Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Stay back there!” I called in an angry order. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Jessica about Sheila.

  “Mister Murdoch!” Wyatt called again. “You in there? Or am I gonna have to knock on this little girl out here till you answer?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Jessica!” Sheila, still on her hands and knees in front of Wyatt, screamed. “You guys run!”

  Wyatt stepped forward, put a well-placed boot to her ass, and sent her sprawling. “Shut up, bitch! Women ain’t got no voice in this club, and you fucking know it!”

  I tightened my hands on the shotgun’s grip and turned back to the front of the house with determination. I slammed the barrel through the window, broke the glass, and cleared it away from the pane. No sense in worrying about shattered glass now, right? Especially not with a small army of bikers pointing guns at the cabin. “What do you want, Wyatt?” I yelled through the window. “You’re not getting Jessica, so don’t even try it!”

  “Jessica? The bitch at the art gallery? I don’t want her, you motherfucker!” The vein on Wyatt’s forehead stuck out from his skin, pulsing with the lifeblood and adrenaline that was roaring through his body. “Nah, Richard, I’ve come to finish what we started! I want to finish our fight!”

  On cue, his men began to fan out to either side of him in an arch, five on one side and seven on the other. They held rifles, shotguns, and pistols. One guy even had a fucking Uzi, if I wasn’t mistaken. Where in the hell he got a firearm like that, I had no idea. But they were gun runners, after all. The men all raised their guns to their shoulders and leveled them at the cabin. Wyatt joined them, pointing the barrel of his big chrome revolver right at the front door.

  “Let ‘em have it, boys,” Wyatt yelled. “Light ‘em up so he knows we mean business!”

  The world roared like a battlefield as the bikers all opened fire at the same time. The lighter crack of pistols, the thundering booms of shotguns, the crackling pop-pop-pop of submachine guns. And, joining in with it all, the splintering of wood and the tinkling of shattered glass as lead and metal-jacketed rounds came barreling through the front of the house.

  I was on my belly before my mind even registered what was going on. I just hoped Jessica and Lacy had listened to me, and had dropped to the floor. Because if they hadn’t, there was nothing I could do about it now.

  Chapter Thirty-nine – Jessica

  My heart hammered in my chest hard enough that I couldn’t even get air. It was like I was having a heart attack as Lacy and I cowered beneath the bed, the world exploding in gunfire and splinters as bullets shredded the cabin and thudded into the mattress over our heads. Lacy and I screamed, tears flowing down our cheeks as we clung to one another like lost orphans.

  We’d hit the floor as soon as Richard ordered us, and had begun to crawl beneath the bed. Never in a million years had I ever imagined that my life would end this way, or this would be what those phone calls came to. If I had, maybe I would have hired Richard earlier.

  I prayed to God I’d make it out alright, that Richard would make it out alright, that Lacy and Sheila would be fine. But, still, the young girl beside me and I embraced one another as death filled the room, the bullets pinging as they ricocheted and whizzed overhead.

  I learned something in those few short minutes that seemed to stretch to long, meandering hours. Your life doesn’t flash before your eyes in situations like this. You don’t think of much at all—except maybe getting out alive, of how screwed you really are, how this is it, this is the end. But your life flashing in front of your face, all the wasted time and misspent potential? It didn’t happen. Not for me, at least.

  But, like they say, your mileage may vary.

  Just as suddenly as the bullets began, they came to an end. The calamitous gunfire sputtered to an end, punctuated by one little pop of a pistol a few seconds after the rest had tapered off.

  “You okay?” Lacy whispered to me, her voice raspy from all the screaming and tears. “Are you shot?”

  “N-n-n-no,” I whimpered back with a snuffle from my own hysterics, “I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said shakily. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Jessica. I’m so sorry I brought these men here.”

  I had no idea why they had Sheila. Had she done something stupid and gotten herself caught? Had she gone to see them when I told her to keep her nose out of this? Knowing her, she had. Dammit, girl!

