One of Reid’s friends tackled him before he could grab his gun,herarm around his throat asshe dragged him away from the bed. Military boots scuffed the floor as she scrabbled at her hip with the other hand.
Clay went limp. The sudden drag of deadweight on her muscles made her stagger and lose her grip. He got his hand up and grabbed one of her fingers—heavy leather gloves, well-fitted—and yanked it back until he heard it pop like a chicken bone.
She grunted behind clenched teeth as the pain hit her, but she managed to hang on.
“Hold him,” a man ordered.
She tightened the chokehold and leaned back, her legs braced as she tried to let his weight strangle him. Another figure—the man—stepped forward with something black and boxy in one hand. Taser. Clay got his feet under him and twisted violently; his thigh muscles tensed painfully as he arched his back. The contacts caught him on the thigh instead of the stomach.
It still hurt like fuck. His leg folded under him, the muscles corded and numb like dead wood under the skin, and he thrashed violently. He bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood…
The rope pulled back between Clay’s teeth like a bit, his tongue raw as it scraped the top of it. Blood trickled down the back of his throat, salt and pennies.
“Hold the bastard still!” someone—Graham, from the last dregs of a speech impediment to his voice—blurted in a panic.
“He’s seen us!” Lawrence said, her voice shrill and anxious. “What are you going to do?”
They were going to kill him, Grade realized with distant clarity.
They wanted him alive. For now, at least.
One leg was dead wood, but the rest of him still worked. Clay had been hit with a taser before. He was that sort of asshole. There was a knife strapped to the woman’s ankle. He grabbed it and pulled it out of the sheath. The blade was short and broad, painted black except for a sickle of bright metal along the edge. It had a good weight to it.
Clay got his knee under him and slashed up with the knife. The woman had body armor on, he’d felt that in the struggle, but the joints were always the weak spot. People had to move. The blade cut through heavy canvas combat trousers and sliced the crease of her thigh deeper. Blood splattered out over his hand and down his arm. He pulled back and sliced at the other side. She managed to block him, both hands around his wrist, but it didn’t matter.
The knife hadn’t gotten the femoral artery, no blood gush, but it had sliced open the vein. She wouldn’t be on her feet for long.
Clay rolled backward and used her grip on him to drag her with him. He got his good foot in her gut and flipped her over his head. She tumbled into the man with the Taser and fouled his footing. He cursed as he tried to untangle himself from her and keep his feet under him on the bloody floor.
Two.
No. Clay scrambled awkwardly up off the ground. His foot was still cramped up, the toes curled in painfully tight, but it held under his weight. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Alexa, turn on lights,” he said.
The spotlights in the ceiling flicked on and flooded the room. It made…
…Reid turned his head away and squinted, his face gray and his nose smeared over his face like putty. Clay pulled the rope out of his mouth and spat on the ground…
“Should have brought more people,” he said.
He wasn’t sure who he’d said that to.
Four. Three now. The woman on the floor didn’t show any sign of getting up. She sprawled on her back, jaw set and one hand clutched to her thigh as blood seeped between her fingers.
“Put the knife down,” the man with the Taser said. He tilted his head to the bed where another man knelt on Grade’s chest, a knife to his throat. “Or we cut his throat.”
Clay weighed his options. After a moment he shrugged and held his hands up. He let the knife drop, and it thunked into the ground next to his foot.
“Smart man,” Taser said. He pointed at the bed with his chin. “Sit down.”
Clay backed up and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You OK?” he asked over his shoulder.
Grade tilted his chin back and swallowed. The knife had sliced a paper-cut-thin line in his throat, and blood dripped down onto the bed. “I’ve been better,” he said.
Taser pulled his hand down over his mouth and chin, exhaled raggedly, and then turned to the last member of the group.
