by Alison Aimes
She stepped over the body and glided forward.
One of the other guards would have to tell her what she needed to know.
She didn’t skip the other doors on her way. They were the last to be searched and she needed to be thorough. Plus, she had no reason to trust the monster.
But a quick glance in each indicated he’d been telling the truth. No other guards. No weapon. When she reached the final dwelling to be searched, she received more confirmation of his veracity.
“No. Stop. No.” Ear pressed close to the door, the faint pleading cries were barely audible over the roaring wind. As were the grunts. The slap of flesh.
She tried to count voices and discern locations. Was Ryker’s friend in there? It was hard to tell.
She was able to distinguish at least two rough voices snapping out threats and the cries of at least one victim, but that was far from the handful of guards her dead opponent had mentioned.
The lack of another egress was unfortunate. The absence of concrete intel even more so.
Logic dictated she wait until the guards emerged, the benefits of immediate extraction not worth the risk to herself or the mission.
But hadn’t she already established she was having more and more difficulty with an exclusively logical approach?
Whirling around, she raised her heel, the certainty that she was about to cross a line she could not come back from flowing through her veins, making her almost dizzy.
If she hadn’t met Ryker. If she hadn’t spoken with him. If he hadn’t touched her. Perhaps she would have been able to put the mission before the victim in that room. But now…
She slammed the heel of her boot into the door. It crashed inward with a satisfying crack.
“What the fuck?” A roar. More shouts.
Two heartbeats later, a thick, wide blur, only a little taller than she, plowed through the narrow doorway, ax raised high. Looking neither left nor right—and, therefore, entirely missing where she’d pressed herself against the outside wall—her first opponent fell neatly into her trap.
Jamming her arm sideways and back, she drove her knife into the target’s neck and yanked downward toward the spine. Cord severed.
The lethal movements were familiar. Reassuring.
The man pitched forward, tripping up the next attacker hurtling through the door. With a curse, the second guard stumbled over his collapsed friend, arms wind-milling as he sought to rebalance.
Grabbing his flailing arm, she swung him around—straight into the sharp edge of her knife. A direct hit to the heart.
Two down. Who knows how many more to go?
Crouching low, she slid through the opening, drawing Ryker’s ax from her harness as she pressed her spine to the wall, ensuring no one could sneak up from behind.
Several shocked faces stared back at her.
She took it all in fast.
The scent of sex, sweat, and coppery blood thick in the air. One badly bruised victim bent over a makeshift table. Collared and naked, his chains held in the hands of a circle of guards who loomed over the captive, dicks out.
Four large, muscled raping bastards. Three with weapons strapped to their back. One with an ax within reach.
Three other captives were chained to the far wall.
She absorbed every horrific detail in an instant, as well as the realization that this Grif person wasn’t among them. Emaciated, near to broken, these victims had been here far longer than she and Ryker had been imprisoned.
Sickened by the thought of what these captives had suffered, she leapt, even as one of the guards roared, “Who in the hell are you?”
“Justice.” Blade held flat, she slid it between the guard’s fourth and fifth rib and delivered a killing blow.
There was no time to play, not with the numbers against her. No room for mercy, either. Not that these monsters deserved any.
Ducking the next guard’s blow, she spun around to his back and drove the pick of Ryker’s ax through the man’s head. The weight of the ax hindered her power, but she managed to send it deep enough. The man dropped, the shaft buried in his scalp.
A woman’s scream pierced the air.
A quick glance proved why. One of the guards had jerked the captive to him, using her as a shield, his knife to her throat. “Don’t come any closer.”
Disgusting coward.
“Look out.” The warning came from another captive, but it was too late. The other guard had slipped behind her. She dove forward, but not quite fast enough.
The tip of a knife dragged along her spine shooting red-hot pain down her legs.
But she’d suffered far worse at the hands of her own employers and learned to soldier through the pain.
Rolling into a somersault, she popped up fast and drove her knife into the back of the knee of the coward holding the woman. Severed tendons were a bitch.
With a howl, he went down, taking the terrified female with him. Together, they landed in a heap. The woman’s cry of terror muffled by the guard’s roar of pain. Moving fast, Jade shoved her knife into his armpit, severing the axillary artery.
“Are you okay?” She pulled the young woman from beneath the corpse.
And cursed to herself when two more guards ran into the room, weapons out.
Back to three more to go. Actually, two. She needed one alive. Long enough to interrogate and discover where 223 and the weapon had gone.
She blew out a breath.
Two of the new arrivals ran toward her, their feral eyes filled with rage. Knife out, she waited for them to come.
She was tiring. Her reflexes slowing. The cut at her spine a flash of pain with every move she made. But she would get the job done. There was no other choice.
The last of the original guards lurched toward her—only to be seized from behind as he passed one of the chained victims. A young male. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Still more boy than man, though the bleakness in his eyes indicated he’d already experienced more hell than most did in a lifetime. With steady hands, the kid wrapped the length of his chain around the guard’s neck.