  “It’s okay,” I said, squeezing her tight. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. They have Sheila anyways, so I’m kind of glad they showed up. Maybe we can rescue her? You think?”

  Outside, a man called out again. Probably whoever had yelled earlier, before they started shooting into the cabin.

  “If you don’t want the girl,” Richard yelled suddenly, his voice loud but still distant to my almost deafened eardrums, “what the fuck do you want?”

  “What?” Lacy asked. “How are we–”

  “I don’t know,” I said, cutting her off quickly, sniffling loudly again. “But we have to get her. She’s my best friend, Lacy. We’ve got to help her. We have to find a way.”

  Lacy shifted and curled into herself as she shivered. “I don’t know, Jessica. Richard told us to stay back here. He said we need to get into the woods if things went bad. He told me, Jessica. I don’t–”

  “And I’m telling you,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulder that wasn’t pinned to the floor and looking her square in the face, “that we have to get Sheila. Okay? We’re not leaving without her, no matter what.”

  She glanced away. “Fine,” she whispered. “She’s your friend, I get it. We’ll stay, alright?”

  I nodded and pressed my lips together into a thin line. “Good.”

  Now, all we had to do was figure out how the hell we were going to set her free.

  Chapter Forty – Richard

  I crouched low, my back pressed against the outside wall. All the bullets had gone wide of their mark by a huge margin, shooting up the ceiling and the top windows of the living room, raining down glass and ceiling plaster on my head. They’d either fired high just to try and scare me, or the Skull and Bonesmen were all just truly awful shots. I was betting on the former, though.

  “You figured out we mean business yet, Murdoch?” Wyatt shouted from the front. “We’ll turn that little cabin of yours into swiss cheese, asshole, pump it so full of bullets we can’t help but hit that little girl we followed out here. You want that? You want her blood on your hands, all mixed up with the blood you’re already gonna have from little Miss Sheila out here? Because, if even if you make it out, blood like that don’t come off your hands, man, no matter how much you scrub.”

  I breathed hard and tried to weigh my options as I sat there with my back against the wall, looking over the destruction they’d already inflicted on my cabin. I mean, shit, it looked like this place had been used for a punk rock or metal show. I’d seen places in Kabul that looked better after a suicide bomber hit it.

  The cabinets in the kitchen were blown open, the dishes and glasses shattered and sprayed all over the kitchen. The TV had been knocked clear off the wall, falling right on its edge and splitting the screen from its housing. Even the refrigerator hung open, having taken a solid blast from a rifle, popping it open and so it swung against the kitchen island.

  I shook my head again to rid the images of what they might do to Sheila if I didn’t turn myself over to them soon. My hands tightened around the shotgun, my knuckles going white.

  “Next thing you hear, Murdoch,” Wyatt crooned to me, “is gonna be little Miss Sheila screaming your name. But it ain’t gonna be in a fun way. You see, we’re gonna take our time with her out here in the gravel. Ain’t got much longer to make your decision ‘fore I can’t hold my boys back any longer.” The men chuckled like some sort of Greek chorus of the damned, their voices evil as they began to imagine and relish the things they’d do to the poor woman.

  What I needed to do was to keep them from putt
ing their hands on Sheila, to stall them so they couldn’t put any of their promises into actual action. And, ideally, I could keep them busy until the rest of the pack showed up. And what better way to keep them busy than to keep them talking?

  “Fine,” I yelled back. “What do you want from me? Why me, Axelrod? Cause I kicked your ass back in Enchanted Rock?”

  “Cause you sucker punched me, you motherfucker,” he snarled, still lying about how everything went down. “Then when Bo challenged you to a fight earlier today, one of your buddies showed up and wrecked their bikes. Seems to us you can’t handle a fair fight, is all, so we wanted to make sure you got one this time around.”

  “That’s what you want?” I asked with a laugh. “A fair fucking fight? That why you brought a dozen of your men up here to protect your sorry ass from me?”

  “That ain’t what it is!” Wyatt screamed. “It’s about respect, boy! About us teaching it to the sorry likes of you!”

