Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3)

by Robert J. Crane

  “He’s overconfident,” Natasya said, causing him to spin around in surprise to look at her. “That’s a weakness in this situation.”

  “The dude has invincible skin,” Simmons said, looking at her in sheer shock, pure disbelief. Was she not listening to anything that had been said? “She can’t shoot him, she can’t cut him, she can’t overpower him.” He held up his hands, like, Explain it to me, you dumbass. “What do you think she’s gonna do? Tickle him to death?”

  Natasya shrugged, like it didn’t matter, and put the phone back up to her ear. “Get the helicopter here now. We’re leaving right this minute.”

  “You said you were gonna let his friends go,” Simmons said, waving at the two cells that Natasya had indicated. Vitalik was already working on one, with a swarthy young guy watching from the other side, slowly disappearing behind a wall of ice. “What’s up with th—”

  Natasya grabbed him by the arm and started walking. Simmons made a split decision to follow her along the metal catwalk rather than let her tear it out of its socket. “What the hell?” he asked when he got his feet back under him, following along behind her.

  “He’s going to die horribly,” Natasya said flatly. “I don’t intend to join him.” Simmons looked back to see Vitalik and an armed mercenary trailing them.

  “She’s one frigging girl!” Simmons shouted as they entered the tunnel, his protest echoing off the walls as he was dragged bodily out of the prison—surprisingly against his will.

  “Everyone keeps thinking that,” Natasya said as she hauled him closer and closer to the apex, the glow of outside light of some sort filtering in from a room at the top of the ramp, “and she keeps killing every person we send after her. At some point,” she said, giving him a look back that returned his earlier one, unmistakably—dumbass!—“an intelligent individual might stop thinking of her that way and see her for what she is.”

  Simmons could barely believe his ears, but he was still having trouble keeping up with his legs. “For what she is? Man, she’s a nothing!”

  “No, she’s not,” Natasya said, shaking her head as she hauled him through the security room at the top of the steps and into an eerily empty lobby. Gunshots were audible now, somewhere far above them, and the Russian paused, looking up like she could somehow see their origin.

  “Fine, whatever,” Simmons said, and even to his ears he sounded annoyed, petulant. “What is she, then?”

  Was it the chill of someone having opened an outside door recently, Simmons wondered, or was it the cold, penetrating eyes of this badass Russian who’d somehow pulled off the impossible in taking over this place that made him shiver? It was worse than being herded out of that plane when he’d first gotten here, without a coat, without anything. He felt the chill, felt it ripple over him, and he shivered, then broke eye contact. He knew what he’d seen there, though, and it wasn’t a good sign, not from a bad, bad mama like this lady. She was tough. She’d seen shit. She’d done a prison sentence of three decades and looked like she could handle thirty more without blinking.

  But he knew what he saw in her eyes. It was obvious as hell.

  Fear.

  “She’s the most dangerous person on the planet,” Natasya Sokolov said, and her voice told Simmons she was serious as she could be. She grabbed his arm again and hauled him off, and this time he didn’t try to fight it.

  45.

  Sienna

  Like the saying goes, I’d rather be lucky than good, but when we started to take out the mercs guarding the hostages, I got a bit of both.

  I leaned out from my position and steadied my aim. The nearest guy was about forty feet away. Not a tough shot for me on a normal day. The next was about twenty feet past him. Getting trickier. The last was at least twenty feet beyond that—an eighty-foot shot with a 9mm pistol when my aim had become much less certain than it usually was.

  Still, ducks in a row.

  I fired the first and that was where my ceaseless practice came in handy. I double-tapped, and while I was pretty sure one shot missed (the second, if you must know), the first caught bad guy number one right in the temple.

  And then kept going and hit the second in the chest.

  Luck.

  I stepped slightly out of cover and fired again at the second guy, not believing for a second that he was dead or any more than briefly stunned. These guys were wearing some sort of body armor, and while a shot could put him down, I didn’t think it would put him out permanently.

