Cheyenne McCray - [Lexi Steele 02]

by The Second Betrayal

  But the Japanese guy was toying with her. She met his gaze as he shook his arms and legs, limbering up for another round. A slight but almost crazed smile was on his face.

  She’d been wrong about the young guy possibly being a black belt. He was too slow. He was an over-confident wannabe. Perhaps a brown belt, working his way up, but he was no expert.

  He moved toward her as she got to her knees, her side facing him and her body holding the hammer.

  Hold. Not too fast. Not prematurely.

  When he started to put weight on his back foot to lash out at her with another kick, she twisted her upper body and put her own weight behind her swing as she went after his ankle with everything she had.

  Satisfying cracks from the sound of bone shattering in his ankle.

  The young man screamed and screamed. Ankle injuries were among the most painful injuries anyone could suffer. There were fourteen ankle bones and thirty-two foot bones. She slammed the hammer down on his ankle again and shattered a few more of them.

  The man screamed long and loud as he held his knee tight to his chest.

  Chandra gasped as the ball-peen hammer was jerked out of her hands in a motion that caused her to fall onto her back. Pain shot up her spine. She looked up to see Stalder’s icy expression as he swung the hammer toward her head.

  Her movements were automatic. She ducked as she rolled toward his legs, but only in time to avoid getting her head smashed in. Instead, the hammer struck her collarbone, which snapped.

  Chandra cried out as nearly blinding pain ripped through her. Only her adrenalized body kept her from losing consciousness. Barely.

  She ground her teeth against the pain as she twisted again so that she was half under Stalder. She brought her knee up hard enough to hit the back of one of his knees. At the same time she levered herself so that the top half of her body pushed against the front of his at an opposite angle.

  Stalder gave a furious shout as he dropped. Breath rushed out of her lungs when his legs landed half on her waist and half on her hip. The movement rocked her whole body so that more pain shot through her collarbone, bone grinding against bone.

  Chandra reached out with her bound hands and tried to grab the screwdriver. Stalder was still lying on her, but from her peripheral vision she saw him reach beneath his suit jacket.

  He was going for his gun.

  Fear gave her the strength to reach higher for the rusted screwdriver.

  Slow motion.

  Stalder had his hand on his gun and was drawing it.

  Chandra gripped the screwdriver in both hands.

  A click as he undid the safety catch of his handgun.

  Chandra screamed the pain of her broken collarbone as she turned her upper body.

  Stalder started to push himself off her.

  She didn’t give him a chance. She jabbed the screwdriver with enough power to ram the tool into Stalder’s eye. And buried it in his brain.

  He collapsed on her body, his deadweight pinning her legs. The other men were whimpering, but not screaming anymore. They probably had guns, too.

  With her still-bound hands, Chandra grabbed Stalder’s .380-caliber handgun and pointed up just in time to see Blondy, his face oxblood red, as he lurched forward and started to raise his own handgun.

  She nailed him in the heart with three rapid shots.

  He dropped. Soundless until his body thumped against the concrete.

  The young Japanese man was sobbing and cursing in Japanese. He sounded closer now. Chandra tried to keep consciousness; her mind wanted to fade to black due to the pain in her shoulder.

  She cried out as she worked her body to get Stalder off her legs. Finally she was free. But she didn’t take time to congratulate herself. She rose just enough to see the young Japanese crawling toward her, involuntary tears flowing from his eyes but deadly determination in his gaze. He probably intended to break her neck with his bare hands because he didn’t have a gun.

  Chandra forced herself to her knees even though she wanted to collapse.

  The man kept coming toward her. She had the strange flashback of an old movie she’d seen called The Terminator, where the humanlike machine kept going and going, even with his body in pieces.

  This was no Terminator.

  And she was finished screwing with these bastards.

  She aimed the handgun at the Japanese and shot him between the eyes.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  China dolls and the bull in the shop

  Oh, shit. The handgun the man pointed at my chest was a wicked-looking Sig Sauer P210-3, the kind issued to the Swiss police.