  I laughed again. “Respect? Wyatt, you wouldn’t know respect if it fucked your momma and knocked her up with you. You’re a lousy piece of shit and a lousy liar.”

  “Think I’m a fucking liar?” he asked, really getting worked up now, his voice almost cracking as he screamed. “You think I’m a motherfucking liar?”

  “I think you tried to sucker punch me on the fucking street earlier today, and I whooped your ass anyways. That’s exactly what I think.”

  “How about this? You think I’m a fucking liar?” The hammer on his revolver clicked as he drew it back and locked it into place. “You wanna see if I don’t keep my fucking word? Huh?”

  My mouth suddenly went dry as I realized I may have pushed him too far. Apparently, Wyatt Axelrod and the Bonesmen with him were only so interested in speaking. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “You made your point!” I yelled out to him. “I’ll come out. But since you’re so fond of your word, I want you to make me two promises.”

  Wyatt laughed, and I heard the hammer release.

  “First,” I called, “I need a minute to get my shit together in here. Then, I’m not coming out till Sheila’s inside the house.”

  “Sounds fair,” Wyatt said to a smattering of giggles and chortles from his buddies. “You come out and you fight. You lose, that’s it, end of story. You win, that’s it, too. We leave in peace either way, long as you as ain’t gonna try and pull no more dirty shit like you did earlier.”

  But just as I was about to head into the bedroom to tell Jessica and Lacy the plan, I heard them. My pack. Their howls echoing through the mountains, urgent calls that let me know they were on their way, and not to worry. They’d have my back in just a couple minutes.

  “Just wanna say goodbye is all,” I called. “Five minutes? Can you at least give me that?”

  “You got five, boy-o,” Wyatt called. “Any longer and the party gets started without you.”

  Chapter Forty-one - Jessica

  The man outside yelled again.

  “Five minutes?” Richard called back. “Can you at least give me that?”

  All I heard was a muffled reply and Sheila's scream as I heard Richard moving in the living room and coming back towards us into the hallway. He opened the bedroom door. “Jessica?” he asked. “Lacy? You back here still?”

  “We’re here,” Lacy said as we both began to scramble out from beneath the bed. As we got to our feet, I looked around at the wreckage.

  Stuffing and down covered every surface. The blankets were ruined, the bed destroyed. Two fist-sized holes were blown out of the wood paneling, and the rear window was shattered.

  “Why haven’t you left yet?” Richard hissed as he came to me and gripped me by both arms. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “The bullets!” Lacy said from beside me.

  I looked up into his frightened eyes. What I saw there, though, wasn’t fear for himself. No, it was fear for me and Lacy, what might happen to us if we stayed here. “And you and Sheila,” I said, putting my arms around him, pulling myself close to his chest.

  Richard stiffened at first as I pulled myself against him, but then relaxed and put his arms around me, his big shotgun heavy against my back. “I know,” he whispered, stroking a hand down my bird’s nest of bedheaded hair. “I’m going to get her out of there, okay? Wyatt wants me, not you.”

  I pulled back from him, the shotgun painfully thumping against my back as I put him at arm’s length. “What?” I cried. “What the fuck is all this shit?”

  “He thinks I besmirched his honor or something,” he drawled. “He took Sheila because he wanted to force me out into the open, I think, make me come along peacefully.”

  I looked into his eyes again. I saw the determination there. “You’re…you’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re going to trade yourself to those fucking monsters?”

  He touched my cheek, brushing his fingers just barely over my skin so lightly he might as well have not been touching me.

  “I have to,” he said, wiping a tear from my cheek with his thumb, smiling sadly. “I can’t even repeat to you what they threatened to do to her if I don’t, Jessica. But don’t worry, I’ll be fine. He says he just wants a fair fight.”

  “What?” I asked, confused. I shook my head. “Who do you think you are, Richard? Superman? Those men are going to fucking kill you, and you know it. This won't be a fair fight.”

