“Gotcha, man. We’re a little outnumbered, out powered here.”
“Everybody down,” Ethan said calmly.
“Ethan, get back to –”
The house shook with the echo as Ethan came running through the door, his assault rifle aimed at everybody still showing their faces. “Stupid bastards.”
The firepower shook the house and pain-filled swearing filled the room. “Anybody else want to die?”
Dylan had to laugh. Ethan’s calm, matter of fact question was answered by the sound of several guns falling to the ground. Only four more still stood.
But a few faces weren’t accounted for.
The one who had originally been holding the girl on the leash. Renee and Shawn came running through the door and Renee swore. “The bastard from the mall, where is he?” she demanded.
Dylan said softly, “He’s pocket change. There’s a bigger rat here we need to find.”
And soon. Before he got away. Again.
****
Kris fought the cloud of sleep and finally was able to open her eyes just as she watched the head of her guard disappear. “Bastard,” she muttered thickly.
Come on…they don’t have time…
Kris froze. “Not again.”
This voice wasn’t one she knew. Lifting her head, she said, “You know, for once it would be handy to have somebody around who can do more than talk to me inside my head.”
A laugh caressed her skin, a sound that came more from inside her, than from without. I helped you wake up, didn’t I?
Kris stood, stumbling into the wall, scrubbing at her eyes with her hands before she lifted her lids and looked around.
She was alone.
“Where did you go?” she whispered, licking her lips.
But there was no answer. Moving to the edge of the cliff, she watched as three men tore into the room, slamming the door shut behind them, staring at the girls with an evil smile.
Kris swallowed, feeling the spit in her mouth dry.
One was the bastard from the mall.
One was a dark skinned man…looking at him, she kept hearing the words, I have taken many butterflies…
But the third—
Max.
Her heart slammed against her chest and it was a wonder nobody else heard it. Max’s lips moved but she couldn’t hear him.
Leveling the gun at one of the girl’s head, he smiled.
Kris screamed and jumped, landing on the window and feeling it break under her weight. Tumbling through, she landed on her ass on the bed and rolled away, keeping the bed between her and the gun.
Slowly, she stood, aware the girls had fled to the bathroom. The door slammed shut and Kris felt the band of fear around her chest loosen, just a little. Even though it was only the slightest bit of safety, it was something.
“You,” Max whispered, shaking his head. “I couldn’t figure out how in the fuck those bastards wound up here. This isn’t anything that the Army gives a flying fuck about.”
Kris smiled at the hatred he spat the word out with. “Nice seeing you, too.” Then she added, “I’m what the Army gives a flying fuck about. Well, maybe not the Army, but a few of the guys in there. I’ve gotten…involved, I guess you could say, with somebody you used to know. And I was told not too long ago that they don’t take it very kindly when somebody tries to go after their own.”
“You think because you’re fucking some soldier they’d do this shit, for you?” Max said, laughing. “No piece of ass if that good.”
Kris smiled. “Well, you can ask Dylan that when he comes in here to kill you, because he’s looking for you.”
“Dylan,” Max hissed out. “Kline. You’re fucking that bastard?”
She arched a brow at him. “In every way imaginable, and as often as possible. And I’m loving every second of it,” she drawled, as the rage bloomed in his eyes.
“I should have shot him in the dick instead,” Max hissed. “I will, this time. Stupid whore.”
She laughed. “Even if you had, he’d still be more of a man than you could ever be.”
“I’m going to shoot you in the belly. You die slow that way, bitch. And then I’ll take my little sluts and start over.”
Kris smiled. “You have to get past them first,” she said as a furious bellow from outside the room filled the air. “I don’t think they intend to make it easy.”
“You die, either way,” he hissed, aiming the gun at her face and squeezing the trigger.
“Max, we have to get out of here, now,” the man at his elbow said, drawing a gun from his back and aiming it at Kris’ face.
The third man, Middle Eastern looking, looked at Kris with appraising eyes. “Yes. Yes. Let us go. We shall take this…woman with us and—”
“My ass you will,” she said.
Get ready, a soft voice whispered in her head. They are here.
Kris whispered quietly, “Who is here?”
“Who in the fuck are you too?” Max demanded.
Kris ignored him as she focused on the girl that had whispered to her so many times before. “Who is here?”
All of them…the ones who are lost for good. A ghost doesn’t always haunt a place. Sometimes they haunt people.
The sound of wind rushing past her ears filled the room, like the sound of wings. When the light went out, she dropped to the floor and huddled there as Max started to bellow in surprise.
Emotion clogged her throat, and she couldn’t speak as her eyes moved over the room.
