Nelson explained and then added, “You know Chelsea is afraid you’ll replace her with Elizabeth. Chelsea knows how badly you want Elizabeth. And Chelsea seems to think she’s on her way out of your favor.”

  “And like I said, Elizabeth’s not the kind of woman you just keep,” he said. “The reason I like her, the reason I want her, as you put it, is because of her softness, because of her innocence, because of her joy in life. I haven’t laughed or enjoyed an hour as much as I had in the two visits I spent with her. But that’s not something you get to keep forever. Like a butterfly, you can’t put it in glass and expect it to thrive. The reason Elizabeth is the way she is, is because of the freedom she’s been given, because of the ability to thrive in her surroundings. And her heart’s already taken,” he said with a snort. “Not that I really give a shit about her heart because I can’t have it as it’s already taken.”

  “You’re right about her freedom and her joy,” Nelson said gently. “And I’m glad you understand keeping her as a prisoner would break her spirit.”

  “She wouldn’t give in easily to everything I would want. I’d have to take it, and that’s fine in the short-term,” he said, “but look at my life. I could take anything I wanted to. To have something like that offered to me instead, well, that’s the gift. And it’s not my gift.” He shot Nelson a hard look. “Whether you know it or not, it’s your gift. And, for that, I’d shoot you cheerfully, but I think she’d blame me regardless.”

  The blows were instant and hard as the truth hit Nelson. And he realized the truth of King’s words. Taylor had tried to warn Nelson. But what he hadn’t seen was how much he wanted her himself. He ran his fingers through his hair. “The bottom line right now is, she’s gone. She’s missing. And I highly suspect you and your men are responsible.”

  “Not me,” King said. “Although that doesn’t mean one of my men might not have. I’d have his head on a chopping block if he didn’t have a damn good reason though.”

  King looked around, his snake eyes once again assessing the men in the room. Taylor did too. In the back, hiding in the corner, was the man who had come to their hotel room door. Nelson pointed him out. “He’s the one who came to warn us.”

  King turned on him. The guy shot Nelson a hard, hateful look. “Sure, I gave you a warning, and look what you do. You throw me under the bus,” he said in disgust.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a warning, was it? It was a decoy. Because I suspect you and Chelsea had Elizabeth kidnapped. But it would have taken at least one more man.” He turned to look around and found the other man standing in the other corner. He pointed him out. “Chelsea’s other henchman.” He glanced at King to see his face had turned ugly.

  He motioned the men to come forward. Neither one moved. At that King’s face turned a mottled red. He turned to his other men, as if assessing how deep the war would be. The other men were looking from one to the other in confusion.

  A shot rang out.

  King gasped and collapsed into the chair behind him. Two more shots rang out. The two men who stood protectively beside King dropped to the floor.

  Chelsea stepped forward, holding the handgun. She leveled it at two more of King’s men. “You are either on my side, or you’re on his. I don’t give a shit which, but I won’t have you stabbing me in the back after this.”

  The two men stared at her; one man curled his lip. But he didn’t get a chance to utter a word. A bullet hole appeared in the front of his forehead, and he collapsed to the floor.

  The other man held up his hands. “Hey, Chelsea, you know me.”

  “I know you,” she said bitterly. “You’re as much a part of his nightmare as anybody.”

  “Only because we’re all in the same situation,” he protested, an angry note in his voice. “You know we’re all prisoners here. None of us get to have a life of our own. It’s either be his man or be dead.”

  “Well, now it’s be on my side or be dead,” she said bitterly.

  “You’re the one who kidnapped Elizabeth,” Nelson said.

  “Yeah, I did,” she said. “But what you don’t know is that King has her brother.”

  Nelson’s gut stilled as his mind spun to make sense of this nightmare. He could feel Taylor tense behind him. They both had weapons. Neither had been searched when they came in. But that didn’t mean they could get to them before bullets hit them. “Why does he have her brother?”

