Decoded

The tone of that one word warned her that she shouldn’t ask any questions. She set the headlamps to the on position and eased away from the curb.

“Where are we going?” She hated that her voice trembled. Damn him.

“Just drive.”

Fury blasted her. That was it. She’d had enough. Maggie slammed her foot on the brake. The car rocked to a stop. “Where are we going?” She was a grown woman. She had responsibilities, first and foremost to herself.

“Maggie.”

She closed her eyes, couldn’t bear to hear him say her name. “Stop. Just stop.” She shook her head. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“We have to move,” he urged. “We can talk later. Right now you just have to trust me.”

Maggie laughed. She didn’t mean to, but the sound, brittle and painful, just burst out of her. “You have to be kidding!” She was hysterical. The stress had evidently pushed her over the edge.

When cold steel pressed against her temple, her attention swung to the rearview mirror. He had a gun to her head. A gun! “What’re you doing?”

“Drive, Maggie. Just drive.”

Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Forcing her foot to move from the brake to the accelerator, she reminded herself to breathe. She’d made a terrible, terrible mistake.

An explosion fragmented the silence. Light burst to her left, changing the darkness to a brilliant yellow. Pieces of something showered down on her car. Not hail…but rocks or pieces of brick.

As if in slow motion, she turned to stare out the car window. The brownstone where Slade worked and lived had blown up. Flames licked toward the stars. Pieces of the building lay on the sidewalk…on the street. On the hood of her car.

“Go, Maggie! Hurry!”

Somehow her foot punched the accelerator. The car lunged forward.

She tried to blink away the images, her fingers cramped from clutching the steering wheel so tightly. This couldn’t be happening. The man she loved—the father of her unborn child—had put a gun to her head. His office—his apartment—had just exploded.

In that moment her reality sharpened into perfect clarity. She had never known this man. She had suspected as much. Her intuition had warned repeatedly that he was hiding something. Everything. Above all else, his identity.

Maggie slammed on the brakes, harder this time. She glared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Who are you?”

He leaned forward, reached up and threaded his fingers into her hair. His hold tightened as he pulled her closer. She should scream. She knew this. But his slightest touch rendered her totally helpless.

“I know you better than you know yourself, Maggie. I know you want to trust me.”

She wanted to argue. The words refused to form on her tongue. The sound of his voice slid around her, tethering her as surely as if he’d used steel bands. How could she lose all control so easily? Where was her courage? Her logic?

His lips pressed nearer to her ear. She shivered. “If you don’t do as I say we’re both going to die. I, for one, have no desire to die tonight.”

The cold steel of the weapon he held snuggled against her throat. “Now, drive.”

Chapter Two

2:10 a.m.

Victoria Colby-Camp heard the ring of the bedside phone, but the concept of opening her eyes and answering was far too difficult to grasp. The sound of her husband’s voice as he took the call parted the constricting layers of sleep, allowing her to rouse more fully. Who would call at this hour?

“Was anyone hurt?”

Victoria sat up, instantly wide awake. “What’s happened?” Was it Jim or one of the children? A member of their extended family at the Colby Agency? Fear roared through her body like a fire set to dry kindling.

“We’ll be right there.” Lucas heaved a weary breath as he placed the phone back into its cradle and turned to his wife. “A friend from Chicago P.D. called Jim. We don’t have any real details just yet, but there’s been an explosion at the brownstone.”

The offices of Jim’s old firm, the Equalizers. Almost two years ago now, Slade Keaton had taken over the firm since Jim had joined Victoria at the Colby Agency. Early last year Keaton had moved into the renovated upstairs apartment of the brownstone. Jim had gone there shortly after midnight to confront him regarding their suspicions as to his true identity. He’d found no sign of Keaton. Thank God Jim hadn’t been in or near the building when the explosion occurred.

“Was anyone in the building?” Maggie James, the owner of the coffee shop across the street from the Colby Agency offices, was Keaton’s girlfriend. Anguish tore through Victoria. She prayed they were both safe. Whoever Keaton was and whatever he had done, Victoria wished him no harm. And Maggie was innocent in all this. Her only misstep was falling in love with a man whose past was an enigma that even Lucas hadn’t been able to decipher.

“The explosion occurred less than an hour ago. Maybe fifteen minutes after Jim was there looking for Keaton.” Lucas adjusted his prosthetic leg and stood. “They’ve only just gotten the fire under control. They’re waiting for the rubble to cool to start the search.”

