Chapter 3
JACE
The blood trails from where she took me down over to where I'm at right now, a long crimson streak that will dry and crust by morning.
Sabine Hart is a powerhouse, I'll give her that.
I've taken down a lot of men twice her size, but she knows how to fight, and apparently, she knows how to stitch too.
"You could just kill me," I grunt, and I feel weak. No way in hell I could best her right now even if I wanted to. She didn't hit the femoral artery but damn near it, and with the wound deep in my thigh tissue, I'll be lucky if I can walk for the next few days.
"I'm not a killer." Sabine works with focus, ignoring my grumbles of pain and avoiding eye contact too. "Besides, you're better to me alive."
I watch her stick my muscle with the needle and then pull the long thread through.
It's not a medical-grade thread, but in a situation like this the most important part is closing the wound.
I've had vets do a worse job. Former ranger means combat medic training too, and I'd trust her to do this even if I weren’t so weak.
"I broke into your house to kill you. Self-defense…
" My eyes fall shut and I rest my head against her wall.
I'm weak. I could pass out at any second from blood loss, and she keeps working on me instead of calling the police.
Which means she wants something from me too.
Otherwise, she'd just have turned me in with the gun pointed at my head.
"Shut up," she orders.
Her hands work my thigh with my pants around my ankles and the blood puddle I'm sitting in getting worse by the second. I know I fade in and out of consciousness for a moment until I feel her hand slap me across the face.
"Stay with me," she snarls, and I feel the cold press of her weapon on my temple.
"Come on, lady. If you were gonna kill me, you'd have done it when I was bleeding out." I manage to lift my head, unintimidated by her gun on my head, and see that she's finished stitching me. It's rudimentary but it'll hold. "Just tell me why you didn't kill me."
Sabine steps back and stands over me with her weapon hanging at her side.
Clearly, she's not worried about anyone seeing in through her sheer curtains, and the way she's covered in blood up to her elbows from stitching me up doesn't faze her, either.
I just didn't figure her for the fighting type.
I thought she'd go down easy like the others.
"Names… on the list… now…"
My brain hurts. Every drop of blood I lost feels like a day of sleep I didn't get, and it's a struggle to keep my eyes open.
"What do you mean? What list?" Playing stupid may work with some folks, but I can see straightaway that with her it won't work.
"Don't fuck with me!" Her gun is raised again, pointed right back at my head. "Someone is killing us, and I want to know who is on that list."
Looking down the barrel of a gun is one thing.
Staring up at a deranged woman who has nothing to lose, whose life is already marked for termination, is another.
She could kill me right now and probably knows twenty ways to hide a body.
But her background and her current access to government intel make her useful.
At least the blood loss hasn't stripped away my ability to think critically.
"Daniel Whitlock, Ryan McAlli—"
"Not them, you dumb fuck. The rest… After me. Who's next?" Her gun, still pointed at my head, trembles as she uses the back of her hand to wipe sweat from her face and it smears blood on her forehead. For a soldier she's top notch, and as a woman, I'd say she's high up on that list for sure.
She's built like a tank, but it's sexy—hard body, toned muscles. Those skimpy shorts leave nothing to the imagination. Not hard on the eyes at all, but with that gun trained on me, it leaves a lot to be desired.
"Talk," she snarls, and her toes press into the wound on my thigh, but my arms are too weak to pry them off.
"Ethan Caldwell is next… Everett Hamilton—"
"Shit!" she hisses and then she starts pacing.
Her gun hand plants on her hip while her other hand runs through her hair and down across her face.
"Mother fucker!" Sabine launches the small alarm off her nightstand across the room where it smashes into the wall and breaks into pieces.
This revelation is clearly not news to her, but she's not happy about it.
"You know who's hunting you?"
Sabine turns on me, using her gun to pistol whip the side of my face so hard, my head snaps to the left and jars my entire neck.
"Shut up, just shut the fuck up!"
The bitch is hysterical now, sweating and crying and pacing.