  “He took him as leverage because he really did want Elizabeth. Do you think I went to all that effort because he was just looking at her? No. I heard him making plans to kidnap her.”

  Nelson turned a hard gaze to King, who was gasping in pain. He’d been gut shot, but he was still conscious and bitter from the looks of it. He went to open a drawer in his desk but a bullet rang out, hitting him in the hand. He cried out.

  “I gave you everything,” she snapped, strolling slowly toward him. “And what did you give me? Nothing. More kicks, more blows, that’s it. I loved you,” she cried out with so much pain in her voice it almost made Nelson wince.

  King stared up at her. “You don’t understand how perfect she is.”

  “And did you hear yourself earlier? How you capture a butterfly and expect it to keep its sweetness and brightness?”

  “I would have given her all the freedom she wanted,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t have been a prisoner.”

  “It’s the only way you could have kept her,” Chelsea wailed. “Can’t you see that?”

  Nelson wondered. Because, of course, that was the only way it would go. So why go to the trouble—unless it was to keep the butterfly for as long as he could. “Why did you kidnap her brother?”

  King raised his gaze. “I would do a trade. Elizabeth for her brother. Elizabeth would have taken the trade easily. My men would have caught her. They were to take her downstairs until I could talk to her. I’d explain the situation. It was up to her to be willingly at my side, happy to be at my side, and I’d let her brother live. But, if she fought me, then she and her brother would die too.”

  Nelson shook his head. “And, of course, then that same bright joy you had found in her that matched that missing piece in your own heart would have died. You know that, and yet, you were still willing to take the chance.”

  “Of course I was,” King said. “I can have everything, but I can’t have the one willing woman I really want. But I thought I could try. I thought, if I could get her to stay with me long enough, I could get her to want to be with me. That she could fall in love with me, and we could have something together.”

  Nelson was shocked to think of somebody in King’s situation softening to the extent he could fall in love. And yet, King shouldn’t be in love with Elizabeth because Nelson himself was in love with Elizabeth. “And me?”

  “You would have taken a bullet in the back of the head somewhere and dropped in the water along with your partner,” King said with a casual tone. “Hell, Chelsea is still likely to do that.”

  “And the reason you didn’t do that right away is because you didn’t want to bring down more of us,” Taylor said in a lazy voice from behind Nelson. “Because you know we’re only two, but, when we go down, a never-ending supply of well-trained military men come and take care of business on our behalf.”

  King glared at him. “Do you think I’m scared of you?”

  “No,” Nelson said. “But I do think you were fucking broken by a woman. Not just the one who has your heart in her hands and doesn’t even know it but the one whose heart you hold in your hands, and you didn’t even know it.”

  Another shot came and slammed into King.

  Nelson turned to face Chelsea. “Is that really what you want to do? Slowly tear him apart, one bullet at a time?” He could see her anger waning. But not enough. “You can still save him, you know?”

  “No,” she whispered. “You don’t understand. There’s no saving King. No matter what I do now, I’m a dead woman.” She gave a bit of a laugh. “Even among my men, there’ll always be a fight to take King’s place. One of these guys will try it.” She raised her gun and shot the man who she’d spoken to earlier.

  Nelson’s breath caught in the back of his throat. He didn’t think things could go any further sideways, but right now she was knocking them all off, like bowling pins in an alleyway. And he knew Taylor was just as aware of the problem. From his count, there were four men left, outside of him and Taylor. Only two of King’s men stood beside Nelson and Taylor, both looking stunned at this turn of events, and there were still Chelsea’s two men. King was almost gone, but it looked like Chelsea was ready to take him down completely.

  Nelson said, “Is that what love is? Just anger and betrayal?”

  She gave him a look that he could barely read, but he could see the pain. He could see the loss and the grief. He realized she really did care, but she also knew she was headed down a one-way street.

  Behind her a door opened. It was so soft, so subtle a movement he wasn’t even sure he’d seen it. It opened just a hair.