Sweet damnation, she thought, as lights swirled up out of nowhere, taking on faces, eyes, voices. The whisper of the young girls he had taken, too many that were silenced. He stared sightlessly at them, swearing and fumbling for the gun he had dropped.
The door came crashing open, light spilling in as he raised the gun, focusing on an insubstantial form and firing. Bullets went flying through the air, and one ricocheted, catching a surprised innocent looking good ole boy in the chest right as he was turning to flee from the room.
The man who had enticed so many girls off the streets collapsed dead to floor as the Arab man who had been ready to buy yet another child from him drew his own gun, just in time to see Max pointing a gun at him, firing at the misty white apparition that stood between them. “Do not shoot, my friend!”
Max’s snarled exclamation rang out, “You are fucking dead, bitch. Stay—”
The words stopped in mid-sentence and Kris looked over two bodies crumpling to the floor to see Dylan standing there, lowering the gun before he lifted his eyes to hers. “Kris…”
That was the last thing she remembered hearing.
****
Jerry and Luciano stood side by side, staring at the fading white lights as Dylan dove through them, catching his lady in his arms and easing her to the floor. “What the hell…”
“Don’t think hell has anything to do with it,” Luciano said as the white lights faded, swirling upward, the soft light sound of laughter fading, replaced by a quiet sighing as the white mist faded away completely.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Jerry said, shaking his head.
“What about angels?” Ethan offered as he moved past them, kneeling down to lay his fingers at the fallen man’s throat. No pulse. Max’s eyes stared straight up, wide and frozen, a look of abject horror on his face.
Standing, Ethan said quietly, “Burn in hell.” Then he moved over and checked the bodies of the other two men, skirting Dylan as the man cradled his woman in his arms.
Luciano and Jerry met each other’s eyes.
What about angels?
****
Dylan brushed back her tangled red hair studying her pale face. Tiny abrasions from her leap through the glass sunroof marred her milky skin. But she didn’t have another mark on her.
“You feeling pretty tough now, babe?” he teased as he lowered himself to the edge of the hospital bed.
“Tough. Sure. I let that jackass Raintree drug me, fell asleep in the middle of
the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life, and then I passed out as soon as it was over,” she muttered.
“I don’t think Ethan taking chloroform to you counts as you passing out,” Dylan said. “And just so you know, that was his bright idea. Not mine.”
She slid her eyes, cool and distant, to his face before going back to stroking the sheet. “I led you here. You couldn’t have saved them without me,” she said quietly.
Dylan blinked, his lashes hooding his eyes. “I know that. You risked your ass though, and I don’t like to think how close you came to dying. Being hurt. They were going to grab you in the mall. Do you know that?”
Arching a brow, she said, “I’d rather that happen than them get another child.” Lifting her chin, she said, “Of course, if somebody was willing to listen to me, I could have probably stayed a little farther from this mess I landed in, and still done something worthwhile.”
Dylan’s face heated and the rage of emotions inside him reflected on his face. “I know that. I knew that before Shawn found your damn journal and told me what in the hell you were doing,” he said, catching a lock of hair and twisting it around fingers. “I fucked up. I admit that. Partners don’t leave the other one behind, do they?”
“Partner? We aren’t partners. I’m an editor, remember? I run names for you from time to time, tell you when one makes my belly itch. I have dreams from time to time and I tell you about those,” she said, her fingers folding the blanket that lay across her lap.
“And you’re not happy with that,” Dylan said gently, reaching out and tugging the blanket the from her fingers, lacing her hands with his. “You left mundane behind a while ago. I should have seen that. Should have seen that you’re not…ahhh…”
She lifted a brow at him. “I’m not what? Soft? Fragile? Helpless?”
He grinned. “Fill in the blank?” he suggested. “You found what you needed to be doing. You have to do something about the voices that whisper to you. I understand that now. So if it’s partner in truth you want…?”
A smile trembled on her lips. “You mean that? You think I can handle myself?”
He laughed. “Hell. It’s more like can I handle you.” Sliding from the chair, Dylan lowered his face and buried it her lap, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I was so damned scared. I thought I’d lost you.” He wasn’t talking about the capture of the kidnappers though. Her distance over the past week was eating at him and holding her close just made him need to hold her even closer. To make sure she never left.
“I wasn’t going to leave you,” Kris whispered shakily, threading her hand through his hair. “I was just…giving you an eye opener.”
Dylan laughed. “It worked. So are you going to make me feel better by marrying me?”
Kris’s hands stilled in his hair. Then she started stroking through the short tousled locks, and she said, “Why the hell not? I’ve been yours for years anyway. Might as well make it official.”
ALWAYS YOURS Page 23