  “Look,” he whispered, gripping my arms more firmly than before, “the rest of my team are on their way here, Jessica, and they’ll arrive soon. I know they will. But, in the meantime, I need you to take care of Sheila when they hand her over. The three of you need to get to safety. Can you do that for me?”

  “But, Richard, I…” I trailed off and glanced at Lacy, who looked like death herself, all the blood drained from her already pallid complexion. “I just found you. I can’t lose you now.”

  He smiled grimly. “Don’t worry,” he promised. “You won’t. You two take Sheila away from here when I go. I don’t want you to caught in the crossfire when the guys arrive and get down to business.”

  He turned to go, but before he could leave, I grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to pull him back around to face me. As he turned, I threw my arms around his neck again and kissed him hard.

  His lips were so soft, so insistent as he pulled me into his arms. I felt the shotgun in his hands lifted away, probably by Lacy, and we both sighed and groaned as we kissed one last time. Because that’s what it felt like, I knew, for both of us. The last time.

  I didn’t want to admit that I was losing him so soon, after just finding an amazing man like him. And I knew he didn’t want to admit that he was going to his death. But there wasn’t any other way to look at it. He was a dead man walking. How could he make it out of this alive? And, God, the reason he was dying? Trading himself for my best friend, a woman he’d only met in passing? This was all my fault. If I hadn’t gone to Frost Security with my problems, hired them to deal with it, Richard would never have been dragged into this. He’d still have a life ahead of him.

  I realized as we finally pulled away from each other that I was crying again, more softly this time than before, the tears slowly and gently rolling down my cheeks.

  He smiled down at me and brushed another tear away with his thumb. “I’m going to be okay,” he said evenly. “Don’t worry about me. Just get yourselves to safety. Okay? Lacy? You’ll listen this time, right?”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Lacy said, a little tremor running through her voice. “Once we get Sheila, we’re out the back, like you said.”

  He nodded again and kissed me on top of my head. “Murdoch!” Wyatt called from outside, then something indistinct afterwards. Richard uncoiled his arms from around me and took the shotgun back from Lacy.

  “Gotta go,” Richard said, his voice deadly serious. “Remember.”

  “We know,” I said, tears still leaking from the corners of my eyes.

  And then he was gone, leaving me and Lacy just standing there in t
he bedroom. Alone.

  “He’ll be fine,” Lacy tried to assure me.

  “Bullshit,” I spat.

  “Believe me,” she said, pausing for a moment like she was searching for what to say next. “Richard’s special. All the guys are. I’ve heard of him getting out of worse situations than this.”

  I whirled on her. “Don’t. Just don’t. I’m tired of having false hope, Lacy. Just please let me cope with this my way. Your lies aren't going to make things any better.”

  She sighed and shrugged, and seemed to resign herself to no longer babying me. “Okay. But you’ll see.”

  Chapter Forty-two – Richard

  “Let the girl go first,” I called from the cabin doorway, shotgun still in hand. “Once she’s inside, I’ll come out.”

  Wyatt had her pulled back up against him, her shirt fisted tightly in his hand so she had to stand on her tiptoes as he held her hostage. He nodded once and shoved her toward the cabin. Sheila stumbled forward, her legs and feet flailing beneath her to get purchase on the gravel. She fell to the ground, tearing her jeans, but quickly picked herself up and came running to me.

  “Get inside,” I said as she came thumping up onto the porch, her eyes frantic like a scared dear.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she came up to me.

  I stepped aside and let her pass. “It’s alright,” I mumbled. “Jessica’s in the back. My partner’s going to get you both out of here, I promise. You just need to listen to Lacy, okay?”

  She nodded, her lower lip trembling like the waterworks were about to start as she stopped next to me. I wouldn’t have blamed her if they did. Instead, she threw her arms around me and hugged tightly, trying to crush the wind from my body. “I’m so sorry, Richard! Don’t go out there! They’re going to kill you!”

  I chuckled dryly as I disengaged myself from her. “It’s okay,” I replied. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got friends on the way.”