The Wedding Pact (The O'Malleys #2) (32 page)

She hoped.

She downed another gulp of the vodka, relishing the burn because of the future oblivion it promised. She looked around the room, taking in the understated elegance. Sitting here in the kitchen like a lush, just waiting for Dmitri to wander back in and pay attention to her…No, thanks.

After topping off her vodka, she wandered around the living room. Everything was top of the line and completely soulless. She would have traded it in a hot second for the faded, lived-in feel of James’s beach place. She rubbed her chest. How was it possible to miss someone so much when she’d been with them a day before? Carrigan sipped her vodka, going slower now that she’d started to feel its effects. Getting drunk was a dumb decision. The last thing she needed was to break down in front of Dmitri in an alcohol-infused sob session. He already had too much power over her. She refused to hand him any more weapons.

Needing to combat the fuzziness threatening, she crossed the living room and muscled open one of the large windows overlooking Back Bay. Instantly, she got a face full of icy wind. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the cold sink into her, driving away her buzz. Better. Much better. She wouldn’t be able to stand here too long, but it was exactly what she’d needed.

I need a plan in place to deal with him. I’ve spent too much time letting my emotions get the better of me and giving the advantage to everyone else. It ends now.

It didn’t take long for shivers to start racking her body, but she wrapped her arms around herself, not willing to close the window just yet.

“Yes, yes, I know.”

Carrigan frowned.
What the hell
? She angled to look out the window, trying to figure out what she was hearing. It didn’t take long to recognize Dmitri’s voice. Apparently the window in the master bedroom was cracked open as well. There was no reason his business calls should interest her, but she needed every piece of information she could get when it came to this man. One never knew when the opportunity would arise where it could be used for leverage.

She stepped out of her heels, picked them up, and padded closer to the window. His voice was partially muffled, growing louder and quieter. He must be pacing. She didn’t dare peek to confirm.

Inside, he kept speaking. “Are you threatening
me
?” He muttered something in what sounded like Russian. “Listen to me, you little
der’mo
. You agreed to this and you took your payment. That means I own you. Though I’m starting to think I overpaid.”

She grinned despite the cold sinking into her bones. Apparently the perfectly temperate Dmitri
could
get frazzled.

“No, things haven’t changed. If anything, it’s even more vital now to follow through on this.” A pause, and then his voice dropped until she had to strain to make out the words. “Don’t misunderstand me, Michael. If James Halloran doesn’t die tonight, you will go in his place, and I will take personal satisfaction in drawing out your last breaths until you’re begging for the mercy of the afterlife.”

Carrigan clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. That murdering backstabbing
bastard
. She reached blindly for the wall, the world turning slow circles around her. All she’d done, all she’d sacrificed, and James was still in Dmitri’s crosshairs.

From the sound it of, he had been even before she agreed to marry the Russian.

He kept speaking, oblivious to her world falling apart around her. “And that is if Ricky doesn’t get to you first. You know what happens if you fail me. Don’t.”

She held her breath as he paced and muttered in Russian. Surely he had more phone calls to make? She tensed, ready to slam the window shut to prevent him from realizing she knew. But then his voice rose to normal speaking levels. Another phone call. She listened for a few moments more, long enough to realize she wouldn’t be able to glean any information from this particular call since he wasn’t speaking English.

It didn’t matter. She knew enough to know she couldn’t stay here another minute longer.

Carrigan padded back inside and slipped on her shoes. They weren’t ideal for escaping guards and fleeing into the night, but she’d run in higher. She eyed the door to the master bedroom, half expecting Dmitri to rush out and demand to know what she thought she was doing. He didn’t, and the longer she waited, the greater her chances of discovery were.

How the hell was she going to get out of here? This wasn’t like the Halloran house, where she could slip out a window and onto the roof and then drop to the ground safely from there. They were at least twelve stories up. The only person who jumped from this balcony would be someone courting death.

She grabbed her purse, digging through it for the one thing that could tip the situation temporarily in her favor—the Taser. For the first time since Aiden had given it to her, she wished it were a goddamn gun. The men outside that door weren’t good men, and while a Taser might put them on the floor temporarily, they’d be up and after her before too much time had passed.

I’ll just have to be quicker than they are. Or smarter. Or something.

Before she opened the door, she ran her hands through her hair, mussing it, and then smeared her lipstick a little. She held the Taser in one hand, tucked behind her purse, and opened the door. “Help!”

There were two guards. One was less than a foot from the door and the other several steps beyond him. Too far. This had to be quick, before they realized what was happening, or it’d be over before it began. She put some stumble into her step, and lowered her voice to little more than a whisper. “Help.”

The guards exchanged a look. The closest one frowned. “Where is Mr. Romanov?”

“He’s…” She ducked her head, watching them through the shield of her hair. “He’s…” They moved closer, trying to hear her. When they were an arm’s distance from her, she raised her voice a little. “On the phone.” She tased the furthest one, holding down the trigger to keep shocking him even after his body hit the ground. She hit the other guard’s body as he drew his gun, her purse flying from her hand as they slammed into the wall. He dropped his gun, and she dove for it, rolling and coming up to fire wildly. The shot took him in the shoulder, knocking him onto his back, and she wasted no time scrambling to her feet.

Then she ran for the elevator, their groans ringing in her ear. It wouldn’t take long for the tased one to recover—less than a minute if Aiden was right—and that hadn’t been a killing shot to the other one by any means. She had to be out of here
now
.

