The two men quickly went to move around the couch, each going an opposite direction, so she simply reversed her tactic and dove forward, using strong arms to flip herself over the back of the couch in the other direction. Gymnastics classes from the time she’d been a toddler and on into her teenage years were finally coming in handy. Her strong legs found steady purchase on the top of the coffee table, sending tea cups, saucers and hot tea flying in every direction.
The glass shattered with an almost pleasing, tinkling sound as it impacted with the wood floor or other pieces of the tea set. The sharp shards and hot tea would have harmed Annabelle’s feet and legs if she hadn’t been wearing her riding boots, so she was grateful for that.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, boys,” the Colonel gave a wave of his hand and several other men moved forward to assist in Annabelle’s capture. She shrieked as someone grabbed her wrist from behind while she was watching two of them come toward her from the front. She yanked just hard enough to catch her captor off-guard and freed her arm. Then she leapt mightily and landed on the back of the opposite couch.
It began to tip backwards beneath her weight, so she used the momentum to kick one of the men in front of her, catching him square in the chin before the couch slid out from under her, throwing her, off-balance, to the floor.
The man she kicked tumbled backwards to land against one wall, only half-conscious, but the man she hadn’t kicked was on her in a heart beat. Before she had any more time to consider further action, she was being wrenched from the floor and held by three of the Colonel’s black-clad brutes, their grips bruisingly tight on her tender skin.
She didn’t even try to yank away this time, knowing the movement would do nothing but cause her injury and pain.
“My sources tell me that you are one of these, how shall we say, tree huggers,” the Colonel said. He paced back and forth across the room, gesturing as he spoke, choosing not to address her violent evasive actions, as if they meant very little anyway.
“Since you care so little about your own well being that you take to riding motorized cycles, which everyone well knows are nigh a perilous mode of transportation, I can only assume that you choose to reduce, reuse, and recycle,” he said, uttering the terms by way of saber-rattling banter, “and, even, to refrain from eating animals, because you possess a great deal of empathy.”
Annabelle said nothing, but Jack had gone very, very still. She could sense a new wave of fury coming from him, even across the room. She watched him as the Colonel spoke.
“I must admit, my dear, that I normally find such a thing to be a charitable trait in a woman. There is a reason you are referred to as the fairer sex.” He stopped and turned to face her. “So, it is with some regret that I have found myself in a situation where a woman’s empathy must be used against her.”
He nodded then, and one of the men who had been holding her let her go, leaving the other two to hold her fast. In the next instant, the one who had released her was standing in front of her. He pulled his right arm back and balled his hand into a fist. Annabelle’s eyes widened, but she had no time to react. No time to draw a breath before he drove that fist deep into her gut.
He didn’t pull his punch. He hit her as hard as he could.
The impact was like nothing Annabelle could have imagined. It hurt more than anything she had ever before experienced. Though she possessed a strong mid-section, which Jack often referred to as a “six pack”, she hadn’t thought fast enough to flex these protective muscles, and, as a result, her internal organs had absorbed the vast majority of the impact.
She was fairly certain she was dying. A horrendous coldness climbed up her spinal cord and settled at the base of her skull. When the men released her and she fell immediately to the hard floor, she barely felt it. There was no sensation in her world other than the agony that was inside of her, the cold fear engulfing her, and a growing need to breathe. No air would come, no air would go. She wanted to vomit, to pass out, to die. Any of those three would have been some kind of relief, but none would come.
Though white spots swam around in her vision and her legs writhed of their own accord, the darkness refused to engulf her, leaving her viciously trapped in her world of pain. She laid there, like a speared fish, squirming on the end of a stick, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection, her eyes shut tight against reality.
It was several horrible millennia before she was at last able to draw in a breath and she did so desperately. The sudden intake of air only made her nausea much worse. She retched, but as she hadn’t eaten much in the past few days, nothing came up. She gulped in air and retched again and the white swimming spots slowly began to recede.
