Chapter 11
WAR
C an’t turn my back on her for a second.
I jerk the weapon from the girl’s grasp and drop it, then swat each of her pert ass cheeks hard enough to leave a handprint. When I spin her to face me, holding her by the upper arms, I clock her shock.
She tries to reach back, probably to rub the stinging spots where I slapped her, but she can’t move her arms enough while I’ve got them in my grip.
Leaning close enough to smell her citrus-scented hair, I whisper, “As soon as I’m sure they’ve got no cameras on us, I’m gonna bend you over, pull down your panties and spank your ass ’til it’s cherry red. ”
“Do it, and I’ll kill you,” she says, before biting my earlobe so hard I think it might be in two pieces.
My head jerks to the side to free itself from her teeth. I turn her toward the wall, locking her in my arms so she can’t move an inch and lifting her from the ground. “Settle the fuck down.”
My throbbing earlobe develops its own aching heartbeat. I should spank her hard for that little stunt, but a small smirk curls the edges of my lips. This fucking girl is insane. There’s no one here to save her. I could kill her and blame the kidnappers.
Too late I realize I shouldn’t have let myself get distracted. Something sharp cuts into my back. A second stab hits an instant later. Blades? I drop her and whirl around to see what I’m up against.
Shit. Four shooters in combat gear.
“Hit him again. It takes at least three to drop him.”
I rake my back against the wall, dislodging exactly what the girl told me about earlier. Tranquilizer darts.
“No, just shoot him with actual bullets.”
Fuck, there’s no cover. I grab the mattress and raise it to block their view of us.
Ashling’s expression remains fixed in a fierce, furious expression.
“Hey,” I say gravely. “Hold this while I?—”
A bullet tears through the mattress, sending an explosion of fabric and foam toward the wall.
“Not the girl. We need her alive!” someone shouts.
Ash drops to one knee and raises the rifle. Her body tilts sideways, like she’s made of rubber, and then there’s a telltale crack . The gun’s kickback, knocks her into the wall, but a second later, there’s a thump and a scream.
“Fuck! I’m hit,” a guy yells.
She rolls forward, so she’s upright and tries to fire again, but it’s empty.
My vision blurs around the edges, and I realize the drugs are throwing me off. I blink several times and narrow my eyes, trying to clear my vision.
I stumble and take a knee to keep from falling. My balance is fucked. Losing my grip, the mattress tips and sags.
A blur of milky light splashes over the floor in front of me.
It’s her, I realize. The girl dives, and her arm goes through the bars. Then she rolls like a pencil across a desk and comes up onto a knee. Her arm is straight out as though she’s pointing .
Pop, pop, pop.
Black blobs drop from the air. It’s our armed captors falling to the ground, I realize.
Opening and closing my eyes slowly helps a little, but it’s not my eyes that are the problem. The issue is my head, and I need to overcome it. Fast.
Near my leg, something twitches like a dying lizard.
Only it can’t be moving. It’s one of the darts I dislodged from my back.
Nothing’s touching it, but it seems to jump like corn popping in a frying pan.
I’m definitely hallucinating, seeing constant motion that makes my stomach roll like I need to puke the poison out.
Fuck that. I swallow and shut my eyes a second.
The wave of nausea passes, and I slowly force my lids to lift. Better.
The scene materializes, weaving but not wildly.
Focusing my gaze on the ground beyond the bars, the world distorts and wobbles. But I know what I’m looking at. Bodies. Can’t tell if they’re moving or not. Seem to be, but so are the walls.
The girl crouches at the bars, her body angled so she can watch the darkness of the hall for movement. Her back sways too in my mind’s eye, but it’s not real because her arm is dead still.
Ashling’s harsh breathing slows, the sound softening until I don’t hear it at all. She waits in position, then lowers one knee to the ground, steadying herself. She’s got a pistol in her right hand. One of the shooters must have dropped it near enough to the cell for her to retrieve. Good girl.
I look the bodies over. One’s got a dart gun.
One’s got an assault rifle. And the last, who’s closest to the cell, has nothing.
He’s the one who let her get his Glock, and he paid the ultimate price.
In addition to the bloody off-center neck wound, he’s got a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.
“War,” she says in a low voice, eyes still fixed on the corridor. “You all right? ”
“Yeah.”
“Not shot?”
“No.”
Her exhalation sounds relieved. Which surprises me. In her place, I’d have used one of the Glock’s bullets on me.
The effect of the drugs is wearing thin. The walls stop moving, and I rise, shuffling to the bars and grabbing hold to brace myself. I can’t stay standing. Too unsteady. Lowering myself to a knee, I continue to grip the bars tightly, willing myself to get it together.
Looking at the bodies, my eyes trace the blood dripping from their foreheads to their temples. Pop, pop, pop. I heard three rounds squeezed off from the handgun, and every single shot she fired from the Glock hit its mark like it had a homing device attached.
“Jesus Christ,” I say softly. “You’re a fucking Crue hitter. They never let on.” Blowing breath through pursed lips, I study the dead bodies. Their armor did them no good at all since she put a bead in each of their brains. “Was that so you could hit one of us if necessary?”
“Of course not. And shut up, okay?”
I rest my forehead against the bars and let my lids drop over my eyes for a moment. When I open them again, everything’s in clear focus. Holding the bars, I drag myself up to a standing position, locking my knees.
