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Jamie's face twisted, and his eyes welled. “She kisses me like she does!”
I barely held back my twisted laughter. “She kisses you like she kisses me.” I traced the knife tip over his tongue and tapped his top teeth with the blade. “She told me so. You know why? Because you threatened her, Jamie. You scared her. That’s not family. That’s some facade of power that doesn’t really matter. None of it does, right now. Does it?”
He gurgled up at me, panting, his face as red as his eyes.
I nodded, a deep calm sinking over me as I shifted the small blade, knowing the force I’d have to use.
“Kyle–” Sienna’s broken whisper shattered the deepening silence pervading around us.
I whipped my head around hard enough to kink my neck. One of the boys who touched her that day in the yard held her to his chest, his hand clenched painfully over her breast, if the way her face screwed up was anything to judge by.
Beneath me, Jamie moved, and I was too slow in cataloguing the hurts to Sienna to be there as he rose over me with a tiny damn gun he must have hidden in his sock, or maybe his pants.
I ducked instinctively, fast enough to avoid taking a bullet through the top of my head as the gun went off, deafening me and hopefully everyone in the vicinity. Sienna screamed, tearing away from her captor and tore into the kitchen. Jamie hesitated, and it was enough of a distraction for me to launch myself backward.
The gun went off again, plaster raining down on us from above as I landed on his chest and punched him as hard as I could in the face, forgetting the knife clutched in my fist. The blade sliced through his flesh, leaving my hand coated in a fine spray of blood.
His scream ripped through the house, the gun going off again as another scream joined his, this one more feminine. I risked a glance over my shoulder.
Sienna stood in the kitchen doorway like a mountain goddess with vengeance in her heart. In her hand she held the lighter that glowed above her fist. She took two steps forward and pressed it to the floor. The other man, like me, reacted half a second too late, lifting her from the ground as the rug caught, lighting up in a second with the pair of us in the middle, though her eyes were only on Jamie.
I understood that single minded obsession, the need for control, but right now she sealed the fate of more than one man.
“Get her out of here,” I bellowed, as the mat went up around us.
Jamie’s hair caught on fire, then his clothes. I launched backward, slapping at my knees, but by some blessed miracle I was out of reach of the flames before they caught.
Brendan was not.
“Fuck,no.”I slammed my body forward, ripping my shirt off and covering his face as I bent to take his weight on my shoulder.
I didn’t count the steps it took to reach the front door, or how long the trek took amidst smoke, but Jamie screamed the entire time.
I had no idea if he even managed to stand, but by the time I threw Brendan into the dust, rolling his body over and pulling half melted boots from his feet, Jamie’s screams stopped. The house burned on in relative silence under the watchful gaze of the mountain. Its face was quickly obscured with smoke as I patted Brendan down, checking the old man still had a breath in him.
“Get her,” he rasped, coughing half a lung up.
I sliced the ropes bound around him, praying he’d be alright for a few minutes.
And came nose to barrel with a sawn off shotgun that was sure not to miss at that range.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sienna made a hideous sound, still in Jamie’s man’s grip, flailing and scratching and rasping. Her screams filled the yard, and it was a damn fine thing they did.
Because while the man with his shotgun in my face was listening to her and only focused on me and the house burning to its stumps behind me, hewasn’tlistening to the trucks that crept along the drive, or the footsteps that pounded the gravel behind him.
Gage reached down over the shorter man–at six and something feet tall, everything looked short to that man I suspected–and liberated the gun from his grip.
Jude pulled him around and punched him in the face while Sienna scrambled free into my arms.
“Jesus, girl. You scared me.” I covered the back of her head with my hand, holding her close.
“Love you,” she whispered through a voice coated in ash and pain. “Daddy–” she gasped, tearing past me.
I let her go, turning back to the house.
“That’s...not recoverable.” Jude ran a hand over his short hair, folding his arms.