  Hagstedt. I would bet this man’s life on it. Hell, I’d kill him just for intending to abuse these girls, even if he didn’t turn out to be Hagstedt.

  But there wasn’t a doubt in my mind who he was. In my gut I knew it.

  “What is going on?” I laid on the Swedish accent really thick, as well as giving the the best look of innocence and confusion I could muster. Well, innocent for a woman who oversaw prostitutes.

  He narrowed his snow-pale blue eyes, and I saw a flicker of indecision in them. Kill me now or kill me later?

  Not a chance in hell I’d let him do it one way or another. Since I wasn’t already dead, he likely wanted to drill me with questions about the organization I worked for—yeah, whatever—before drilling me with a bullet. Plenty of time for me to come up with a plan to get out of this mess as I faked innocence and stalled. Takamoto would have RED agents here in no time, too, thanks to my response text.

  I’d forgotten to text Takamoto the room number after I checked Jianjun’s messages. At least RED could pinpoint me with the GPS tracking device in my mini cell phone.

  The three Chinese girls probably couldn’t see the gun, only the man’s head. Ai, Daiju, and Ning stood obediently behind me and I felt the thickness of their fear in the air and heard their sniffles and low sobs. My own fear had my heart pumping, but my anger kept my hands steady at my sides and kept my gaze fixed on the man’s strange eyes, which reminded me of snowstorms followed by pale blue skies.

  Go, go, go! I wanted to yell to the girls. I didn’t say the words because I’d be taking the chance of getting a hole blown in my chest, or the chance that the man might shoot the girls.

  “Get inside the room,” he finally said in Swiss-French-accented English as he gestured with the gun. So, the man was likely from a French-speaking part of Switzerland.

  “My girls do not role-play with men who want to use weapons,” I said as I passed him. Not likely he was taking my innocent act for anything but what it was. An act. “These girls are too young. Too inexperienced.”

  “Quiet for now.” He looked calm, arrogant, and sure of himself as he gestured with his gun again for me to get into the room. “I have questions that you will answer. Soon.”

  I cataloged his appearance as I stepped past him into the large sitting room of a luxurious suite.

  About six-one, the man was anywhere from mid-to late forties, possibly fifty. His hair was dark brown, sleek, and he managed to appear handsome while holding a gun on me. He actually looked debonair in a black tux and starched white shirt, complete with a bow tie. What, he dressed up to abuse young girls? That or he had a special occasion planned.

  Oh, I had something special in mind for him, too. Lots of special things.

  Even though this man was older, he reminded me a lot of a very young, fit, athletic Roger Moore when the actor had played James Bond 007 in the 1970s and early ’80s. I’d always enjoyed a good spy movie.

  I didn’t like this guy ruining my mental image of Moore’s 007. Another mark against Hagstedt. Not that he needed any more marks. He was as good as dead already.

  When I’d walked away from the girls, his gaze moved over them. They gasped and cried harder as they saw the gun that he still had fixed on me. Greed and lust flickered in his eyes along with anger.

  His gaze was only partly diverted to the girls, because
a good portion of his attention remained on me.

  My body was tense, alert. Adrenaline flushed through my body and made me intensely focused on the man. If he’d been near enough, I could have broken the wrist of his gun arm by closing in with a quick combat move, which would also disarm him. Hard to hold a gun with a broken wrist.

  Unfortunately he was out of range. And he was the one with the gun.

  He slammed the door shut when we were all in the room. Gun still trained on me, the man pointed his free hand in the direction of a couch and two chairs. They were arranged behind a coffee table that had a huge clear glass vase holding a brilliant bouquet of flowers.

  As he pointed to the furniture he told the girls, “Take off your coats and throw them into that corner.” He nodded to the corner farthest from me and the girls. “Then sit.”

  The girls tossed their coats into the corner and walked with stiff but hurried, frightened movements as they obeyed him. He was amazingly patient.

  “Take off your coat.” The man met my gaze again as he spoke to me. “Slowly. Do not put your hands anywhere near your pockets or I will put a hole in your pretty head.”