The gang member bucked and roared, his face turning purple, but the young male captive held tight, his expression determined.
She gave her savior a quick nod and left him to it. Though the guard was bigger and older, she already knew who’d come out on top. She’d seen it in the young man’s eyes. He was a survivor.
It took one to recognize another.
Whirled around, she discovered the other two attackers almost on her. One’s ax raised and already swinging toward her head.
There was no time for her to dodge both.
Bracing for the pain, she hurled her knife at the closest opponent, wanting him out of the picture before she suffered the blow. Aim true, she caught him in the throat—just as she shifted to take the damaging strike of the last man, the one she needed alive.
Then blinked…and blinked again, when her final target’s swing faltered in midair.
Mouth open in shock, the guard she’d intended to interrogate buckled to his knees. Lurched forward. His blow missing her altogether.
A familiar piece of ceiling metal buried in his back.
Her gaze shifted.
Ryker loomed behind.
Out of the dark, he was even more formidable.
Every honed, lethal, naked inch of him taut as his massive forearms flexed and his wide chest bellowed in and out. Veins bulging. Streaks of red dust, clay, and blood mixing with his tats and scars to make him look like an avenging demon.
All he was missing was horns as blood snaked from beneath the thick black cuffs encircling his throat and ankle and a murderous expression twisted his handsome face.
Payback had arrived.
10
She spoke fast. “The weapon’s not here. Nor is your friend.”
He just kept coming, barreling toward her, a seething wall of rage and muscle—and in her exhausted state, she knew she’d never be able to take him down.
Tho
ugh it pained her, she glided back several paces. “You’ve killed the last of the bastards that might have told us where 223 has gone. It’s time to calm down and think.”
Snarling, he didn’t even slow his advance.
“Your friend Grif may not be here,” she tried again. “But these others need help.”
This time, thank Janus, her words penetrated.
Freezing in place, Ryker’s gaze swung to the captives chained to the wall.
A brief flinch. She watched his knees start to buckle, a mix of horror and panic thundering across his face as he took in their condition. Then, his spine snapped upright, his expression wiped clear in the next heartbeat.
Except for the look in his eyes. There was no hiding that kind of pain.
“Dragath hell.” His roar sent the captives whimpering and pressing deeper into the wall.
Fists clenching by his side, Ryker swung his lethal gaze back to her. “Have you searched the entire place?”
“Yes.” Appearing accommodating, at least until her energy returned, seemed wise.
In the light, he was even bigger than she remembered. His wide chest and washboard abs tapering to a mouthwatering deep V that caused an irritating flutter in her belly.
She swatted such idiocy aside. “223’s taken the weapon to the caves to ride out the storm. Most of those in the camp went as well.” She gestured toward the downed men. “Those were the ones left behind.”
“Which caves?”
“They didn’t say.”
He stared hard.
“They didn’t say,” she repeated.
“Forgive me if I don’t quite trust you.” His voice was a bitter rasp.
“You would have done the same.”
“Would I?” He stalked forward once more, a sleek predator, darkness pulsing from his skin.
She raised her weapon. She refused to feel even a flash of regret about chaining him in that cell. They were enemies. And they’d agreed. What had happened in that dark was a moment out of time and place. It wasn’t supposed to change a thing about what came next.
So why was every nerve in her body humming now that he was near?
She hefted her weapon higher. Stay detached. Remain focused. Feel nothing.
He halted a few steps away, grabbing the handle of his ax and yanking it from the scalp of the dead man, his stare never wavering from hers. “What else did you help yourself to besides my weapon?”
“Your clothes are still in a pile in the dwelling with 223’s number carved above.” She eyed the placement of his hand on his weapon and tried to relax. “There’s a tool that can be used to cut off the metal cuffs there as well.”
It was always better to play nice with a man on the edge.
“Good to know.” It didn’t exactly sound as if he meant it. He started forward once more.
“What are you doing?” She gripped her knife tighter. She didn’t want to kill him. She really didn’t. But if he came at her, she wouldn’t go down without a fight.
He shot her raised weapon a disgusted glare. She shrunk to two feet tall. Of all looks he’d given her to date, this one stung the most.
“We’ll complete our business later, assassin.” The promised menace in his voice raised goose bumps on her skin.
Until his amber gaze shifted to over her shoulder and she witnessed another flash of pain.
Fascinating. She had the sudden insight he wished to be anywhere but here with the captives. Still, he remained.
“This was supposed to be so damn simple.” His grim stare met hers, his voice so low he might have been talking to himself. “But now…” He blew out a breath. “Screw simple and screw me. First priority is to check on them.”
A warm flash of something that might almost have been tenderness flickered in her belly before she squelched it. “I saw a first aid kit in one of the other rooms. I’ll go get it.”
The surprise in his gaze only increased the growing itch beneath her skin.
“I have always been committed to helping those who cannot help themselves.” She told him that before, but, of course, he hadn’t listened. “I was in the middle of assisting them before you appeared.”
She didn’t wait to hear his response.
