Cherish Me (Stark Ever After #6.5) - J. Kenner Page 0,24

one of our radios. He killed two of my men. You better hope he’s still listening in.”

I glance at Red, whose expression is as tense as I am.

“What do you want me to do?”

“What do you think, you fucking bitch? I want you to shut your husband down. Get him to come here without a fight, and I promise you—my word as a gentleman—that he’ll get out of here safe.”

“Really?”

“All I want is the stone.”

Aubert sits on the other side of the booth, and he looks at me, his eyes dead and flat. Defeated. Red squeezes my hand.

“You promise?” I press.

“Yes. I promise.”

I swallow, then nod. “Then give me a radio.”

Chapter Thirteen

The radio crackled, and Damien frowned, surprised that he was able to get any reception at all in the elevator shaft. Then he heard Nikki—just a quick clearing of her throat, but Christ, he knew it was her—and he stopped wondering about the reception.

He tried to shift his weight, teetering on the small ledge beneath the elevator doors as he prayed she’d come back on the air. Had she gotten away? Had she managed to get her hands on a radio?

“Damien,” she finally said, and her voice—strong and clear—made his soul ache. It felt as though they’d been apart for years, and he wanted nothing more than to have her in his arms. “Damien, they have a message for you.”

“Nikki—”

But she was gone and when the radio came back to life, he heard the voice of the man in charge. “We have your wife, Mr. Stark. We have several people. They’re safe now, but if you keep pulling the shit that you’re pulling, that won’t last for long. Come to the bar. Hold your wife. And soon enough, we’ll be gone and you both will still be breathing. Continue this nonsense, and I assure you that won’t be the case much longer.”

Damien started to respond, but his fingers froze when Nikki’s voice came back through the speakers. “Listen, I know you’re acting like John McClane,” she said, her words slow and clear. “But sweetheart, if you’ll just stop, they promise they won’t hurt me. Please, please, Damien. You know what’s going on here. If you don’t listen to me, we can all forget riding off into the sunset once this is over.”

The line turned to static, and Damien closed his eyes, overcome by both relief and fear. Relief that she was alive and—for now at least—unharmed.

Fear because she was telling him to press on. To not stop. He was absolutely certain. The reference to Die Hard, one of their favorite movies, in which the hero did everything he could to save his wife. And, more than that, the specific message to not listen to her. To not stop. A hidden message, sure, but one designed specifically for him. Because by saying that he should forget the sunset … well, that meant forgetting—or rather, not—stopping. Because sunset was their safe word. An absolute, no questions, demand to stop.

And she’d just told him to ignore it.

He knew why, and that certainty was what terrified him. Because she was telling him that she knew for certain what he already suspected—that if he didn’t succeed, everyone in that bar was dead.

He had to succeed. There was simply no other option.

With intense concentration, he managed to get in a position where he could balance on the ledge while forcing the fourth-floor elevator doors open. Without a tool it wasn’t easy, but he managed, getting his fingers into the gap, then applying opposite pressure.

Soon, he had an opening wide enough to squeeze his shoulders through.

He did, balancing precariously on the ledge so that he wouldn’t fall backward into the void.

There.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but it came too soon. Because just as he was hoisting his body up, the sharp impact of a kicking foot caught him in the chest—and before he knew it, he was tumbling backward into the shaft’s void, falling and falling toward the floor below.

Damien landed with a thunk on the top of the elevator car that, thankfully, had been stopped only one floor below him.

Unfortunately, that left him too close for comfort when the man above—Barclay, he assumed—got off a round of bullets. Ping! Ping! Metal hit metal, and Damien rolled to the side, clinging to the edge of the car to avoid the spray, his legs dangling in the shaft and the two stories below him. Survivable, but he’d likely end up with broken bones—and then he’d be