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He landed on top of her with his full weight, knocking the air from her lungs, and pain fogged everything for a brief second. Joaquin rolled, and she followed, landing a blow to the side of his head.
The man was bigger than her in every way possible. But she’d learned long ago that size meant nothing with the right leverage. All she had to do was find it.
“And you wonder why I said I didn’t trust you,” Joaquin growled, grabbing her and tossing her away from him in order to get to his feet. “You’re a brilliant woman, and with the right motivation, we could have done some great things together. It’s a pity.”
He swung at her, and she ducked and spun, landing a quick jab to his kidney. She had nothing to say to him. The arrogant ass was only wasting breath in the middle of a fight.
She continued to dart around him, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other men go down under Mark’s and Callum’s fists. Callum surged forward to help her, but Mark put one hand to his chest, and a single flashing glance at his face told her she had this and he knew it.
This was her fight.
She let the beast inside her free. For every time she’d been forced to do something against her will. For every life that had been lost because of it. For the arrogance of people like Adil Garrison and Joaquin Martinez who thought that money was more valuable than human lives.
For the fact that she was never going to walk on the beach ever again.
The beast inside her raged.
Jenna was fast, but Joaquin was strong. She blocked the blows she could and took the ones she couldn’t.
Spinning behind him, she leaped, using her elbow to slam down into the place where his shoulder met his neck. His roar of pain was music to her, and she took him the rest of the way down, wrapping her legs around his neck and squeezing. She held one of his arms, so he couldn’t move.
For the first time since she’d met him, Joaquin Martinez had no fucking leverage.
He almost managed to shove her off, but she held fast, and the words of abuse he was hurling at her faded as he slumped beneath her, unconscious.
They’d done it.
She felt when he passed out, and she relaxed, scrambling away. Now that it was over, she didn’t want to touch him in any capacity.
Callum was already there, getting Joaquin’s phone, and Mark was pulling her to her feet.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Callum said. “There’re a lot more fucking people in this building than the four of them.”
“Are we in Vegas?” Mark asked.
Callum nodded, dialing a number on the phone as they moved toward the door. A few seconds later, he actually smiled. “Looks like help is already on the way. Ian and the Zodiac team are about to infiltrate. They’d already pinpointed our location. Thanks to some ping Jenna put out.”
Mark looked at her, eyebrow raised. She shrugged. “Their closed system wasn’t as closed as they thought it was. I got an encrypted message out to Kendrick Foster of Linear Tactical. But I wasn’t sure if he got it or would recognize it for what it was. I especially didn’t expect it this early.”
The power blew, and the gym of horrors fell into darkness. The noise of firearms could be heard in the hallway.
They had done it.
Chapter 29
Mark had forgotten how grueling a debriefing could be. Granted, having a knife wound didn’t help. He’d given quite a bit of his statement while an ER doc stitched him up.
He’d be on crutches for a while and would need physical therapy to rebuild the muscle damage in his leg from Joaquin’s little knife gift, but it would ultimately heal. He was much better off than Callum, who’d basically collapsed from his wounds as soon as the Zodiac team arrived. Callum was stable, but with a broken nose, multiple cracked ribs, a concussion, and internal bleeding, the man wouldn’t be leaving the hospital for a while.
Mark had told his account of the events to damned near everybody—local law enforcement, Callum’s colleagues at Omega Sector, Ian and the Zodiac team. Hell, even Jenna’s brother had been there. Mark had told Craig what happened too, even though he wasn’t there in an official FBI capacity.
He’d wanted to know that his sister was okay. Mark wished the other man could’ve seen her kick Joaquin’s ass. That would’ve reassured him that he’d done the right thing by asking for Jenna’s help at the start.
By the time Mark was done, it was nearly midnight. There were hotel rooms for them to stay, and he knew Jenna had already gone back to hers. He’d wanted to escort her himself, but carrying her wouldn’t be possible for some time.
But she’d been surviving the outside dash without him for a while, so he knew she could do it when she had to. Maybe beating Joaquin to a pulp would help make it a little easier.
But Mark didn’t fool himself into believing Jenna was cured. This wasn’t the movies; it didn’t work that way. Like his peripheral neuropathy, Jenna would be dealing with her agoraphobia for the rest of her life.
