38. Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
Lucy
The moments after I drove that brick into Deana’s face were chaos. It took me a few seconds to realize I hadn’t been shot, that I was still breathing and my limbs still worked even though they were screaming. She fell to the ground with a sickening crack, and my heart stilled.
Did I just kill her?
Shock racketed through me as I stumbled forward, blood from the open wound she’d made ran slick down my front.
I didn’t take time to think. I ran straight for the exit of the cell, forgetting about the other man who’d been standing right outside of it.
Chase pummeled me onto the concrete floor before I could make it through the bars.
Pain seared down my back as I struggled against him, letting out an excruciating wail.
Chase’s wiry arms caught me by the waist and shoved me against the hard floor as I kicked out at him to no avail. He shoved my face into the ground as I screamed, fighting for my fucking life.
The sudden sound of a magazine clicking into place stilled us both. Chase grasped me by the waist and hauled me upright, and I hadn’t noticed he’d had time to grab the knife Deana used to cut me off the floor. He held it up to my throat, the metal sticky with my blood.
I didn’t move. Didn’t so much as breathe. Then I saw who was standing outside the bars of my cell, a rifle pointed straight at us.
Clay, the man Dax had hired to follow me around and who was apparently his old CIPHER comrade, looked every bit the soldier he was. His emerald eyes were narrow, his jaw clenched tight.
Oh my god. If he was here, Dax was probably nearby too. He found me, he—
“Let her go, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” Clay’s voice was deep, commanding, chilling.
I felt the rumble of Chase’s deranged laugh against my back. “I’d settle down if I were you. I can slit her throat right now.” He tightened his grip on me, the knife pressing closer to my skin to prove his point.
“Please…” I whimpered, every one of my instincts in overdrive.
Clay’s brows furrowed together, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes remained locked on us.
“I’ve gotta say, this is more than the subscribers paid for.
They must be losing their minds right now.
” Chase let out another crazed chuckle. “I can’t believe you took her out with a fucking brick.
She should’ve listened to me. I told her you were feisty.
” He ground his hips against my back and if I wasn’t so afraid of moving, I would’ve thrown up.
Not even a second later, a loud pop blasted in the air, and my eyes twisted to the camera, which had exploded into a hundred pieces, flying from the tripod.
I felt the tiniest bit of slack from the knife at my throat, and I made the split decision to take my chance.
I elbowed Chase in the ribs against my back and flung myself to the side.
His knife swung down, slashing deep into my shoulder and I screeched with pain, the sound echoing hauntingly.
“Stupid bitch—” was all Chase got out before gunshots fired from different directions. I rolled myself on the floor, clutching my shoulder as blood spurted from the wound beneath my tattered blouse.
My breaths came out in heavy pants between my screams as I writhed on the hard, cold floor with my eyes squinted shut. The pain was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
Within moments, I felt warm, steady hands clutching my sides.
“Luce,” a deep, familiar voice said. I popped my eyes open to find a ski mask-covered face and a pair of cobalt eyes that glistened with worry. “It’s gonna be okay, I’m here. Let me see.” He pried my fingers from where I was pressing down on the deep slash on my shoulder.
My heart fluttered despite the pain, but the only words from my mouth were, “Phoebe…get her out…key is in his pocket.”
Dax turned toward Chase’s body, which slumped down next to Deana’s.
Clay was already there, digging through his pocket to retrieve the key.
Gingerly, Dax sat me up and peeled back the short sleeve of my blouse as I winced at the pain.
He reached up and ripped the mask off his head.
His forehead creased as he inspected the wound, sliding the sleeve down my arm before he pressed the soft material of the mask into the wound.
“You’re gonna be okay. We’ll get this stitched up as soon as we get out of here,” he promised. Even though I didn’t feel like anything would ever be okay, I had faith in his words.
He came. The man who swore to keep me safe, who was willing to open the wounds of his past to protect me. Despite everything I was feeling, there was one emotion inside that pressed on me heavier than the rest. I should have recognized it sooner, and maybe I did, but I’d been trying to ignore it.
Love. I loved him with every pulsing, vulnerable morsel of my heart.
All I could do was nod in response, and he reached down to scoop me up in his arms. I clutched onto his neck with the little strength I had left as he stood and we made our way through the exit of my cell.
I watched over his back as he exited the cell at the same time Clay unlocked Phoebe.
It was only now I noticed she had figured out how to get her hands unbound, and I felt a pang of relief.
