Page 2 of Lure

ALPHABET

The door to the barn was partially open, and lent more evidence to Gracie being in there. Goblin remained on point next to me. His whole body seemed to vibrate with tension. I flattened my hand.

“Goblin, bewaken,” I said in Dutch. Goblin’s hackles went up and the low tonal growl he responded with told me he was ready. The smell of copper and dirt in the air aggravated me, irritating my nose. If it smelled that bad to me it had to be worse inside.

A flash of Gracie being hurtagainflashed across my mind. I shuttled it aside and stuffed it into a compartment where it couldn’t distract me. Find her, secure her, clear the scene andthenI could deal with the rest.

The faint drag to my right foot had me making sure I stepped carefully. No way whoever was in there didn’t know I was here. Goblin paced me, his aggressive posture didn’t have him lunging forward. Not yet, he wouldn’t until I gave him the command.

Not wanting to get my head blown off, I crouched as I slid around the door. Duck walking was a bitch, but I ignored my body’s complaints. The interior of the barn was all shadows andmotes of dust. The lack of a breeze said the only way to disturb that much into the air was activity.

Goblin snapped his head to the left even as a thump of sound reached me. It took less than three seconds to assess the situation playing out in the gloom. A match struck fire to my temper at the man holding Gracie aloft with a fat hand over her mouth. He shook her like a rag doll. The thump was her head hitting the two by four stud.

“Loop,” I said, snapping my left hand forward. Goblin lunged. He crossed the distance between me and the assailant in mere seconds. He hit the man on the calf and sank his teeth in.

I was already moving as the man let out a shout, his yowl of pain was only a momentary beat of savage satisfaction before he tried to lash out at Goblin. The Staffy avoided the blow and attacked the other leg. The vicious bites penetrated the denim, adding the stain of fresh copper to the air.

To try and fend off Goblin, he had to release Gracie. She dropped, collapsing to the dirt floor like someone had sliced all her strings. Goblin drove the son of a bitch back and right toward me.

“Goblin,erop,” I ordered and Goblin released the bastard and darted back toward Gracie to protect her. The command pulled the man around to face me. Big dude, but I’d fought bigger.

I ducked the back swing of the guy’s meaty paw and slammed my left fist into his kidney as he stumbled past me, then slapped him across his face with the side of my pistol. A knife flashed in his hand and it sliced through the fabric of my shirt, but no pain followed its path.

Despite his behemoth of a size, he was far more spry than I expected. He caught me in the side of the head with a blow from his fist. I twisted, catching his arm with the knife and putting it in a hold. Even as he locked a hand on the wrist of my gun hand.

Yeah, I wasn’t going to fire wildly with Gracie and Goblin right there. Our assailant lacked a firearm, and I wasn’t letting him have mine. The pressure he put on my wrist was brutal, but I didn’t let go of the gun and I kept it pointed away Gracie and Goblin.

The beast of a man let out a growl that vibrated up from his chest. With bared teeth he tried to slam his head into mine. I stumbled back a step, avoiding the strike, and it pulled him off balance. Then I snapped my head forward and slammed it into his nose.

Nose had cartilage, and it didn’t hurt as much to strike it with my forehead. But it definitely hurt him. He let out a shriek of pain as blood sprayed from his nose. It covered me but it also caused him to let go of my wrist and he dropped his knife.

He staggered back a few steps, putting a hand up to his bloodied face. The blow had definitely given me a headache, but I really didn’t give a shit about that at the moment.

If anything, I wanted to pistol whip him with the Glock until he couldn’t move.

Then I wanted to tie him down, and remove all of his digits, one at a time, then his extremities. Answers would be nice. His pain would be better. Sadly, we didn’t have that kind of time.

The few scattered seconds between my head butt and his releasing me were far too fleeting. He recovered quicker than I would have liked and he crashed into me, hitting me at the midsection and sending me crashing back through some old boards into what was probably an old stall.

Heavy fucker knocked the breath out of me as we landed. The gun was sliding out of my hand and rather than let him grab it, I sent it skittering into the darkness away from us. He swore in Spanish, but between the nasal obstruction from his bloodied nose and the spittle flying from his lips, I didn’t understand him.

It wasn’t important, cause he had the knife again, but I got my legs up between us as he reared back and then slammed both feet into his gut. He let out a harsh grunt as I shoved the air out of him. It didn’t send him back far enough and he struck with the knife, slamming it right into my right calf and then into the top of my foot.

Ignoring it, I swung my left leg and this one clocked him right in the ear with my foot. He staggered to the side. No more games. No more playing with him. I pulled a knife from the sheath on my belt and I made it to my feet before he made it to his.

The bloodied mess of his face in the shadows, with all the dust flying that had been stirred up by our fight, gave him a gruesome appearance. As much as I wanted to question him, or at least tear him apart strip by strip, we didn’t have time for this shit.

Graciedidn’t have time for this.

I didn’t waste any more time playing with him. Grip firm on the combat knife, I slammed it through his throat from the side, piercing both carotid arteries. Shock rippled across the man’s face. I twisted the blade, severing the trachea and the vocal cords as I sliced down.

When I pulled the knife out, blood squirted from the injuries. He slapped his meaty hands against his throat like he could staunch the bleeding. His wet gurgling gasps filled the silence as he staggered. Cutting a person’s throat was never a silent or swift way to die—not like they tried to show it in the movies.

He had enough time to recognize he was going to die. To feel the fear leach into his blood as it sprayed out of his body. To want to fight to stay in the land of the living. Fight or flight kicked in, the furious pumping of his heart desperate to get blood to his brain would only serve to shove the blood out of him faster.

Three steps.

He made it all of three desperate steps as he staggered before he went to his knees.

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