by Callie Hart
“Asshole. I have low blood sugar,” Clay grouses.
Ben opens the door, mouth open, ready to say something, but his words never materialize. He just blinks at the person facing him, his brows banking together in confusion. “What the fuck? How did you get down here?”
I sit up, straining to see who’s arrived, hope swelling in my chest. Zeth. Zeth made short work of that bitch, and now he’s going to destroy these two idiots for holding me here against my will. Only…it’s not Zeth. There are two people standing in the hallway, and I don’t recognize either of them. Both tall, both with dark brown hair and dark, murderous eyes, both dressed in immaculate black suits and black shirts that put Michael’s wardrobe to shame.
The two strangers look at one another, then slowly back at Ben. “We walked down here,” the taller of the two says. “How did you get down here?”
Clay gets to his feet, hand already moving to his holster. “Don’t be fucking smart, asshole. Where’s Alaska? Where’s the cop?” Neither of them say anything. They both stare down the other two men before them, watching them intently as Clay snarls, producing his gun. “Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?” he hisses.
The guy with the shorter hair huffs dramatically. “It’s fucking amazing how none of you know who we are,” he says. “I’m Theo, and this is Sal, my brother. And as for your second question, I think it’s easier to show you what we want instead of explain.”
Theo. Sal. I know those names. I know them, because Zeth has spoken them to me countless times. They’re Barbieris, the guys who burned down the warehouse. They’re here, in Seattle? But why? My head pounds as I struggle to make sense of this turn of events, my pulse skittering all over the place.
Oh…
Shit.
There’s only one reason why they would be here. Zeth went out there to kill them, to teach them a lesson for what they did when they came here last. I have no idea what went down in New York, but…if the Barbieris have traveled to the west coast, it’s probably because things didn’t go according to plan with Zeth, and they’ve come seeking revenge. And the best way to do that is to kill me, of course. So…I’m about to be kidnapped from my kidnappers? A coil of fear lashes itself around my throat. God. What the hell are they going to do to me? And where is Zeth? Is he okay?
“We don’t know any Barbieris,” Ben says, his voice edged with warning. “You’re not meant to be here. You’d better get the fuck out of here before we decide we’re going to keep you here.”
Theo Barbieri’s eyes move past Ben, over his shoulder, roving over the walls of the small engineering room. At last, they land on me. I expect a flicker of excitement to cross his face—I am his target, after all—but his expression remains stoic and unmoved.
Ben steps forward, his gun now in his hand, too. He prods Theo firmly in the chest with the barrel. “You’re not listening, motherfucker. You need to leave. Now.”
In no apparent hurry, Theo turns his head to his brother, Sal. They seem to have this weird way of silently communicating, though I can’t tell how they’re doing it. Certainly not through any gesture that I can discern; they’re both still as marble statues. After a long, drawn out second, a sharp-edged smile spills across Sal’s face. “And here I was thinking this trip was going to be no fun,” he says.
Theo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Just get on with it.” He returns his gaze to me on the bed, sniffs, and then says, “Better cover your ears if you can.”
Clay laughs. “You aren’t very observant. You have two guns trained on y—” Before he can even finish his sentence, Sal Barbieri rushes forward, faster than I would have thought possible, and tackles Ben The two of them go crashing to the floor, Ben hollering as Sal’s full body weight comes slamming down on him. Clay is stunned. He stares at Ben, wrestling on the ground for a second, and then he’s jerking forward, pulling the trigger on his gun, and a deafeningly loud crack and roar is filling the air.
The smell of burning metal floods my nose. Despite being so damn close, Clay didn’t hit Theo, because Theo is no longer standing in the doorway. He’s crouched low, rushing forward, charging for Clay. I watch the scene unfold, my heart in my throat. I’m not sure who I should be rooting for here. If I were to get my own way, they’d all simultaneous kill each other in some unlikely fluke and I would be safe. Life doesn’t work like that, though.
