Quietly, so as not to draw attention to my movements, I eased open the Velcro on my cuff. Layla slid down my covers. When my feet slipped onto the floor, Brady and Griffin were already rushing Bastard, their arms reaching to tackle him to the carpet. Hunt made the most of those long legs of his, sprinting toward the second guy as if he’d never been killed and resurrected.
Shots rang out, too loud in the confined space, and I desperately searched for where they’d hit.
The men were locked in struggle and I couldn’t tell if anyone had been hurt. Then Magnum Chase strode into the room as if he were as invincible as we were.
“It’s in your best interest to stop and listen to what I have to say.”
The men merely grunted, wrestling and rolling across the floor, smashing into the small table. The water pitcher and glasses came crashing down, shards flying in all directions. Chase looked on, unimpressed, unaffected. Impassive. Like an entitled psycho.
“I promise youwillwantto hear what I have to say.”
I hated it, but he was right. Ididwant to hear what he had to say. Nearly as much as I wanted to murder him, I wanted to understand.
And apparently, so did the others. Griffin, Brady, and Hunt disentangled themselves from the soldiers, bloodied and breathing hard. Hunt was holding a gun.
4
Un-Bloody-Fucking-Likely
Before he got his feet fully under him, Bastard was jerking his pistol toward Hunt. The second guard did the same, aiming a small, backup gun at Hunt’s head while he stalked toward Hunt’s other side, his wary stare flicking from him to the rest of us crowded inside the room.
Hunt was as fast as a damn jungle cat. He stared down the barrel of the gun he’d somehow lifted from the guards, straight at Chase, who contemplated him blandly, just as if there were no pesky, lethal steel in the way.
Of everything that was going down, that unperturbed demeanor was perhaps the most unnerving.
I perched against the foot of my bed, Layla at my side, a hand squeezing Brady’s arm in support. Blood already soaked the shoulder of his scrubs around a bullet hole.
Legs wide and ready to lunge, Griffin stood alone beside the armchairs. Cuts from the shattered crystal and glass dribbled blood along his bare forearms. His nostrils flared, his jaw clenched; he was seconds away from charging again.
Just the thought of him getting shot sent a surge of nerves racing across my body, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.
Bastard’s eyes were pinched so ferociously that he looked one wrong move away from shitting his fancy, all-black, elite-soldier pants that had enough holsters and pockets to make me jelly. His finger vibrated on the trigger, begging for any reason at all to pull it.
“Don’t you hurt him,” Bastard warned Hunt, a subdued edge of panic revealing he considered the billionaire more than just an employer. Was it deluded hero worship? Or was there more to their bond?
“You can’t stop me,” Hunt said with a steady resolve that caused Bastard’s left eye to twitch.
“Oh yes I can. I’ll blow your head open like a ripe melon before you so much as—”
“There’ll be no need for any of that, Jaggar,” Magnum Chase said with a calm that belied the fact he was staring down the hollow end of a semi-automatic.
Chase either had balls the size of a prize-winning stud bull, or he knew something I didn’t.
Jaggardidn’t argue with Chase, chewing the inside of his cheeks instead.
Chase took another step into the room. Another step closer to the gun and Hunt’s unwavering grip on it.
Jaggar openly bit his lip, his finger ever so slightly tightening around the trigger.
“Don’t you dare pull that trigger,” I snapped at him.
He whipped his head toward me, his gun remaining right where it was.
“I see you,” I told him. “You want to do it. But you’d better not.”
“Yeah,” Layla said. “We’ll come back from the dead and haunt your ass so hard that you’ll turn that gun around and point it at yourself andBOOOOM!Pull the fucking trigger.” She wiggled the fingers of her free hand in the air as if stars rained down from the sky. I couldn’t decide why, but then Layla had never been weighed down by trivialities such as making sense.
“Jaggar won’t be pulling any trigger,” Chase said. “At least not today, not now. Neither will Raynar. Men, lower your weapons.”
