AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stab the accelerator hard. “I wouldn’t have minded so much if it were just me.”
“No,” Peter tells me. “You would probably have wiped them all out by now.”
The Hummer leans and the tires scream as I sling it around a bend. I know where we’re headed. The group has taken over an old warehouse complex out in the desert north of Las Vegas, but we don’t have too much intel on how many of them are likely to be there.
Pat Gallagher’s squad believes the team was hired by Drago, the Morettis’ security captain and chief hood.
John says, “Relax, Paul. We’ve got this.”
“Might be best if you let John and me lead this, Paul.” Peter means well enough.
“It’s me they’re out to get, and it’s me they’re getting.” I bang my hands on the wheel. “But you’re right, John. They must have fucking trailed me last night. I should have seen something.”
John’s voice is firm and low. “Probably used drones, Paul.”
“That’s what I figured,” Peter says, “or you would have seen them on pure instinct. If they were in a car or a van, you’d have made them for sure.”
“At night especially.” John is the voice of reason. “Can’t hide lights at night.”
Peter says, “John’s right, though, Paul. Relax. Separate yourself from it.”
“I’ll slay the fucking lot of them.”
“You’ll get your girl out,” John says, “quick and clean with a minimum of fuss.”
Peter puts a hand on my shoulder. “You know this is the best way. For her safety, as well as ours.”
Right now, I’m thinking the best way is to burst in and open up with all weapons on automatic and repeat. That’s just hot blood doing my thinking. I’m so mad right now. Seriously. I need to breathe and calm down before we get there.
Chapter Seven
Lucy
They broke down the door to my apartment. I was in the shower.
The noise was a shock. It was lucky I had a pair of jeans and a shirt handy, or I’d have run out in a towel. Getting my panties pulled up was hard without stopping to dry myself, but I knew I had to get out of the apartment fast.
If I had any smarts at all, I would have gone out of the bathroom window instead.
Three of them were trashing my apartment. They were huge and ugly. As they wrecked my things, they didn’t seem to be looking for anything. And they weren’t angry. Like bad school kids, they just looked like they were having fun, smashing up all of my little possessions.
They pulled out every drawer and just flipped it. Turned everything out. Then they flung the drawers against the mirrors and the picture frames and they stamped on everything. It was like the part of a movie where everything starts to turn bad and you get that feeling that everybody’s going to get slaughtered, all except for one girl who gets out at the end.
That girl was not going to be me. I was the girl who should have gone out of the window when she had the chance.
The three men stopped and stared at me when they spotted me. They were hunched. Huge. Slavering. In the smashed-up wreckage of my little apartment.
I was clothed, but still soaked and dripping from head to foot. They looked like snarling dogs that had been ripping up scraps when they all looked up and saw a rabbit.
One of the men said, “Ooh, look! What shall we do with her?”
“Plump little Irish girl. She could pass for a Sicilian mamma.”
“Yeah. If it weren’t for the hair.”
“She could pass for a Sicilian whore, though. They have all kinds of mongrel blood in their veins.”
“Here, pussy, pussy, pussy!”
After they made me call Paul the first time and he didn’t pick up, one of them said, “Oh, that’s bad. The big mick doesn’t care so much about his plump little pussy.”
Another one said, “Maybe we take her as our pet. The minchione should have taken better care of her.”
“We’ll show you a good time,” the first one said.
The third handed my phone back. “Or at least, you’ll see us having a good time. You better get the mick on the phone though, puta, or that’s all you’re ever going to see.”
I had the distinct feeling nothing I did would change their plans for me. All I wished now was that I could do something to protect Paul. I had no idea what I had done, but it was me they came to so I knew somehow I brought this on myself, and on him.
Before they bundled me out of the apartment, they blindfolded me and strapped my hands behind my back with a painful zip-tie that cut into my wrists. Then they forced me down the steps. Every step, I thought they were about to pitch me headfirst down the concrete stairway. Or over the handrail.
