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With a movement barely discernible by even my own eyes, which had been witnessing the altercation, Downy moved off his chair.
The next movement was quick.
He took the baton from Adrian’s hand, and then followed it up with a vicious slam across Ronnie Prescott’s face.
So fast that I didn’t even realized he was doing it until it was already done.
The old man dropped to the floor, boneless.
Adrian turned, but he couldn’t get into a defensive position fast enough, and he went down much the same way as his father had.
His blood shot eyes looked up at me, and caught the tears streaming down my face, as well as my hands tied behind my back with the rough, coarse rope.
I knew that I was bleeding.
I could feel the slick blood pouring down my hands.
It reminded me of what warmed lotion felt like between my fingers: thick and sticky.
When his eyes made the complete circuit over my person, he bent down, painfully, to the ground and started unthreading the two men’s shoe laces.
Once he had them off, he tied the two men’s hands together, ripped their shirts to pieces, and then shoved them into their mouths.
He must’ve seen my surprised look taking over my face, because he explained. “If I kill them, that’ll be a lot more trouble than they’re worth. Alive, I’ll know that Adrian will be in prison getting his due every night from the men of Huntsville State Penitentiary, and with any luck, his father will, too.”
I winced when I thought about how a man could be treated poorly, but I couldn’t work up the ability to care.
These two men had just abducted me from my boyfriend’s house, beaten said boyfriend senseless, and killed Lord knows how many dogs all because he wanted to make money.
Really, I didn’t care about him at all.
Not even a little bit.
“Let’s go,” he rumbled, startling me.
I looked up and raised my brows. “My arms are tied behind my back much the same as yours were. Did you want me to untie them with the power of my mind?”
He sighed and walked around me, hissing when he saw the state of my wrists, and started the painstaking task of unthreading the knots that Adrian had put in to keep me contained.
“The fight,” I said quickly once he was finished. “They’re starting it in ten minutes…or maybe it’s even now. I don’t know. I have no sense of time in this room.”
He hissed and started walking faster, opening and closing doors in the rooms beyond to see what they held.
He must’ve watched exactly where the men had disappeared because that was the one door he didn’t open.
“Bingo, bitches,” he muttered, walking into a room and gesturing me inside.
I went easily enough, but froze when I saw the rows and rows of cages in the room beyond.
“Oh, my God,” I said, dumfounded.
The cages were all full. Some were two and three deep with dogs.
Dogs of all shapes and sizes. Brown, black, small, stocky. You name it, and they had a dog with that build and color.
“What is this?” I whispered in horror.
The dogs all looked healthy, at least. It made me wonder if they were newly stolen, because they didn’t have a hint of wear or tear.
They all looked like they’d come from someone’s home…or a shelter.
There had to have been at least fifty cages, if not more.
“Let them out,” I whispered brokenly.
Downy’s swollen face looked back at me, blood now running from a cut above his eye, down along his nose, around his lips, and disappearing into his beard.
“No. If we let them out, then we’ll never catch them all. Some could die. They stay. They won’t be here much longer,” he decreed.
And I believed him. I knew he’d get them out.
“They’re about to put Peter and Mocha into that pit,” I gasped, remembering suddenly.
He nodded. “I know. That’s where we’re going next.”
“Gotcha,” I said, following him out the door and into the warm afternoon sun.
If I had to guess by the sun’s position, it was near three or four in the afternoon, but I could be wrong.
“They’re just out the back side. But there were ten…” I started to say, but he interrupted me.
“I know,” he rumbled.
Just how long had he been awake?
“Why’d you let them hit you if you were awake?” I asked quietly.
He shrugged. “I had to work my hands loose before I could let them know I was awake. It was the only way I’d be able to hold out against the two of them. It was sheer luck that by Adrian not ‘rousing’ me pissed old Ronnie off, causing all those men to leave the room.”
I nodded in understanding.
The man was a freakin’ genius.
I just wish his plan hadn’t factored in him getting the shit beaten out of him.
“What…”
A fist swung quickly at my face, and there was nothing I could do.
It hit me hard.
A solid ‘whack’ right to the cheek.
I turned at the last possible second, feeling it land solidly, but at least it wasn’t in the nose.
Pain blossomed around my right eye socket, exploding into an agonizing shock of pain that traveled from the right side of my face all the way down into my neck.
I swear I even felt it in the tips of my fingers.
I’d, of course, never been punched before.
Especially by a man’s fist that was the size of a sledgehammer.
I was too busy calming my roiling stomach to see Downy’s retaliation blow.
I heard it though, and it wasn’t something I could really describe.
Even when Adrian Prescott had been beating Downy’s face with the baton, I hadn’t sounded like that.
It was a sound that, I swear on my life, I never wanted to hear again. I’d already be replaying this one in my dreams.
Surprisingly, it was more of a soft, wet sound. No bone crunched, per say, but it was a sound in which I’d never heard before. When I looked up to see the man laying down on the ground with the baton sticking out of his eye, I nearly lost what little was left in my stomach.
