by Kit Rocha
He released Jade, backhanding Lex as he flailed. She stumbled back, fell, and then he was on her, snarling and wild-eyed as blood gushed from his throat.
He wedged his forearm across her throat and leaned on it--hard. Lex sputtered and pushed back, but her feet slipped on the blood-soaked tile. Woods outweighed her by a good sixty pounds, and without any leverage, she couldn't shove him off. But she could outlast him, maybe.
Hold on, Lex. Just fucking hold on.
Jade wept, her back against the door as the blood pulsing from Woods's jagged, gaping wound began to slow and his skin went pallid, gray. He was cursing, the words coming slower and slower, like a battery-powered toy losing its charge. He slumped, the pressure from his arm intensifying.
Dead weight.
With growing horror, Lex bucked and tried to roll, but she couldn't budge him. This is it, she thought vaguely. This is where I die. The world was already fuzzy, bright white but darkening by the second, and she was tired, so tired...
One more mighty shove and she flung him off her, gasping for breath. Jade screamed as something hit the wall. Lex struggled to sit, only to find herself staring down the muzzle of a pistol.
It was Fleming's bodyguard--the one Jade had called Finn--who stared back, his dark eyes unreadable.
"Lady, you just fucked up my night."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gareth Woods really was well and truly terrified.
From the trees at the edge of the property, Dallas watched the house through a pair of zoom lenses and listened to Bren's report. "Looks like Fleming cleared out pretty good. Most of the guards left seem to have come with Woods. Cruz and I can go in, work together, kill the ones from Eden, neutralize the ones from Five."
Maybe not the most satisfying approach, but Fleming wouldn't appreciate having his guards murdered, and Woods was less likely to slip through Dallas's fingers if his guards died quick, silent deaths. "Anyone from Two?"
"One driver. No guards."
And no sign of Cerys. Hard to say if that was good or bad, but it did simplify things. "Take Cruz and get as many as you can out of the way without being seen."
"Got it." Bren dropped his rifle, checked the pistols in his holsters, and drew a knife from his boot. "Give us a lead. Two, three minutes."
Dallas watched the two men disappear, following them with his gaze as he spoke to Jasper. "You ready to put this bastard down?" Easier to ask the question without having to look the man in the eyes. Something fragile had almost snapped between them, something that had been strained for a while. Jasper was a man of divided loyalties now, and the person who held his heart might cheerfully sink a knife into Dallas's.
"Would've thought you'd be more excited." Jas knelt beside him and lifted his own binoculars. "This is what you wanted, right? Gareth Woods's blood?"
"Sure it is." It had been his obsession for damn near a month, but he'd hardly thought about it from the moment he'd wrapped that collar around Lex's throat. Hell, he hadn't even worked up half the excitement he should have over getting his hands on Three. Sending Bren to do recon, recruiting new members when a little extra legwork could have resulted in more money...
Lazy. He'd been lazy, because he wanted to keep his ass in bed, preferably with Lex under him. Or riding him.
If he hadn't been so hot to blow a hole in Woods's brain, Lex might be under him right now. So he had to make this the highlight of his goddamn year.
A branch snapped behind them. Jasper spun, already drawing his hunting knife as the foliage parted.
A bleary, red-eyed Dylan Jordan held up both hands. "I surrender."
Jas sheathed his blade. "You almost got hurt there, Doc."
"Almost." The man snorted out a laugh. "Only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, isn't that what they used to say?"
Dallas groaned and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes. Whatever pills the man popped like candy didn't do a damn thing to fix the fact that he was fucknuts crazy. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Both of his eyebrows shot up. "Lex told me to meet her. When I saw you over here, I figured you were in on it."
"Lex told you to meet her here?" Dallas echoed, his brain struggling to process the words.
His body moved.
Dodging Jasper's attempt to grab him, he snatched up a gun and jammed it under Doc's chin, adrenaline and fear graying out the edges of the world. "How long ago? How fucking long ago?"
He didn't flinch. "This afternoon. She said it was a pickup--a girl who needed help to detox."
