanding in Grant’s voice, a tone unaccustomed to being disobeyed. Or maybe my escorts just take pity on the half-naked guy strapped to the psycho-killer’s chop block. Either way, they pull me back into the room and let me walk over to him.

Before any of the agents can stop him, Grant darts forward and kisses me passionately, his fingers entwined in my hair. The entire time I stand there with my hands bound, head tilted back, eyes closed in rapture.

Oh God… that kiss…

It was all worth it, for that one kiss.

As the FBI troopers pull me away, Grant calls out fervently, “I love you!”

“I love you, too!” I cry as they drag me bodily from the room.

The FBI keeps us separated for the next two hours as they secure the property and wait for reinforcements from San Francisco. I catch a glimpse of them herding the armor-clad thugs who shot up the airplane at the hangar. They’re all handcuffed together in a daisy chain, one guy’s right hand to another guy’s left. They look for all the world like big, ugly, sullen kindergarteners on a field trip, forced to hold hands by Teacher.

Oddly enough, no one in the FBI asks me what happened, although I’m prepared to shout “Lawyer!” the second they do. Maybe the carnage they found at the hangar, plus the plastic-wrapped torture room, are making them a little slower to pass judgment.

I see Grant again when they take all of us – including JP and Dominique – to the black FBI helicopter on the lawn.

“JP!” Grant exclaims humorously. “You came after me!”

“I wanted my ten million dollars,” JP says, totally deadpan.

Grant grins, then turns to Dominique. “You okay?” he asks her in a far more serious voice.

She looks at him, and I can see the longing in her eyes. We all know the reason why she traveled across the ocean to save him, and it wasn’t money.

She smiles tightly and nods, resigned that the reward she wants isn’t the one she’s going to get.

“Thank you,” Grant says, seriously and sincerely.

She says something in French, which can’t be anything but
You’re welcome…
and then she looks both happy and brokenhearted at the same time.

If I’d seen that same emotion from her yesterday, I would have been a jealous wreck. Now I just feel a pain in my heart on her behalf.

I can be that secure because when he looks at me, love fills his entire face.

We try to kiss again, but the FBI agents separate us forcibly and stow us in opposite ends of the helicopter.

Doesn’t matter. We spend the entire flight back to San Francisco grinning from ear to ear and staring into each other’s eyes like lovestruck teenagers.

I could turn this into an interminable list of
this happened, then this happened,
but long story short, we get taken to FBI headquarters in San Francisco where they separate us and rake us over the coals. I lawyer up immediately. Or at least I say nothing but ‘Lawyer,’ even though one never appears.

Two hours later, I’m finally reunited with Grant in a cement-walled interrogation room.

Unfortunately, Duplass is waiting for us. He’s sporting a black eye where Dominique clocked him, and man does he look
piiiiiissed.

He also looks different. Not the pissed part – that’s par for the course. No, it’s something else. For a second I chalk it up to the black eye, and then it finally dawns on me: I’ve never seen him before without his ever-present Bluetooth earpiece.

Too bad, dude. It’s either in an air duct in Marin County, or an FBI evidence locker.

Mailin’s there, too, standing in the corner behind Duplass. He gives me a knowing little glance, like
Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.
My worries go down… mm, maybe ten percent.

The Frenchies aren’t present. I’m guessing some bilingual agents are sweating them down in their native language somewhere else.

“Hey babe,” Grant teases me as soon as I’m escorted in. “Long time no see.”

They’ve got him dressed in an FBI prisoner’s jumpsuit, but even
that
looks incredible on his muscular frame.

Before I can say anything, though, Duplass snaps, “Sit down.”

“Where’s my lawyer?” I ask as I grab the chair next to Grant.

“I’ve been asking the same thing for the last two hours,” Grant says.

Duplass shakes his head. “You don’t get a lawyer right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is a matter of national security.”

“National security?!” Grant exclaims. “How?!”

Duplass points at me. “She hacked the NSA.”

Oh yeah. Actually, that
would
qualify as a matter of national security.

I don’t look at him directly – I only glance at him out of the corner of my eye – but I can tell Mailin is watching me worriedly.

Don’t worry, dude,
I want to say.
You had my back when I was 17, and you helped me save the love of my life today. I’m not about to rat you out now.

“Yes, I did hack the NSA,” I say.

While Mailin’s body noticeably relaxes, his face betrays how horrible he feels about leaving me hanging out to dry.

“So you admit it,” Duplass gloats.

Grant looks at me in surprise, and I’m pretty sure I can tell what’s in his head:
What about never admitting to anything, even when you’re caught?

The corollary to that, though, is
Never screw a friend.
And I’m not about to screw Mailin, not when his help is one of the reasons Grant’s still alive.

So I try to evade instead.

“Yeah, I admit it. But this isn’t about national security. National security was never at stake.
You
just don’t want to look bad.”

“
I
don’t want to look bad?! YOU’RE the internationally wanted criminals!”

I remember something Grant said almost a week before, and quote him almost verbatim. “No I’m not. I’ve never been convicted of a crime. Therefore I’m not a criminal.”

Grant looks at me and grins, then turns back to Duplass. “Me neither.”

Duplass splutters for a second. It’s hard to protest an argument that’s 100% accurate, yet absolutely ridiculous on its face. “You – that’s – you have both engaged in activities that are against the law!”

“Because a murderous asshole was trying to kill us,” I point out.

“You ran from authorities in the United States and abroad!”

“Because a murderous asshole was trying to kill us.”

“You instructed that – that
woman
to assault me!” Duplass yells.

“Because you were standing by while a murderous asshole was trying to kill Grant.”