by Angel Payne
“Showtime, motherfuckers.”
Chapter Three
Emma
I feel him before I see him. Bright as a star inside my mind, sizzling as sparklers in every drop of my blood. I jerk from the force, knowing every drop of the savage agony he’s suffered while searching for me.
But now that he’s almost here, I force myself to shout the most hideous words I’ve ever fired at him.
“Don’t do it, Reece! Stay away, damn you!”
Because no matter how this shit goes down, ’Dia and I won’t be leaving this situation alive. And damn it, I’d really prefer my last mortal sight not to be the man I love more than anything trapped by the bitch I hate more than everything.
“It’s a trap! Goddamnit, Reece. Listen to me!” I shriek it with my mind as much as my lips. Cram the alarm into every shred of my thoughts and every beat of my heart. Listen to me, you effing dork. Nobody is going to win here, okay? Faline won’t allow it. But damn it, you need to survive. You need to live—because you need to take down these filthy bastards in every form they exist.
But the shithead, in all his stubborn glory, isn’t listening. As the booms and screeches of colliding metal grow louder through the hangar, I understand why I can’t even sense his desperation anymore. He’s focusing too hard. Diverting every spark of his energy toward getting in here.
Stop! You stubborn shithead, you need to stop right now. This is exactly what she wants you to do. Don’t you get—
With a crash that hits the air like a shockwave, a door to the hangar’s catwalk flies off its hinges. The steel slab teeter-totters on the railing for a second before tumbling fifty feet and hitting the floor with a deafening clatter.
And then there’s no more trying to stop him.
Because he’s here.
Damn him. He’s here, already making my lips twitch into a smile and my heart race in pure lust, despite the really disgusting circumstances of this whole thing. Can I be blamed? I almost want to scream that too. Look at him, with the wind in his hair, the fire in his fingers, the lightning in his eyes…
“Faline!”
And the rage in his voice.
“Holy shit. He’s pissed.” Lydia scrunches closer to me—if that’s even possible, considering we’re trapped in a nylon net like a pair of almonds in an oversize wedding favor. Only there’s no cute birch reception tree to support us here. We’re dangling from a hook attached to the end of an airport catering vehicle. The only reason I’m so sure about that is because something Italian must’ve been transported in there last, and my stomach constricts just from getting to smell the savory mix of tomato sauce and melted cheese.
Somehow, I push out a dark laugh. ’Dia’s understatement, joined to the recognition that I’m suspended in front of a luxury jet’s engine and can only think about pepperoni pizza, have made the humor inescapable. Still, I follow up the chuckle by muttering, “Yeah, he is. And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
But I’m alone in the feeling. From the second Reece stomps out onto the catwalk, joined by Sawyer on one side and Rambo’s long-lost little brother on the other, the surge of hope in my sister is palpable. There’s not a hitch of trepidation from Reece and his wingmen, either.
His wingmen.
Holy shit. My boyfriend now has support troops.
But nobody’s all-out confidence freaks me out more than Faline’s.
The woman appears in the plane’s passenger door opening, still dressed in the black and red cat-bitch outfit with a smug smile draping her bloodred lips. Though she’s yanked her hair into a ponytail, she still looks like airbrush art from a fanboy needing to jack off to a mashup of Black Widow and a Rio beach babe. Seriously, I wonder how the armed goons pacing the floor below us aren’t sloshing through their own testosterone puddles by now.
“Darling!” she gushes Reece’s way, opening her arms like a gameshow model showing off the jet for a showcase package. “You made it at last. And my oh my, looking so handsome too. Now I know why the VIPs always come late.”
As soon as she stresses that last verb like an orgasmic moan, I clench every muscle until the whole net shakes. At once, Lydia jabs me hard with a shoulder.
“Breathe, baby girl. Right now.”
“Even if it means imagining that bitch being violated by five kinds of farm animals?”
“You’d subject those poor animals to a trauma like that?”
