Page 93 of Anything for You
Beast’s cue based on his drone footage led to Jaws’s hand and arm signal for us to proceed. We moved in three-man teams now, Cookie breaching another door in an almost joyfully quick picking of the lock and rushing down the hall.
Around the first corner, two men appeared. One shouted and the other made to grab his weapon, but Oak and Jaws had them subdued on the ground before they could move. Barbie stepped in with duct tape for theirmouths while I zip-tied their hands and Cookie bound their feet.
“So sorry, fellas. Can’t have you ruining the surprise,” Barbie whispered, clearly amped up on the small victory.
Jaws signaled to move so we did, covering the distance of the next hallway with rapid, silent steps.
Another two men sauntered up and were taken down. Jaws asked them where to find Dove, but they literally spit in his face so Barbie blissfully duct-taped their mouths and we left them.
Adrenaline was thrumming through me and I hadn’t worked on controlling it like I used to. Managing the adrenaline dump was essential, but it flooded me now and I prayed it wouldn’t stop until we’d found her.
Just then, Jaws held up his fist, the signal forhold.We all froze immediately, and a second later, I heard it.
“If you touch her again, I’m going to have to take it personally and then we’re going to have an even bigger problem than we already do, okay?”
Dove’s voice and no shortage of her energy and determination shining through.Thank God.
Then a male voice rang out with a nasty slur and Jaws’s hand moved. We moved.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Dove
Jeb gripped Lucinda’s arm in a grasp so hard I could see his fingers bruising her in real time. He sneered after his nasty epithets and gotrightin my face.
“Your pathetic little threats mean nothing, you whiney little?—”
Jeb disappeared in a movement so sudden, I gasped and Lucinda screamed. And then I started laughing like a maniac because Dorian was here!
But before I could launch myself into his arms, six goons I’d seen around and Hawk burst in and threw themselves into a fight. Well, six men did, and while Dorian tried to get to me, to shield me and Lucinda, I felt a hand go around my neck and the muzzle of a gun press into my temple.
“Stop! Stop right now or she’s done.”
Hawk’s voice was hard and so cold, I didn’t know him.
That was the reality I’d slowly begun to accept as the day went on and I hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t checked on me. He’d left me to Jeb and whatever sick plans he had for me once I did his bidding, and that meant this person now directly threatening my life wasn’t my brother anymore.
He’d been too broken by our childhoods, too twisted by the lies and manipulations of the people around him, and this was the fallout.
He’d lost himself, and he was now threatening to murder his own sister.
“Move the weapon away from your sister, Hawk.”
Dorian’s voice came out clear, commanding, and almost compassionate. It was remarkable, and at some other time, it might’ve even been sexy.
“I can’t. It’s—this isn’t how it’s supposed to go! He said she’d be safe here and this isn’t right. She belongs here and you’re not supposed to be here.” His grip around me tightened, and the press of his ulna against my throat threatened to cut off my airway.
“Shoot them all!”
Jeb’s voice came in a cry that was then muffled with something I couldn’t see in the hallway, and Hawk’s arm tightened further.
“Just leave! Just leave and she’ll be fine,” he said, a twinge of hysteria clear in his tone.
Dorian held out his hands showing he was unarmed. “She’ll be fine if you move that weapon, right? You don’t want anything to happen to her or you, so please, Hawk, just set it down. We’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone moving, but I didn’t let my gaze track them.
And then everything happened at once. Dorian spoke in that calm, steady voice, Kenny Carmichael moved toward Hawk from the left, and Jeb’s voice rang out again with, “Shoot!”
