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As if sensing my surprise, he shrugged. “No way Morgaine was gonna want me to stay home with her just because she’s pregnant when I could be out here helping save Murphy.”
Yeah.
That sounded like Morgaine.
The woman who’d dedicated her life to poisoning men who’d abused women.
“This is Crow,” I told Cohen. “He’s the most bloodthirsty son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” I added.
“Good. We’ll need that,” Cohen agreed as his dogs sniffed around the woods we were parked in, waiting to hear from Rook who’d claimed just half an hour before that he was pretty sure he’d found something.
“What are we going to do with these guys when we go in?” I asked, nodding at the Bloodhounds.
“They’re trained. We’ll leave them outside the perimeter and they will stay unless told otherwise,” Cohen said, petting Mercury’s head.
“You want me to take a look at you?” Crow asked as Cohen winced when he lowered himself onto the tailgate of the SUV as we waited.
“No. The pain is its own kind of motivation,” Cohen declared. And who were we to argue that. Who knew what kind of shit he’d done and been through. He’d know better than we would if his pain was an asset or liability.
Guns were pulled from hidden compartments and handed out. Same with extra magazines. The masks. The gloves.
“Phones stay here,” Cohen said, reaching into a pocket to turn his off, then toss it into the SUV. Surprising me. Everyone else followed suit.
“I brought an extra burner. Riff said, pulling it out. “To call the cops with. Can’t leave those women there, scared and alone any longer than we need to.”
We all silently agreed to that.
Who the fuck knew what they’d already been through.
“Wonder if Rook could seize some of that shithead’s money and re-route it to accounts for his victims,” Riff wondered aloud. And I went ahead and shot off the idea to Slash.
He said he could once he gets names.
Then, almost a fucking hour later, Rook was sure of the location.
On went the masks and gloves.
And off we went, trudging through the woods, relying on Cohen’s sense of direction since none of us had that sort of training, heading toward Cain Roth’s bunker.
To save my girl.
Really, I probably should have known better.
Murphy was never really the damsel in distress, was she?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Murphy
It wasn’t until the range was in sight that I sensed it.
This growing sensation of wrongness that was hard to deny. Even as I tried to reason with myself about it.
I was on familiar land.
Cohen was a safe person.
Sway was just a couple miles back behind me. In the kind of landscape where sound carries.
I would know if something was wrong over by the house.
I was so busy trying to tell myself that I was being crazy that I missed the signs until it was too late.
Until hands were reaching out to grab me, one anchoring across my stomach, the other my chest so hard that my breath got caught. Not that I could have screamed anyway as the tape got slapped over my mouth by another set of hands.
I tried to fight, truly I did.
But the box of guns was on the ground.
And there were four of them.
Like Cain Roth knew how this would go, that I would scratch, kick, claw, and hit my way out of this if I could.
So they didn’t give me a chance.
Mouth covered, I couldn’t scream.
Arms trapped under a much bigger man’s vice-like hold, I couldn’t fight as I was carried, kicking uselessly in the air, toward a car that was hidden behind the target range.
Cain Roth wasn’t around.
Which meant that the guards didn’t think twice about slamming me forward into the side of the car, knocking my head so hard that my vision flashed in and out.
A pair of hands grabbed my ankles, holding them together, as another set bound them.
Zip ties this time, not tape.
Adapting.
Learning from their mistakes.
And they tightened so hard that they bit into my skin, ensuring they would rub me raw with any small movement.
A hand grabbed the back of my neck, pressing bruises into my skin as he released my body so someone else could reach for my arms, yanking them up so hard I was worried they might break my shoulder or elbow as the pain shot through my system, making my eyes swim with unwanted tears.
I tried to focus on breathing, on keeping myself as calm and focused as I could, even as my other arm was wrenched upward, and my wrists bound.
Again, zip ties.
Again, too tight.
The sadistic assholes.
But, I knew, if they had their way, it would be a lot worse. So in a sick, twisted, fucked up way, I guess I could be glad that Cain Roth was waiting for me, had his own plans for me. It would keep these assholes in line. Especially after what happened to the last one.