  The third guy, he was the wild card. All it would take was one of these yahoos to start shooting up the hostages, and we’d be cooked like a Thanksgiving turkey. Which, in my house, was always overdone. The Nealon women are not great domestics, okay? Also, our patience is not infinite (which is how long it takes to cook a turkey, or so it feels).

  His instinct saved me from worst-case scenario, because he went for self-preservation rather than chaos. He leveled his HK submachine gun down the hall and let off a burst in my direction.

  Yay for him not shooting at hostages!

  Not so yay for him shooting at me.

  I felt the bullets go skipping past as I took cover in an office doorway. This one belonged to one of the guys who handled admin for transport, and the glass window just past me shattered as it took a few rounds.

  “Tango down!” I heard Reed shout in my earpiece. I’d expected it a lot sooner, frankly. Another round of shots skipped past me and painted the far hallway door. I wanted to blind-fire to cover myself, but I was afraid an un-aimed shot might hit a hostage, so I waited a second.

  “Another down!” Scott called. They were rolling theirs right up, and I had one to go.

  I had a bad feeling that my last guy had the hallway pretty well covered, but Reed and Scott’s actions were raising enough of a ruckus that I could hear them now. If my last target got distracted, his natural instinct would be to sweep his weapon over the crowd to fire at them. I could imagine Reed and Scott, out of cover, ganging up on the last of their targets, not realizing I hadn’t held up my end of the bargain. Then my guy would shoot, and either they’d get sprayed or shots could go into the crowd or—

  I didn’t want to think about what might happen after that. Madness lay that way, and I was crazy enough most of the time.

  I leaned out in time to feel another burst miss me by nearly nothing. A quarter second sooner and I would have died right there in the hall. My target was firing in bursts, controlling his shots, not letting his barrel climb too much before re-centering his aim on me.

  Why did I get a competent guy? Why couldn’t I have pulled a moronic henchman that couldn’t hit the broad side of an airplane hangar?

  I ducked back into cover and waited, tense, hesitant. That pulse-pounding feeling of adrenaline was giving way to a gripping fear. Not that I was gonna die, but that I was about to fail, big time.

  “Your last guy is loose, Sienna! We’ve got no shot!” Scott’s voice called breathlessly into the microphone.

  Another burst of bullets hit the frame I was leaning against, sending fragments of wood into my face. I felt a dozen stings on my cheek and blinked, realizing that my eye, thankfully, hadn’t been hit. “I have no shot,” I said, and I felt like I was ready to cry. I don’t like to lose, and I was set up for a big one here.

  “He’s got us covered in the hall again, Sienna,” Reed said, and I could hear the edge of desperation in his voice. “We couldn’t get him for you.”

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I whispered, and another staccato discharge of fire went thudding into the frame behind me. I stiffened, wondering how long it would be before he managed to send a lucky shot penetrating through to me. I guessed it wouldn’t be long.

  A loud pop! was followed by a thud, and I heard a deep rush of relief from J.J. “Tango down!”

  “Good shot, guys!” I breathed, feeling my body slump against the frame. Splinters poked at me back from where it had taken a few shots, and the Glock in my hand suddenly felt like it weighed ten millio
n pounds.

  “Wasn’t us,” Reed said, sounding a little baffled. “That dude had us pinned. Scott was gonna work around to you and try and hit him from both sides of your hallway, put him off balance.”

  I felt my spine stiffen, and I eased around the corner, Glock up again as I quickly covered the distance down the hall. “J.J., what am I looking at here?”

  “A hell of a surprise, I’d say,” J.J. replied, and he sounded like he was grinning on the other end of the transmission.

  I slipped into the bullpen and saw Reed do the same from the other direction. Our hostages were there, tuxedos ripped, fancy shoes discarded, dresses glistening not nearly so much as they were a few hours ago when the party had started. A few of the men were standing now, or crouched, looking like they were finally ready to get in on this fight, now that it was over. I saw a certain senator looking like he needed to breathe into a paper bag, I saw Andrew Phillips sitting calmly, legs crisscrossed, in the middle of the floor, Jackie next to him with a look of relief on her face.

