Page 53 of The Hitman's Omega Priest
“Yeah, you did. We need to get out of here.”
“How did you get a gun?”
“Someone left it for me in the dumbwaiter.”
“Huh?”
“My brother must be here.” Kensley looped Malori’s right arm around his shoulders, paused a moment to pick up Sadist’s gun, and then headed for the door. He had no idea what was on the other side, but he wasn’t surprised to find a plain foyer and an elevator with only a down button. An elevator that was moving up, based on the noise behind the sliding doors.
“Back, back.” Kensley retreated into the apartment, just in case, and stashed his friend behind the couch. Malori was turning white and starting to breathe hard, but he was alert. Kensley knelt at the end of the couch and aimed his weapon at the open apartment door.
The first buzzer sounded, which he knew now was the elevator arriving. Kensley wrapped his finger around the trigger and held his breath, ready to shoot if he didn’t recognize whoever stepped through that door. His and Malori’s lives depended on it.
Footsteps shuffled. Voices murmured. Kensley’s pulse spiked. A bitter taste filled his mouth. Someone spoke and the noise stopped. Had they noticed Sadist’s dead body inside the apartment? Kensley’s brain spun with possibilities, everything from a friendly face, to a barrage of fire from Sadist’s minions.
“My charus!”
Kensley’s hand jerked and he nearly fired the gun. “Bishop! I’m here!”
Bishop made the most miraculous entrance in the world, dressed in all black, both hands bracing his own gun as he strode inside the apartment. He glanced down at Sadist briefly. “Kens?”
Kensley lowered his gun as he stood, his entire body reacting to Bishop’s proximity. At seeing his charus in the flesh, very much alive, his eyes blazing with intensity. Six days apart was too much, and Kensley didn’t think. He threw himself at Bishop, who caught him with a single arm around the waist, never lowering that gun as he continued to survey the room. “It’s just me and Malori, no one else,” Kensley said.
“Clear!” Bishop shouted.
Three men in black flooded the room, guns raised, and they began to search. The fourth man to enter made Kensley’s heart kick hard. King commanded the room with his presence, even more so after fourteen years. Time had put lines around his eyes and a few flecks of gray at his temples, but that was his brother.
King’s relieved smile melted quickly into annoyance when he saw the body on the ground. “Is that Decker?” he asked.
“Looks like it, based on our surveillance photos,” Bishop replied. He finally wrapped his other arm around Kensley and squeezed the life out of him. Kensley pressed his face into Bishop’s neck and held on, fighting tears. Tears could wait until they were out of this horrific place.
“Man down,” someone said. “Gunshot wound to the shoulder.”
“His name’s Malori,” Kensley said. “He’s been here a long time. Please, help him.”
“We will, sweetheart,” Bishop replied, his heart thumping so hard Kensley felt it in his own chest. “I wanted to kill Decker myself for daring to touch you.”
“I’m okay. Just get me out of here.”
“Gladly.” Bishop holstered his gun, then swept Kensley up into his arms. Kensley didn’t protest being carried. He neverwanted to leave Bishop’s arms again, and he clung to his charus as they piled into the elevator. He opened his eyes long enough to make sure Malori was with them, and he startled at the surprising sight of King cradling Malori in his arms, while Malori sobbed into King’s neck.
They were finally free, Malori most of all.
FOURTEEN
Ziggy deserveda massive raise for uncovering all the information they needed to locate Kensley, and if King didn’t give him one, Bishop would. Not only had Ziggy found the brothel, codenamed the Farm, but he’d also managed to locate a special weapons importer from the west coast, who was seeking a missing loved one: his alpha female sister.
King generally disliked trusting strangers, but he and Oswald had a common goal in finding their siblings, and so they threw their resources together and found the brothel hours before it would have been relocated. Bishop couldn’t imagine how much more difficult their recovery would have been if that had happened. How much worse for wear Kensley would have been if he’d been with his purchaser much longer.
Six days had been bad enough, judging by the way Kensley clung to Bishop and refused to be parted from him. Not during their flight from the secluded farmhouse where Kens and eight other victims had been imprisoned and abused. Not during the long ride to the safe house they’d prepared two hundred miles east of the Farm’s location. Oswald and his men had taken his sister and gone their separate ways, and Bishop wished her a full recovery.
That left Bishop and King with Kensley, Malori, and six remaining victims, one of whom was an alpha female, and one other omega male. The other four were two young men and two young women who’d been trafficked into Arye Decker’s house of horrors. Tormented and abused, many of them for years. They’d divided into three black vans, no windows or markings, that made their way steadily east.
Bishop sat on a bench seat with Kensley dozing on his lap. They hadn’t spoken much, beyond their initial declarations, but this wasn’t the time to inquire about the lengths to which Kensley had suffered. On the seat behind them, King sat with Malori’s head in his lap. Malori’s shoulder had been bandaged, but they couldn’t do much more for the gunshot until they arrived at the safe house.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
Bishop’s one regret was that Decker was dead before Bishop could kill him. His consolation was the shot right through Decker’s dick—and that no employee of that monster had gotten out of the house alive. And Decker’s victims were free. Now they had to make sure they stayed safe and began to heal.