Which meant she'd known almost as long as he had, and had made her own choices about what to do with the information. Just imagining what that choice was likely to be--
Dallas bit off a curse as he shoved Doc to the side and whirled to snarl at Jasper, who was blocking his path. "I will go through you."
"No, you won't." Jas glanced at his watch. "Not for thirty more seconds."
Thirty seconds of knowing Lex was trapped inside with a monster and his guards. Thirty seconds of wondering what she'd had to sacrifice to get there, what she'd endured because Dallas hadn't found a way to finish this bastard off weeks ago.
Thirty seconds of rage that she would willingly walk into a trap he'd helped to set, knowing it could spring shut on her. Christ, they were in Sector Five. How many ways could Fleming administer drugs? They could be in the water, in the food, in the fucking air.
"I'm going to strangle her," he growled, shaking with the effort it took to restrain himself. Raising an alarm could get her dead, but he wanted her in his arms now, so he could examine every goddamn inch of her for the slightest injury and then skin whoever had put it there.
Slowly.
"No one would blame you." Jasper held out his pistol, butt first, offering it to the doctor. "Ten seconds, and you're gonna make yourself useful."
"I'm not stupid." Jordan pulled a semiautomatic from the small of his back. "I don't wander around unarmed."
Dallas barely heard them. He was a rubber band stretched too tight, seconds from shooting forward or snapping back on the idiots trying to hold him in place. Clutching his gun in one hand, he rested the other on the hilt of his knife.
Eight...seven...
Lex was in there. His heart was in there.
Five...
He needed to tell her that.
Three...two...
God, let her still be alive to tell.
"One," he growled, and started running.
Doc and Jasper kept pace with him as he raced across the open area. They found proof of Cruz and Bren's handiwork as soon as they cleared the edge of the building. Two men lay dead, and a third leaned over them, his fingers pressed to one bloody neck as if seeking a pulse.
He was still reaching for his gun when Dallas slit his throat.
True to Bren's promise, most of the guards were down, and they only ran into stragglers as they followed Cerys's directions through the labyrinthine halls. Dallas plowed through them, Jasper at his side. One guard, two, four--
They rounded a corner, but the man at the other end wasn't a guard. He was too damn old, for one, though he held a gun in both shaking hands.
"Drop it," Jasper ordered flatly.
The old man's hands wavered as he stared at Jasper's wrists. A moment later, the gun clattered to the floor. "She had those," he said in a shaking voice, pointing to Jas's cuffs. "Lady Jade's friend. Are you here for her?"
The name meant nothing to Dallas, but it wasn't hard to guess that this was the driver from Two. "You picked up a woman tonight?"
He nodded and edged carefully to the side, both hands held upright. "A friend of the lady's, she was."
"And she's through here?" Dallas gestured to the huge double doors.
Another nod.
He couldn't hear anything on the other side. No sounds of fighting or fucking, just a chilling sort of silence that could mean anything or nothing. For all he knew, the damn room was soundproofed so no one would know what Fleming's hig
h rollers got up to on the other side.
Only one way to find out. Dallas passed his knife to Doc and pulled his favorite pistol. "On three?"
Jasper counted it off under his breath, then splintered the door's latch with one solid kick. Lifting his weapon, Dallas spilled into the room only to freeze three steps later.
A gigantic man he vaguely recognized was holding a gun to Lex's head. Finn, a silent, severe hulk who ran drugs for Mac Fleming.
Beyond that, all Dallas could register was the blood. It covered Lex, slicking her skin and drenching the ruffled white negligee she wore. His heart seized until he realized there was too much blood for her to be sitting upright, tense and alert and noticeably fuming.
Not hers, then. A brief glance at the woman sprawled beside her made it clear it wasn't hers, either. Her white gown was splattered, but her worst injuries seemed to be the vivid red marks around her throat.
As if he could read Dallas's thoughts, Finn sighed. "If this woman belongs to you, she's been busy," he said, gesturing briefly with the gun. Dallas looked to the left and saw Woods sprawled on his back, glassy-eyed, with a giant shard of glass sticking out of his throat.
