by C. M. Owens
“Why wouldn’t she call in a team?” I ask Jude. “Maya, I mean.”
His eyes level mine. “Because Maya is too green to know what to do. She has someone handle shit like this, and she shuts down emotionally when there’s a severe crisis going on. She shifts into whatever survival mode comes into play. She’s been coddled during her corrupt-yet-pampered lifetime, and someone else has always made the truly hard decisions. Kara will be of more use in the gritty times than Maya. Maya’s default has her being a self-sacrifice sort of girl. Kara’s a determined survivalist.”
Axle abruptly stalks between us, and Jude arches an eyebrow at me.
“Something he knows too well,” he adds as he gestures his head toward Axle. “Better follow him if you’re going to save your girlfriend and kidnap her later.”
“I take it you’re not coming?” I ask as Axle throws open the door to the stairs and starts quickly sprinting down them.
“Not my fight. I’ll call some guys to meet you. Have fun with all that,” he says as he pushes off from his perch. “I’m going to go visit Dash and see what ridiculous thing Eve has knitted him today.”
I don’t have time to spare on confusion, and I dart down the stairs as well, jumping over the railing and landing on the next level.
By the time I reach the outside, I’ve almost caught up with the beast that is Axle.
“Got enough ammo on you?” he calls over his shoulder as we both quickly sprint across the hospital parking lot.
“Depends on the size of the party we’re crashing and the artillery we should be expecting,” I’m quick to point out.
“I have a location. Nothing more than that,” he gripes. “We just need to stall for twenty minutes before Blackbird operations gets a team to her. Jude calling in some Calvary?”
“I’ll tell him to have them bring bigger guns and more ammo,” I answer to the next words that would be out of his lips, as I quickly fire off the text.
JUDE: Not my first blind mission. Already did that. Aim small...miss small. Don’t say I never taught you anything.
“What’d he say?”
“Something dicks say in response to intense, serious situations when they’ve lost their fucking minds,” I grumble as I pocket my phone.
I really wish I’d given Kara a fucking phone.
Chapter 29
KARA
It’s like one of those really awkward movie scenes that has people rolling their eyes when the heroes who have no business being heroes...
That’s how I explain this moment.
The gasps, and shush sounds, and slipping against the wall like that’s going to hide us better...things of this nature. We’ve even done some crawling inside this massive warehouse on our way to the elevated mezzanine.
What’s below us? You know, the usual. A bunch of gun-toting, suit-wearing men laughing and cutting up in some areas. Some are serious and glaring at everyone else. Some appear bored, but you can see the keen observational undertones in their appraising eyes as they flick them around the room, taking in the other groupings.
I’m not sure what’s going on, but this many suits and guns is never a good combination.
“I’m saying you’re a very powerful woman who genuinely has no self-preservation skills. It’s like you want to die, and you refuse to ask for help to save your life,” Drake hisses at Maya as we scramble in behind one of the massive spotlights shining down like a beacon toward a doorway.
The concrete floor below is visible, and there are certainly a lot of bloodstains creasing all the cracks.
Chains with hook ends hang like bad movie props to only add to the frustrating scene at hand.
“How is anyone going to help us out of this without dying? I don’t value my life above my boyfriend’s life. What else am I going to do? Call in a tactical team without any knowledge of what sort of firepower they have down there? That’s going to turn my people against me after carelessly getting myself into this position in the first place. Sarah will get out of this. She’s like a cockroach, and cockroaches survive everything. It’s like a cardinal rule of thumb or something,” Maya argues in a heated whisper. “After everyone is gone, we’ll calmly call for safe retrieval.”
Drake snatches her phone out of her pocket, quietly scuffling with her until he has her pinned. She’s not even struggling when lifts it...and...
“No battery,” I tell him when he quietly curses it.
The idle chatter and laughter from below is all loud enough to mask any small sounds we make up here.
He glares at Maya, who gives him an unapologetic shrug. “I threw it out the window when we started driving,” she confesses. “I expected you to try this before now.”
“And mine was in the fucking clown van that blew up,” Drake gripes, slipping down beside me as he leans against the spotlight’s massive mount. “I’m going to die a man in my prime without even getting my dick sucked by the women who keep unrepentantly dragging me to my demise.”
“If you survive, you’ll have some interesting stories to tell,” I tell him like I’m a silver-lining expert.
“I don’t tell interesting stories. Telling secretive stories is what gets simpleminded fools killed,” Drake bites out.
A rustling of hushed whispers erupts as an almost palpable silence permeates the room. With much more caution, I silently peer back over the edge, watching as the men below spread wider in the room, all the groups putting more and more distance between them.
Drake startles next to me when a loud alarm wails, but since none of the men look overly concerned, I just simply watch. The alarm cuts off, and motion stirs.
Maya jerks on the other side of me, as a heavy rattle, clank, click, click, clack sounds out all at once. The hooks with chains start moving, ending the sound of the alarm that I now realize was meant to warn people to get out of the way of the moving hook-chain conveyor thingy.
The men below have all trained their attention on the doorway in front of them where the chains are moving in from in more abundance.