I release my rage through a violent snort. “I hate her, ’Dia.”
“Well clearly, so does your man. So focus on him and help him defeat her disgusting, perfect ass.”
I don’t reply to that out loud. But inside my cracking heart, there are still words. So many things that I can still feel. Oh, Lydia. My incredible warrior of a sister. The angels will be stronger with you in their number. I’ll just do my best to keep up.
I wish to God I really could let it all tumble out. And let her label me melodramatic again. And wish, for once, it was really true.
I’m not melodramatic. I’m realistic.
And there, in its sucky purity, is the truth of right now.
That even if Reece hands himself over to the bitch—and he will, because he shares my sister’s conviction about a “dignity among assholes” code at work here, like “honor among thieves” only crazier—that the witch on the stairs is really going to let ’Dia and me walk out of here despite how we now know her first name, her distinctive tattoo, and her astonishing immunity to camel toe.
That’s not the reality here.
And believe me, how I wish I could jab my head into the same dream in which Reece and ’Dia are living and really see things otherwise. But I believe that within the next fifteen minutes, I’m going to be dead.
Dear God, just not by the method I think Faline’s planning…
But that hope’s busted too. In the very next second. The moment the woman steps to the top of the passenger stairwell and sweeps one hand high enough for the pilot to see—
And the turbines of the engine we’re dangled so close to now rev to life, powering the massive fans that suck in the air they need for flight.
And anything else that gets too close to the massive blades.
Like a pair of human almonds trapped in a demented wedding favor.
“What the hell?” Lydia sobs it close to my ear, and I lean into her with eyes tightly shut. It’s the moment I’ve dreaded. She’s tumbled out of the dream and into the glare of the truth. We’re going to die tonight. Faline is prepared to make that happen, probably in several different ways. I just pray Reece will do something to ensure it isn’t this way.
“Stop!”
His drawn-out bellow, though barely audible over the engine’s din, is still discernible. I finally trust myself to look—and breathe—again, as the engines fade and then click off. But only in this moment do I realize that the engines haven’t been the only machinery that’s been in motion over the last minute. Faline’s go-ahead to the pilot also served as a high sign to the driver of the catering vehicle—who’s nudged the whole rig, including Lydia and me in the net, forward another couple of feet.
“Holy shit,” Lydia rasps. Then continues to whisper the words as a pacifying mantra, even as Reece’s roar takes over the air again.
“What the living fuck?” He doesn’t move from his location but visibly quakes from the effort of holding himself back. Silently, I try to lend him my dwindling strength. Stay there, Reece. If you hit the floor, her minions will corral you. “News flash, Faline,” he proclaims, stabbing a finger toward Lydia and me. “You kill them, you don’t get me.”
Her petulant sigh vibrates on the air—and grinds the diplomacy off every nerve in my body. “Ay, papi. You were so much more fun with a plastic bit in your mouth and a needle up your cock.”
“Shut. Up.” Reece’s growl is a bizarre piece of comfort. Another wire of connection back to him. I pull in a deeper breath, feeling a little stronger. Maybe a drop braver. Maybe.
“Mierda
.” Faline wrinkles her nose and examines her nails. “And now you are just being a grumpy prick.”
“Who’s finished with your goddamned games,” he snaps, curling bright-blue fists around the catwalk’s railing. With a longer snarl and a tsunami of a glare, he snaps the metal like a toothpick. He rips the two pieces out of their riveted moorings and hurls them aside but doesn’t bother to watch as they’re embedded into the hangar’s thick steel walls. “Tell your man to lower that net and set the women free,” he orders. “Only then do you get me without a fight.”
Faline runs her fingers along the rail at her side, clicking her nails in a sadistic Morse Code. “I do believe I will already get you without a fight, darling.”
Sawyer pushes forward like he’ll be the next to snap the railing in place of the woman’s neck. “So you were behind that joke of a robbery at the gala.”