Theo takes Clay out at the knees, sending them both reeling back into the wall. The back of Clay’s head makes contact first; his eyelids shutter, his teeth bared in pain, and then Theo’s snatching the gun from his hand and spinning it around, cocking it, firing...
As a doctor, I’ve seen a hundred gunshot wounds. More than a hundred, probably. And since I’ve been with Zeth, I’ve seen plenty of people shot at close range, too. But this shot…this is something else. Point blank range. The round doesn’t merely penetrate Clay’s skull; it splits it open like a ripe watermelon. Fragments of bone and brain matter fly under the impact of the bullet, spraying Theo and me in the process. I try not to gag as I scurry back into the corner of the bed, as far as my restrained wrists will allow me, putting as much space between myself and Theo as I can. His face is drenched with blood, his eyes wide, the whites showing, his chest heaving as he stares down at Clay’s body. The man sprawled out at Theo’s feet is still twitching. His hands and feet spasm reflexively, the synapses in his brain firing randomly as the final wisps of life leave him.
I dare a glance over at Ben wrestling with the other Barbieri on the floor, and I gasp, startled by what I see there: either Sal took the gun from Ben and kicked it aside, or Ben dropped it in the commotion. It lies five feet away from his grasping hand as Sal kneels over him, tearing at Ben’s neck with his…with his teeth.
Ben’s agonized cries are filled with horror. His legs kick fruitlessly at the ground, his body writhing, but Sal is bigger than him, and has him pinned. Sal rears back, grinding his teeth together, and ropes of sinew and muscle tear away from Ben’s neck with him.
“Holy fucking god,” I whisper.
Theo spins around and sighs, as if he’s disappointed. “Sal. Fuck, Sal, come on. You’re behaving like a goddamn savage.”
Sal just grins, blood covering his face, gore hanging from his mouth. “I am a savage. So are you. You just need to loosen up a little.”
Ben shudders one last time, then his limbs fall slack, his head rocking to one side, eyes staring blankly over toward where I’m curled up as tight as possible on the cot.
If Sal has no qualms over ripping out a man’s throat with his teeth, then what the fuck is he going to do to me? I shiver, trying to brainstorm, to think of something to say to them that will stay their hands. I can’t form a single coherent thought, though. Not one.
Sal gets to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes flash unnervingly, like he could happily use his teeth to cause some more damage right about now. The brothers approach the cot, blood-flecked and terrible.
And then…
“Jesus, Sloane! What the hell happened to you?”
My heart slams in my chest, my vision flashing. I look back over Theo’s shoulder, and Pippa is standing there, her arm bound to her body, her face pale and drawn. She rushes into the cramped room, stepping over Ben and Clay’s broken bodies as if she doesn’t even see them.
“What are you doing here?” I can’t think of anything else to say.
She runs her hands over me, looking for any injuries. Finds none. She seems to calm down when she realizes I’m unhurt, for the most part. Turning to Theo, she holds out her good hand, motioning to him. “Knife. Hand it over. I know you’ve got one.”
Sal laughs, shoving Theo out of the way. “Why settle for his puny, worthless weapon when you can have mine?” He flips back his suit jacket and draws a long, serrated, sinister looking knife from a sheath that runs down the side of his body. The blade is at least eight inches long, and looks like it’s been well used. Pippa grimaces as she takes it from him and carefu
lly uses it to cut through the zip ties.
My hands pulse and burn with pain as I slowly lower my arms. Warily, I sit myself up on the edge of the bed, doing my utmost not to burst into tears as I say, “Can someone please explain what the fuck is going on here? Because I think I’m losing my mind.”
Pippa rubs my arms with her single, good hand, murmuring softly. “These guys were sent back with Zeth to help deal with that DEA agent, Lowell.” Shame washes over her face. “The one I called back at the hospital…”
I shake my head: don’t worry about that. Not now.
“Zeth told us to wait at the gym,” she continues. “He told these two to watch me and work on the Lowell problem. As soon as he left, Theo called in a favor and had the bitch tracked…to here. As soon as we realized Lowell was at the same baseball field you were being held at…well. We got in the car and drove straight here.”