My breath catches in my throat when one particular chain moves through the shadows and comes through the doorway, because a very familiar, possibly murderous, blonde comes through it with smiling eyes.
I have no idea if she’s smiling or not, because she’s wearing one of those masks similar to what Hannibal Lector had to wear.
“I’m not sure how I feel about her anymore,” Drake announces in a hushed tone.
Her hands are bound and chained far above her head, moving with the hook-chain. The hook is looped through the chains on her waist, that also wrap all the way down her legs, cocooning her in thick, metal confinement.
Her hair sways forward when the chains stop moving abruptly.
Silence descends, making it so quiet that you can hear my sharp breaths coming out in timid, short bursts.
Every man below us seems to move their hands to their weapons all at once, like they’re preparing for her to escape and start killing them.
“These guys are mid-level flunkies sent for product retrieval. This is an auction,” Maya finally says on a quiet breath. “She’s the merchandise.”
“What?” Drake whispers so softly that I have to pat Maya’s shoulder and repeat his question in her ear.
She gestures around. “They’re just the purse sent to view authenticity and bring home the trophy.”
“Sarah’s a trophy?” I ask in confusion.
“She’s singlehandedly dispatched full teams of highly trained mercenaries. When she worked for her father as the perfect brainwashed weapon, she made him a far more powerful man than he already was. Strategy kills are her expertise. She doesn’t just cut the head off of a snake—she removes all the other organs first to weaken the snake—”
“Ironic how she chose to love a man with the nickname Snake,” Drake states in dry sarcasm.
A new man walks out of the room behind her, practically skipping as he smiles broadly at the roomful of men.
“She’s
upended plenty of empires, and now she’s honing in on her father’s, making huge strides as a one-woman army. Killing her is just a waste when you realize her true potential. One woman. One army. One very big asset. People who want her dead are the ones who live in fear of her. People who want her alive have no idea just how very much she hates being controlled...”
Maya lets her words trail off when the man raises a stopwatch and clicks it. That last part of her comment reminds me too much of Rush. No one likes being controlled, but he needs to be the one in control. He also makes no apologies for it, especially at this point in his life.
The smiling fella with no concern for the threat of the one-army woman he’s nabbed starts speaking to the assembly.
“The bidding will begin with only the buyers present. Please, no outside buyers or contact with outside buyers. This was an extremely sensitive operation that took a little longer to execute, but I appreciate your patience and personal presence,” the new guy tells the semi-restless crowd. “All sales are final, and in the event of escape, she’s your problem to deal with. Not ours—”
“Did you tag her?” one of them asks so casually, causing my eyes to widen.
They really are treating her like cattle.
“She only has the temporary tracker that we’ve embedded just under her shoulder blade. Feel free to examine her for any others,” the guy tells him.
I lift the gun, but it’s pointless to shoot into a roomful of men while only armed with one weapon. I’m not even sure how many bullets are in here.
Not to mention, these are just some of them. We narrowly slipped by their entourage of security goons during our too-stupid-to-live-sneaking routine.
“Shoot the main guy. It’ll send the rest of the room into chaos,” Maya tells me.
“Don’t shoot anyone, or they’ll all be shooting up here at us,” Drake hisses.
I’d shoot Sarah free...if the bullet wouldn’t just ricochet off the metal.
Her eyes are still smiling, even with that horrifyingly disturbing mask on that will forever haunt my dreams and taint the way I see her.
The guy running this show snaps his fingers, and three men join the room with stacks of binders that look edged with professionalism. They move in front of the men, who all take a binder as the stacks near them.
“You’ll find a detailed list of the things she’s capable of—”
“You mean the things you’re aware that she’s capable of,” one man states, idly raking his gaze over Sarah from head to toe.
She rolls her eyes.
Unperturbed, the lead guy continues on. “Last theorized to be quite possibly the best assassin in the world, AJ was groomed as a child to become a chameleon soldier. Trained by some of the world’s top specialists in areas of martial arts, weaponry, sniping, strategic warfare, and various other fields of violent interests, by age nine, she’d started being the primary in top-secret missions for her very well-known father. I’m sure you’re all aware of his accolades that are mostly attributed to his daughter’s ruthless reputation.”
Snake was also a child soldier...
Definitely a different set of fucked-up circumstances, but I doubt it’s a coincidence they fell in love.
“Refined to ladylike stature, she can blend in with any society, and her cultural education keeps her at the top of her game with foreign countries—”
“She’s been off-grid for too long. How do you know she’s kept current?” one man asks.
The lead guy shrugs. “Her mind has been getting expanded since birth. Do you really think you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”
Sarah barks like it’s a bad pun, and all the men closest to her startle. When she laughs, they all take a wider step back from her.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much sanity does she have left?” one man asks very warily.
“That part doesn’t really matter. So long as you spend a few months reconditioning her mind the way specialized psychologists have laid out for you in your respective manuals, you should be fine,” the man states like brainwashing is an easy task. “Take a moment to look over the information we’ve provided. The bidding will begin at ten million.”