  I managed a huff of indignation. “Sir, what is—”

  The weapon made a clicking sound as he cocked it and gave an evil smile.

  I shrugged off the coat while he kept his gun pointed at me. I threw it where the other girls’ coats were.

  Still holding the gun on me, he reached into his tux pocket and withdrew his cell phone.

  He flipped it open one-handed, pressed a speed-dial number, then put the phone to his ear. A pause, and then he said, “I require your services immediately at the prearranged location.” Another short pause. “Do not be late.” He finished the call by snapping the phone shut before he put it back into his inside tux pocket.

  “Sir—” I tried to get in another innocent plea.

  “I will ask the questions.” His voice was smooth and almost casual. Definitely self-assured. “Who do you work for?”

  More faking confusion. “Mr. G at the Elite, of course.”

  “Remove the wig.” The man raised his gun so that he’d be putting a bullet between my eyes if I didn’t figure a way out of this soon. “You are the fucking bitch responsible for ruining my Boston enterprise.”

  Hagstedt.

  It didn’t really surprise me that he knew. Bet he’d seen some kind of surveillance vids when we took down his Boston sex slave auction ring.

  “So you’re Hagstedt.” I jerked off the white-blond wig. I dropped the wig, the Swedish accent, and all pretenses. “Not so great to make your acquaintance,” I added as the wig landed on the carpet in front of my right foot.

  Since the hair of the wig was in a French knot, and the hair itself was pretty heavy, the wig made a thumping sound when it hit. I didn’t take my eyes off Hagstedt when it landed.

  “Of course when I kill you,” I added, “things will be terrific.”

  Hagstedt didn’t seem surprised, either, by my response or that I knew who he was. “Before the hotel maids find your body,” he said, “you will tell me who you work for.”

  I smirked. “Of course. Easy as that I’m going to spill everything then let you shoot me.”

  “Yes, easy as that.” As if he was enjoying a casual conversation with a business associate, he stepped back, farther out of my reach, and pointed the gun at Daiju. She stiffened, her face even more pale, her eyes wide with fear. “I will shoot one of the girls each time you do not answer a question to my satisfaction.

  “When I run out of these precious little china dolls—” He smiled as he glanced at them, then at me again. “—I will start shooting at different parts of your body and cripple you slowly. First I’ll put a bullet in one of your thighs, and if I’m not satisfied I’ll shoot the other. A bullet in your shoulder should be painful, as well as a wrist . . . and so on.”

  I sucked in my breath as old terrors ripped through my gut. Images filled my mind of what the Nigerians had planned to do to me after my screwup in Army Special Forces and I had the nearly uncontrollable urge to throw up.

  If I hadn’t taken the ultimatum given to me by the Fucking Asshole Sonsofbitches—to be an assassin for their ghost of an operation—FAS would have turned me over to the Nigerians.

  The Nigerians had planned to tie me to a public post, cut me up a day at a time, then patch me up enough that I’d live, tied to that post for the next mutilation. Something that was beyond a long, slow, painful death.

  Through torture and threats, FAS had broken me in just about every way possible. The waterboarding finally did it after several beatings and three days of sleep deprivation. After the water torture, I could agree to nothing but turning into one of FAS’s assets, an assassin.

  Before Karen Oxford saved my life and brought me into RED.

  The remembered fear and terror from my past balled up with the anger I felt now. Here, facing Hagstedt, I had no choice but to speak, because he was going to kill the girls, and he’d do it without remorse. I could see that in his unnerving snow-blue eyes.

  I had to tell him something.

  “Okay,” I started then almost screamed as a shot rang out.

  Daiju slumped on the couch, a hole in her forehead and a single trickle of blood nearly reaching her wide-open dark eyes, the whites red from the constant tears she’d been shedding.

  The other two girls did scream.

  My heart thundered and I had to force myself to look away from Daiju’s body. To pretend she had only been a pretty china doll and not once an innocent, beautiful young woman.

