Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
It felt good to be killing.
Felt like he was actually doing something.
Something useful. Something productive. Something that was going to go a long way toward saving his girls.
There was only one person who would go to these lengths to reach him and his team. One person who would have had the resources to have someone keeping tabs on Kate and follow her if she ever made contact with him.
While he knew his girl blamed herself for their home being compromised and them having to leave, really, Lion knew it was his fault.
He was the one who, instead of bringing Kate in, letting her know what had happened, ensuring she was safe and protected, had left her to fend for herself.
Without knowing that he was in danger, she’d had no reason to think anyone might be following her when she drove out to the mansion.
They should have suspected it might happen.
He should have suspected it might happen.
But when no one else turned up at the mansion right on Kate’s heels, he’d never really given it a second thought. Been too busy trying to find a way to earn his girl’s forgiveness and bond with the daughter he hadn't known existed.
Instead of coming right for them, River Gardner must have had her people search the area, looking for a different way to take them down, one that gave her the advantage.
Finding the plane, sabotaging it, and planting tracking devices on it had been a good plan.
While it might have killed them all, should have killed them all, it would have made whoever survived easy pickings.
At least that’s what Mrs. Gardner had obviously thought.
Only she was wrong.
With all six of them alive and already mostly healed from what amounted to minor injuries as far as he was concerned, the men who had been sent to capture or kill them didn't stand a chance. There was no way to know if River Gardner’s plans aligned with her son’s.
While Ridge had wanted him and his team back in a glass cage under his control, there was every chance his mother just wanted them dead.
Preferably, she wanted them alive, not because Lion wanted to find himself trapped in a cage again, those three hellish years were forever seared into his memory, but if they were wanted alive, it limited how the men sent after them could act.
Shooting to kill was easier, and Lion himself had already shot three, but there was something immensely satisfying about killing with your bare hands.
Thankfully, he and his team weren't under any constraints.
They could maim and kill to their hearts content, and that was exactly what they were doing.
Over the last several months, their desire for revenge on the man who had lied about his experimental drug program to trick people into signing up for it had shifted, grown deeper. It was one thing to want revenge for yourself, it was quite another to want it for the people you loved.
Each one of them had more than enough reasons to loathe the Gardner family.
Well, the family minus Rose. Steel hated that Rose’s entire childhood had been filled with abuse.
Dragon hated that Cassandra had been dragged into this mess just because she was linked to them.
Blade hated that Whitney’s genius had been used against her.
Voodoo hated that Indigo had been experimented on, and Thunder hated that Maya had been bought like she was less than human.
As for himself, well, he hated that Kate had unknowingly been watched for the past decade.
Which was why when he spotted a man dressed in black, attempting to hide behind a tree as he fired at the farmhouse, Lion grinned as he slunk toward him.
How did these people think they would come out of this firefight victorious?
Hadn't they been warned about the advantages he and his team had? With his sight, Blade’s hearing, and Dragon’s smell, they were easily pinpointing where each shooter was hiding and giving directions to the others.
It was why they’d already eliminated half of the men. Now that the threat was greatly reduced, he knew he wasn't the only one who had lost interest in using his gun to kill. He was ready to unleash that pent-up rage.
Rage that had been created when those drugs first hit his system. Grown when he realized it was taking over and he’d been forced to give up the girl he loved. Deepened in three years of captivity and experimentation. Promised retribution in the seven years after they escaped.
Now it was time to let it fly free.
Shifting his position, Lion circled the shooter, who seemed completely oblivious to being stalked, which did not speak highly of the kind of people River Gardner hired.
When he was close enough to strike, Lion grinned.
Just because this man might not have personally hurt Kate and Ariella, he’d made himself part of this.
He was shooting at the building where his girls were huddling inside, scared and injured. He deserved whatever he got.
“Hi,” he drawled, smirking when the shooter startled, spun around, weapon aimed at him.