  Chelsea kept talking. “You know I can’t trust any of the men in this room.”

  Her two henchmen straightened, and one cried out, “Hey, that’s not fair. We’ve been with you the whole time.”

  She gave him a half smile. “Yeah, because I made it easier on you with King. But, with him gone, what’s to stop you two roosters from thinking you can take over?” She gave a broken cry. “This has been my life as long as I can remember. Nothing but discarded garbage. And I’m so fucking done with that.”

  And, without warning, she turned and shot twice more. The two men beside Nelson and Taylor dropped. Her two henchmen stared at her in shock. She just gave them smiles.

  “Now it’s just the three of us. We don’t have to worry about them coming after us.”

  They took deep breaths, but their gazes never left her.

  Nelson wondered if the group of them—her two henchmen and Taylor and him—could have jumped her. She might have shot one or two of them, but she couldn’t have killed them all.

  She was taking them out with so little regard for life that he knew it didn’t matter what he said; it wouldn’t be enough. He looked at her. “Did you hurt her?”

  “Ask them. They’re the ones who kidnapped her.”

  He shot a hard gaze at the man who had been the decoy, then turned to look at the Chelsea’s second man. The other one shook his head. “I just dumped her downstairs.”

  “And where’s her brother?”

  “He’s downstairs too,” the henchman said. “But he’s getting to be a pain in the ass to look after.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because every eight hours we gave him a bathroom break and water. Other than that, he gets to stay in that lovely room.”

  “I don’t understand why King grabbed him at the beginning. And where did he grab him?”

  “He grabbed him at the bus depot, heading back to the US, not sure what for, but figured he could use him somehow. Before he figured it out, you came to town with Elizabeth.”

  “Her brother was planning to go to ground and to hide until things improved for him,” Chelsea said, her voice broken, haunted. “But you arrived, and so did she. Once King saw, … then met, her, that was it. It was 100 percent down the road for all of us.”

  Chelsea started to cry. She walked over to King, who was bleeding but still staring up at her, hate in his eyes. She reached out and smacked him hard across the face. “Why couldn’t you have been happy with what you had? Why couldn’t you have been happy with me? Why couldn’t I have been enough?”

  King closed his eyes.

  Nelson could see he was close to death.

  “You don’t understand,” King gasped. “When you see something like sunlight, and you reach out and touch it, and you get touched back, it’s … redeeming.” He smiled a smile of sweetness and sunshine. “I may not have held on to her, and maybe nobody should, but I did get to touch her. I did get to feel what it was like, to walk in the sunshine for a moment. And, for that, I’m damn grateful.” And he closed his eyes.

  Chelsea cried out, “No, no, no, no. Please no.”

  “He could still live,” Nelson said, “if we got him some help.”

  Chelsea reached down to touch his neck and shook her head. “No,” she said, “we can’t.” She started to cry in earnest, as she paced, first one way; and then she got angry as she paced the other way; and then she got worried, as she sorted out what her options were.

  Nelson watched as all those emotions tore across her face. “Were all the men in this room?” Nelson asked, helping her come to the right decision. “Are there others outside who will stab you in the back?”

  She stopped and looked at him, and there came that weaselly assessing look. She looked around the room, counted the heads of the dead men in here, and then said, “You’re right. It’s just the two of you”—she pointed to her two henchmen with her gun—“with me.”

  “And we can take over,” one of her henchmen said gently. “It’s not too late for that. Nobody knows. You can take King’s place. We have all the contacts. You know we’ve already supported you every step of the way. Instead of King, it’ll be the Queen as our leader.”

  She looked up and smiled. “You know what? I can almost get behind that.”

  “The difference will be that, instead of taking orders,” Nelson said, “you’d be giving them. Instead of getting beaten, you could order the beatings.”

  “Of course you want to be a little judicious in your orders, unless you want to end up like King,” Taylor said, once again his lazy voice rolling through the room.