Victoria dropped her feet to the carpeted floor and rushed to the closet for clothes. “Were any of the neighboring buildings damaged?” she called out to Lucas. The brownstones along the two nearly identical blocks were structurally connected. She doubted one could have been destroyed without damage to one or more of the others. Since most were businesses, she prayed no one had been working late. The injury or death of the innocent was always the most devastating in deliberate acts such as this. Admittedly, she had no way of knowing if the explosion was deliberate just yet. However, based on the events that had taken place recently related to Keaton, she felt confident that the explosion was the result of foul play.

“The two buildings on either side were damaged, but Jim didn’t mention to what extent. He may not have known. He’s en route. We’ll be right behind him. Perhaps there will be more information by then.”

Victoria dressed and stepped into a pair of comfortable leather slides, not bothering with socks. Grabbing a clasp from her bedside table, she tucked up her shoulder-length hair. Lucas was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and sneakers, no less. She so rarely saw him dressed casually that she almost smiled in spite of the circumstances. Thank God for him. As much as she loved her son and her grandchildren, her life would not be complete without Lucas.

Victoria grabbed her purse as they hurried to the garage. Lucas tucked his weapon into the waistband of his jeans. Ever the gentleman, he opened then closed her car door before climbing behind the wheel. As soon as they backed out into the driveway, the house and garage were secured with a single click of the security remote. The rest of their small gated community was tucked in for the night. The gas streetlamps and lovely landscape lighting had a calming effect. As scary as the world could be sometimes, she was very thankful for a safe and pleasant neighborhood.

With her nerves settled, Victoria used the time as Lucas drove through the darkness to consider the possible causes of the explosion. Gas leak…? Explosive device? Did Keaton keep explosives on hand? Surely that was not the case.

Considering what had happened only days ago to Levi Stark and Casey Manning, Lucas’s goddaughter, in Acapulco, Keaton had made some powerful enemies. Had those enemies caught up with him this night?

Victoria blinked away the images that immediately attempted to intrude. She didn’t want to think about the woman…the one they called the Dragon. According to Levi and Casey, she looked a great deal like Victoria—like a sister. That Lucas had had an affair with the woman made it hard for Victoria to breathe.

But that was in the past. Thirty years ago. Victoria had no right to feel jealousy about that time. If this woman was Keaton’s mother, as suggested from the results of Levi and Casey’s investigation, she clearly had no motherly feelings for her son. That part of the intelligence—the biological connection—had not been corroborated, so it was best not to speculate. Bottom line, the Dragon was an enemy to Keaton and, it seemed, to Lucas.

The idea made no sense. Why wait all these years to strike? Of course, she may have only just located Keaton. Perhaps thanks to Victoria and Lucas trolling his history. As much as she wanted the truth in order to assess any threat from Keaton, Victoria genuinely hoped she and Lucas had not triggered this tragedy.

“This has nothing to do with anything you did.”

Her husband had read her mind. The tension banded around her chest eased the slightest bit. “How can you be so sure?” She had sent Levi down to Mexico. Keaton had stirred her suspicions and she’d reacted. Dear God, what had they done?

“This one is on me,” Lucas said quietly. “You need to understand that. You have no part in that world.”

The question Victoria had wanted to ask for the past twenty-four hours pressed against her skull. She needed to know. But did she have a right to know? “Are you certain I had no part in what happened?” She held her breath. The woman looked like Victoria, after all. Had that been the reason Lucas had turned to her all those years ago?

Two, then three beats of silence passed. Lucas reached for her hand. “Let’s not do this to ourselves until we have the facts. Whatever is happening may be about Keaton only. The ordeal in Mexico may have been a way to smoke him out once our connection to him was established.” Lucas exhaled a big breath. “The fact is, we can’t rule out or confirm anything yet.”

Victoria ordered herself to breathe. Lucas had assumed her question was about the current situation. In time they would need to talk about her other question, the one she really needed to ask. But that would have to wait.

This puzzle had to be pieced together very carefully, one fragment at a time. Far too much was at stake to go about this any other way.

THE BROWNSTONE STILL smoldered when they arrived on the block. Jim waited for them just outside the perimeter of the crime scene. The cold filtered right through the thick sweater Victoria had chosen. She hugged her arms around herself and hoped for good news about Keaton and Maggie.

“Still no word on victims,” Jim said as they approached. “I called Maggie’s home number as well as the coffee shop and there’s no answer. Keaton isn’t answering his cell and his car is parked in the alley.” Jim jerked his head toward the brownstone. “It’ll be hours before we know the probable cause of the explosion and if there are victims.”