by Selena Kitt
“Let’s end this.” Beast shifted again, and so did Erich. It was a like a dance, with Tilly stuck between them. “You give me Tilly, I let you go. It’s that simple. But I don’t have a lot of time. Once my people get here, there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“You really think you’re in control here?” Erich laughed out loud at this. “If I can’t sell this little cow, she’s useless to me. I’ll slit her throat faster than you can pull that trigger, I can guarantee that.”
“I’ll let you go,” Beast repeated. “Just let her go first.”
“Oh no.” Erich shook his head, dancing again, back right this time, taking Tilly with him. “Silly me, I brought a knife to a gun fight. So what I want is your gun. For that, I’ll give you this.”
He yanked Tilly back left now and she cried out, her mouth sore from biting down on the gag—she hadn’t even realized until that moment that she’d been doing it.
“An even trade?” Beast seemed to be considering it, and Tilly’s eyes widened in fear. Was he so blinded by his feelings for her that he couldn’t see what would happen? Beast would slide the gun over, Erich would push Tilly away, and before they knew it, Erich would be shooting them both in the head. And probably everyone else, too, for good measure.
Tilly protested through her gag and Erich snarled in her ear, a warning.
“You’ve got something I want,” Erich said. “I’ve got something you want. You get your sister, and I get a little insurance policy for my escape route.”
“You better hurry.” Beast cocked his head, as if he was listening, and Tilly held her breath, listening, too. She didn’t hear anything. “Hey, Tills, do you remember the spaghetti game?”
“What?” Erich exclaimed, moving yet again, keeping away from the aim of Beast’s weapon. “What do you hear? Sirens? Do you hear fucking sirens?”
Tilly didn’t, but the porthole was closed, and Beast was closer to the door. Maybe he did? And what the hell was he doing, bringing up the spaghetti game? They hadn’t played that since she was ten!
“Tilly’s mother can’t cook to save her life,” Beast told Erich, ignoring his question. He sounded cool, calm, even casual, like he was just telling his buddy a good story. “But when my father married her mother, she spent the first month we lived there cooking dinner for all of us. She refused to let the chef do it—that’s right, they had a chef, someone who could actually make a good meal, but no. My stepmother was determined that she was going to do the cooking for her new family.”
Tilly almost laughed out loud at this. She’d almost forgotten. Liv had been so in love, it had colored everything, and she’d seriously overestimated her abilities in the kitchen. Tilly’s stepfather had indulged her, of course, as he had in everything. Sometimes she wondered how things would have turned out, if he hadn’t died.
“Quit fucking stalling!” Erich shook Tilly again and she cried out. “Do you hear sirens?”
Tilly didn’t and shook her head, which only made Erich clasp her to him even harder.
“All she could cook was pasta,” Beast went on, like Erich hadn’t even interrupted him. “I mean it. She could boil water and pour in noodles. Then she’d open a jar of sauce. And that was dinner. For an entire month. Nothing but pasta. Noodles, noodles and more noodles. Man, I was so fucking sick of noodles…”
Tilly met his gaze, saw the smile in his eyes. Why was he telling Erich all of this? Why this sudden trip down memory lane? Was he just trying to cheer Tilly up, to calm her fear?
Erich was getting impatient. “Beast, I swear to God, if you don’t shut up about noodles—”
“I know, I know, but hang on, you have to hear the rest.” Beast made a placating gesture with one hand, while the other still had his weapon pointed at Erich. “The thing is, she’d cook a different sort of noodle every day, so we’d think we were getting something different, right? It wasn’t just spaghetti. I mean, this woman cooked noodles I’d never even heard of before.”
“Fuck you!” Erich exploded. “I don’t care about your fucking noodles, asshole! Give me that gun or I’ll slit her throat! I’m not fucking around!”
Tilly couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Beast and Erich were dancing around, Tilly between them, while a dozen helpless women watched it play out, and all Beast could do was talk about noodles? If reality hadn’t already seemed as if it had come unhinged, it certainly felt that way now. She was going to die remembering how Liv had valiantly cooked pasta for a month, trying to be a real mother for once in her life. And maybe that was the point—maybe Beast just wanted her to have a good memory in her head, to be less afraid, before Erich ended her life.
But it was absurd. So absurd it nearly made her laugh, although she knew that was a bad idea. Beast’s sudden noodle obsession seemed like it was part of the dance, although she couldn’t figure out how. He seemed to be saying, “I’ve got something for you, asshole—can you guess what it is?” But Erich clearly had no idea. And neither did Tilly.
“Do you remember your favorite pasta, Tilly?” Beast asked.
“Don’t talk to her!” Erich’s voice nearly cracked. Maybe he could tell Beast was up to something, even if he didn’t quite know what, and he didn’t like it. “Now give me that goddamned gun!”
“I will! I am!” Beast agreed, but he didn’t stop looking at Tilly. It was like Erich and his demands had ceased to exist—except the knife at her throat was very real. Beast was playing a very dangerous game. “Don’t you want to know what our favorite noodle was?”
“I don’t care about your fucking noodles, asshole!” Erich growled. “Now set that gun down like you were taught and slide it over here.”