Faline rears back, one hand splayed on her chest. “Now, that is not very nice. My boys worked hard on coordinating all that. Well, bah.” She dismissively waves the same hand. “It was needed entertainment. East Village or not, the event was a bore. But a means to an end, I am afraid.”
“And now you have that end.” Reece braces his stance wider. “So let’s get on with it. Free them and take me.”
“Nooo!” I’ve been a quivering ball of tension, fighting to hold the scream back, but the cold words of this brutal bargain, on his lips, are too much to bear. “Damn it, Reece!” My tears, terror, misery, and fury spew with it. “Do not be a dumbass about this! You have to carry this fight on. You. You’re the only one who can!”
His shoulders, weighted like they each support ten elephants, rise and fall. He rumbles, without altering an inch of his glower, “Faulty argument, Velvet. Because I’m not me without you.”
I drop my head and watch my tears splatter against the tops of my knees. “With all due respect, Mr. Richards, fuck that.”
The retort is no sooner out of my mouth than a peeling laugh pours out of Faline’s, and she tosses her head back before rolling her sphinxlike gaze between Reece and me. “You know, Alpha Two,” she finally croons to Reece, “you chose very well for a mate. I do like her.”
I whip my head over, knowing the admiration in her assessment should petrify me worse than her disdain. But rage is my new best buddy, and the trooper doesn’t let me down now. “You know what, Fartline? Fuck you too.”
The wench’s lips twitch, hedging on writing off my insult with another chuckle, until most of her henchmen beat her to the punchline. As soon as their snickers start, her smile disappears—and the edges of my mouth hitch up in matching measure. The woman may have bypassed the curse of camel toe, but I managed to twist her panties anyway. If only for one second…
“Oh, yes, Reece. She is special.” But only the words are an accolade. In her voice and in her eyes, I’m subjected to unfiltered venom—and unbridled violence. “And how fortunate for all of us, yes? It makes the observation that much more…special.”
With her emphasis on the descriptor, she twirls her hand again in the air. At once, the jet’s pilot complies—along with the catering vehicle’s driver.
One second.
The comprehension screams through my brain, fate’s twisted joke on me now, as Lydia’s wail fills one of my ears and the engine’s torrent is a demon in the other.
One second.
For even Lydia’s voice to be drowned by the relentless zeer of the revving turbines and whirring fans.
One second.
Which brings the crazy discovery that at the height of personal terror, there’s a strange, accepting kind of peace. As my hair whips forward, sucked by the strengthening intake of the mighty fan, my mind breaks through a nauseous ozone into a numb outer space that I take a moment to treasure…
Knowing it’s about to be stained with blood and pain.
Then the darkness of forever.
REECE
One second.
The words slam through my psyche like something meaningful. A realization. An epiphany?
No. A surrender. Emma’s surrender.
She’s ready to die.
For me.
Because of me.
As I drop into a crouch on the landing, I give myself only one moment more to crash her misguided mental party—with words that seethe from my clenched teeth but originate from the whole of my screaming soul.
“Not. Tonight.”
And then there are no more seconds.
No more time for delays or games.
No more limits on what I must do. What I have to do. No matter what the cost.
I dig my psyche into that purpose before forcing it down inside myself, past the red lines of my reserves, to the dark, vicious places that have been depleted several times over tonight—until I force them back into the light. Ram their charging ports with new charges. Flood their anodes and cathodes with a power I’ve embraced as limitless.
The magnitude of loving an extraordinary woman.
I’m steady in that purpose now, even balanced here on just the pads of my fingers and the balls of my feet, like a sprinter on invisible blocks—that overlook a forty-foot drop. But that distance is barely a scratch on my conscious and a nonfactor in determining the course my actions must take. I only see the space separating me from the most important target in this room. The bundle of two terrified women, across the field I have to clear before they’re sucked in and slashed apart.
“Not.”
I summon the voltage to my legs.
