Page 75 of Stealthy Seduction
“Steele,” Dante’s voice was tight with tension. “Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it now. This bastard’s working himself up to something, and I don’t think it’s going to end well for Izzy.”
Time seemed to slow as Steele watched Cipher raise the pistol, pointing it directly at the woman he loved. Through his scope, he saw Izzy’s face clearly—frightened but defiant, meeting her captor’s gaze without flinching.
She was magnificent.
Even facing death, she refused to give this monster the satisfaction of seeing her break.
“I love you too,” Steele whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear him but needing to say the words anyway.
* * * * *
“You could have built something beautiful.” Izzy’s voice carried the weight of genuine conviction despite facing a man holding a gun he fully intended to use on her.
“With your intelligence, your resources? Your obvious ability to coordinate complex operations? You could have created a foundation in your mother’s name, funded medical clinics all over the world. Saved thousands of lives. Instead, you chose destruction.”
Daniel paused in his pacing, turning to face her with that unsettling smile that never reached his cold eyes. “How wonderfully naive. You think the world runs on good intentions and charity galas? My mother spent her entire career trying to build something beautiful, trying to save lives, and where did it get her? A bomb delivered to her in a crate of supplies.”
“So you became exactly like them,” Izzy pressed.
Every inch of her spine blazed with pain. And her hands…she’d stopped feeling them half an hour ago.
“You became someone who delivers death to innocent people. How does that honor her memory? How does killing Drysdale—who was only doing his job—in cold blood on a crowded street or terrorizing families in Times Square bring your mother back or make the world safer?”
“It doesn’t bring her back.” His voice took on a philosophical tone that was somehow more chilling than outright rage. “But it creates consequences. It ensures that the people who fail in their duties, who make choices that cost innocent lives, understand that actions have prices. The government calls it acceptable losses. I simply apply the same logic on a more…personalscale.”
Izzy’s stomach turned, hot with nausea, but she recognized the twisted logic that allowed him to sleep at night. She didn’t just want to keep up her end of the philosophical argument—her life depended on it.
Each minute that Cipher was arguing with her, he wasn’t lifting that gun and pulling the trigger.
“The difference is accountability.” She tried not to glance down at the weapon in his grip. Or let her lip tremble with tears she was barely holding at bay. “The military has rules they have to follow. They try not to kill innocent people when they can help it. You’re just a man with a grudge playing God with other people’s lives.”
Daniel’s expression darkened, and for a moment she thought she’d pushed too far. But then his phone buzzed against the metal chair where he left it, the electronic chime seeming to echo off the container walls.
He twisted his head and glanced at the screen. Then that frigid smile returned, wider than before—the expression of someone who’d just received the news he’d been waiting for.
“Well”—he picked up the device with obvious satisfaction—”it looks like we’re about to have company after all. Your boyfriend really is as predictable as I hoped he’d be.”
Terror flooded into her body, taking over every corner and making it impossible to breathe. Hudson was here. Oh, god. He could save her.
Or lose his life trying.
That was the opposite of what she wanted.
With a smile that made her think of horror-movie clowns and robots, he placed the phone on her knee, within her reach. The weight of it, knowing who just touched it, made her stomach pitch.
She lifted her stare and fixed it on his face. “What do you expect me to do with that?”
“Call your boyfriend.”
Panic swept over her like a cold tide. “How do you expect me to dial with my hands tied?”
“I gave you enough use of your hands. Call him.”
“I don’t know the number.” Which was the truth. “Who remembers numbers anymore?”
He swung the gun up and aimed between her eyes. “Remember the number,” he bit off.
Her mind reeled. Nausea knotted in the pit of her stomach. If everything came down to her ability to recall a number she’d never even glanced at when she called Hudson, they were all goners.