As her retching unconsciously flexed her abdominal muscles, a hard ache settled into her mid-section. She wondered if she’d suffered real internal damage. Could he have ruptured something? Was she bleeding internally?
“You’ll have to take my word for it, my dear, though it feels as if it truly is the end of the world as you know it, it is only pain, nothing more. I assure you, I have not allowed any real damage to occur to you.” The Colonel’s Southern drawl sounded like the voice of the devil, just then. It was, quite literally, the very last thing she wanted to hear at that moment.
But she was forced to hear it some more.
“I’m afraid this was a necessary evil,” he continued. “You see, I need you to fully comprehend what it is that my men are about to do to Mr. Thane.”
That got her attention. She managed to pull herself up just enough that she could make out the Colonel’s portly figure across the room. Then she turned a little more so that she could look up at Jack.
More blood trickled in various rivulets down his arms from his wrists and it was obvious that he’d been pulling at the manacles viciously, mindless of the pain. His eyes locked on hers and willed them to not look away. His teeth were gritted against his anger, against his grief. He held Annabelle’s gaze as if it were a lifeline. As if it were all he had left in the world.
And perhaps it was.
Annabelle coughed and managed to push herself up a little more, settling into a seated position, some of her weight on her left arm. Nausea continued to roil in her gut, but she no longer felt it bad enough to retch. There was just a throbbing pain now, and a wretched, frantic fear.
“I will, of course, ask you one last time, Miss Drake. What did Mr. Anderson leave for you?”
As he asked the question, his men positioned themselves around Jack. Annabelle tried to push herself up further, forcing shaky legs beneath her. She watched as one of the men pulled his arm back and balled up his fist, just as the other goon had done with her.
Jack’s gaze moved from Annabelle to the man in front of him, and then back at Annabelle again. He shook his head, once.
And the man hit him.
“No!” Annabelle screamed, or, at least, tried to. It came out half-croak, half-scream, as her body still didn’t have quite enough air. Jack bent in his bonds, unable to curl inward due to the manacles keeping him upright. His eyes shut tight against what Annabelle knew, first-hand, to be excruciating torture.
She stood up the rest of the way and was instantly accosted by the Colonel’s lackeys once more. They held her back as she tried to move toward Jack.
“Stop!” she yelled, this time managing to get some force behind her voice.
The man hitting Jack pulled his fist back to ready for another strike, but the Colonel held up his hand and the man stayed his action.
The Colonel looked at Annabelle. She looked at Jack.
Jack opened his eyes and peered back at her. There was a world of hurt behind those blue eyes. But Annabelle recognized other things there as well. And either it was her imagination, or he truly did not appear to be in as much pain as she had been.
“Don’t worry, luv,” he told her, from his bent position. His Sheffield accent was thick in his softly-spoken words. They brought comfort to her, even in this dire situation. “It’s not
as bad as it seems.” She knew he was telling her this solely for her benefit. He didn’t want her to be afraid for him. He really didn’t want her to give in. “I was expecting it,” he said, glancing at the guy in front of him. “And this plonker hits like a little girl.”
At that, the Colonel lowered his hand and the man in front of Jack slugged him again, this time harder than the last. As Jack bent forward once more, the guy back-handed him, sending his knuckles cracking against the side of Jack’s skull.
Annabelle screamed for them to stop. She struggled in her captors’ grips, but it was all to no avail. She insisted, loudly, that she would tell the Colonel whatever he wanted to know. No one was listening to her now. The man hitting Jack was joined by another, who also began to beat on him. Neither of them pulled their punches and neither slowed in their torture, no matter how much Annabelle pleaded with them.
For several eternal minutes, this continued, until Annabelle’s vision was completely blurred by the hot tears she was crying as she begged them to leave Jack alone.
And then there was a loud bang and a crunching sound behind them as the door they’d come through buckled inward, nearly coming off of its hinges. Everyone stopped and turned to look as the roaring sound of machinery grew louder outside, drawing nearer to the building.