Even if I’d died in there, she would have figured out a way to survive. I believed that.
“Grab that laptop,” Dax instructed Clay with a deep rumble. “Everyone who watched this go down is gonna burn in hell.” I shivered in his arms, pressing my face into his neck. It wasn’t a threat. It was a vow.
“Already on it.” I clung onto Dax and watched Clay swing open the door to Phoebe’s cell before working his way back over to the laptop. Dax was already carrying me away from the crimson lights of my prison and into the dark, unlit part of the old deli.
Clay picked the laptop up from the folding chair, unplugging it as he snapped the screen closed.
His back was turned away from the cells as he fiddled with the laptop.
I wanted to shut my eyes, to leave every terrible thing that happened here behind.
But movement from behind him caught my attention.
I inhaled a sharp breath to scream, but it was already too late. She was standing right behind him. The side of her face was wrecked from the brick, and she stooped out of the cell with one of the guns from the deceased guards in her arms, raising it to the back of Clay’s head.
“No!” I screamed, jerking in Dax’s hold. He spun around as Deana cocked the gun, Clay’s back stiffening with the laptop in his hands.
A flash of platinum blonde hair.
The crack of gunfire.
The shimmer of something gold caught in the deep red light.
My earth-shattering cry pierced through the room, and then another.
That one wasn’t mine—it was Deana’s.
She’d dropped the rifle to the floor, shrieking as she held her hands to her face. It didn’t appear Clay had been shot, at least I didn’t think so, because he’d already secured her gun and had it pointing straight at her face.
“Fuck! Motherfucker!” Deana screeched, not even seeming to notice she was seconds away from being sent to hell. Her hands patted frantically at her face.
Her face had the sharp prongs of the butterfly hairpin gouged deep into her eyeball.
The pain from the wound in my shoulder was suddenly overcome by adrenaline as I flung myself from Dax’s arms and sprinted toward the frail blonde who looked like her bones might have shattered on the floor.
Phoebe moaned, and I noticed the red starting to stain the concrete floor beneath her.
I winced as I got down to my knees next to her.
Oh no.
Dax was right behind me. “Where did you get shot?” His voice was hard, mechanical. Like those were words he’d asked before.
“It’s…” Phoebe puffed out a quick breath, her face scrunched up in agony. “My leg. My right leg.” He wrenched up the raggedy hem of her dress, and sure enough there was a hole in her leg gushing a stream of blood into a pool on the floor.
“Fuck!” Dax said, peeling off his leather jacket and stripping the black shirt from his chest. I hadn’t noticed the bulletproof vest he’d been wearing underneath it before, and my eyes caught on metal lodged into the thick padding. My parched throat felt suddenly even drier.
Dax grabbed her leg and she made a sound like a wounded animal. He wrapped the wound in a tight tourniquet with his shirt, then pressed a device lodged up against his ear.
“Emile, send in the medic. Gunshot wound to the leg. It’s Phoebe.” His voice was deep and clinical.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered to Phoebe, though I had no right or reason to tell her that.
We’d been so close to getting out of here. Fucking Deana, and the nightmare she dragged us into. That venomous fucking bitch.
“Should I just shoot her?” Clay asked through gritted teeth. Deana was still screaming and clawing at her face.
Dax grimaced as he continued applying pressure to Phoebe’s leg, then those beautiful blue eyes, almost violet in the lighting, flickered over to me.
“I told you I’d let you choose what happened to them.
Unfortunately, the two jackasses we were originally after had to die early, so Wrangler’s the best I can give you.
It’s up to you.” His voice was no more than a low murmur.
I glanced over to Deana as she writhed on the floor like she couldn’t decide whether or not to pull the hairpin from her face. Deep loathing spewed through my wrecked nerves.
I thought about everything she’d done, to so many women, in so many horrific ways. Publicly humiliated, tortured, and murdered in front of a camera. The twisted and evil monsters who cheered it on and made their requests like this was some kind of a performance.
Dax didn’t even know she’d murdered his father yet.
“No,” I surprised myself by saying. She didn’t deserve to get shot. That was far too merciful for everything she’d done. Things had come this far because I was in search of one thing, and that was revenge.
And revenge was something Deana understood. She’d mentioned it herself. It was something she believed in. I guess that was one thing we had in common.
They say an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
I say evil fucking people should get what they deserve.
I remembered what Phoebe told me about how Deana chain sawed a woman to death. Then I knew exactly what I wanted to do with her.