Take It Down

The grumble in his voice belied the rush of adrenaline flowing through his veins…the first zing of electricity he’d felt in months. He’d missed it, this flurry of activity that meant he had a purpose.

“The staff is already implementing fire procedures. I’ll let you know when all guests are accounted for,” Marcy said.

“Let me know if anyone finds sign of a fire while you’re at it.”

Marcy chuckled.

Slamming down the receiver, Zane began to furiously type in commands, systematically scanning each zone, starting with five and seven before backtracking to one.

He didn’t get much further.

Halfway through scanning the fourth-floor hallway, he watched a woman disappear inside one of the guest rooms.

“Idiot,” he muttered under his breath. She’d obviously heard the fire alarm. Hell, it was practically spiking into his brain and making his eyes throb. God only knew what she thought was more important than meeting a fiery death.

He was halfway out of his chair when she reappeared…and went to the door immediately to the right. Ten seconds flat and she was inside that room, too. Because the main guest rooms were housed in the old French plantation house, they didn’t have modern keycard technology.

He’d argued with Simon about the need to upgrade to that sort of system but the other man had grumbled something about old-world charm and authenticity, tacking on a statement about cost and headaches. Zane had managed to talk Simon into adding security cards to the restricted areas and the executive suite on the top floor, but that was as far as he’d been able to push. He wondered if the man would listen to him now.

He watched the woman on his screen appear and disappear one more time. Alarm bells—the ones inside his head—started clanging. Something wasn’t right.

Picking up the two-way radio beside him, he yelled into it for Tom. “Get your ass up to the Crow’s Nest,” he said, using their nickname for the security hub. “I’ve got a situation, but I want eyes up here in thirty seconds.”

A crackle of static floated up from his hand as he raced into the stairwell. “But …”

“Now,” he yelled again. Whatever the other man was doing could wait.

Zane’s mind raced just as fast as his feet, putting the pieces together as he flew down the two flights of stairs.

The fire alarm had been a diversion.

He burst through the door just in time to see the red-haired woman slip into yet another room. He’d barely gotten three doors down when she reappeared.

“Hey! Stop! What are you doing?”

Zane reached automatically to his hip, searching for a piece of his past that was no longer there. He hadn’t felt the need for a sidearm in almost two years.

His body tensed for the chase. He expected her to run—they always did. Instead, she stopped in her tracks and turned to face him.

“Thank God.” He could see tears glistening in the corners of her eyes as she took a step toward him. Warily, he slowed.

“What are you doing?”

“I was looking for my room, but I couldn’t find it and the alarm is making my head hurt and I started to panic and …”

Her rambling words trailed off as one of those tears slipped free and rolled down her cheek.

He might have bought it, if he hadn’t seen her go in and out of several locked rooms with his own eyes. With a speed that would make his trainer at The Farm weep.

He went to step behind her and she spun, her eyes going wide and her mouth opening in a silent protest.

“Turn around.”

“Wait. Why? What are you doing?”

He took out his badge—nothing like the one he used to carry, this one was white plastic with his picture and title as head of security for the resort in big, bold letters—and held it in her face so she could get a good look at it. “Turn around before I put your face in the wall.”

Reluctantly, she took a half step sideways, presenting him with just enough of her arm to grasp and spin. Snatching the other one, he had her wrists locked into one hand and his other pressed between her shoulder blades, just enough to keep her uncomfortable and cooperative but not enough to damage.

“Now, we’re going to take a little walk. And you’re going to tell me exactly what you stole from those rooms—” he couldn’t help himself, he really wanted to know her secret “—and how you got in and out so fast.”

“I swear, I didn’t steal anything.”

“We’ll see about that.”

WELL, SHE OBVIOUSLY HADN’T gotten away clean. Giselle Monroe wanted desperately to rub the throbbing pain centered right between her eye sockets, but she couldn’t. Her wrists were currently locked together behind her and tethered to a rickety chair. Her mind flashed back to the one other time she’d felt the cold steel of handcuffs against her skin. Not her finest hour.

She’d been sixteen, rebelling against her overprotective father and brothers—all three of whom were cops—and had been caught, breaking into the school gymnasium with her friends. They’d honestly been doing it for a lark, nothing else. The fact that the cop hadn’t found any spray paint or drugs or anything else had gone a long way in getting them community service and two weeks suspension instead of a stiffer sentence from the courts and the school.

Well, that and the pull of her family’s name.

For a teenager, community service had been bad enough. When her father had found out she was the one who’d picked the lock, he’d tacked on six months’ house arrest. Sneaking in and out of the house had become a skill she learned for survival during those months.

Her father would be so proud to see how she’d put those old skills to new use. The sarcasm and cold metal cut into her skin, reminding her she was far away from home, with no father or brothers to save her this time. But she wasn’t about to show the tight-jawed giant who’d unceremoniously dumped her here any weakness, especially the fear snaking through her belly.

Okay, so her assessment of him might be a bit unfair, considering the guy was just doing his job, but he’d locked her inside a closet-size room with stale air and the permeating smell of industrial-grade cleaners. And then left her here. Alone.

She had no doubt that she was being watched. She could practically feel his eyes on her. Waiting for her story to crumble.

The beauty was that it wouldn’t.

By now, he’d probably questioned the guests of the rooms she’d been in and discovered that nothing had been taken…because she hadn’t been lying. She hadn’t broken into the rooms because she’d wanted to steal anything, and certainly not from the guests. Recover what was rightfully hers? Absolutely. Steal? She wasn’t a criminal. There was a difference, not that the Wall of Silence was likely to understand that.

The door squeaked open.

Without turning around, she asked, “Are you going to let me out of here?”

“Probably not.”

“Wha—” she squeaked, craning around in the chair as far as the handcuffs at her wrists would let her. “What do you mean ‘probably not’? I didn’t steal anything. You have no right to hold me!”

Elle rattled the metal rings against the wooden slats of the chair, using their noise to punctuate her protests. “The minute you let me out of here, I’m calling my lawyer. I’ll own this place when I’m done.”

Which would actually make her search measurably easier. For a brief moment, she indulged the vision of booting everyone off the island so that she could run from one room to the other until she found the painting of her grandmother that her sleazy ex-boyfriend had stolen from her four years ago.

The piece was far from priceless, at least in art circles. It had been semivaluable. The man who’d painted it, a lover from her grandmother’s own misspent youth, had achieved a moderate amount of success after their time together. The painting had gone up in value somewhat over the years, but the emotion behind it had always meant more to Elle.

The colors were lush. Burgundy, gold, black, green. Her grandmother, a young woman just beginning to taste the world, was looking over her bare shoulder, caught in the act of dropping her robe to the ground. The mischief and passion in her bright gray eyes, so familiar and yet so different, had always called to Elle. Nana had never married the man. In fact, she’d gone on to devote her life to someone else. Very happily, to hear her tell it, although Elle had never met her grandfather. But caught in that one moment of time, there was no mistaking that the young woman her grandmother once was desperately desired the man staring at her with a brush in his hand.