  Nelson had always appreciated how he was in control all the time. How he seemed so calm and collected. He was always analyzing everything they’d seen to the bottom line, everywhere.

  She paced back and forth and finally stopped again. She turned and looked at them with a calculating look in her eye. “The thing is, there are witnesses.”

  Nelson’s heart froze. He had to be able to react quickly to whatever happened next.

  Then behind Chelsea the door opened, and a stranger stepped out.

  Taylor was talking again, but Nelson heard none of it. Maybe not a stranger. Nelson looked at the shape of his face, and his heart beat again. Then he saw Elizabeth step out too. And he knew things were about to head south in a big way. If there was one thing that would set Chelsea off, it would be the sight of Elizabeth. Chelsea had tried to kill her once before, without success. But, with Elizabeth right here, right now …

  Nelson stepped forward. “You know what we want. We’ll take our people and leave. “If you want to live here and be the Queen of all you survey, that’s up to you.”

  She gave a hard laugh. “Like I believe you. You don’t really think I’ll listen to your gibberish. You’re just anxious to save your own life.”

  She raised her weapon, lined it up to his heart. “Two witnesses is two witnesses too many.”

  “And what about your henchmen?”

  “They’re witnesses too,” she snared. “But, like they said, they’ve been with me the whole time.”

  He knew he shouldn’t do it, but it was hard not to, and he needed her to believe all things were possible. Not everything would work in her favor. “Maybe,” he said. “But what happens down the road when they hold that over you?”

  She just glared at him, and he knew she already had thought of that. Both men would die too today. Whether they deserved it or not wasn’t Nelson’s job to decide. He could see that both henchmen hadn’t said a word about the people behind her. They wanted her taken down as much as anybody. Nelson took half a step forward.

  She held the gun back up and said, “Watch it.”

  He nodded. “I don’t have any intention of touching you. I want your agreement that I can take my three people away, take them a long way away from you. You never have to see Elizabeth again.”

  Chelsea curled her lip. “She ruined my life. And I’ll see her again.” Her voice was hard; she was almost gleeful, as if looking forward to it. “And I’ll put a bullet right between her eyes.”

  And into the silence afterward came a very soft gasp.

  Nelson clenched his muscles as Chelsea spun and saw Elizabeth and took a shot.

  Nelson jumped Chelsea from the back as Skunk jumped her from the front. Elizabeth hit the floor, and the shots went wild, but Chelsea’s hand kept clenching the trigger, as if spasmodically hitting the bane of her existence, that need to do something to take out the person she hated so much. With Chelsea finally pinned to the floor, the gun kicked out of her hand, she lay here sobbing. But her cries were half in anger and half in fury that she couldn’t accomplish exactly what she wanted.

  Elizabeth picked up the gun and held it out to Taylor.

  He put it into his waistband out of the way. He looked over at Chelsea’s two henchmen and said, “If you ever wanted a chance to restart your life, this is a really good time to get on a bus and disappear. Because we won’t give you a second chance. Just being associated with what went down, you know you’ll do life. I’ve got no bones with what you want to do after this. But you know where my vote is.”

  The men took one look at each other and disappeared out the front door at a hard run.

  “Can you really let them go like that?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Not our problem,” Nelson said. “The local PD can grab them. And probably will too. Whether it’s at the local bus stop or from another henchmen hideaway in town. But, with King dead, and Chelsea having taken out almost his entire conclave, the cops may not worry about these lower-level guys. And often the cops will overlook what the underlings did in order to get the bigger ones. However, the top guy, the King, is dead and Chelsea’s standing in that top position and murdered a half dozen men herself and that’s just now.”

  “I see that.” She stood over Chelsea, who even now showed signs of madness. Elizabeth caught her hand in hers and said, “Calm down. It’s over.”

  Chelsea looked up at her and spat.

  Elizabeth stepped out of the line of fire. “I’m sorry for you,” she said. “You didn’t have a chance right from childhood. And you won’t like jail much either.”