Page 47 of Mountain Shadow

Two was shorter, but broad around the middle—like an old soldier who’d let himself go to fat.

“Told you he would come down to investigate,” One said.

Two barked out a laugh. “Idiota.”

Jens’s mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Stalkers didn’t work in pairs. And these men definitely sounded Italian.

“Nice place you’ve got here. Sit down at that table and let’s have a—”

As One spoke, the barrel of the gun wavered away from Jens’s body for an instant. Knowing he wouldn’t get a better chance, Jens exploded into action.

He lowered his head and barreled into One, grabbing him by the waist. He took hold of the man’s gun hand with both his hands and pulled upwards, slamming it against the wall—one, two, three times—until the man let go and the gun fell to the ground with a loud clatter.

Jens kicked it away in the direction of the dining table, then turned back to the man, snapping his neck forward. The center of his forehead connected with the bridge of the man’s nose, a solid hit. One’s eyes teared up, but still he didn’t fall.

The man retaliated with a full-blown punch aimed at his trachea, but Jens deflected it so it grazed the base of his jaw instead.

One’s quick recovery after being head-butted told Jens this was a man used to taking hits. He thought of Sarah, locked in the bedroom upstairs.

Need to end this now.

Knowing the man’s eyes were still tearing up from the blow to the nose, Jens pressed his advantage. He feigned a swing to One’s face, then when the man’s arms came up to protect himself, lowered his palm and dropped a solar plexus strike instead, putting all his two-hundred-forty pounds behind the punch. The man doubled over, gasping. Jens followed with an elbow to the kidneys, which dropped him to the ground.

Jens turned, half-expecting the second man to be behind him.

Where is Two?

The answer came quickly enough. Two’s barrel-shaped body appeared on the stairs, pushing Sarah ahead of him. She stumbled down, barefoot, still wearing Jens’s T-shirt, which fell down to mid-thigh. She looked vulnerable and frightened.

Jens saw red. This situation had just gotten a lot more complicated very quickly. He forced himself to steady his breathing. Panicking wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah croaked, reaching the bottom of the stairs. Tears rolled down her face. “The phone wasn’t working, and I—”

Jens tried to process that information. If the phones weren’t working, that meant One and Two were inhibiting the signal.

The fact that they have that kind of equipment—

Understanding dawned, and he suddenly remembered who Two reminded him of—he was an older version of the man they’d rescued from the plane crash. The one who’d died at the hospital.

Jens realized all this just as Two pushed Sarah down the last step. In his free hand, Two waved a familiar-looking baseball bat—one Jens knew spent its days in the back of his closet.

“Look at what this sweet piece of ass was carrying. She was coming to help you. What do you think of that?”

Jens’s anger focused to a pinpoint of rage. He picked One up off the ground and placed him in a choke hold.

“Let her go,” he growled, “if you want your friend to take another breath.”

One gasped.

Two laughed darkly. “Not going to happen. I have a six-inch knife on your woman’s back. If my friend dies, I’ll stab her in the kidneys. She will go into shock and die in a matter of minutes.”

Jens sucked in a deep breath. His hands unconsciously pressed harder for a moment, making One’s eyes bulge out of his face.

“Last chance,” Two said, baring his teeth. “Let him go, or I’ll—”

Cursing, Jens released the man and took a step back. One fell to his knees, sputtering, his hands up by his throat as if he could massage it back into the right shape.

“Now let her go,” Jens ordered. He didn’t look at Sarah in the face—now that he had a good idea who these men were, he didn’t want them to realize just how much she meant to him.