Chapter Thirteen #3
“Shut up,” I said, but I was smiling. I had grown to really like Carrie and Darby. Both women had a lot of Antonio in them. Carrie, I’d learned, was basically a trained assassin. Apparently, she had brothers in the shadows no one was supposed to know about. And yeah. That wasn’t terrifying at all.
She bumped my shoulder with hers and went back to looking out the window, relaxed but I could see the tension in her shoulders and the set of her jaw.
Twenty minutes out from the compound, and we’d be at the private airport.
Obviously, Carrie took her protection detail very seriously.
We’d landed on the roof before, but Knight thought it might keep everyone guessing if we left Tonio’s helicopter here and took a different helicopter home.
And there was so much to unpack in that statement alone.
Under protest, Tonio had gone ahead to the airstrip, readying yet another freaking helicopter to take me and Carrie back to the mountains.
If I was the kind of woman to care about money, I’d probably have my head spinning with the amount of casual wealth the man had.
But truthfully, I just wanted Tonio. OK, so, I wanted Tonio and his family.
Because I’d never felt closer to anyone other than my sister than I did in the presence of all the men and women of Kiss of Death, but most especially Tonio’s large and ever-growing extended family.
His absence was why Carrie was with me now.
She said she’d do anything she had to, to keep Darby’s new stepmother and brother or sister safe.
Carrie had said it with a straight face, but Darby had cracked up which led to a cascade of giggles before Carrie and I both hugged Darby goodbye and left.
I never saw the truck coming. Metal screamed into metal as something enormous slammed into the front quarter panel where Kass sat.
The impact threw me hard into my belt, air punching out of my lungs in one ugly grunt.
Glass sprayed across the seats like ice.
Carrie’s arm came across my chest on instinct, bracing me back, and she was already shouting something I couldn’t process because my ears had gone to a high thin ring and everything else sounded like it came from a deep, deep well.
Gunfire erupted from both sides at once, flat cracks against the windows, and I ducked with a scream, covering my head instinctively.
Smoke rolled in through the shattered window, gray and stinging.
Finch shouted something. Kass had his door open and his weapon covering us while Finch assessed the situation.
“Tessa!” Carrie’s voice cut through the ringing, sharp and furious. She had her door open, was already half out of the vehicle, hauling me by the arm toward the gap. She must have undone my seat belt because I certainly hadn’t undone it.
A man in a black mask came around the back bumper and grabbed me. I screamed again, and Carrie pounced with a yell.
She got his knife from his belt and stabbed the guy in the neck four times. She hauled me toward the tree line, half guiding, half dragging, before a second man grabbed my other arm and jerked hard enough to make my shoulder scream.
“Let her go!” Carrie screamed. She slammed her bloodied palm flat against the side of the vehicle where they’d taken me.
She wasn’t letting them take me without a fight and I helped her as best I could, struggling as hard as I could, kicking and scratching.
For some reason, I focused on that bloody handprint.
The smeared, bloody handprint was difficult to see on the dark paint, but it was there, streaked down the side of the van where Carrie dragged it across the surface.
I fought. I clawed at the hand on my arm, kicking out blindly and connecting with something because the man grunted close to my ear, but there were two of them, and they moved like this wasn’t the first time they’d done this.
Both were calm and coordinated even with Carrie shrieking and Kass’s gun going off somewhere behind me.
I know Carrie had dropped at least one more of the attackers and she was making enough noise to wake the dead.
Then something bit the side of my neck. Sharp, quick, and gone before I understood what it was.
The world went soft at the edges almost immediately. My legs stopped working the way they were supposed to. I heard Carrie’s voice, still screaming my name, and it sounded like it was coming from underwater, from very far away.
A hood came down over my head, and the world went from gray to black, and somebody’s gloved hands checked the zip ties at my wrists.
I don’t know how long the drive lasted before the drug thinned out enough to let me think again. Long enough that my wrists had gone numb against the plastic. Whatever was coming, I’d survive it. I’d survived worse with less reason to.
And whoever had sent these men had no idea the magnitude of shit storm about to rain down on them.
As I covered my middle with my bound hands, I understood my assignment.
Keep us both safe until Tonio came for me.
Then God have mercy on anyone involved in this, because I knew Antonio Miles would not.