Page 73 of Colombian Chemistry

This time Knox and Piper didn’t contain their laughter.

“You’re fucking adorable,” Piper said. “Literally like a little tiny ball of pure sunshine. How did you fall for a grump like Marcus again?”

“Just point and pull,” Marcus said, ignoring her.

I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The recoil made me scream, and I dropped the gun on the ground, jumping up and down while shaking my hands. “Nope. I hated it. No way. No guns.”

Marcus stifled his laughter and pulled me into his arms for a tight hug. “It’s always scary your first time, baby.”

“Nope. Not doing it. No guns!”

“What about knives? We need to at least arm you with a knife and teach you how to make quick kill moves.” Piper pulled a knife out from her ankle and twirled it between her fingers.

“I can’t kill anyone. No matter what.”

“We sure she’s up for this?” Knox scrubbed a hand through the hair on his wide jaw.

Hearing him question my ability to help them out made me feel ashamed. Irene from a few weeks ago wasn’t capable, but new Irene wouldn’t chicken out.

“I can do this,” I said as I closed my eyes and dug into that confidence Marcus had brought out in me. “Let’s try the knives.”

Piper walked over and started showing me her knife and all the ways it could be held. When she got to the part about using it on someone, I could barely keep my jaw shut watching her quick and effortless moves.

“You can go boom, boom, boom,” she said as she mimicked three stabs. “That takes the lungs, kidney, and then heart. The heart is harder than you think because you need to get between the ribs. I like to save it for last just in case I miss, and my knife gets lodged in the bone. The other two stabs will leave them incapacitated while you wrench it free and stab again.”

Bile rose up my throat. “Uh, what about the non-lethal stabs? Like the ‘just defending myself so I can get away’ ones.”

“You can do this move.” She whirled about with her knife mimicking where she’d hit on Marcus. When she finished with a fake plunge into his balls, we all gasped.

“Ouch,” I said through gritted teeth.

Piper tossed her knife in the air and caught it by the tip. “Yeah. Ouch is right. But no one is running after you if you stab ‘em in the balls, though. Am I right, boys?”

Marcus and Knox grimaced as they nodded.

“So just stab at the thigh and balls.” I nodded. “Okay. That I can do.”

“Your turn to try.” Piper handed me the knife and proceeded to show me how much force I needed to penetrate human flesh.

It felt so odd to be stabbing the air with a knife pretending it was another human being. But as much as I hated it, I knew that the men who I would be handing myself over to weren’t exactly deserving of my mercy. Even though I knew I could never kill anyone, knowing how to stop them from hurting me made me feel a little more powerful and more confident to do what I was about to do.

“I’ll keep working with her tonight,” Marcus said. “She’ll be ready by tomorrow.”

“Good,” Piper said. “I need to know she’s gonna be okay when I have to sneak off to plant the virus.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said confidently. “I have to be. We need to save my father.”

Marcus slung his arm over my shoulder and brought me back to the Jeep. We said our goodbyes to the others then headed back to the hotel. We spent the rest of the night practicing my self-defense moves, and it was a lot more fun doing it with our clothes off.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Irene

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