Nazar was too angry and too cruel to let her go.
Someone would have to pay.
First her, then the pimp and anyone else he felt like eliminating on his way out.
Sam covered her body in mock-shame as Nazar’s mouth curled in a sneer. She used the pretense of lifting the sheet to cloak her movement as she reached for the knife behind her back.
“Show me your face, whore,” he spat out, his voice low and dangerous.
Sam flinched again, glancing around the room at the other men. Two held Arman up; a third stood in the corner just behind Nazar, hand on his gun as he watched her, his eyes alight with disdain and bloodlust. Two additional men blocked the pimp from entering the room as the man continued to plead and bargain from the hallway, offering food and drink, other prostitutes, opium, whatever they desired.
“I will not ask you again,” Nazar warned in a low tone, stepping closer to the bed.
Wright, where the fuck are you?
Sam lifted her free hand to the veil, her fingers shaking a little from fear and adrenaline as she unhooked the chiffon from around her ear. As she released the fabric, she kept her eyes down, hoping that with the eye kohl and her desert tan she’d pass for the Tajik woman she’d replaced.
Her heart pounded as Nazar studied her silently. The hand clutching the knife felt slick with perspiration. A bead of sweat slipped down her temple.
“Take Arman out to the car,” Nazar ordered his men in a softer voice, his unusual eyes never leaving her.
Samantha saw the men exchange knowing looks as they shuffled a dazed Arman from the room, the pimp still prattling on in the hallway, his offers and pleas for forgiveness ignored.
Nazar stepped closer as they shut the door behind them, and Sam shifted to the rear, her back pressed against the cold wall as she sat on the dirty mattress amidst the prostitute’s skirts, feeling more bare and vulnerable than she had her entire life.
“Where do you come from?” he asked her silkily, sitting at the edge of the bed. “What do they call you?”
Sam tried to draw the sheet higher over her shoulders, her knife hand at the ready while she attempted to reach between the mattress and the wall for her wedged gun.
Nazar snagged the sheet, drawing it down quickly. Sam only just managed to conceal the knife under her skirts. She crossed her free arm over the thin top, covering her chest in false modesty as she abandoned her reach for the gun.
“Call me whatever you like,” she whispered in Persian, defensively drawing up her legs under the skirts.
“Your name,” Nazar insisted, his hand flashing out to clasp her bare ankle. He jerked her leg out, dragging her body down the bed with surprising speed and agility. He managed to flip her over onto her stomach as she gasped in surprise. Sam’s blood roiled as she struggled against the instinct to fight him off. Instead she slid her hands under the pillow to hide the knife.
Now she was down to two possibilities.
Harm or death. Neither of which she wanted to consider in depth.
Relief coursed through her when she heard the sudden litany of gunfire from the rooms below.
Nazar let her go abruptly, cursing as he crossed the room, withdrawing a Sig Sauer 9mm from under his coat. Angry shouts and surprised screams rent through the air as Wright and his team worked their way through the brothel, clearing rooms, taking out hostiles, shouting at others to lay low in gruff Arabic and Persian.
Nazar opened the door, glancing in both directions as he stepped into the hallway.
That bastard’s not getting away, she thought, leaping off the bed, knife in hand as she followed him into the dingy hallway, ignoring the partially-opened doors, men and women peering through the cracks at the commotion, eyes wide with startled panic.
Nazar disappeared down the hall, heading for the same narrow staircase she’d climbed up only a few hours ago. He was quick, deftly knocking out what few bulbs there were in the staircase as he descended, plunging his escape path into darkness. Sam was only a flight behind him before she heard three successive shots fired at ground level. She whipped around the corner just in time to see Nazar step over the two soldiers he’d shot as he pulled open the very door she’d snuck into with the little girl.
Flying down the stairs, Sam leapt off the last few steps just in time to see Nazar pushing himself up and over the garden wall.
She reacted, flipping the blade into her palm and hurling the weapon hard and fast into the darkness.
