Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE DEVIL
Khloe hit Gabriel hard enough to send both of them crashing against the leather booth.
The gunman fired.
The bullet tore through the upholstery where Gabriel’s head had been less than a second earlier.
“Down!” Khloe shouted.
Gabriel didn't need the instruction twice.
He rolled onto his side, drew his pistol, and fired twice toward the attacker. The man staggered backward and disappeared behind an overturned table.
Khloe was already moving.
She grabbed Gabriel’s wrist and pulled him beneath the booth's heavy wooden frame as another burst of gunfire ripped through the restaurant.
“What the hell are you doing?” he growled.
“Keeping you alive.”
“I'm capable of doing that myself.”
“Apparently not tonight.”
For one astonishing second, Gabriel stared at her.
Then he almost smiled.
Across the dining room, Vincent shouted into his radio.
“Two men at the entrance! Another one near the kitchen! We need the east exit secured!”
Gabriel looked toward Khloe.
“Can you shoot?”
She hesitated.
That hesitation told him more than her answer could have.
“Not anymore,” she said.
It was a lie.
She had been trained to shoot before she was old enough to drive.
But the last time she had held a firearm, her father's blood had been on her hands.
Gabriel shoved a pistol toward her.
“Then stay behind me.”
Khloe ignored the weapon and reached beneath the booth.
She pulled a fallen metal serving tray from the floor.
When an attacker approached their hiding place, she struck his wrist with the tray, sending his pistol skidding across the tiles. She followed with a sharp blow to his throat and drove him backward into the table.
Gabriel watched her work.
There was nothing accidental about her movements.
Nothing clumsy.
Nothing ordinary.
Within three minutes, Vincent and two security men had forced the remaining attackers toward the entrance.
One escaped into the rain.
Another lay unconscious near the bar.
The third was dead.
The restaurant smelled of gunpowder, spilled wine, and burning electrical wiring.
Gabriel rose slowly.
His suit was torn at the shoulder.
A thin line of blood ran from his forehead.
Khloe stood several feet away, breathing hard.
He approached her.
“Sarah.”
She said nothing.
“Look at me.”
She raised her eyes.
For the first time that evening, she forgot to look frightened.
Gabriel studied her face.
“You just saved my life.”
“I reacted.”
“You disarmed an armed man with a serving tray.”
“He was careless.”
“And you think I'm stupid?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I know exactly what I saw.”
Vincent approached, holding a small black object between two fingers.
“Boss. Found this outside the kitchen.”
It was a tracking device.
Khloe's stomach tightened.
Vincent examined it.
“Looks like military-grade equipment. Someone planted it beneath the restaurant's delivery van.”
Gabriel's expression changed.
“Get the staff out. Nobody leaves without being checked.”
Khloe took a step backward.
She needed to disappear before they searched her belongings.
But Gabriel noticed.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You're coming with me.”
“I don't work for you.”
“You don't have a job anymore. I bought the restaurant.”
Khloe stared at him.
“You bought it?”
“Twenty minutes ago. The previous owner owed me money.”
“That doesn't mean you own me.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“No. It means I can afford to keep asking questions until I get answers.”
Vincent received a message on his phone.
He read it, then looked at Gabriel.
“Boss, we identified the escape vehicle. Registered to a company connected to Arthur Caldwell.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Find him.”
Vincent left.
Khloe reached for her apron.
Gabriel caught her wrist, not hard enough to hurt but firmly enough to stop her.
“Your name isn't Sarah.”
Her pulse hammered.
“You have the wrong woman.”
“Perhaps. But the woman I'm looking for has a fifty-thousand-dollar bounty on her head. A woman who disappeared from Chicago eight months ago.”
Khloe went completely still.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
“Khloe Harper.”
The name struck her like a physical blow.
Nobody in New York was supposed to know it.
She pulled her wrist free.
“Don't say that name again.”
“Why?”
“Because the last people who said it didn't live long enough to regret it.”
Gabriel studied her for a long moment.
Then he said something that made her blood turn cold.
“Your father called me three days before he died.”
Khloe's lips parted.
“My father is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then you know he never called you.”
Gabriel reached into his jacket and produced a folded photograph.
It showed an older man standing outside a Chicago hotel.
Khloe recognized him instantly.
Her father.
But the photograph had been taken two weeks after the date of his supposed death.
And standing beside him was Gabriel Rossi.
Khloe looked up, her voice barely audible.
“Tell me why you were standing next to my dead father.”
Gabriel's expression hardened.
“Because he was trying to warn me about you.”
Then he turned the photograph over.
May you like
On the back, written in her father's unmistakable handwriting, were six words:
THE GIRL DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SHE CARRIES.