"He had it coming," Lex spat.
"No argument here, dollface." Finn dug through his pocket without taking his eyes off Dallas and came up with a bent cigarette. "But you put me between a rock and a real damn hard place. Also known as my boss and yours."
"I'm not her boss," Dallas drawled, fighting to keep his temper leashed. One wrong move could end Lex. "But I am thinking I might shoot your balls off if you don't point that gun someplace else."
Snorting, Finn lit his cigarette. "If I point it someplace else, I'm dead. Lackeys have eyes too, O'Kane."
"Easy answer?" Lex rose slowly, her hands held out to her sides. "You weren't here. Woods brought plenty of guards, and something else needed your attention. Business, or even some pretty little thing with a powerful need to see you."
The barrel of the gun followed Lex as she moved, and Dallas fought to keep his voice lazy. "Lex is right. My only grudge with you at the moment is your shitty taste in where to point your weapon."
"Yeah, except lying to the boss tends to come back and kill a guy." Finn took a long drag from his cigarette before dropping his arm and letting his gun point toward the floor. "But hey, I'm dead anyway. Just don't shoot me before I finish my last smoke, eh?"
Leaving the bastard to Jasper, Dallas crossed the intervening space in three paces and dragged Lex to him. "Jesus Christ, woman, you will be the death of me."
"Jade," she muttered, clutching his arms. "She's already hurting."
He couldn't unlock his arms from around Lex. Not until Finn was gone, maybe not until they were back in their own damn sector. "Doc's here."
"A doctor can't help her," Finn said in a dull voice. He watched Jade tremble on the floor with dark eyes devoid of satisfaction or sympathy, devoid of anything but a numb sort of exhaustion. "I can give her the dose I brought to take the edge off, but she'll be going through this again in two weeks unless you send her off peacefully before that."
Doc knelt next to the woman, tilted her head back, and peered into her eyes. "Is this that shit Fleming's been pushing? The habit-forming additive?"
"Insurance in a bottle." Finn looked away, and Dallas could hear his distaste.
Distaste wasn't enough, not for this. Chilling rage had burned away everything except the need to be touching Lex, to remember she was safe and their enemy was dead. "Give the last dose to the doctor."
The man retrieved a plastic container the size of Dallas's thumb and tossed it to Doc. Dallas waited until the doctor had checked it and nodded before gesturing with his gun. "Time to finish that cigarette."
"Dallas, no." Lex curled her fingers in his shirt. "He could have killed me and Jade and been gone already."
He hesitated, because she was right. Even if Finn hadn't wanted to kill two women, he could have gotten out before Dallas showed up with the cavalry. "So why did you stick around?"
Finn snuffed out his cigarette against the bedpost. "I was hoping to make a deal. You all clear out and pretend you were never here, and the boss and I pin this on Cerys." His gaze tracked over Lex. "It's not entirely a lie."
"No one's gonna believe a junkie whore wiped out a squad of Eden-trained guards," Jasper observed.
Dallas tended to agree, but Finn just laughed and flicked the butt of his cigarette into a pool of Woods's blood. "I've pulled off more complicated frame jobs with zero sleep and tripping on acid. What sort of cushy life do you fuckers live in Four?"
"The kind where we work smarter, not harder."
"Enough," Dallas snapped. "If you wanna stay behind and play with the dead bodies, be my guest. I'm not gonna piss my name on the wall to prove I was here. Doc, the girl?"
The man pocketed the inhaler. "Want to have one of your goons carry her?"
Bren and Cruz had arrived, so Dallas directed Jasper to help the doctor and had Bren cover their retreat so Finn couldn't shoot them in the back. His gaze snagged on Gareth Woods as he turned, and he hesitated, half expecting thwarted rage to roar through him. That kill--that vengeance--should have been his.
The dead didn't matter. Lex did. He swept her up into his arms, surprised when she didn't struggle or protest. Something different rose in his chest as he carried her out of the bloodstained room.
