Chapter 6 – Ava Jade #3
“Everyone down on the ground, hands behind your head,” he shouted. “Now!”
His warped image reflected back to me in the old mirror backing on the other side of the counter. Unmistakable eyes, even distorted, but the rest of his face was concealed beneath a black ski mask.
A muted shot hissed in my ear, and I snapped my head up to see he’d fired a round into the kitchen, a silencer on the barrel of his gun. It wasn’t a kill shot, but a warning that had the knife brandishing cook with the Kurt Russell moustache dropping his knife and raising his hands in defeat.
“Any other heroes want to take their chances?” Rook hissed, and I could hear the smile in his words.
The gun pressed back to my temple, and I realized what was happening and had to keep the smile off my face, wear a stricken look of horror instead.
It was a con.
A motherfucking con.
Adrenaline flooded my veins, making my fingers twitch and my breaths come heavy. My face heated, and my vision swam. It probably only added to the effect of armed robber takes hostage.
“No,” I cried. “No, please! Please don’t kill me.”
It was easy to summon the tears, they were always there, held back by the force of a strong dam I’d had in place since I was barely a teenager. They poured freely now, streaking down my face.
Rook stuffed a wad of white cloth into my hand, and I took it, hands shaking.
“Open it,” he ordered me, and I clumsily found the opening to the pillow case.
He gave my waist a little squeeze that I felt all the way to my greedy little cunt.
Fuck.
“You,” he hissed, momentarily training his weapon on the waitress lying on the ground muttering prayers to herself. “Get up.”
She tripped as she stood, stumbling into the counter.
“Just do what he says, Cher,” her plaid wearing hero called from where he lay face down on the dirty linoleum flooring next to his stool. “It’s okay, doll. Everything’s gonna be?—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Rook groaned as Cher stood. “Fill it,” he ordered her, the cold steel barrel back at my temple.
When she hesitated, he cocked it back and I felt the click all the way to the marrow of my bones. Like a current of electricity plugged straight into my flesh. I gripped the countertop, a hard breath gushed past my lips at the sensation of being alive .
Curiously, I peered toward the gun. Not many handguns needed manual cocking. I was no expert, preferring my blades, but Dad showed me a thing or two.
It was a Browning Hi Power. Semi-automatic. A sleek black number with a worn mahogany grip. He held it like an extension of his arm.
Why was that so damned hot ?
Cher hurriedly emptied the register, pulling out wads of fives and tens and a few twenties. Nothing to get excited about, but right now, I didn’t care, this was the most fun I’d had in ages .
I forced a whimper as she cautiously stretched her arms over the counter and dropped the bills into the pillowcase.
“You want the money out of the safe, too?” she asked, her voice a meek whine.
Was this bitch serious?
I hear the cook curse to himself in the kitchen and Cher realized her mistake, going whiter than the pillowcase between my fists.
“How very accommodating,” Rook replied, tugging me closer to him, letting me feel the slight bulge of his erection against my lower back.
I pushed against it, biting my lip, making him grunt and pull back.
“Hey!” he shouted, spinning us both around to face the man who’d been in the booth by the door.
The one with his cell phone in his hand.
“ Uh, uh, uh ,” Rook cooed and roughly shoved me over to the man, forcing me to my knees at his side.
He snatched a fistful of my hair, pulling until my scalp stung and I shivered.
“In the bag, hero ,” he said through gritted teeth, and I opened the bag for the man to drop his phone inside to join the cash. He wasn’t giving me any dirty looks now, was he?
Dick.
“You too,” Rook ordered his wife. “Your phone. In the bag. Everyone! Phones out, lay them beside you. Now! ”
I feigned injury as Rook dragged me to my feet and forced me around the diner, collecting phones from the floor. “I’m sorry,” I whimpered as I took each one, depositing them into the bag until we got back to the counter.
“Get his phone,” Rook growled at Cher, gesturing to the cook in the kitchen with his gun while I took Cher’s phone from the counter and dropped it in with the others.
“I don’t have a phone,” the cook lobbied through the pass-through window.
Cher’s breath caught, giving away his lie.
Rook’s rough fingers moved from my hair to my throat, the leather of his gloves flexing as he squeezed. I made a show of choking, letting my eyes bug out of my head.
“P-please,” I begged.
“Do you want her blood on your hands?” Rook bellowed, his voice ringing out in the diner. “Hmm?”
“All right, all right! ” the cook said, his hands raising palms out in a stop gesture.
I gasped for breath as Rook loosened his grip on my throat but kept his fingers there, brushing the sensitive skin on the side of my neck.
The cook reached very slowly into the front pocket of his stained apron and tossed the phone through the pass.
Cher grabbed it a second after it clattered to the floor and thrust it at me.
“Now, how’s about we open that safe you mentioned, Cher?”
She sent an apologetic look to the red-faced cook before dropping to her knees and opening a small cabinet beneath the register. The telltale tinkling sound of a dial being turned gave me goosebumps.
Cher came up with an armful of cash. Stacks of bills elasticized together with little receipts at the tops of each one that denoted the amounts contained within each stack. My blood buzzed with a euphoria bordering on madness as she shakily stuffed them into the heavy bag clenched between my hands.
“Th-that’s everything,” Cher told Rook. “Now...now just let the girl go and?—”
“An ice cream cone,” interrupted Rook. “With all the flavors. Pile it high.”
Her brows drew together.
“Did I fucking stutter?”
She jumped and sped into action, rushing down to the end of the counter to scoop ice cream onto a waffle cone.
Butterflies.
This psycho just gave me butterflies.
My thighs squeezed and he must’ve sensed where my mind went because he let his fingers slip lower, brushing down my collarbone, and lower some more until they caressed the tops of my breasts.
A soft moan escaped my lips just before Cher rushed back with a monster ice cream in her hand.
“Be a good girl and grab that for me, would you, love?”
I closed the sack of money and phones into one fist and took the ice cream with the other.
“Everybody stays down until that clock over there strikes six. If you get up, you die. If you call the police, she dies.”
“The girl!” The cook called from the kitchen as Rook began dragging me backward to the door. “You said you’d let her go.”
“Did I?” Rook asked. “ Hmm . Don’t think I did.”
“Please!” I begged. “Please let me go!”
“If these good people here forget what they saw, you’ll get your freedom.”
“Please,” I croaked, my plea meant for the patrons in the diner now as Rook hauled me out the door and around the side of the building.
Once we were out of sight of the windows, his arm around me dropped and I let out a small laugh, unable to hold it in for another second.
“That was the most?—”
He ripped his mask off with one hand as he shoved me with the other, my back hitting the rough wall behind us. His lips parted as he stared openly at me, his dark eyes darting between my light ones. Trying to find something in their depths.
“Rook?”
I barely got his name out before he stole it from my lips with a brutal kiss that tore through every inch of my body like a shockwave.
I gasped against his mouth as a sensation that bordered on pain twisted like a knife in my belly.
The butterflies there turning to iron, their edges sharper than honed steel.
Rook’s tongue slipped between my lips, and I let him take me. Lost in the feel of him as his hands gripped me roughly, fingers pushing into flesh like hot branding irons.
When his lips left mine, I blinked through a dizzy haze, unable to breathe.
His fingers gripped my chin, forcing my eyes to meet his. “You did good, Ghost.”
“What?” I breathed, struggling to focus.
“You just passed your first trial.”