“I’d never heard of it before,” Beast went on, his eyes boring into Tilly’s, and she remembered what it was, the noodle they’d both fallen in love with. “I was fourteen years old and Tilly was ten. Remember, Tills?”
Of course she did. And it was suddenly obvious what he wanted her to do. It came to her in an instant. He’d been trying to tell her all along.
“Put the gun down and slide it over here,” Erich repeated, taking Beast’s tactic of ignoring him. “All the way, so I don’t have to reach.”
“Okay, okay,” Beast agreed, glancing from Tilly to Erich and back again. She tried to tell him with her eyes—yes, I know, I’ll do it! “But I bet you’ve never heard of it. The noodle, I mean.”
“Fucking noodles!” Erich exclaimed. “You’d better stop stalling. Either slide that gun over here or shoot me, man. But I swear to God, I’ll cut this bitch before I bleed out.”
“Okay, Tilly for the gun,” Beast agreed, meeting Tilly’s terrified gaze. Was she really going to do this? Would it work? Her knees shook. When? How? “I got it.”
Beast put his hands out in a “giving up” gesture and Tilly felt Erich begin to relax his hold. Not much, but a little.
“I think my stepmother bought stock in noodles, but there was one that Tilly just loved. Tills used to jump around the kitchen, singing it like a little song,” Beast went on. He was starting to slowly descend into what would inevitably be a squat, so he could slide the gun over to Erich, and she felt Erich relax a little more in anticipation of reaching for the weapon. And, more importantly, he’d almost forgotten the knife. It wasn’t up against her throat anymore.
“Okay, fine!” Erich huffed, when Beast just wouldn’t give up. Besides, he was getting what he wanted, and curiosity was probably getting the better of him. “What was the name of the fucking noodle?”
“Bucatini!” Beast yelled.
It was her cue. Suddenly, deliberately, Tilly went limp, slithering out of Erich’s hold like a buttered noodle, sliding down his body to be sure she avoided the knife, landing on her knees on the cold, wet floor. Bound, there was no way to catch herself and she fell over onto her side—on her hurt shoulder—and the gag muffled her scream.
It happened so fast, she barely had time to register it. The moment she slipped out of his arms, she sensed Erich u
nderstood, too late, what had happened—and the futility of making any move now, however fast. Beast’s eyes held something indomitable, remorseless, as he rose to full height, gun pointed directly at Erich once again.
Four loud bangs echoed through the metal room as Beast put three rounds through Erich’s chest and one between the eyes. Erich bounced off the wall and slumped down, his legs pushing up against her from behind.
Tilly shuddered and rolled away, not wanting to feel any part of the man touching her.
Beast quickly holstered his weapon and kneeled down to inspect her throat. His fingers came away sticky with blood, and he shook his head as he ungagged her. He used Erich’s dropped knife to cut the zip-tie, freeing her.
“Am I killed?” she whispered hoarsely, once she had her voice again.
“Just scratched,” he assured her, pulling her quickly into his arms, holding her far tighter than Erich had been capable. There would have been no slipping out of Beast’s arms, not that she wanted to.
“Good noodling,” he chuckled as she wrapped her sore, aching arms around him and held on for dear life.
That made her laugh. Even in the midst of the muffled screams, crying, and whimpering from the rest of the bound women, with a dead man bleeding out behind her whose brains were literally splattered on a wall she’d recently been leaning against, Tilly laughed. It was either laugh, or burst into tears, and she didn’t have time for the latter.
Beast moved on to Frankie, gently freeing her, too, and Frankie threw her arms around him, already apologizing over and over for not listening to him, not heeding his warnings, for putting him in a position to have to risk his life to save them, and all of that was conveyed simply with the tearful words, “I’m sorry!” croaked hoarsely into his shirt over and over again.
Beast handed a shaking, still sobbing Frankie over to Tilly and they fell into each other’s arms while Beast went around, one by one, to free the others.
The ship swarmed with men and women wearing jackets labeled FBI. Tilly saw more body armor, swat teams and automatic weapons that day than she ever had, even on television. Beast told her that there’d been some resistance, but none of it effective.
One of the conspirators seized an assault rifle and was turned into a sieve by two agents who had better things to do than lose their lives to a doomed man. The assault was too swift for any further resistance, and when the ship was secure, the all clear was given for everyone who had been locked in the hold to be escorted to the dock.
Police lights flashed everywhere and several ambulances stood with their doors open. Some of the women were severely dehydrated and were being taken to the hospital for observation, but no one was seriously injured. Of the girls, Tilly was the worst, between her bloody wrists and wrenched shoulder, at least that’s what the paramedic told her.
The two corpses would receive attention last.
Real handcuffs were now the order of the day, not zip ties. The ship’s crew was bundled off for booking and interrogation. Tilly saw several armed agents surrounding one man in particular. His hands were cuffed behind his back, legs in shackles as he shuffled along, head down, eyes dark and closed off.
