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Ready to kill.
But not ready to die, not anymore, because the most important person in my world is kneeling at my back.
It’s my job to protect her.
Chapter Eight
Kelly
Kane rises and takes out his gun in one slick movement. He waves his other hand at me, meaning that I should get down, and the adrenaline is pumping so hard and this is all so crazy, all I can do is focus on him, my man, to help me through this.
Just like he helped me with the panic attack, maybe he can hold this together.
“Is that Kane Knight in there I saw?” a man calls out, his voice lilting and pitched high as though he knows the punchline to a joke and we can’t guess the setup.
“There are certain people in Cartel-land who’d pay a lot to speak with you, Kane Knight, ever since you refused our very fair offers. Come out and say hello. Yes? No?”
Kane’s gun hand trembles in rage – I can read it in his taut features – but then loosens as he calms himself.
“If you want this to end in blood,” he calls. “Then we can go that way. But I should warn you, I’ve never lost a gunfight, and I don’t plan on starting now. Why are you here?”
“We were here to steal from a man we had been informed kept money in his home. It turns out we’ve been lied to. This is not a home. But I bet you have money stashed here somewhere. Why are you here, Kane Knight?”
“What were those shots about?” Kane snaps, ignoring his question. “Three shots. Why?”
The unseen man laughs and a shiver tingles down my spine, uncomfortable and way too close.
“You really are a stubborn bastard, aren’t you, Knight? The gunshots were some of my friends scaring the locals. They’re crazy men, Kane. You’d probably get on well.”
“Boy, if you loved your own voice anymore, you’d be fucking married to it. I’m telling you right now, you’re not coming in here and if you don’t leave, you’ll regret it. The Bloody fucking Chariots will ride roughshod over you, son.”
Keeping his gun aimed at the door, Kane reaches into his pocket and takes out his cell.
He presses a few buttons and holds it to his ear. I try to move, to close the door, to be of use.
But Kane waves me back, shaking his head, his face fixed in a grimace of concentration.
“Garrote, I’m at the gym. Cartel here. Send in the cavalry.” A pause. “Yep.”
He hangs up and tucks his phone back in his pocket, and then slowly backs away from the door and reaches down for my hand.
When I interlock my fingers with his, he backs us deeper into the building, keeping his gun trained forward at all times.
Then, suddenly, he spins and I squeal as he drags me into a nearby room, kicking a chair under the handle and then tipping over a whole wooden display cabinet and shoving it up against the door. It looks light as he manipulates it into place, but it lands with a heavy thunk and kicks us dust.
I look around the office, the chair and desk, the filing cabinets, the keyboard and mouse leading up to nothing, a space where a laptop should be.
“I’ve got a manager,” Kane explains. “He takes his laptop home with him.”
“That’s my biggest concern right now,” I say sarcastically, mustering a laugh.
Kane smirks. “Yeah. We’ll be discussing the goddamn stationary next.”
Kane takes out his phone again and presses the screen a few more times.
“Who’re you calling now?”
“The local police,” he says. “Need to let them know who they’ll be dealing with.”
I move to the other side of the room, wondering if I’ll hear the footsteps pounding down the hallway soon, wondering if the door will hold.
I watch Kane as he discusses the situation with the police, the way he holds himself, the official aura about him as he handles this situation.
He hangs up the phone and moves closer to me, directing me with a touch of his hand into the corner. I pull my jacket tighter around me, the one he had waiting for me at the bike.
Here, you’ll look the part.
“You didn’t do a deal with the Cartel,” I blurt out.
“No,” Kane says quietly. “No fucking way. They decapitate civilians and sell hard drugs to teenagers and even kids, Kelly. I wouldn’t do a deal with them.”
“No,” I say, feeling the truth of it. “Of course not.”
The Kane I know wouldn’t even dream of it.
But the Kane my dad created, the bogeyman, he would.
He’s not real. Dad made him up. There’s more than one side to a story.
“What do we do now?” I whisper.
“We wait,” Kane growls, sounding like it’s hurting him just to say it. “I could go out there guns blazing, sure, but that’d be either a death sentence or a one-way ticket to murder.”