Sam was rewarded with Nazar’s surprised yowl as he dropped back down onto the ground, his hands scrambling to reach the knife she’d thrown into his lower back. As he turned to pull the blade from his back, he caught sight of her in the doorway.
“Jende khiabooni,”27 he hissed, yanking out the bloody knife with a grunt. He lifted his gun, firing so rapidly, Sam only had just enough time to duck behind the door as the wood splintered from the bullets. She reached down for one of the fallen soldier’s guns, but Nazar shot at her hand, forcing her back. Sam pressed herself against the stairwell wall as he fired again and again; the sound of screams and shouts coming from the brothel were nearly deafening as Nazar approached.
She tried to calculate the number of shots he had left as he approached the doorway. Seven or eight in a ten-clip size if it was a Sig Sauer P226, she recalled from memory.
A handful of frenzied prostitutes and their johns burst down the stairwell behind her, trying to get out as Wright and his men continued to clear the brothel, each burst of gunfire fueling the crush and maelstrom as men and women pushed through the narrow channel.
Sam shouted at them to calm down and stay back, but no one listened, pushing past her to rush out of the house. A young girl at the end of the pack tripped and fell on her way down. Sam managed to catch her just before she landed.
“I’ve got you,” she muttered in Persian as the girl cried out, clutching Sam’s shoulders as Sam tried to righten the girl onto the stairs, her own back to the door.
A sudden, searing pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced wrenched in her side, coursing through her like an excruciating electric current.
Sam screamed as Nazar twisted the knife into her. Tears filled her eyes as she gasped, her eyes rolling back as she nearly blacked out from the pain.
“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” he hissed into her ear, lifting the blade again so it hooked under her ribcage, slicing through skin, tissue, and muscle. Sam swore she could feel the metal scraping bone. Agonized, blood-soaked sounds fell from her mouth as she struggled to free herself, her hand futilely slipping over his blood-and-gore covered hand.
The girl’s terrified face swam back into her field of vision, becoming a narrow pinpoint as Sam fell backward, succumbing to the agony.
But there was nothing to fall back on.
No one was there.
Nazar was already gone, leaving her for dead on the ground near the bodies of the fallen. Sam struggled to remain conscious as the girl she’d helped hollered and wept, trying to stifle the bleeding with her fabric of her skirts.
“Stay with me,” Sam whispered, certain she was dying. “God, please, don’t leave me…please, don’t leave me…”
*
Dec 13th—Evening
Wyatt Ranch, Texas
S A M A N T H A
“You’re a born rancher,” Sam remarked, watching Carey as he worked in his father’s office in one of the converted barns that made up the ranch offices.
Carey looked up from the feed sheets he was reviewing. “You are too, you know,” he replied, leaning back in the old leather chair. “This place is as much in your blood as it’s in mine.”
Sam pushed away from the door, setting a bottle of moonshine down on the desk alongside a couple of mason jars.
“Don’t think those are going to mix too well with the pain meds, Sammy,” Carey drawled as he watched her pour a finger into each glass.
“Who do you think you’re bullshitting, Bear?” she answered with a look.
“You’re too damn stubborn to take those pain meds, so I figure we’re safe.” She gestured to his plaid-flannel covered chest under the ranch vest. “How’s it healing?”
“Hurts like a bitch,” he admitted, accepting the jar. “But it keeps me sharp. I’d rather feel the hurt and let it keep me angry than be dulled out on painkillers while you make plans for Afghanistan.”
She considered him. “You seem awfully disappointed about not being dropped into hell with me.” She lifted her glass. “A toast?”
Carey raised his jar. “Everybody knows you need two things in a gunfight, Sammy,” he told her.
“A gun and…?”
He smiled grimly. “And friends with guns.”
Sam laughed softly as they clinked jars, leaning back in their respective seats as they each took a sip and winced hard while the liquid fire scorched their throats. She examined the moonshine bottle. “Remember when I caught you and Ry in the back of the barns drunk off your asses on this stuff?”
