Bad Wedding (Billionaire's Club Book 9) Read online

  And now, Jackson’s cell was ringing.

  He glanced at Dan, who looked to the agent next to him with furious dark eyes and an expression that said he was going to kill whoever was responsible. “Ready for the trace?” The man nodded. “Okay,” Dan said turning back to Jackson. “Answer, but on speaker.”

  Jackson swiped his finger across the screen, hit speakerphone. “Hello?”

  A voice heavy with a Russian accent said, “Point Bonita Lighthouse. Midnight. Bring the hard drives currently in KTS’s possession.”

  “Where are Molly and Laila?” he asked. “I need to hear that they’re—”

  Click.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, tossing the phone onto the desk. “Fucking hell.”

  “It’s clearly trap,” the pissed off man at Dan’s side spat.

  “Yeah, Ryker,” Dan said. “I know.” He glanced at his watch. “But we have three hours. We need to get the drives here, so we have something to negotiate with. Daniel?” He turned, nodded at the other agent. “Can you call headquarters? Tell them that we need some leeway.” He glanced at Jackson. “If you work fast, can you make them look like the program? Something that looks real enough that we can hand over for the switch? If we use dummy drives to get Molly and Laila out—”

  Look, Jackson got it.

  He’d been staying mostly to the sidelines for the majority of this investigation, letting the agents lead the way since that was their expertise.

  But this?

  No. No more.

  “Absolutely fucking not,” he snapped. “I’m not putting the woman I love at risk just because some politician with something to hide might get outed from my program. I’ve sat back for too long, letting you guys drive this, but I’m done.” He shoved to his feet. “They can have the fucking program, can use it to glean whatever fucking personal information—porn habits, racist comments, search habits—they want. I don’t give a shit any longer.” He slapped his hands on the desk. “Because I’m done risking Molly’s life for this. I’m done risking my own life and everyone else’s. Is it the most noble thing in the world to turn it over? No. But no longer will I give up everything important to me for a program that someone else is going to make in a few years anyway.”

  Dan stared at him, eyes intense pools of deep blue.

  Then he turned and nodded at Daniel. “Make the call. Get the drives here.”

  Daniel nodded and left.

  Dan waited until the door shut then came over and clapped Jackson on the shoulder. “I promise that you’re done having to give things up.” A beat. “Nice speech by the way.”

  Then before Jackson could ask Dan what in the fuck he meant by that, the agent began talking.

  And suddenly, a hell of a lot more pieces fell into place.

  Less than an hour later, the drives were in the back of an SUV, Jackson was sandwiched by a pair of muscled military guys, and they were heading to the lighthouse at Point Bonita.

  This time he wasn’t going to sacrifice to get Molly back.

  He was going to fight for her.

  Until his last breath.

  Twenty-Three

  Molly

  She woke to someone nudging her hard in the side.

  To someone hissing in her ear.

  “Molly! Wake up, now!”

  Boulders were attached to her eyelids, but she managed to wrench them open, to see that she and Laila were . . . somewhere.

  She sniffed and inhaled salt. Looked around and saw trees and dirt and darkness barely punctuated by moonlight. Listened and could hear waves crashing at a distance.

  Were they near the ocean?

  “Molly.”

  She blinked, focused on the someone in front of her. On Laila in front of her, arms bound, eye swelling, and normally contained blond ponytail scattered to hell and back.

  “Laila,” she whispered, instinctively keeping her voice low in volume to match the other woman’s. “Where are we?”

  A shake of her head. “No time. The guards have finally gone. I need out of these restraints.”

  Molly glanced at the zip ties that were wrapped around Laila’s wrists, her arms pulled tightly behind her back. Her own wrists were free, but that probably had more to do with her not posing a threat.

  Too bad there weren’t any sheet pans around.

  “Is there a trick to getting them off?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” Laila said, her teeth flashing in the dim light. “A knife.”

  Molly shifted to her knees. “Well, I don’t happen to have one of those.”