I pin Theo with an incredulous gaze first, then Sal. “Why would you bring her with you? Can’t you see she’s hurt?”
A scathing bark of laughter escapes Theo. “When was the last time you tried to tell this woman to do anything?” he answers. “She’s stubborn as fuck.” Sal actually pales a little as he looks down at Pippa, which seems entirely out of character, based on what I’ve seen of him so far. I don’t blame him, though. Pippa can be a frightening individual when she sets her mind on it. She probably threatened to psychoanalyze them, and they gave her whatever she wanted.
“Come on,” she says, helping me to my feet.
“We haven’t seen the others yet, but I’m betting they won’t be far. We’ll go find somewhere safe to wait this out.”
“And we,” says Sal, rubbing his hands together, “will go and find the party.”
EIGHTEEN
MASON
Michael’s like a wraith as he flits from one bank of shadow to the next, gun already locked and loaded, held out in front of him. His lips are pressed into a tight line, his eyes glinting with fire and steel as he searches from one room to the next. Storage, mostly. Locker rooms. I don’t have a gun, so I trail behind him, keeping close just as he told me to.
After twenty minutes of searching, the sound of footsteps rings out down the oppressively narrow corridors, and Michael grabs me by the collar, spiriting me back into the room we’ve just cleared. We both hover in the darkness, the door partially cracked, and watch as a tall, curvy redheaded woman in a killer red dress saunters by. Zeth follows behind her, his expression stony.
So this is Alaska, then. She’s smoking hot, but by the look on Michael’s face you’d think she was the most repulsive creature to ever walk the planet. It’s hatred—that look on his face. He fucking hates this woman, for one reason or another. I’m guessing it’s mostly because she had the gall to kidnap his boss’s pregnant girlfriend. I know how close he is with Sloane. It’s very hard not to adore the woman; her heart’s as big as they come, and she loves Zeth with every single cell of her body. Just like Michael.
Zeth doesn’t show any sign that he knows where we are. He stares dead ahead, his gaze burning into Alaska’s back as he trails her further into the bowels of the stadium.
“We’d better wait,” Michael whispers. “If we follow too closely, she’ll notice.”
“You think she’s taking him to Sloane?” I hiss back.
Michael shrugs with one shoulder. “If she knows what’s good for her.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
The darkness that settles over Michael says enough: she’ll die. She’ll pay the price for her stupidity. The realistic, logical part of me already knows Alaska is already a dead woman. She’s courted danger itself by taking the one thing Zeth really cares about, the one thing that’s precious to him. There is no reality in which he allows her to walk away from this, woman or no. So how could she be so blasé as she strolled down the hallway in front of Zeth? How could she not realize that she’s in the shit right up to her neck? It makes no sense.
Michael bars the doorway, cutting a tall, imposing figure as we wait. Five minutes pass, then ten. He pulls open the door and then he steps out into the hallway, gun still raised, face severe and unreadable. “Come on. Let’s go.” He sets off in the direction Zeth and Alaska headed in, body moving the way a sleek predator’s would.
I follow, trying to emulate the stealth, the power, the confidence with which he moves, but compared to him I must look like a fucking bull in a china shop, tripping over it’s own size eleven feet. I’ve trained to be agile, to move swiftly, but Zeth’s right hand man almost fucking floats ahead of me as we creep toward an uncertain destination.
My hearing is also clearly not as good as Michael’s. Down the corridor, a left, and then a right, he angles his head to one side, pausing every five seconds, obviously listening, hearing things I can’t discern. I trust that he knows where the hell we’re going. I don’t have a clue.
It hits me, then, how bizarre this is. I used to work for one of the biggest crooks in Seattle. I fought tooth and nail to make sure I never aided and abetted in his illegal activities. Railed against every offer he made me for after hours work, shuttling stolen cars from one side of the city to the other, even though I desperately needed the money for Millie’s care. And here I am, helping these people potentially end lives—a far, far worse crime than driving stolen vehicles. It’s different, though. It feels vastly different. If I’d been caught doing Mac’s dirty work, I would have been on my own. He would have denied all knowledge of my very existence. He retained no records of his employees whatsoever. He paid us all in cash at the end of every week. If the cops had turned up on his doorstep and started questioning him about me, he would have claimed never to have laid eyes on me before.