“Kill Thane and bring the girl!” The Colonel cried as the crashing sound came a second time and the door flew into the room, nearly landing on a few of the men who had been standing in front of it. The large man moved to a rug on the floor and kicked it aside, revealing a trap door beneath. He quickly pulled up the trap door and disappeared into its recesses, followed by several of his men.
Reese, who managed to get out of the way the first time, ran toward Annabelle, grabbing her away from the two men still holding her. “I’ll take her! See to the Colonel’s safety!” He told them over the noise of a loud engine and rending metal.
“Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” Annabelle shrieked at Reese as they released her and he grabbed tight. Fury fueled her strength as she thrashed in his grip, bringing her legs up to kick as well. She managed to get him good in the knee with her right boot, and he instinctively let her go to double over in pain.
She needed to get to Jack. They were going to kill him. She peered around Reese’s figure, even as he recovered and dove for her once more. She lunged right, taking Reese off guard, and then dodged to the left, moving around his body with an agility she didn’t know she possessed.
Two men stood in front of Jack now, and one had pulled out an automatic hand gun. Annabelle rushed at the man, diving in low and using her shoulder to absorb the impact as she slammed into the side of his midsection, knocking him away from Jack. The gun went off, the bullet driving into the plaster above Jack’s head.
The bullet sliced through the wall and struck the metal siding beneath it, bouncing back in a ricochet that shattered the tea pot on the coffee table several yards away.
Annabelle and the Colonel’s goon hit the ground hard, but he rolled and had her beneath him in an instant. He acted fast, taking the opportunity to backhand her just as he had Jack. The impact cracked Annabelle’s jaw and forced all sensation to spin away from her as if she were falling through Alice’s rabbit hole.
Her eyes were shut, so she didn’t see it, but she felt the weight of the man on top of her being lifted away. She wanted to look, but she also didn’t. All desire seemed to fall away just as sensation had. She was certainly no longer in any pain and sound began to fade. Before it went out entirely, she thought she heard a familiar Texan accent.
She couldn’t make out the words, though. And then everything went black.
It was Reese who had pulled the thug off of Annabelle. He spun the man around and shot him a seething look. “You idiot,” he hissed, “you could have killed her!” He shoved the man aside. But as he bent to retrieve Annabelle’s unconscious body, he, too, was grabbed from behind and spun around.
The man who had grabbed him, however, wasted no words on him, instead choosing to slam his knuckles into Reese’s face, knocking off Reese’s glasses and sending him reeling back several steps to stumble into the thug he had just shoved away.
The first man turned and ran in the direction he’d seen the Colonel go. Reese slid to the ground, temporarily stunned.
“God dammit, Jack, what the hell kind of mess did you get yourself into?” Sam turned toward Jack, whose eyes were on Annabelle’s prone form. Sam unfastened the manacles around Jack’s wrists and Jack bent to undo the ones around his ankles. Then he was at Annabelle’s side.
“You look like shit, buddy,” Sam said softly. And it was true. Jack was covered in his own blood. His hair was matted with it and parts of his black t-shirt were stained blacker with the dark liquid.
But Jack barely noticed. He placed his fingers to Annabelle’s neck and then closed his eyes, releasing a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “She’s alive.”
“Not that she’ll be happy about it when she wakes up,” Sam said. Jack bent to lift Annabelle into his arms and Sam helped the man stand back up. Once he was on his feet again, Jack swooned ever so slightly and Sam shook his head.
“They had a field day with you.” He looked Jack over from head to toe. “Looks like it got personal. Which means you pissed ‘em off, didn’t you?”
“Not now, Sam.” Jack brushed by him to lay Annabelle on the couch nearby. And then he turned toward Reese, who was only now gaining enough of his senses back to attempt to get onto his feet.
