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I hummed in response. She didn’t look to be under duress. Her clothes were clean, and her dark hair was neatly parted down the middle. Everything about this was off to me.
It was the middle of the night, her family was behind me with bullet holes in their foreheads, and she was wandering around the woods playing ding-dong-ditch?
Not fucking likely.
“We can’t leave her out there,” Tito said before he bumped me back out of the way and tried to open the door. I threw my weight on the wooden surface, slamming it shut with a loud bang.
I turned my head and glared at him. “That’s exactly what we need to do.”
My warning either went right over his head or his flawed compassion meter was at maximum capacity. With a look of abhorrence aimed at me like a weapon, I was shoved sideways, almost falling on my ass. Tito threw open the door, charging out before I could stop him.
The gunshot sounded like it came from the right, but I knew it was the left. Tito’s leg buckled just as he hit the first step, his bellow echoing louder than the gunfire as he fell in an awkward heap on the walkway.
Arterial spray peppered the gray paint on the stairs and the cracked concr
ete.
The little girl looked at him and smiled as four people stepped from the surrounding darkness.
A man stroked her head and told her, “Good job” before settling his gaze on me. I quickly assessed the scene. Tito held his hand over a leg that was gushing like a geyser, doing his best not to show he was in pain.
There were three men and a chick with dirty blonde hair standing around him in a semi-circle, all looking up at me, and all carrying long black guns hooked over their heads.
This obviously wasn’t good.
Taking a silent breath, I stared into the cerulean blue eyes of the man straight ahead. I locked down my poker face, forcing myself not to look at Tito.
It was always friends and family that wound up used as leverage against you in dire situations—precisely why it was best not to have any.
“Why don’t you come on out.” Blue Eyes spoke, breaking the tense silence. It wasn’t a question as much as it was a politely spoken demand.
Damn Tito and his stupidity! How did he miss the fact that the little girl was bait? Her demented ass was still smiling down at him. He walked himself into this. I didn’t feel an ounce of sorrow for his suffering, because now I was in shit with him.
“What if I don’t want to?” I asked innocently.
Blue Eyes barked out a laugh, flashing his teeth. Surprisingly, they weren’t the color of urine. His clothes were clean and he was unmistakably healthy, letting me know these weren’t your average band of outliers.
“I could come in and get you,” he said calmly.
Yeah, no, that wasn’t happening.
Knowing I couldn’t run without likely being shot in the back had me begrudgingly stepping out onto the porch.
None of the others with him spoke, so I assumed he called the shots.
I moved down the stairs, keeping my hands by my side, flicking a careless glance at Tito. He had torn a piece of fabric off his shirt and was securing it around his wound. “Skinners,” he groaned through his teeth, not bothering to look up.
I briefly wondered if the pain was making him delusional, but I didn’t have time to discern that. Ignoring the other three people with him, I kept my eyes locked with the man in front of me, slightly tilting my chin up to accommodate our height difference.
He looked pretty damn good if I was honest, with his odd blue eyes and dark curly hair.
He didn’t hold a flame to Romero because, also being honest, he was the perfect specimen.
On the bright side, if Blue Eyes decided to use his gun and paint the house behind me red with my blood, I’d get to look at something pretty as I died.
“Get down on your knees,” he commanded in the same tone, snapping me out of my intrusive stare down.
“Wow, straight to foreplay?” I replied, not making any effort to do what he said. If he wanted me on my knees, he would damn well have to put me there. Call it stupidity on my end, but I wasn’t going to bow to any man.