“I’m going to see if I can find an alarm to trip or something. If we can free her from those chains, she can get us and her out of this,” Maya says as she starts belly-crawling across the floor.
Drake curses, trying to grab for her ankle, but she kicks at him. Instead of grabbing for her again, he quickly tucks himself back against the base of the spotlight, whispering curses to her as she goes.
“My heart is beating too hard. I can’t handle this sort of fucked-up pressure,” Drake grinds out. “Just. An. Artist. That’s it. That’s all I am. Why am I in a secluded warehouse where child assassins are getting auctioned off? Why am I friends with chicks from the mafia? Why am I friends with that horrible, ungrateful, club of narcissists?”
As he has a panic attack of major proportions, I watch with rapt fascination. Until...he faints.
Just great.
When I turn back around, I almost startle, because a long body drops to their knees right beside me, and a sniper’s rifle stretches out. It’s a really weird rifle...
Not the important part.
The important part is that it’s Snake right beside me, and he smirks as he stares down the scope of the gun he has aimed directly at Sarah’s...head.
When I open my mouth to speak, he cuts his dead eyes at me like he’s daring me to piss him off. I shut my mouth. Snake used to be friendlier than this, even if he did have a really screwed up life that I’m not supposed to know anything about.
Curious people get killed because they uncover secrets people wish to keep buried.
Curious girls only survive when they play dumb.
His eyes cut back to Sarah, and his smirk returns like it never left and the rest was all an illusion.
I’m not sure how long we sit like this, or what he’s planning to do, or what the hell is—
The men below stop talking about relevant facts pertaining to the off-grid assassin, when music starts streaming through the speakers.
My eyes widen, and I jerk my head back to Sarah as the voice of Julie Andrews streams through the room, to the tune of I Feel Pretty.
The men all bristle uneasily as Sarah’s smiling eyes get brighter, her pupils seeming to dilate the way a cat’s does before it pounces.
In the next instant, Snake presses a button on the side of his gun, and glass crashes from above like micro-bombs are up there. Everyone immediately starts shooting in that direction, and I curl into a ball as glass rains down on me.
Snake never moves, even as nicks and cuts emerge on him from the vicious pieces of glass that feel like fire-ant stings against my skin. I watch as his breaths stop, one eye shuts, and a loud, deafening boom sounds over the rest of the aimless gunfire.
My eyes dart back just as the chain holding Sarah snaps in half above her head.
What the hell kind of gun is that?
She drops, but only one man notices her. With the chains loosened, she manages to get one leg out in time to trip him and kick him across the face hard enough to knock him out cold.
More gunfire sounds from below, and the men in the room curse. It’s then I look back and see the chains in a pile on the ground...
They all look back as well, finding the doors that were open now sealed and barred shut.
“Where the fuck did she go?” one of them hisses as he grabs his phone.
I see them all making calls, even as they spin circles the way people do in horror movies when the killer goes missing from the floor.
Snake’s smirk remains in place, until he turns and levels me with a cold glare. “Speak of my presence here, and I’ll shoot Rush in all your favorite places.”
I swallow and give one curt nod, as he turns and disappears into the shadows toward a place with no exit.
The song starts back over, and I hurriedly crawl down the hallway tow
ard the stairs, even as Sarah’s laughter echoes throughout the room to set the creepy ambience.
Maya is paused there, her eyes wide as Axle stays pinned down, changing out ammo with a bleeding arm, before he fires around the vehicle he’s using for coverage.
I spot smoke just before a grenade bursts, and it sends men flying backwards, ending the assault on Axle. Fortunately, it was nowhere near Axle or us, but the starchy heat of the blaze can certainly be felt from here.
Maya and I stay crouched low, watching the madness unfold. My heart rockets to my throat when I see Rush leap up onto the back of a car, murderous eyes narrowed in concentration, as he uses nothing but pistols to start thinning the herd.
He’s too freaking exposed!
Maya yanks me back down when I make an unconscious move to go to him, and she shakes her head firmly. “You’ll get them both killed if you cause a distraction.”
The security teams are now in scramble mode, firing in a frenzy.
When an assault rifle starts popping off rapid rounds, Rush spins, dropping from the car with a calmness I certainly don’t feel, and shoots underneath it.
The spray of rapid-fire bullets travels up the wall, ripping through it next to Maya and me, as the guy falls.
Maya and I both exhale a breath that was apparently frozen in our lungs. She even reaches over and squeezes my hand in a fuck-that-was-close grip.
Rush leans around the back of the car, shooting twice through the man’s head, and the rapid-fire stops completely.
Well, for a second.
In the next instant, doors spring open from somewhere I can’t see with a telling sound, and rapid gunfire hammers the guys.
Rush ducks and dives, Axle flies to the left, and we lose sight of both of them as the bullets hail on.
Maya’s grip on my hand gets tighter, neither of us moving.
I’m not even sure if we’re even breathing.
The gunfire stops, and we watch as the tactical group move in with silent, militant hand signals.
My hand slips, and the gun I’m clutching bumps the ground. A laser pointer shoots out, and my eyes widen as I scramble to try to turn it off.