Jack didn’t give him the opportunity. He strode to the man, gripping Reese’s shirt and vest front in his right hand, and hauled him up off of his feet altogether. Then, without warning, he shifted his weight and slammed Reese’s body against the wall behind them. The impact stunned Reese once more and the man’s eyes closed momentarily.
Jack let him drop to the ground and then he turned and strode back to Sam.
“Give me your piece.”
Sam didn’t question him and he didn’t hesitate. He pulled his weapon out of its place in his shoulder holster and handed it to his friend.
Jack moved back to Reese and stood looking down at him. Then he raised the gun, a revolver, and cocked it.
“No, da’! Don’t shoot him!”
Jack froze. He looked over his shoulder.
A massive fissure had been carved into the opposite wall of the converted garage by what appeared to be nothing short of an armored bulldozer, which was now sitting, motionless and clanking amidst the wreckage and air-borne dust. Jack recognized it as one of the large pieces of machinery that had been sitting, untended, in the nearby construction site.
Through the chasm it had ripped, several figures made their way carefully over the bits of scrap and debris hanging from the surrounding walls or jutting up from the ground. One of those figures was a tall, slim woman with long black hair and bright green eyes.
“Clara…” Jack blinked. He watched the girl and her mother make their way over the last of the rubble and then break into a run toward Jack.
“Da’, don’t kill him. He tried to save our lives.” Clara reached her father and stood a few feet away, the expression on her face a mixture of pleading, gratefulness, and a sudden onset of heightened concern over the physical state Jack was in.
“Oh, da’. They gave you a right pasting. You’re bleeding something awf-”
Jack cut off her words by moving forward and pulling her into a fierce embrace. She hugged him back, despite the blood he was sharing, and closed her eyes. “Sorry to scare you, da’.”
He hesitantly pulled away and looked down at her. “You knew to get out.”
“Yeah, I had a feeling. But, remember how ‘e kept tellin’ us to close the door?”
Jack spared a glance to the man now sitting against the wall, watching the exchange with nervous eyes. Then he turned back to his daughter and nodded.
“On the back of the door was a note. He warned us to get out.” She glanced down at Rees
e. “Told us where the back door was, and what route to take.” She looked back up at her father. “Had a few seconds to spare.”
Jack looked down at her, a thousand thoughts racing through his head. His gaze cut to Reese again, who stared back. Then he looked over at Sam, whose expression was unreadable.
“We have to get out of here.” It was Cassie who at last spoke. A voice of reason slicing through the stunned silence that had come over the room. She stood beside Annabelle’s unconscious figure, her fingers on her friend’s throat, searching for a pulse, as Jack had. When she found one, she straightened, her hand remaining on Annabelle’s arm. “The cops will be on their way. We’ve broken a thousand laws.”
Dylan stood beside them. He took off his jacket and laid it over Annabelle, not saying anything.
“An’ the bad guys might come back, eh’?” Beatrice added, nodding toward the now shut trap door across the room. In-between them and the trap door were several strewn bodies, all with pools of blood spreading beneath them. Jack assumed these had been dispatched by Sam.
The only living employee of the Colonel’s left remaining in the building was Reese. Who wasn’t moving and wasn’t talking. He was wise enough to keep even his breathing on the quiet side.
“Bring Reese. I have some questions for him.” Jack gave the order and then moved back to Annabelle. Cassie and Dylan stepped out of the way and watched, apprehensive looks on their faces, as Jack shoved Sam’s gun into the waist band of his jeans at the small of his back. Then he bent and once more lifted Annabelle into his arms.
Sam grabbed Reese’s upper arm and yanked the man off of the ground. “Come on, hoss. Step to it.” Reese stumbled ahead of him, shrugging his jacket straight as he did so.
Jack led the way out of the building, holding Annabelle in his arms. Once outside, he looked around, searching for a mode of transportation.
“Two lots down,” Sam supplied. “There’s a boat tied to the pier.”
Jack moved in that direction. In the distance, sirens wailed.
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