Chapter Ten – Zane
Something was wrong.
I could sense it in the air, something hanging over me. It was like the world was holding its breath and waiting for something to happen. In the room next door, Chelsea had just finished taking a shower. She had insisted on washing herself after being locked up in that room for so long, and after what we had done the night before, I figured it was the least I could do for her.
But I was keeping a close watch on the door, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with breaking out. There was no way she could have used the window to escape. It would have been a ten-story drop straight down, and besides...
When I had woken up this morning, I had realized that I’d left the door open. Unlocked. I wasn’t sure if she had noticed it or not. If she had, she had decided not to take the chance to run from here, and that was... a lot for me to wrap my head around. I would have guessed that she would flee the moment she got the chance, but she hadn’t. No, I had woken up beside her, her body just a few inches from mine. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I had come to next to another person like that, but it felt like a lifetime.
It had spooked me enough that I’d taken my leave the second I had woken up. I could tell she wanted to talk about what had happened, but there was no way I could do that. I had never been the kind of guy to sit around and talk about my feelings, not a chance in hell, and the last thing I needed was to complicate this by letting myself get drawn into something more. What had happened last night, it was nothing more than a mistake. I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Or get in the way of what I knew I needed to do to take revenge for my brother.
The water turned off next door, and I heard Chelsea humming quietly to herself as she got dressed. My mind drifted to what she must have looked like naked, the water dripping from her soft body, her red hair a mess around her delicate features...
All of a sudden, a noise caught my attention. My ears perked up at once, head snapping around toward the door. There was no reason for noise here, not in this apartment block. Nobody else lived here. It could have been just a creak of the house, some old pipes settling, but something told me there was more to it than that.
Something told me, after the call I had made nearly ten days ago, that they were here. Could have just been my paranoia, but my instincts rarely let me down.
I rose to my feet, moving toward the door and picking my way across the floorboards toward it. Pressing my eye to the grimy keyhole, I peered out into the stairwell beyond. For a moment, I thought I was just being crazy. There was nobody out there, no sign of movement. Nothing. Just as I was about to straighten up, though, I heard it again, the creak of footsteps on a floorboard, unmistakable. My shoulders raised to my ears, and I took a step back, reaching for the flick knife in my pocket.
My instincts were already kicking in, warning me to be ready to fight. But this was what I wanted, wasn’t it? A confrontation with the Dogs, a chance to lay them out and make them pay? I glanced back toward the bathroom, where Chelsea had no idea any of this was happening. But I’ll lose her. I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t ready to let her slip through my fingers, not yet.
And if I had to fight these fuckers off to do it? I would.
The door to the apartment burst off its hinges, and within seconds, chaos exploded into the air. The Dogs were here. I didn’t know how, but they had found me.
And they were going to do whatever they could to take Chelsea from me.
A man lunged toward me. A decade or so my senior, he threw himself in my direction, fists spinning through the air, a glancing blow landing on my jaw and sending a sparkle of stars flashing through my vision. I gripped on to the knife tight and drew it back, thrusting it rapidly into his gut. He staggered backwards, pressing his hand to the wounds that were swiftly filling with blood through his leather jacket, and he dropped to the ground with a gurgling grunt.
Two more men entered, these guys a little younger—and behind me, the door to the bathroom opened.
“Don’t fucking move, Chelsea!” I warned her. I knew she would try to run to them, but I was blocking her path right now, the bloody blade of my knife glinting in the light. The younger of the two men moved into me, pulling his own knife from his pocket, a battered sheath of metal with a dangerous serrated edge and teeth that looked ready to tear into my flesh. I locked eyes with him, refusing to let him see the fear on my face as he drew the knife back and took his shot at me.
I parried the blow, lifting my arm and catching the flat of the blade on my wrist. It crashed out of his hand and onto the floor, and before he could drop down to grab it, I kicked it away, sending it skittering into a hole in the floorboard.
Beside me, I could hear Chelsea breathing hard. I kept waiting for her to bolt past me and flee, but she didn’t. Didn’t she want to get away from me?
With no weapon, the man who’d been coming at me raised his fists and swung for me. I ducked with ease and rushed him, slamming my head into his chest and driving him back out the door and down the stairs. He tumbled backwards, letting out a helpless cry as he crashed down and came to a halt on the landing, thumping down painfully onto his back.
I swiveled back to the apartment, where the one remaining intruder was trying to coax Chelsea into moving.
“Chelsea, come on!” he yelled at her, but she seemed frozen to the spot, not moving an inch, her eyes wide and fixed, to my surprise, on me. I wasn’t going to waste time trying to make sense of it. I sprinted back in, catching the guy who had been calling to her by the waist and lifting him from his feet. He struggled against my grip, but I drove the knife into his side, feeling it pierce the leather of his jacket and his tee underneath. Not a lethal blow, but enough to stop him in his tracks.
I slammed him into the ground, a spray of blood spattering out from his fresh wound, beside the first attacker, who was mumbling something to himself on the floor. His wounds were a little more serious but nothing that couldn’t be patched up. Not that I cared.
“Chelsea, with me, now,” I ordered her as I wiped off the blood on my jeans and grabbed my jacket hanging over the chair beside us. She was still just standing there, staring at the chaos surrounding us, but I didn’t have time for that. These three, they might just have been the scouts, and when the rest of the Dogs realized that they hadn’t emerged with Chelsea in tow already, they would send in the army.
Chelsea’s gaze flicked to the knife in my hand. I wasn’t brandishing it at her, but I guessed, right now, I didn’t have to. She got the point. She took a step toward me, and I grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door, forcing her to step over the forms of her Dog allies as we went. She stumbled a little but didn’t stop. I kept waiting for her to fight me, to dig her heels in and tell me she wasn’t going anywhere, but whether it was the shock or the fear that kept her moving, she stayed right behind me.
And I refused to question it. I led her outside and down a fire escape that ran down the back of the building so we wouldn’t run into anyone who might try and get in our way. I had no doubt that there would be other Dogs here soon when they realized that their three-person mission hadn’t gone to plan. I didn’t even know how they had managed to track me down. The call, maybe? I thought they wouldn’t have been able to track it, but maybe I wasn’t quite as smart as I thought I was.
My car was parked around the back of the building, and I pulled open the door and gestured for her to get inside. She slipped into the front seat, peering up at me with those giant green eyes, her face filled with a strange mix of emotion I couldn’t make sense of.
“What... what just happened?” she breathed to me as I climbed into the car beside her.
“It doesn’t matter,” I shot back. “You’re with me. I’ve got you. You’re—”
I almost told her she was safe, but I realized just how laughable that would have sounded the second before it came out of my mouth. I gritted my teeth and put my foot down, eyes darting this way and that as I watched for anyone who might have been hot on our tails.
There was only one place I could think of to go, one place in the whole of Atwood that I had access to right now. I didn’t exactly want to set foot in there, let alone bring her there, but I didn’t see what choice I had.
“Where are we going?” Chelsea whispered to me, her delicate features written with doubt as we drove.
“We’re going to my brother’s place,” I told her as the road stretched out in front of us.