The damn elevator would take too long, so she shoved through the doors to the stairs. Her bare feet slapped the cold concrete and she almost went down before she realized that was exactly where they’d expect her to go. Carrigan ran up the stairs; all the while a small voice in the back of her mind pointed out that she was violating the cardinal rule of horror movies—
never run up
.

She made herself slow down as she reached the door two floors up. Her stomach hurt and her breath was coming too fast, but she pressed herself against the wall when she heard the door open below her. Dmitri’s men shouldn’t be able to see her from their angle, but she couldn’t take any chances. She was trapped up here.

Idiot
.

They conversed softly in Russian and then the sound of a door opening whispered through the quiet while a second set of feet started down. Carrigan waited ten seconds, and then thirty, and then a full sixty. Only then did she slip through the door into the hallway behind her and press the elevator button.

She almost cried out when the elevator door opened and it was empty. The ride down to the second floor seemed to take forever, but in reality it was less than a minute. She looked both ways as she stepped into the hallway. As tempting as going down to the lobby and running out the front doors was, by now the men had contacted Dmitri, who might have contacted whoever he had guarding the entrance. She’d be better suited to take a less obvious path.

She wound through the hallways toward the back of the hotel. At this time of night, the place was mostly deserted, and she kept glancing over her shoulder, expecting to be found out at any second. A quick trip down the corner stairs to the back door found her at a carefully cultivated courtyard, complete with trees, grass, and walking paths. She put her shoes back on and hurried through it to Ring Road and headed south, away from the bay. It felt unnatural to keep her head down and her stride even, but if Dmitri’s men got this far, they’d be looking for a woman in a black dress running from them. She wasn’t about to make finding her that easy. She eyed the people around her as she turned the corner on Huntington, this time heading northeast. People were suspicious these days, but she looked like a hot mess, so surely some well-meaning Good Samaritan would help her. She just had to pick the right mark.

A block later, her gaze fell on an older guy trying to flag down a cab with his wife. Perfect. She stopped a foot away from them and made her voice as pathetic as possible. “Excuse me? Sir? Ma’am?”

The man turned, a frown on his face, but it melted away when his wife put her hand on his arm. “What?”

“Do you have a phone I could use?” It wasn’t hard to dredge up some tears, though they didn’t fall. “My boyfriend and I had a fight and he took his car and abandoned me down here. I…” Her voice caught. “I need help.”

“Of course, honey.” The wife grabbed the phone from her husband’s hand and passed it over.

Carrigan stared at it for half a second. She wanted to call James, to hear his voice and know that he was okay, and warn him of the danger. But she didn’t know his damn number—she’d just put it in her phone and used his contact every time she’d called him.
Lazy.
Really, there was only one number she had memorized. She dialed, and then held her breath while it rang. She almost cried all over again when her brother answered. “Teague O’Malley.”

“Teague, it’s me.”

Instantly his voice lost its cold, professional tone. “What’s going on? Why are you calling me from a strange number?”

“I’m in trouble.” Conscious of the couple’s gaze on her, she kept it as brief as possible. “I’m down on Huntington and Dartmouth. Can you pick me up?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. By now, Teague had to be aware of both her pending marriage to Dmitri and the fact that pretty much their entire family saw her as a traitor for falling for James.
What if he—?

“Go to the Copley Square Hotel and wait in the lobby. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Okay.” She hung up and handed the phone back to the wife. “Thank you.”
I never should have doubted Teague. He didn’t let family get in the way of offering me a way out before. Obviously that hasn’t changed.

“It was no problem.” The woman watched her with concern written across her face. “Do you want us to wait with you?” From the disgusted look her husband sent her, he wasn’t happy with the idea.

“No, but thank you for offering. My brother will be here in a few minutes.”

“Good, good.” She put her hand on Carrigan’s arm. “Get rid of that good-for-nothing man of yours.”

She managed a smile. “Oh, I plan on it.”

*  *  *

Jameson’s was nearly empty, and Cillian was doing his damnedest not to stare at the new bartender. She wore a pair of jeans that were holey enough to be considered indecent, layered over fishnets, with a black tank top. The combination would have been sexy as hell under normal circumstances, but the glimpses of those fishnets killed him. He drank his apple juice, knowing damn well that he was focusing on this woman—Olivia—because he didn’t want to deal with the shit storm waiting for him back home.

He’d gotten a text from Aiden this morning telling him that Carrigan had basically been handed off to Dmitri Romanov—who was, as far as he could tell, the same Dmitri who had chatted him a little over two week ago. He
knew
he hadn’t given the bastard anything then, knew that it was ultimately his father who made the decision that treated his sister like a piece of furniture, knew that there wasn’t a damn thing he could have done to stop it.

It didn’t matter.

Hate the man or not, he’d seen James Halloran’s face when Aiden shook Carrigan. The guy loved her, or cared about her so much it was the same damn thing. If Aiden had shaken her again, James would have thrown out their tentative peace without a second thought.

That, more than anything else, had stayed with Cillian over the last few days. No one in their family put personal health and happiness above the needs of the O’Malleys as a whole. It just wasn’t how shit went down. Up until Teague’s wedding, he would have said the Hallorans were the same way—worse, really.

And he’d have been wrong.

There isn’t a damn thing I can do to help her
.
Just like I couldn’t help Devlin.

“You keep looking at the drink like that, it’s going to curdle.”

He glanced up to find Olivia standing on the other side of the bar, and hell if she wasn’t even more striking up close. Her dark eyes were damn near black and held secrets he could only guess at. What was this woman’s story? Benji usually hired guys because apparently he’d had enough bad past experiences with female bartenders to make him gun-shy. This woman had to be something special for the big man to have made an exception. “Maybe I like my drinks curdled.”