“God,” Carey groaned, rubbing his hands down his face. “We were sick for days.”
“You never learned your lesson though,” she smiled. “You two were constantly trying to do everything I told you not to.”
“Well, there’s nothing more attractive than what you’re denied, right?” Carey grinned. He casually rested his chin on his hand, examining Sam. “You look different, Sammy.”
She tilted her chair back. “How so?”
“Softer,” he replied, eyes running over her braid and the old denim work shirt she wore. “Younger.”
Sam lifted a brow. “No woman in the world ever complained about being told she looked younger than her age.”
“Guess not,” Carey agreed. “You sitting here in jeans and cowboy boots—reminds me of when you were a girl, helping our daddies with the roundup.”
“Yeah, well,” Sam shrugged. “I think coming home’s been good for me. Especially now.”
“Why’s that?”
Sam shrugged, picking up a framed picture on her Uncle Grant’s desk. It was an old Polaroid of Carey, Ry, and her just outside the stables when they were kids. She rubbed her finger across the glass, over their smiling faces, recalling the feel of Ry and Carey’s little shoulders under her arms as they posed for the picture, their smiles winsome and more than a little cocky. She set the photo down, looking Carey in the eye.
“Bear, I know I don’t tell you this often, but I’m proud of you. You were a brat and a hell-raiser as a kid, but you’ve become a good man. A man I’m proud to call my partner and my brother,” she told him.
Carey sucked in a surprised breath. “Sammy, it’s not that I’m ungrateful for the high compliment, but why are you—”
“If I don’t come back, you’ll need to step up and take my place,” she interrupted, not wanting to dance around the issue. “Not just at Lennox but with the board at Wyatt Petroleum and here with the ranch.” She smiled grimly, reaching for his hand. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but I know you can handle it, and I trust you to handle it, Bear; to take care of my family’s legacy.”
Carey blinked, his throat working as he absorbed what she was saying. “I appreciate you telling me this, but it won’t be necessary, Sammy. You’re coming back,” he told her, his voice resolute.
“Neither of us are naive, Bear,” Sam replied, watching him stand and round the desk toward her. “Let’s not pretend to be. Not us.”
Carey pulled her up out of the chair, wrapping his big arms around her in a strong hug. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you planned this,” he muttered against her hair.
Sam pulled back with a questioning look.
“If I hadn’t gotten shot, you’d have found some other way to ground me while you went after Nazar, wouldn’t you?” he asked, his eyes knowing.
Sam smiled, resting her head against his chest as she squeezed him back. “And if I didn’t know any better, I’d have sworn you moved to Chicago after you discharged from the military for the sole purpose of keeping an eye on me, Bear.”
She felt Carey’s soft chuckle against her cheek.
“You think I don’t know you’d rather be back here, living in Texas?” she teased.
“Sammy, when Ry died I told you I’d never leave you. I keep my word like that.”
“I know it,” she replied quietly. “I know you’d lay it all on the line for me.”
“I’ll always be the Clyde to your Bonnie,” he smiled.
“I prefer to think of you as the Robin to my Batman,” she quipped.
“That’s alright,” Carey shrugged. “My legs look great in tights,” he replied, before his expression turned serious. “This isn’t goodbye, Sammy.”
“’Course not,” she smiled, patting his chest. “Just a drink between two old friends, one of whom has delusions of grandeur about how he looks in women’s hosiery.”
Carey dropped a gentle kiss on her brow before stepping back. “That what you did yesterday?” he asked with a knowing look. “Have a drink with an old friend?”
Sam let out a little laugh. “You been spying on me, Bear?”
“Well, I noticed you didn’t make it home last night. Hundred bucks says you went to Austin to see that shithead, Elliott.”
She chuckled, taking another scorching sip of her moonshine. “I had something I needed to lay to rest,” she replied, trying not to cough as the liquor burned down her esophagus.
“That all?” he asked, his smile quizzical. “Wes Elliott may be a son of a gun, but I know he still means something to you. How could he not?”