  Another flash of white teeth. “Well, I do. Reach into my bra, but carefully. There’s one sewn into the band.”

  “Sewn in?”

  “You never know when it might come in handy.” Laila gave a small shrug. “And it’s usually missed because the people searching are too focused on other things. Here,” she added when Molly didn’t move, just stared at her incredulously. “Under my shirt on this side.”

  “Got it,” Molly said.

  “Be careful,” Laila told her, “I can feel that it’s come loose of the sheath.”

  Nodding, she put her hands under the T-shirt and moving up to the band of Laila’s bra then sliding between the fabric and her skin, trying to find the knife without stabbing herself or feeling Laila up.

  She didn’t succeed on either effort.

  “Ouch!” she muttered, feeling the tip dig into her finger then carefully shifting back and working at the other end. “How are you able to move without stabbing yourself?”

  “Lots of practice,” Laila quipped. “Though usually it stays in the sheath.”

  “I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of females in your can’t-tell-you-without-killing-you entity,” she said, running her finger carefully along the edge of the knife.

  “Not so much.”

  “Well, tell whoever it is that designed this thing to go back to the drawing board,” she muttered. “This could kill you.”

  “In fairness, I’m not usually in this particular position when I’m trying to retrieve it.”

  “In fairness, I don’t think they’re all that familiar with the inner workings of the female bra.”

  Laila snorted. “I think they’re probably more familiar than either of us.”

  Molly froze then thought of the muscled badasses she’d seen over the last week, “Okay, fine. You’re probably right.”

  “What a sad thing to be right about.”

  Molly snorted then, “Got it!” She tugged at the handle, feeling it come loose of whatever string or casing it had gotten stuck on. “I keep thinking someone is going to step out of the trees and call ‘Cut!’ at any time,” she said, carefully sliding the blade from beneath Laila’s bra and T-shirt. “Then ask me to do it again, only with more fondling.”

  “Not sure that’s possible,” Laila said.

  “Hilarious.” She held up the blade, thin and slender, but also scarily sharp, as her bleeding finger could attest. “How should I do this?” Last thing she wanted was to cut Laila.

  “Just slip it in and tug,” Laila said.

  Molly blurted, “That’s what he said.”

  Then froze and her gaze met Laila’s, smiles breaking out on their faces. “I didn’t think I’d be the type of person who’d be making jokes when I’m about to die,” Molly said, shifting around and doing as Laila instructed—shoving the blade in the gap and yanking it toward her. It took a surprising amount of force to cut through the tie, and she suspected Laila’s wrists didn’t come out of the endeavor unscathed.

  She didn’t complain though, didn’t do anything other than spin, take the knife from Molly’s hands, and say, “You’re not going to die. That’s the first thing you need to remember. Second,” she said. “Laughter is a way to cope with stressful situations. Keep it so you can freak out later instead of now.”

  Molly nodded, sucked in a breath. “Okay. Pretend to be a badass now. Cry later.”

  A punch to her shoulder. “Exactly.
” Laila shimmied and pulled the knife’s sheath from her bra, covered the blade, and then stuck it in the back of her pants. “Ready?” she asked.

  “For what?” Molly was blinking, stunned at how fast Laila had moved.

  “For your first lesson in badassery.”

  And then she showed Molly how to launch herself over the cliff.

  Twenty-Four

  Jackson

  “Doesn’t make any sense,” Daniel muttered as they all piled out of the SUV. “Why would they knowingly corner themselves?”

  They had pulled into the parking lot, and the lighthouse was a short hike ahead of them.

  A short dead-end hike.

  “Because they’re not planning on being cornered,” Ryker muttered. “It’s a trap, dude.”

  “Yeah,” Dan agreed, checking the straps on his backpack. “They want the drives. The rest of us are collateral.” He glanced at Jackson. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  “Yup.” Jackson adjusted the bulletproof vest he wore, the one he was all too aware didn’t protect his head in the least, and tried to summon up some of the same confidence these guys had when he didn’t have a gun . . . not that having a gun would mean anything, since he had no clue how to use one.