  And I saw Ariadne with a smoking pistol in her hand, still pointing the weapon at the mercenary she’d killed, a look of bare shock on her pale features, her red hair mussed and her mouth agape.

  I swept over the downed mercs quickly, kicking aside their weapons just in case. The first of mine was definitely dead, the second was less certain until I fired a round into his skull—drew a few gasps from the crowd, but I had zero time to deal at the moment—and Ariadne had hit the last with a shot to the cheek. It had gone through and out the back, and the guy’s eyes were glassed over.

  I looked at her for all of a second and knew it was her first kill.

  “Nice shot,” I said quietly, and she seemed to shake out of her comatose state long enough to lock eyes with me.

  “Sienna?” she asked, like it wasn’t obvious that it was me.

  “None other,” I said, that sense of post-battle fatigue falling over me. “You all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Andrew Phillips said, slowly pulling himself to his feet. He was a really big guy, probably could throw a decent punch if he put his mind to it. “None of the hostages were harmed.” He looked me up and down. “Thought you were dead for a while, though.”

  “I bet that really pricked at your conscience,” I said, feeling my smartass oats.

  “Yeah, it really got me down for about five seconds,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “We need to get these people out of here.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “J.J.?”

  “Umm, well, the staircase behind you is clear,” he said, suddenly afflicted by nerves, “but I’d hurry if I were y—”

  “EVERYBODY OUT!” I shouted, pointing in the direction I’d come from. “Ariadne, get them to the ground floor, now!”

  To her credit, she didn’t hesitate. “This way, people!” she shouted, waving her gun in the air. I cringed at her cavalier disregard for the rules of gun safety, but at least she was keeping it pointed in a safe direction. She ran, her evening gown flapping in the breeze as she charged down the hallway. I knew her well enough to know she was just masking her feelings; she’d been around me, around here, long enough to have seen some serious stuff. She knew when to run.

  The herd was moving slow, and I cut right through them without hesitation, shoving where I had to. I gave a two-term congressman from Oregon a hip-check that would have made a Minnesota Wild player proud when he tried to run me over in his flight to the stairs. It wasn’t as easy without my power, but I didn’t take any crap from fleeing chickenshits while I had a fight coming my way.

  “Where is he, J.J.?” I asked. Reed and Scott were there waiting, my brother with his gun pointed at the hallway and Scott with his hands out.

  “Coming out of the staircase now,” he said, with a touch of nerves. I was feeling more than a touch myself.

  “Where is she?” he announced in grand style, voice booming down the empty hallway. I could hear the crowd moving behind me, scrambling, cattle fleeing from a wolf.

  And he was the wolf.

  Reed slid out in front of me. It was subtle, like he was taking possession of this bad guy. If I thought he had a chance in hell of dealing with him, I would have let Reed take Anselmo.

  But a snowball’s chance in hell would have been generous in this case. Reed didn’t have the heart to do what it would take to put down Anselmo, even when he did have his powers. He just didn’t have it in him to get mean and vicious, to fight a dirtbag like Anselmo on his own level and win.

  Me?

  I was born for this.

  “I’m right here, shitheel,” I said, fearless. I pushed all the fatigue back, knowing I was about to go mano-a-womano to with the meanest rattlesnake I’d seen in quite some time.

  He came around the corner with a smile on his face. “And so you are,” he said with that Italian accent. He was wearing his paper outfit, which was more than I could say for the last time I’d seen anything other than his eyes. He bowed like he was Don Juan, and when he came up his smile nearly made me sick. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you.”

  46.

  “Not running, little lamb?” Anselmo asked as he eased into the bullpen. To his left was the massive pile of discarded rubble that used to be our office furniture. I felt a small sense of relief that I was no longer involved in the budgetary process of replacing that crap. Enjoy it, Phillips. You tool.

  Anselmo monologued on. “Do you not find yourself with a desire to run now that you’re … weak? Do your knees not tremble at the thought of what I will do to you?” He smiled. “Do you find yourself anticipating—”

  “That’s about enough of that crap,” Reed said. He had his weapon pointed at Anselmo’s face.