I can't hold my eyes open much longer. This is excruciating.
I have no fear she's going to kill me, but the idea that she could call one of her army buddies to come clean me up does cross my mind.
Then the thought of the police coming makes some adrenaline surge and I'm more awake.
"What? You know who's hunting you or what?"
Sabine paces for a few more seconds then sets the gun down on her nightstand. She hovers over me before crouching in front of me and steepling her fingers.
"I don’t know you… Okay? I don't know anything about you, but I know who hired you. And I know why they hired you…"
This is news. I relax my head and shoulders again, but I don't let my eyes fall shut. It's not often that a victim gets the best of me, but almost every time, the person I'm hunting already knows who sent me. Though, most times, they don't know I'm coming until it's too late.
"And?" I say dryly. I don't give a rat's ass if she knows who sent me and why. I'm here to do a job, one that could be much easier to complete if I had someone like Sabine Hart and her military clearance to bases and government information.
And she's sparing me… I should be dead right now, but she kept me alive.
The irony isn't lost on me. That young girl I left alive became my downfall in the organization. I might as well be scum to Barone now. And this woman just beat the shit out of me and almost killed me, but she stopped. The least she could’ve done was finish it.
"And I need your help."
I can't help it.
A deep belly laugh that shakes my whole body starts low in my gut and rumbles upward. It's loud and shakes the nightstand beside me, and Sabine isn't amused. She plants a hard thumb on my thigh and I scream, actually reaching for her wrists.
"Fuck's sake, bitch. That hurts."
"I said, I need your help." This time, she's clear, and she's not just asking. She's giving an order she thinks I'm going to follow. But she moves her hand, so I relax and listen. "You have the muscle to help me convince the others to work with me. I need that muscle."
My head spins a little so I close my eyes. Thinking takes too much energy. "What 'others' are we talking about?"
"The others on the list…" She huffs, then she says, "They're all getting hunted for a reason. We fucked up badly, and then we had to cover it up… Our CO, Captain Bryan, he made us cover for him, and for some reason, I think he's having us killed…"
When I look into her eyes, I see with dead certainty that she believes what she's saying.
This Captain Bryan dude sounds like a total douche, and no doubt, he really did hire that broker to pay me to kill the people on that list. But the pieces just aren't lining up for me. Maybe it's because I’m so weak.
"Look, lady, I was given orders. If I don't finish the list, they end me." It's harder to breathe now too. Every breath is labored, my chest so tight I could feel it snap if she even touched me.
"You don't know what you're up against. This man… If he finds out you know who he is, he'll come after you next." She's scrambling now, struggling to find a way to make me work with her.
"I hate him. I hate everything he stands for… And I've been trying to take him down for years. I need your help."
"I don't see how it's my problem…" I cough weakly, and the shaking jars my ribcage, still bruised from the other man's fists and now battered even more from her.
"You're right… not your problem." She's getting desperate now.
I can hear it in her tone. "But I'll let you do whatever you want with the ones who don’t help me.
And the ones who do help me will take down the man who hired you, so you don't have to worry about retribution.
" Sabine is panting as I open my eyes to stare into her face. "Or I could kill you right now."
I watch her pick up her weapon again and press it to my chest. "You pick."
I don't think she'll really do it, but I won't take a chance. Sabine Hart is a trained killer just like me, and she's really fucking hot when she holds that gun.
I can use that sort of spit and vinegar when it comes to hunting these fuckers down, and if she can get me intel on where to find the few I've been unsuccessful at locating, all the better.
The man never said they had to be killed in order, just that they all had to disappear.
Who's to say Ms. Hart won't make a really beautiful sidekick for a few days while I dispense of the remainder of the names, and then a sexy corpse when it's all said and done?
"Do we have a truce?" she asks, and I let my eyes flutter shut again. I'm too tired to give a fuck right now. It's something I can sort out when I wake up.
So I let the blackness consume me, knowing when I wake, I'll have a massive pain in my thigh and most likely, a gun to my head.