After a few moments to give my body time to adjust, I move around the girl with the mysterious abilities, so she can keep her line of sight and firing position while I kneel next to her. My hand cups the side of her head, and I move my lips to her ear.
“Tell me,” I say. “What’s your place in the hierarchy. Sniper soldier? Or higher?”
She moves her head away from my mouth. “I’m not Crue.”
“He trained you as a shooter. Trick did. From really young. How old? Tell me the truth.” I don’t know why I’m so insistent, but I have to know .
“Wasn’t like that.” Her blue eyes shift to my face for a second. “He taught me. Just so I could protect myself.”
“But you’ve killed before,” I say, speaking so softly in her ear that, for a second, I’m not sure she hears me.
Glittery blue eyes stare into my dark ones.
“Yeah.” Her voice comes out soft but steady.
“Once, when I had to.” Her gaze shifts back to the darkness, waiting patiently the way the best snipers do.
“Like today. These guys were shooting actual bullets blindly through a mattress. It was us or them.” Her shoulders rise and fall in a delicate shrug. “I had to stop them.”
“You could’ve separated yourself from me. You weren’t the one they were trying to kill.”
“I know.” Her voice is different, harder. And colder. There’s no playful baby girl left now.
This is a side of the girl I didn’t know existed. The flip side of a coin I was already having trouble resisting. No chance of that now. None.
“I don’t work for C Crue, but I belong to the Crue family and so do you.
” She blows out a breath, glancing down the hallway before continuing in a low voice.
“If someone comes for you, they come for all of us. Was I supposed to tell C I stood by and watched you die without trying to save you? When they were kidnapping me, you got out of the car. You’re in here because of that. ”
When I touch my swollen earlobe, I grimace. She chomped on it good. Surprisingly, it’s still in one piece, though it feels the size of a golf ball. “You expect me to believe you still wanna be on the same side? You nearly bit my earlobe off to stop me from messing with you.”
“So what?” Her casual tone makes me laugh.
My laughter causes her mouth to curve into a small smile.
“Are you still drugged?”
“What do you think?” My mouth is so close to her ear I could give her a matching wound. Instead, I do what I’d rather do at the moment. I suck her lobe into my mouth .
She shudders and then curses. “What the hell?” Her voice is soft and without any real heat. “I’m working here.” Her delicate hand shoves at my chest.
I’d like to suck on those fingers, too. Along with the rest of her.
Barely steady enough to stay upright when she shoves me, I clutch a steel bar to keep myself from keeling over. Yeah, the drugs are still doing their worst.
“Try to sober the hell up,” she whispers with mock annoyance. “I didn’t save your life out of Crue loyalty alone. I need you to do something.”
“What’s that, baby doll?” What the fuck? Man, I’m losing it. Me calling her baby doll in that tone? When I’ve been saying for weeks that’s a dickhead move?
“I need you to break us out, War.”
Sucking on my lower lip, I shrug. “The bottom of the bars are anchored hard. My guess? Buckets of cement.”
“You think?”
“Well, they’re in more than dirt, or I’d have knocked the row of them flat by now.”
“So you can’t break them apart enough for me to get through? I’m pretty skinny.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. Too skinny. That’s what you think. Your girlfriend Greta is pretty skinny, too. If you really want a girl with big muscles, why the hell don’t you date a bodybuilder girl from your gym? I know some work out there.”
I never said too skinny. Never. “How do you know who trains at my gym?”
She shrugs.
“You stalking me?”
“Do I look like a stalker?”
“What the fuck do looks have to do with it? You look like a teenage barbie doll. Meanwhile, you’re a fucking sharpshooter. What’s your kill count? ”
“Shh. Keep your voice down.”
“Better not be higher than mine.”
“I doubt it is. But I bet I’m more experienced at this.”
“At what?”
“Being kidnapped.”
“Yeah? How many times you been taken?”
“Including this time? Three.”
What the—? Then again… “I’m not surprised.” I draw in a long breath. “Any guy who sees you is gonna wanna do it.”
“To kidnap me?” After a beat, she chuckles. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Just a fact. That’s why you should have a fucking bodyguard. Which I been saying from the jump.” My words are angry and somewhat slurred. I need to shut the fuck up, but the fuzz in my brain won’t let me. There are things I want to know about her.
“How about you, War? Want to kidnap me?” When I don’t answer, her gaze shifts to my eyes. “Well, do you?”
“Mostly no. But, sometimes… Definitely.”
“Is that what makes you angry around me? You want to flirt, but someone told you not to or something?”
“No. I’ve been warned, but that doesn’t piss me off, because I don’t care about warnings. I don’t touch you because it would complicate my plans. Even if they are in flux.” Balling my fists slowly, I frown.
Stop talking! For fuck’s sake.
“What plans?” Her soft voice reaches inside me, unraveling my defenses. How the fuck does she do it?
I shake my head. “No, no. Drugs talking, not me.”
“What plans, War?”
“Hey,” I say sharply and nod my head as I spot movement in the corridor.
Her head turns, and she waits. A flicker of movement causes her to squeeze the trigger, but there’s only an empty click. She tries again. Nothing .
“Fuck,” she mumbles under her breath, setting the Glock down and grabbing the rifle.
She raises it, and the shooter retreats into the corridor’s darkness again.
He didn’t need to. The rifle’s empty, too.