Chapter 23 – BODHI #2
“Dimitri noticed those clean boots. So, he had us check up on you.”
I glance over my shoulder. The barrel is levelled at the centre of my back, going for the kill shot.
“That car you borrowed? GPS tracker. You drove to a security compound that’s owned by a goody-two-shoes ex-military buddy of Jake’s. Stayed twenty minutes, then came back. Somehow, I don’t think that’s where you go to bury two men you just murdered.”
My bear goes still. Waiting.
“So now.” Piotr’s gun presses between my shoulder blades, cold, even through my jacket. “We need you to tell us what you did with those cops. Then we put you in the quarry for real.”
I curse myself for not rolling around in the mud and getting a little sweaty before I returned.
“One chance.” I offer, my tone deceptively calm, almost gentle. “Put the weapons down and walk away.”
Pavel laughs in disbelief, drawing his weapon and aiming it straight at my head. “Two of us, one of you. Do the math.”
I move.
Pavel’s gun goes off, the crack splitting the air, but I’m already gone, inside his guard before he can adjust his aim.
My hand closes around his wrist, bones grinding together beneath my grip, and I twist. The snap echoes off the rock walls.
He screams, high and thin, and the weapon clatters to the gravel.
Piotr fires. The shot grazes my shoulder, a line of fire across my deltoid, but the pain barely registers.
I spin, using Pavel as a shield, and drive my boot into Piotr’s chest.
He staggers backward, arms pinwheeling, and for one satisfying moment, I think he’s going over the edge. But he catches himself at the last second and drops to his knees, then scrambles for purchase on the loose stones.
I’m on him before he can recover. My hand closes around his throat and I lift him off the ground and slam him back down onto the rocks.
He wheezes, clawing at my fingers, kicking harmlessly at the ground, trying to get enough purchase to push away.
But he’s not going anywhere.
Pavel gasps from where he’s curled around his shattered forearm and wrist, tears streaming down his face.
“Emma.” I tighten my grip on Piotr’s throat, feeling his pulse flutter beneath my palm. “What’s happening to her right now?”
“I don’t know.” He rasps. “I swear.”
My bear roars for blood. These men attacked my mate. They were sent to kill me. They deserve to die slowly, screaming, with their bodies left for the vultures.
I stare down at Piotr and watch his lips turn blue as the life drains out of him, one strangled breath at a time. It would be so easy. So satisfying.
A phone buzzes, the sound cutting through the red haze.
I release Piotr, letting him crumple to the stones, gasping and retching, and snatch the phone from Pavel’s pocket, standing on his ankle until I hear a pleasing snap.
While he howls in agony, flailing around on the ground and begging for help from nobody in particular, I hold the phone in front of his face until it opens.
A message from Dimitri.
Ashworths en route.
For a moment, I can’t breathe.
They have her. They took her while I was out here playing their game. My mate is about to be handed over to those monsters, and I’m not there to stop it.
My phone rings. Chase.
“They have her.” I snarl before he can speak.
“I know.” Chase’s tone is solemn. “The camera you planted? It’s moving. She’s not at the property anymore.”
The camera. The tiny device I hid in her headboard.
“She grabbed it?” My voice cracks.
“Must have. When they took her.” A pause. “It’s not transmitting video, but it’s still pinging. Van’s tracking the signal now.”
Clever girl. Even terrified, even being dragged out of that bed by Kozlov’s men, she thought to take it.
She’s fighting. She’s giving me a way to find her.
Through the bond, I feel her: terrified, furious, and underneath it all, reaching for me. Calling for me. She knows I’m coming.
“Where are they taking her?” I demand, but the two broken men at my feet just shake their heads.
Clearly, Dimitri didn’t share that information. They’re too low down on the food chain.
Pavel’s phone buzzes again. Another message. This time, an image.
Despite the feeling of nausea that rolls in my gut, I open it.
Emma, bound to a chair, a gag between her lips, and mascara streaking down her cheeks.
Behind her, there’s a blurred shape of a man adjusting a camera on a tripod, and in the corner of the frame, Mrs. Ashworth is standing in the doorway, her elegant hand resting on her husband’s shoulder as he leers at my mate, her wedding ring glinting in the harsh light.
My vision turns red.
Chase is still talking. Something about using the signal to triangulate her location.
“Send me the picture.” He demands, and robotically, I do, but nothing else he says to me gets through, as my bear tests my control to its absolute limits, demanding I step back and let him take over. But all he’ll do is wreak violence.
I need to find her first. Vengeance can come later.
“What the hell... what are you?” Pavel stares at me as I struggle to fight back the shift, my skin rippling, body swelling, and my bones cracking.
“Bodhi, stay with me.”
I can hear Chase’s voice, tiny and distant, but the words don’t register. Nothing registers except the image burned into my retinas and the roar of blood in my ears.
“Bodhi. Wait. We’re twenty minutes out.”
The phone slips from my hand, falling with a dull thud onto the damp ground.
Pavel is trying to crawl away. He drags himself across the gravel, whimpering, leaving a smear of blood from his shattered wrist, and something cold and final settles in my chest.
Chase thinks they aren’t worth it.
My bear thinks he’s wrong.