  “Where is your beautiful companion?” Anselmo asked, taking a deep sniff of the air. I imagine he thought he was erotic or something, but I thought he looked a little like a dog sniffing a crotch. Actually, scratch that—my dog didn’t look like that when he sniffed at anything. “Your … lady doctor?”

  “She’s otherwise occupied,” Reed said tersely. Perugini was probably on the ground floor by now, helping the hostages with their exit. No need to tell Anselmo that, though. Reed was buying time, kinda like me. When this fight started, it was gonna get nasty quick. I doubted Scott would attack with any more killer instinct than Reed did, especially since he likely hadn’t been in a fight in three years or more.

  Which meant it was going to be up to me to get so vicious with this psychopath that he would either run from the fight or lie there until he died.

  As usual, I had one good idea about that, but it was going to require proper positioning.

  “I have dreamed every night of wrapping my hands around your throats,” Anselmo said, looking from Reed to me. As far as dramatic revelations went, I wasn’t shocked. “I have considered so very many ways to end your lives. Knives were a favorite, for a while, for their intimacy, and the ability to carve pieces … to inflict pain … the maximum amount of pain.” He took a breath, luxuriating in the thought. “Then I had a brief flirtation with the more, shall we say, straightforward? I imagined shooting you both in the head from behind.” He rubbed his hands together as though he were cleansing them. “Quick, disdainful, a problem solved and nothing more.”

  His lip turned up at the corner. “But then I thought … you have stolen precious, precious time from me. You have debased me. Stolen my home. What is the appropriate response for this insult?”

  “You’re going to bore us to death with your monologue?” I asked.

  “You’re going to—dammit!” Reed said, too slow, casting an irritated glare at me. You gotta be quicker than that if you want to out-smartass me, brother dear.

  Anselmo’s face was consumed with dark clouds. He was not amused. “You are swine, and here I waste my time casting words before you like pearls.”

  “Pearls?” I snorted. “Your words are butt plugs; go shove them up your ass.”

  He came at us,
and he was damned fast. Too fast, really, for us to handle. What the hell could a normal human even do against someone who moved like that? He crossed ten feet in the space of a half-second and elbowed Reed aside. I saw my brother stumble into the wall, smashing into it and leaving a solid imprint where he’d cracked the drywall with his head.

  Anselmo put a hand around my neck and lifted me up. He glared at me, held me in the air. I hadn’t even bothered to draw my gun. Why did they always do that, the lift and dangle thing?

  Oh, right.

  Power.

  “I will kill you, you dirty, rotten whore—”

  Reed rallied and charged into Anselmo with a shoulder. If I’d been able to speak, I would have told him not to bother. I’d already signaled Scott to back off and he was keeping his distance, cautious. I had a feeling he wanted to charge, but he saw what I was doing and knew I needed a few seconds. Reed bounced off like he’d hit a steel wall, falling at Anselmo’s feet.

  Aw, hell. He needed to not be there, and damned soon.

  Anselmo deigned to notice him, putting a foot on his chest like a conquering asshole, and suddenly my plan was not going to come off nearly so well as I hoped for. I estimated I had about five seconds left.

  What do you do when you want to get some misogynist, testosterone-laden alpha dick’s attention?

  I kicked him square in the balls.

  His eyes went wide with rage, not pain. Like he couldn’t believe I had deigned to kick him in his holy of holies. He forgot all about Reed for a second and took a step forward, leaving my brother on the ground in a heap.

  Yay!

  Also, yikes.

  He moved me toward the pile of debris that had once been office furniture, and I had a feeling a choke-slam was in the offing. His rage was kinda predictable. I hoped my plan was not nearly so.

  “I will enjoy this,” he promised, lifting me higher. “I will enjoy your pain, enjoy your cries, your protestations—” His mouth was wide as he said protestations, and I shoved the grenade I’d been cooking in my hand for the last five seconds right in his gaping trap. Then I kicked him in the throat while he gawked at me in surprise, mouth wrapped around the green canister, and wriggled out of his fingers. I was already rolling away when I hit the ground, and I didn’t stop until I had a good fifteen feet of distance from him.