  But he digressed.

  Because they had a half-mile hike ahead of them, one that would be easy on a normal day, but one that seemed daunting in the dark, especially when he was recovering from a bullet wound.

  Jackson didn’t say any of that.

  Instead, when Dan said, “Fifteen minutes. Let hit it,” he followed the other man who followed Daniel, and was trailed by Ryker.

  Quiet.

  It was very quiet as they walked.

  Well, they were quiet, not making any noise as they moved, not the crunching of rocks or a stick being broken beneath their boots, not a muttered curse as they tripped over a bump in the path.

  Nope. All the noise came from Jackson.

  And knowing that, he tried to walk carefully and silently . . . but he just didn’t have the skill.

  He was also slowing them down, not just because of his injury but because these men could move.

  Post-bullet Jackson wasn’t currently in the best shape of his life.

  But then, his ineptitudes turned out to be a good thing. Because the path narrowed and turned a corner, a metal bridge seeming to spring up out of nowhere as it spanned a huge gulf below them.

  Shouting erupted. Shouting in Russian.

  Flashlights flicked on, bouncing through the dark in the distance and then closer.

  Footsteps pounded along the metal bridge.

  Before Jackson could open his mouth to ask what they should do, he was yanked back and to the side, Ryker moving in front of him. “Down,” he hissed, and Jackson didn’t hesitate, didn’t question the order. He hit the dirt, wincing when his stitches protested. “Stay,” Ryker snapped.

  Jackson stayed.

  The footsteps pounded closer then closer then . . . Dan made a gesture with his hand and Daniel moved. He grabbed the first man that came over the bridge, wrestling him to the ground while Dan took the next, and then Ryker took the third. They were silent, the three men between him and the mafia as they silently immobilized the figures sprinting over the bridge.

  Then he felt something hit his shoulder. Hard.

  But not where the guys were focused. Not in front of them.

  It came from beneath them.

  He twisted, felt his eyes go wide, and had to bite back a curse. Because beneath the bridge, clinging to the edge of the craggy cliffside were Molly and Laila, the latter with a knife clutched between her teeth.

  Jackson didn’t think.

  He moved, shimmying forward and reaching over the edge. He grabbed Molly’s arm, the back of her pants, and yanked her up next to him on level ground, but when he turned to help Laila, he saw she was already up, hustling toward the group of men, joining the fray with a sharp word to Dan.

  Ryker froze for a heartbeat, his hands around the neck of one of the men who’d come over the bridge, then he moved, tearing a gun out of another one’s hands, as Laila slipped between them.

  The pop-pop of silenced gunfire.

  Flashlights shining, blinding him for long moments before his eyes adjusted again.

  Scuffling on the path.

  The sound of fists meeting flesh.

  But the entire fight was quieter than he would have expected, certainly quieter than a fight scene in any action movie he’d ever watched.

  And then it was over.

  A line of bodies on the ground. Laila, Ryker, Daniel, and Dan standing over them.

  “Any more?” Dan asked Laila.

  “Not sure,” she said. “Unconscious until ten minutes ago.”

  “You climbed a fucking cliffside when you were unconscious?” Ryker snapped.

  Laila rolled her eyes. “I know you’ll reconsider the logic of your words later,” she muttered. “For now—”

  If Jackson never saw another circular, red light for the rest of his life, it would be too soon. But this dot wasn’t on Laila or Molly or Daniel or even on Ryker. It was on Dan, squarely in the center of his chest.

  He glanced down, cursed.

  Footsteps coming over the bridge. The light drifting up from the bulletproof vest, centering on Dan’s forehead as Maksim emerged from the shadows. He stopped out of reach and his gaze slipped from Dan and the group of agents, over to Jackson, who tucked Molly behind him.

  “I’ll take the hard drives now.”

  He knew.