“Tonight!”
I push out my war cry as I punch the new thrusters inside, launching me off the ledge…
Through the air.
Farther.
Farther.
Until I collide with the net with such force, it swings on the hook like a cocoon in a hurricane.
As Emma and Lydia scream, I fight to do three things at once.
Redirect the charge in my blood back to my fingers.
Wrap both arms inside the net to avoid getting sucked away myself.
Find some kind of voice so I can snarl at them, “It’s me. It’s me, damn it. Stop biting!”
“Reece?” Even hoarse from terror, my woman’s voice is the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. But there’s no time to savor it now, despite the tears and kisses in which she drenches each joyful repetition. I only have enough time—and strength—to grit out a terse command in response.
“Brace yourselves, girls. Ride’s not over yet.”
The second the electrons fill my arms again, I swing one high and wide over my head and burn a clean slice through one of the cables holding the cocoon up. It hurts like a motherfucker, and I glower at the thick black line across my fingers, knowing I’ll slice them all clean off if I go for the second cable with the same hand. Not that I particularly care about the things, except for the service I still need from them in getting Em and Lydia all the way out of here.
With a snarl worthy of a Wookiee, I switch hands and finally get the second line severed. I hang the hell on as the three of us plummet toward the floor. A couple of feet before we hit, I twist in order to cushion our fall.
“Oof!”
Despite my exclamation, the impact wasn’t as nasty as I expected. Good thing too, since Faline’s already shrieking at her men to hustle their asses and surround us again. But the circle they’re supposed to form around us is more like a sad crescent, thanks to Foley’s last-minute-but-badder-than-badass battalion. Thank fuck, half of the Consortium’s goons are already wounded or motionless, though I hardly pause for a “Kumbaya” with Archer, Mitch, and Alex, who are still bringing their finest G.I. Joe game as they work on the rest of the assholes. I join them, pulsing back any dickhead who dares to approach the girls, until Kane reappears in front of me with intention in his stomps and steel in his stare.
“Let’s do this,” he growls. “Colton’s got wheels right outside that door.” He nods toward a corrugated roll-up about ten feet away. So close but so damn far. “You pu
lse where you can. I’ll cover the rest.”
I nod and then growl, “Charged.” I raise one hand to show him the neon rods of my fingers, their glow emphasizing the black burns across the knuckles. “And ready.” I lift the other, which forms enough light to reflect off his near-black eyes.
“Fuck.” He dips a fast nod. “That is cool.”
I don’t answer him this time. No need to. The girls are my first and sole priority. I roll back toward them, grunting in approval as they kick off the last of the netting, but then wonder why their moves are so clumsy. Did Faline have them drugged? Holy fuck. Are they injured?
Handcuffs.
The observation is a relief. This, I can handle.
While jabbing my pinky at the key post of Emma’s cuffs and then at Lydia’s, I use the pause to dictate to them, “Listen to me like I’ve got a gift code for free shoes.” I jog my head toward the roll-up. “I’m getting you out of here right through that door—but until we’re out, you both stick to me like tree sap. Got it?”
Wordlessly, they nod as one. Damn good thing. The three of us need that unity. Right now.
As soon as they cast off their cuffs, I roar one word.
“Go!”
The sprint to the door is the longest journey of my life, including my escape run from the Source. Though that flight was longer by a quarter of a mile, fleeing the Consortium’s grip didn’t include turbofan jet engines, flying bullets, a dozen soldier-grade profanities, and one screaming banshee in red stiletto boots.
But we’re there.
And the door is rolling up, freed by the jolt I’ve just directed at its lock.
And we’re ducking beneath it, keeping low as we clear the final five feet and tumble into the Escalade, Colton yelling things from behind the wheel that I can’t hear. But there’s a hell-yeah smirk on his movie-star lips, so I’m positive a bullet isn’t about to rip up my spine.
If only I didn’t already feel that way.