Hope.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dallas's good mood lasted until he got Lex to his room. It had taken too long to get from Five back to Four, especially when Jade had roused just enough to protest at leaving her driver behind. Still riding the buzz of having Lex curled trustingly against his chest, Dallas had ended up being too charitable, and Noelle was currently hovering over a dotty old refugee from a Victorian novel who had earnestly asked if Dallas could use a valet.
A gang leader with a valet. Jesus Christ, he hated Cerys.
At least the new arrivals had somewhat distracted Noelle. Dallas figured he could thank Jasper for that, one way or another. But all of the delays meant that by the time he helped Lex out of her blood-soaked clothes, bruises had begun to form on her body.
And that made him rage.
"I just need a bath," she protested. "And some gel for my hand."
"Shh." He turned on the shower and climbed in with her, blocking the worst of the spray with his body as he eased her hair aside and started a slow exploration. "Your face is swelling up, too. What happened?"
"I got smacked, what do you think?" She twisted away from his touch. "I'm covered in blood, that's the bad part."
"Lex." It came out as a snarl that echoed off the tile, and he fought to moderate his tone. Fought and failed. "Let me take care of you, for Christ's sake. Let me do this."
"I--" A shudder wracked her. "Okay, fine."
Seizing hold of his frayed self-control with both hands, Dallas edged her under the showerhead. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap. You just scared the hell out of me."
"I know." The water plastered her hair to her head and ran red with the blood that hadn't quite dried.
He poured shampoo in his hands and worked it into her hair. "Why'd you do it?"
"The opportunity presented itself," she answered dourly.
That simple. That cool. For all that she was tolerating his attentions, Lex was still pissed at him. "Because I dealt with Cerys."
"I took him out," she said stormily. And I did it on my terms, not yours."
"Okay." He cupped her cheeks and tilted her head back. "Look at me, Lex. Believe me when I say this. I don't give a fuck. As long as you're okay, Cerys and Fleming and everyone in both their sectors can burn. And Gareth fucking Woods, too."
She stared dully back. "Stop it, Dallas."
He opened his mouth and shut it again without speaking. Talking wasn't getting it done, so he'd listen. He'd prove he could listen. Maybe that was what she needed, to know she could draw a line and ask him not to cross it, even if the line was this simple.
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Stop it.
In silence, he washed the blood from her hair and body, taking careful note of her injuries. When the water finally ran clear, he turned it off and wrapped her in an oversized towel, using a second to work the water from her hair. "Will you let me bandage your hand?"
Lex nodded and tugged the towel higher on her chest. "I need something to wear."
Because there wasn't anything else, he found her a clean T-shirt and toweled himself off while she pulled it on. He took just enough time to drag on a pair of jeans and went in search of the med kit.
Impossible not to compare this to the last time someone had gotten patched up in his suite. Noelle had babied Jasper's tiny cut before kissing every part the man had to make it all better. That had been a night of dedicated debauchery, a night he'd almost crossed the near-invisible line he'd drawn for himself and fucked Lex cross-eyed, even though he hadn't collared her.
She'd been pissed at him the next morning, pissed that he'd gotten her off but refused to get in her, pissed over his arbitrary line and how ridiculous she found it. Dicks aren't required for fucking, Declan. A certain proclamation, delivered with a tilted brow that invited him to imagine a whole world of scenarios that didn't require dicks even before she added, I should know.
Having watched her fuck Noelle on a dimly lit stage more than once now, he suspected she'd been right about that, too.
When he returned to the couch, he found Lex curled up on one end, her legs tucked beneath her, rubbing her fingers over the tattoo on her wrist.
He thought of what Doc had said and damn near bit through his tongue to keep from commenting. Instead, he set the kit on the couch and knelt in front of her. Slow and easy. That's what he had to do.
Gentle.
"Do you want Jade to stay here?" he asked as he examined the cut on her hand. A safe, neutral topic to test the waters with. If Lex wasn't planning to stay, she'd be less likely to make long-term plans involving the gang. Assuming any plans concerning Jade could be long-term.