Acting before the man could get off a shot, Lion snapped out a hand, grabbed the weapon, shoved it up so any bullets fired would fly uselessly into the sky, and shoved it backward, so the weapon slammed into the man’s face, shattering his nose and knocking out a few teeth.
“I don’t think so,” Lion rebuked, tutting as he yanked the weapon from his hands. The man howled in pain, which, quite frankly, he found pathetic. If he couldn’t even handle a broken nose and a few lost teeth, he had no business being in this line of work.
While it would be fun to take his time, allow his fury off its leash for a little while to work off a decade’s worth of restraint, there were still more threats out there, and he wouldn't risk his girls’ safety by losing control.
When they found River Gardner, then he’d let himself let go of that control.
They’d wound up deciding as a team to just kill Ridge without a lot of fanfare, thinking they were ending things.
But now they had a second chance at getting the revenge they’d originally planned on, and he wanted to follow through this time around.
To that end, he allowed his fists to fly, breaking bones, sending blood spraying everywhere, relishing those screams, which soon turned to whimpers, and then nothing at all. Only once it registered that no sounds meant the man was dead, did he stop.
Breathing hard, Lion turned and spotted a man slinking his way.
Not one of his teammates, so he didn't hesitate to launch himself at him. Apparently not realizing he’d been spotted until it was too late, the man was powerless to protect himself as Lion slammed his fists into him over and over again until he had another dead body lying at his feet.
The night had fallen silent.
Did that mean they’d killed everyone who had gone there tonight intending them harm?
Lion scanned the forest, his enhanced vision searching for anything out of place. When he didn't find anything, he headed back toward the farmhouse. Seemed he wasn't the only one who had also determined that they were the only ones left breathing, because the rest of his team were emerging as well.
“Don’t hear anyone still alive,” Blade told them.
“I don’t smell anything but death,” Dragon agreed.
“And I can't see anything moving,” he added.
While they’d been out there killing, they’d all been making sure that no one got close enough to the farmhouse to enter it, so now he was anxious to get to his girls. He needed to feel them wrapped up in his arms, to know they were safe and sound.
But as he approached the front door, something shifted.
Something felt wrong.
Apparently, he wasn't the only one who felt that because the others stiffened too. All of them were as anxious as he was to get inside and check on their loved ones. No one had moved toward the house, he was sure of it, he’d been making sure of it.
Any movement toward the house had been quickly eliminated.
So when he stepped through the door and saw only five figures waiting for them instead of seven, it felt like his heart dropped right out of his chest.
“Where are they?” he growled, praying that Kate and Ariella had just gone upstairs to the bathroom, even as he knew they wouldn't have done that. He’d told them to stay there, and he and his team had been out there for maybe fifteen minutes killing off the intruders, there was no need for them to have needed to leave the stairs.
“I'm sorry, Lion,” Rose said as she lowered the weapon she’d had aimed at the door.
“They’re gone,” he snarled.
“Ariella freaked and ran. Kate went after her,” Cassandra explained.
He hadn't been looking for anyone leaving the building, hadn't thought he needed to. He and the others had all been too focused on anyone approaching it. But that failure had given his girls time to get away.
Now they were out there somewhere. Alone and unprotected. And there was every chance that River Gardner was nearby and wouldn't hesitate to get her hands on them.
March 18th
3:28 A.M.
This was a terrible idea.
But what else was she supposed to do?
Kate wished she’d been keeping a tighter hold on Ariella, preventing her from running out of the house once the shooting had started, but she honestly hadn't expected her daughter to run.
Ariella had held it together so amazingly well so far, and she hadn't been prepared for her to freak out at the sound of gunfire.
Which made her feel like a terrible mother.
Which made her a terrible mother.
Of course, her nine-year-old would freak out at the sound of gunfire.
Even though she’d been warned that the bad men were coming, Ariella was just a child. Knowing you were about to be shot at and then being actually shot at were vastly different things. She was freaked out about it, and she was almost two decades older than her daughter.