Beast stood by the open back door of an ambulance, one foot on the fender, looking over his shoulder at the man. Just inside the ambulance door Tilly sat being attended to by an older, salt-and-pepper bearded paramedic who wore a wedding ring. He frowned over her injuries and talked about having a daughter her age and wanted to start an I.V., but she refused. She was afraid of needles, she told him, a comment that made Beast laugh out loud. Tilly just stuck her tongue out at him. Behind her, inside the ambulance, Frankie was actually flirting with her admittedly handsome paramedic, who quite a bit younger than Tilly’s.
Beast turned his head back to Tilly, and jerked it in the direction of the man.
“Debrovna,” he said. “Perfect timing. Got here just in time to be arrested. You know, I really don’t get it. Erich was already making good money—legally. It was just never enough for him.”
“Well that’s all I can do for you, here,” Ron—the bearded paramedic—said to Tilly. “Keep an eye on your wrists, and change the bandage on your neck twice a day. If those cuts get infected, you’ll need to get to the doctor for antibiotics. I’d really like to have that shoulder x-rayed…”
“No.” Tilly shook her head, adamant. Beast raised one eyebrow at her. “Not now. Later. I’ll go tomorrow.”
Ron gave her the sheet to sign off on and told her if there was any redness, swelling, discharge or fever, she should seek medical attention. She nodded and signed, glancing over at Frankie, who laughed at something the younger paramedic said. She still couldn’t quite believe they were safe.
Two FBI agents approached and Tilly ducked her head, already knowing what they were going to say. Beast had informed her that her escape plan and call to 911 had threatened to mess up the entire sting operation. But how was she supposed to know?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Tilly started apologizing before they even reached the ambulance, holding her hands out in a “don’t shoot me” gesture. “I didn’t know you guys had a thing!”
“It’s okay,” one of them, a big, older, bald man laughed. “You’re not in any trouble, Tilly. You didn’t do anything wrong, under the circumstances. In fact, what you did was very brave.”
“You’re as much of a Beast as your brother,” said the other agent. He was younger, and kind of cute, if you liked goatees and glasses, and he made Tilly smile with his comment. “If you ever decide to go into law enforcement—”
“No!” Beast protested, taking a protective step toward Tilly in the ambulance. “You feds even come near her to recruit her and I’ll end you—I mean it, I won’t stop until I’m standing on the smoking ruins of Quantico.”
Both agents laughed.
“Well okay,” said the younger, kinda cute one. “But is it okay if we date her?”
Beast gave them a look of veiled death. The older, bald agent gave an awkward cough by way of transition, and started talking to Beast about the prisoner count, and who was or was not accounted for.
“And Samsonov?” Beast asked.
“He played it safe—stayed behind in that little café where he holes up like a spider,” the young agent interjected.
“Just like him to let the others do the work while he sits back and pretends to be ‘coordinating’,” Beast sneered. “Did you get him?”
“Oh yes.” The bald agent gave a satisfied nod. “And he’s already singing.”
Beast snorted with contempt.
They were talking about people Tilly knew nothing about—and didn’t want to know.
The agents continued to talk business with Beast for a while. Ron tried to talk her into an I.V. again—Frankie had happily let her handsome paramedic give her one—but Tilly remained adamant, so he settled on giving her a bottle of water and watching while she drank it. She was crazy-thirsty all of a sudden, so she downed it, under his watchful eye, listening to the agents and Beast talk. They discussed Debrovna, throwing a few other names into the mix she didn’t recognize. When the conversation was over, they told Beast they needed to coordinate with some other agents in different parts of the world, but for now, they’d forego the debriefing.
The agent with the goatee called out a farewell to Tilly and she waved at him, in spite of Beast’s dark look.
“Jealous,” she teased softly as Beast came back toward the ambulance.
“Fuck yes.” He held his arms out to her and she slid down into them, settling slowly, softly, into a kiss. She couldn’t believe how good it felt, to kiss him, to feel his body against hers, to just be breathing and moving and alive.
When they parted, he let her down to her feet—he had her held so tightly, she was face to face with him and a foot and a half off the ground—and took her hand.
“Now what?” she asked, glancing around, wondering how many of these people knew Beast was her stepbrother. Frankie knew—she was
watching from inside the ambulance, grinning from ear to ear.
“I’ll take Frankie home first,” Beast said, nodding toward her friend. “Then you.”
“Oh, they’re going to take me to the hospital,” Frankie called, waving her fingers at them, grinning even bigger, if that was even possible. “For observation. I’m dehydrated!”
Frankie had never sounded more thrilled about anything in her life, and that made Tilly almost laugh, but she managed not to. At least the other paramedic—his nametag said his name was Daniel—wasn’t a rich club owner with sadomasochistic tendencies.
“I love you, Frankie,” Tilly called, blowing her a kiss.
“Back atcha, Tills.” Frankie did the same, kissing her fingertips and waggling them again.
Tilly pulled her purse up over her sore shoulder—Beast had retrieved it from the back of Erich’s car—and slowly walked with Beast toward his car, still skidded up beside the one she’d rode in with Erich about, oh, a million light years ago. Were they really going home? It seemed impossible, after what had just happened, that somewhere in the world, her mother was still dying, and her son was peacefully sleeping under Tilly’s aunt’s roof.