Dodging the raging wind and pelting rocks, she hustled to the room where she’d found the supplies and his discarded clothing. A few of the dwellings on the other side of the settlement were now battered wrecks, flattened by massive boulders that hadn’t been there when she first arrived to search the camp. Another sign the storm was only growing in strength and danger.
This was supposed to be so damn simple. Ryker had said the words about himself, but she was growing increasingly certain they could be applied to her as well.
After what she’d just witnessed, there was no possibility she could complete the second part of her assignment and use the weapon to exterminate the people on this planet. Some of whom were as much victims as the innocents she sought to protect back home. Nor could she return the weapon to her employers so they could send another operative to carry out what she refused to do.
Her job parameters had to change. After countless assignments and years of loyalty, she was about to willfully defy her employers, fail to complete a mission, and sign her own death warrant.
It was not the legacy she had imagined for herself, but safeguarding those who could not protect themselves had always given her life its sole meaning. Now it would inspire her death.
Determined, she grabbed what she needed, made a quick detour to where 223 kept his supplies, and, after no more run-ins, hurried back.
On her return, she found Ryker at the back of the room, leaning over one of the captives. He’d wrapped a piece of fabric around his middle—most likely to appear less frightening to the captives.
With a gentleness she hadn’t seen before, the man she’d once dismissed as nothing but a worthless felon put his arm around the female’s shoulder and helped her to standing, his muscles flexing and bunching, the intricate swirls on his chest and back undulating as he absorbed the female’s weight and lifted her upright.
Jade’s chest did that foolish stabbing thing it increasingly did when he was near.
Why the man insisted he didn’t care was beyond her. It was easy to see that beneath all the bluster and brutality was a man drowning in pain because he cared too much.
Her gaze shifted to the others. Two men and the kid. Not a single one without cuts and bruises on their body. Tense, they all watched Ryker with the woman, clearly trying to gauge if he was friend or foe.
“Here.” Juggling the pile of stuff in her arms, she moved forward and thrust the kit toward him. “The key to unlock the manacles was hanging by the door. You can use it to free them.”
He seized it without hesitation, tucking the female captive closer into his side, the lines at the corners of his mouth etched deep. “What else did you find?”
Not even a thank-you. Clearly, he was still nursing a grudge.
Bending forward, she laid the pile at his feet, his hands already too full for anything more. “There’s water jugs, food packets, and clothing as well.”
“Almost seems as if you might have a heart.”
“Whereas your repeated attempts to bait me clearly prove you’re missing a brain.”
He scoffed, his gaze locking with hers once more. As if the verbal exchange had strengthened him, and tempered the worst of his raging darkness.
A bewildering flare of satisfaction streaked through her.
Until the weeping female captive wrapped her arms around his thick neck as if he was the only anchor in the universe.
“You will find more supplies in the armory if you need them.” With a quick nod and a final glance at Ryker, she started for the door.
“Where in Janus hells are you going?” His shout echoed off the walls, the slick of metal being pulled from a holster barely discernable. Yet, she heard it nonetheless.
The crying woman went silent.
Drawing
on her patience, Jade turned and found Ryker’s ax raised high. The captive female cowered behind him.
“Your shouting is disturbing them.” She drew her own weapon.
A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he didn’t respond.
“I will help you get them to safety,” she informed him, “so there is no need to fear I am sneaking off.”
“Help me?” His eyebrows reached his forehead, his usually hard expression loose with shock.
“Yes. I am off to patrol the area and scout the safest way for us to lead these people from the compound. They can’t remain here.”
Plus, she needed to scour 223’s work station and obtain more supplies if she was going to put her revised mission plan into effect. Like before, she still intended to acquire the device before the nanotechnology inside her detonated. The difference was, now she meant to destroy 223’s twisted toy before anyone else could use it.
“So, you weren’t heading off to find the weapon?” Ryker’s arm dropped to his side, the ax with it.
Narrowing her gaze, she shot him a disappointed look. “Attempting to retrieve the laser while 223 and his men are sheltered in an unknown, unexplored location is foolish and illogical and will only result in failure.”
He kept staring. “And?”
“Fine,” she conceded. “It is also true that these people are the only ones with any potential information about where 223 has taken the weapon.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
The smugness in his tone irked.
As did the additional, less-than-rational reasons she hadn’t voiced for why she remained: her admiration for the way the smug bastard was staying to help, despite his obvious discomfort around the captives.
If he could stick it out, so could she.
“When I strike,” she warned him, “it will be at the optimal time for success. I do not intend to fail.”
He sheathed his ax in a single, deliberate move. “Nor do I.”
“Then we have a temporary truce? For the good of these people?”
His jaw twitched. “Very temporary.”
Unwelcome arousal slid beneath her skin. She’d always liked a challenge more than she should.
“I accept those terms.” She swiveled once more. She would see these brutalized people to safety, learn what they knew, and then she would survey the caves where 223 was hiding and put her revised plan into effect. It was a logical agenda—and not at all influenced by a certain too-tempting, wide-shouldered man.