  Maksim somehow knew that none of the badasses had the drives. He knew they were in the backpack that Jackson was carrying.

  “Why do you want the hard drives so badly?” Laila asked, attempting to draw his attention, but Maksim didn’t shift his focus from Jackson . . . or move his gun from Dan’s head.

  “How fast can you duck, Agent Plantain?”

  Dan’s spine went stiff.

  “Also,” Maksim said. “I don’t give a shit about the program that fucking pain in the ass made.” His word hardened. “I want those fucking hard drives.”

  “What’s on them that’s so important?” Laila asked.

  Maksim smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. This was laced with cruelty, anger, and . . . satisfaction. His eyes flicked between the agents. “Well, aside from it having information that is critical to Alexei’s innocence—”

  “Read: there is blackmail material on someone in Spain that will get him out,” Laila muttered.

  Maksim’s expression shifted, more satisfaction creeping in. “I think that is what you Americans would call splitting hairs.” He shifted his gun, moving it from Dan over to Molly. “I was going to only wound her before,” he said to Jackson. “Just to motivate you to come to the right conclusion and hand over what our money bought.”

  “I returned the investment,” Jackson said. “Once I figured out what you wanted, I gave it all back.”

  “But you couldn’t return the investment of our time.” He sighed, shaking his head. “You Americans always want and want, but never are willing to give. Although, perhaps that isn’t fair. I have found one individual here who is—”

  Daniel was going to move.

  Jackson didn’t stop to process how he knew that. Instead, he watched in horror.

  Daniel yanked Laila’s knife from her hand and threw it. The blade flew through the air and . . . struck home, cutting off Maksim mid-sentence. His body crumpled, collapsing to the metal frame of the bridge.

  “What the fuck was that?” Dan spun, grabbing Daniel’s vest and shaking him violently. “We had him. We fucking had him—”

  Laila got in his face, followed by Ryker, and the conversation got heated.

  Daniel shoved them away, turned to Jackson. “Give them to me,” he snapped. “Now.”

  “Daniel.” Laila’s tone was devastated. “No.”

  But the man who had stopped just a few feet away, didn’t react, didn’t seem to care that while
her knife was in Maksim’s chest, Daniel might as well have stabbed it directly into Laila’s heart. “Hand it over.”

  Jackson felt a tug on the backpack and let his shoulders relax, his arms to fall so that Molly could slip it free. Fine. Daniel could have it.

  If it meant they would all be safe then—

  Molly stepped to the side, holding the backpack, and drawing Daniel’s focus. He took a step toward them, hand extended, and . . . Molly launched the backpack over the cliff.

  “No—”

  The sentence cut off abruptly as Daniel was momentarily detained by Ryker, but then he was free and he was running—not toward the parking lot, but over the bridge.

  His footsteps clambered across the metal, followed by Dan, Ryker, and Laila’s as they gave chase.

  But Jackson couldn’t focus on that, couldn’t take more time to think, to process the roar of a boat’s motor as it came to life and then faded away. Instead, he just needed to feel and react and live without walls between him and the rest of the world. He spun, took Molly into his arms, and hugged her tightly.

  “It’s over,” Dan said, when he came back, Daniel conspicuously absent. “For you, it’s finally over.”

  And for the first time in four years, Jackson knew that when the other man said those words, it was the truth.

  Just as he believed Dan when he added, Laila and Ryker coming up behind them, “For us, this is just beginning.”

  Twenty-Five

  Molly, A Week Later

  “How are we just supposed to go back to real life when we’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing commando?” she asked Jackson, stepping between his legs as he sat in “his” stool in the bakery’s kitchen.

  “Easy,” he said, slipping his arms around her. “Because we weren’t actually the commandos.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “But, I did climb a cliff in the dark of night, after being drugged with a poison dart—”

  “Don’t remind me.” Jackson shuddered.

  “I also finally got to put my sheet pan throwing skills to good use.”

  He grinned. “True. Who would have thought that all those years of throwing things at my head would be useful?”