“It was nothing, Bear,” she replied, not quite meeting his eyes. “Just a little reminiscing about the days of old.”
“You’re not one to look back in the rearview mirror, Sammy.”
She lifted a shoulder. “A lot’s happened in the past few weeks, Bear. A girl can’t get sentimental every now and then?”
Carey considered her thoughtfully before picking up the bottle. “We all done what we done, Sammy girl. No sense in eating sorrow by the spoonful.”
“You sound like your mama.”
“Well, she’s smarter than both of us,” he shrugged before throwing his big arm around her and leading her out of the office. “This moonshine is something terrible,” he remarked, holding up the bottle. “Let’s go trick Talon, Rush, and Marv into drinking it.”
Samantha chuckled. “I’ll get the cards. Seems fitting we spend our last night together with you losing your money to me.”
“Won’t be the first time, and it definitely won’t be the last, Sammy,” he replied, hip checking her on the way out. “No way, no how.”
Chapter 19
Dec 14th—Morning
River North, Chicago
J A C K
A few things registered slowly and in painful succession.
The first was the soft cotton of fine linen sheets beneath him.
The second was the Sahara-level dryness that filled his mouth.
The third was the white-hot heat of the sun pressing up against the windows.
And finally: the vicious, blinding headache beating its way through the back of his skull.
Jack lifted his head, stifling a groan and shielding his eyes from the glare; his thirst nearly overwhelming.
Someone shifted against his arm.
Samantha.
“Tesoro,” he murmured, resting his head briefly against her shoulder as relief engulfed him.
It was all just a dream. Just a long, awful dream—
But then he saw long strands of ash-blonde hair against the Egyptian cotton of the bed, the smooth expanse of a woman’s back next to him. A back that didn’t belong to Samantha.
Startled, Jack lifted his head, anxiously sifting through hazy memories as he felt a hand slide low down his waist, curling around his naked hip under the sheets.
“It’s too early, lover,” Nia murmured sleepily, her hand scratching his skin lightly as he turned slowly, mortified to see another woman’s head
on the opposite pillow beside him. “Go back to sleep,” Nia sighed, curling against him.
What the—
Jack glanced around the foreign hotel room as he frantically tried to recall where he was, to remember what he’d taken.
Clothes were strewn around the opulent suite, upended bottles of champagne and half-eaten food littered the coffee table, cocaine and pills decorated the glass top like party confetti.
He didn’t know what day it was.
He didn’t know where he was.
He couldn’t remember what the fuck he’d taken or who he was with besides Nia. Jack leaned over the unknown woman, a brunette, realizing she had a passing resemblance to Samantha.
Jesus Christ, he thought, rubbing a shaking hand over his face. What have I done?
Jack pulled away from Nia, climbing out of the massive bed before stumbling naked toward the windows. He pushed open the drapes, staring down at the panoramic view of the Chicago River, his own building not far from where he stood. Jack closed his eyes against the intense glare of the winter sun, trying to recall how he’d come to be here.
What had he done the night before?
Who had he done?
Nausea engulfed him. He barely made it to the toilet before he heaved up whatever was in his stomach, the bile acrid and burning; shame tinging his cheeks as he thought about how badly he’d fucked up. Jack hung his head over the porcelain, flashes of memory returning to him in brief, hypnagogic pulses.
“Why do you keep calling me ‘tesoro?’” the woman with dark hair and vivid blue eyes asked him with a licentious smile. “What does it mean?” she asked, licking his neck.
Jack heaved again, the sickness clenching his middle like a fist.
Nia snorted cocaine off his stomach.
“You’re a bad girl,” he smiled, his fingers curling around her head as she dropped lower, her tongue swirling around him.
“Nah,” she laughed softly, her breath a humid against his cock. “I’m a good girl who does bad things sometimes.” She flashed a slow, satyric look. “But only because I like to play with fire…”
Jack sat back on his haunches, resting his pounding head against the blissfully-cold marble of the bathroom stall.
Complicated Creatures: Part Two Page 21