  “Why did you kill her?” My fury raised my voice so that I was almost shouting. “I was just about to tell you.”

  “Too slow.” He aimed the gun at Ning before looking at me again. “Faster this time.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. No matter what I told him, even if it was the truth, he was going to kill the rest of us, too.

  “I work for a covert organization.” I practically spat out the words. I was going to kill him anyway, so I decided it wasn’t going to hurt to tell him a little truth.

  “We specialize in recovery of persons who are trafficked into prostitution or slavery.”

  “That has been more than obvious.” He cocked the handgun. Ning sobbed harder and trembled as she stared at the weapon. “Tell me something that I haven’t guessed already.”

  I could tell him the truth or I could make shit up. He wouldn’t believe any of it, or at least he’d pretend not to and just keep shooting.

  I had a better idea.

  “The truth is,” I said slowly, “you’re going to die.”

  I kicked the wig I’d dropped in front of my foot. The French knot and the heaviness of the wig gave it enough weight and balance that it sailed straight for his face.

  He tried to duck out of the way. The French knot hit him on the side of his head and he shouted as the sprig of holly nailed him in the eye.

  A little holiday cheer, courtesy of Kerrison.

  His first shot went wild.

  I’d already dived to the floor the moment after I kicked the wig. I propelled myself toward him as I moved. His wild shot rang out over my head.

  The carpet burned my arm as I tucked my body into a fast, evasive roll. Thank God the dress I’d worn was made of a stretchy material, similar to Lycra, and didn’t restrict my movements.

  I rolled toward his left side to avoid his second shot. That one wasn’t even close, either, and I knew I’d taken him by surprise again by my movements.

  When I was tucked in, I was able to slip off one of my high-heeled slides. Before he had a chance to get off a third shot, I made it to my haunches and swung the heel of the shoe at his Achilles tendon.

  I missed and only grazed his anklebone.

  Hagstedt bent and jammed the barrel of his gun to my head, the metal pressing into the skin right behind my left ear.

  The pain from the pressure made me wince even as I went still. Sweat beaded my forehead and dripped along
side my face as my heart rate continued to ramp up.

  I had to control my breathing. Take deep breaths. Analyze the current situation.

  “Ready to die, little girl?” Hagstedt’s voice was even, smooth, elegant.

  With the gun pressed so hard behind my ear, I couldn’t look up to see his face. “No thanks,” I said in an almost casual tone, then winced again when Hagstedt pressed the weapon harder against my head. It felt like the metal was now tearing the delicate skin behind my ear and starting to drill a hole into my skull.

  Enough of this crap.

  I snapped my hands up and shoved the handgun away from my head so that the muzzle was pointed toward the wall. The loud retort of the gun echoed in my ear as the shot buried the bullet in the plaster.

  In the instant that followed, I twisted my body so that I rose to my knees, facing Hagstedt. In the same smooth movement, I aimed the side of my hand at his in a long-perfected jujitsu move.

  Several bones shattered in his hand.

  Hagstedt screamed and dropped the gun. It was impossible to maintain his hold with a broken hand.

  I dove for his Sig Sauer. He snapped his good hand out too fast and grabbed the tail of my French braid. Pain splintered through my head. He jerked me away from the weapon and dragged me several feet as I clawed at his hand.

  Braids and ponytails were a no-no for this exact reason—it gave him something solid to hold on to. He could swing me around and seriously hurt me. I’d had my hair in the braid to keep it tucked more easily under my wig. I should have taken my chances and just shoved it in.

  He landed a blow to my gut as he kicked me with one of his polished black evening shoes.

  My eyes watered from the pain but it wasn’t going to stop me. I grabbed at air for a moment, trying to reach his injured hand. It was too far from my groping movements.

  With his pull on my braid I lunged upward. I hit his broken hand with the same move I’d used before and probably shattered the rest of the bones.

  Hagstedt screamed. He stumbled as he released his hold on my hair.

  I pushed myself to my feet, fast, and kicked off my remaining high heel. I started to go after him—then I saw the strangest sight.