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“Hold it right there,” a deep voice growled as a second man grabbed Ace’s shoulder from behind and pressed something hard and unyielding—stun gun, it had to be—against the sore spot at his temple. “Move another muscle and you’re dead when you don’t hafta be. Our beef’s not with you. It’s this little deadbeat we got business with.”
“Stop it now! Stop shocking her before you kill her!” Ace shouted, sickened by the popping noises, the helpless jerking of her body beside the shaved-head ox squatting beside her, his mouth stretched into a leer of pure cruelty. Sierra Madden might be Ace’s captor, but this sickened him—and had him wanting to turn their weapons on the two thugs that had jumped them. Thugs that gave credence to the story she had told him about the loan shark who went by the name Ice Veins.
When the crackling ceased abruptly, the man holding the gun on him, a heavily muscled specimen with a dark chinstrap beard, told his partner, “Careful frisking her for weapons. My buddies from down the boxing gym tell me she’s won her last two matches by knockout, and half the guys are scared to spar with her.”
No wonder she took me down, Ace realized. Not that it made him feel one bit better to hear the bald guy laugh or watch him pin her down with one meaty hand splayed across her chest while she whimpered, struggling to regain control of her still-twitching limbs. “Bitch won’t be punching nobody for a while. Nice try with the disguise, Miss Madden.”
With that, he tossed aside the fake glasses and pulled her hair free of its makeshift updo.
“N-no,” she protested. “G-get your—h-hands off me.”
Ace surged forward in response, only to grunt with pain when the bearded goon holding him sharply cracked the gun against his brow and cheekbone. Vision graying out, Ace dropped to his knees.
By the time he could see again, the bald thug was pocketing both Sierra’s weapon and the one she’d taken earlier from Ace inside the bunker. Rising with a grunt, the huge man took a step back, aiming a revolver so long that it practically qualified as a hand cannon above the bounty hunter’s breast.
“I didn’t come across any wad of cash that felt like my boss’s twenty-five thousand dollars in those pockets,” he told her, a satisfied sneer spreading across his broad face. “So which leg do you want blown off? The right one or the left?”
* * *
Nauseated from the threat as she felt uncoordinated from the jolting, Sierra pleaded, “You can’t do this—”
“If you’ll be patient just a minute—” though dark streamers of blood were running down his face, Ace Colton spoke with the forced cheer of a determined salesman “—I’ll be happy to take care of Ms. Madden’s bill here.”
Both men’s heads snapped in his direction. Along with Sierra’s surprised gaze. Why would he volunteer his assistance, now that she was both unarmed and helpless? Did he think they’d kill him otherwise, eliminating him as a witness to their violence?
“All of it?” the bald man asked him, his pale eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Because we’ve got strict instructions not to leave Mustang Valley without either the money or a photo of the mangled leg she owes my boss.”
“And personally,” his bearded cohort chuckled, “we kinda figured that ole Ice Veins would just as soon have us blast her leg off, on account of the way she jammed up his favorite nephew.”
“Every penny,” Ace insisted, “if you don’t mind waiting for me to head down to where I can get a decent cell phone signal so I can transfer the funds to—”
The bearded man nearest to him snorted. “You think we take electronic transfers? I imagine you want us to print you out a nice, neat receipt, too?”
The men’s coarse laughter had panic bubbling up into Sierra’s throat.
“This is a strictly cash operation, mister,” the larger bald man told him, his voice dropping to a more menacing pitch as he straightened to tower over her. “But it’s your lucky day, and we’re giving you one chance right now. Walk away and forget you ever saw or heard us, and you don’t have to be a part of this. Otherwise... I’ve got some extra ammo in this gun.”
When Ace glanced toward her, Sierra felt truly lost, as alone as she had ever felt in her life. For Ice Veins’s men were offering him the escape he craved and needed.
Certainly, he didn’t owe her, Sierra knew as she steeled herself, her gaze connecting with the fugitive’s for a fraction of a second. Nice for Colton to try; he surely wouldn’t risk his own skin for the woman who’d burst into his lair and decked him with a left cross, the woman who meant nothing to him other than a threat.
“What if I told you I could get it all in cash,” Ace blurted, looking from one of the loan shark’s men to the other, “by tomorrow morning? And what if I sweetened the deal with, let’s say, five grand each for the two of you? You know, to reward you for your patience if you’ll only wait?”
Sierra’s heart skipped a beat, her lungs refilling with the sweet, fresh breath of hope. Though she couldn’t imagine how Ace could actually come up with so much currency so quickly, his gambit flooded her with the energy she needed to reach down and carefully begin lifting up her pant leg, reaching for the boot that her captor hadn’t checked nearly as carefully as he should have.
“I don’t know,” the bald man told Ace. “We do have somewhere else we’re supposed to be.”
“And besides,” the bearded one said, “if Ice Veins figures we’re trying to run some kind of side deal on him—let’s just say he’s not the most forgiving of bosses.”
“Who’s to say he has to know?” Ace asked. “Or that it even has to be five thousand? What if I made it eight apiece?”
“Or how ’bout ten for each of us, big spender?” The bearded man laughed. “Is this bitch worth it to you?”
“You may not be an ATM, but I’m not your piggybank, either,” Ace said, abruptly shifting from affable salesman to tough negotiator. “So take it or leave it. It’s no skin off my teeth. I’m just trying to save us all some fuss and bother.”
“You’ll be no bother to anybody when you’re dead, Slick,” said the bald man, spinning his bulk toward Ace so quickly that Sierra knew for certain that he meant to shoot him.
It forced her to spring into action, grasping the little pepper spray gun from her boot holster. With its palm-size orange safety tip—designed to let police know it was not a lethal weapon—it might not look like much, but the toy-like plastic backup sent a stream of noxious fluid straight into the big man’s face.