With Zeth, with Michael, with Sloane…they’re a family. They don’t abandon the members of that family to the cops, or to any other hostile force. They protect each other. Care for each other. They’ve got each other’s backs. Which is why I didn’t even blink earlier when Zeth told me to go and get changed. Refusing to help simply didn’t cross my mind.
I almost walk into Michael’s back when he suddenly stops in front of me, holding up a hand, closed into a fist. “Ahead,” he hisses. “They’re in one of the rooms up ahead. On the right, I think.”
We move forward, not making a sound. It turns out he’s right. We halt in front of a heavy steel door on the right, and the low ebb and lull of voices can be heard through the thick metal. Female voices. Not one, but two. And then Zeth’s unmistakably low, rumbling tone. It makes sense that he’s angry, but fuck. I can literally feel the rage pouring out of him through the concrete wall.
I hear him perfectly the next time he speaks, can hear the pain and the torment behind his words. My heart stops dead in my chest.
“What the fuck have you done?”
Michael freezes; I can see the skin on the back of his neck, the tiny hairs that are pricked and raised. “Fuck,” he says breathlessly. “She’s hurt her. I didn’t think she’d be so fucking stupid.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Zeth roars.
Michael rushes forward, slamming open the door, charging into the room, his arms outstretched, ready to fire. I’m right behind him, no time to think, to plan, to weigh our options. Zeth needs us, and so we go to him. The scene we find ourselves in is not what I expected, though. I survey the room from left to right, the gears catching and stumbling inside my head. What the…what the fuck?
Sloane is nowhere to be seen. Alaska is turned to us, a look of surprise on her face. Zeth stands at the far end of the room, his back to us, his hand clenched tightly around the throat of…of Denise Lowell? He’s pinned her to the wall, feet off the ground. Her face is turning blue as she scrambles, her fingers clawing at Zeth’s hand, trying to gouge his skin, to make him release her from his grip.
He does no such thing.
Michael stumbles into the room, his face falling slack. Another step forward. Another, and then another, until he’s standing in front of a metal gurney. An
d on the gurney…
I’m unprepared for what I see next.
The hands. The arms. The feet. The calves. The thighs. The stomach. The torso. The…the head.
Pieces. Pieces of a person, all decomposing, twisted and rented apart. The woman, whoever she was, looks like she’s been dead for some time. The only dead body I’ve ever seen before is my sister’s and it looked nothing like this. Millie’s face was still fairly flushed with the remnants of life. Her nails were still pink. Her lips were tinged with blue, but she often looked that way, even on her good days. Laid out on that cold metal slab in the morgue beneath St. Peter’s of Mercy Hospital, my sister had almost looked like she was sleeping. It had taken me touching her, feeling how cold her skin was, to finally accept that she was gone. But this woman…
There is no mistaking her condition.
Death hangs over her like shroud. The entire room is filled with the sweet, cloying stench of decay, practically humming with some ungodly electricity that bites at my skin.
I pivot on the balls of my feet, and before I know what the hell is happening I’m bending at the waist and vomiting all over the dusty bare concrete floor. My ears ring with a high pitched humming sound, my eyes momentarily blurring. A pair of patent, brightly shining, glossy red pumps come into view, and then a hand is on my back, lightly rubbing up and down.
“There, there, pet,” a cool, detached voice purrs. “There, there. That’s right. Get it all out.”
I spit, trying to rid my mouth of the foul taste, but it’s impossible. It’s in the air, snaking up my nostrils winding its way down my throat, deep into my lungs. I reel away from Alaska’s touch, trying to force the world back into focus. It takes every ounce of will power I possess to stop myself from throwing up again.
Michael remains staring down at the body, his gun now hanging by his side, his frame curved in on itself, back bowed, as if being crushed by some unseen force.