Page 49 of To Claim A King
“Kellan!” I screamed, my fear outweighing practicality as I limped toward the van as quickly as my Louboutin heels and a scorching leg wound would allow, the clack against the asphalt not nearly as loud as the pounding of my heart. Aaron’s suited form was still splayed on the ground when the two criminals turned their attention to me.
Our worst-case scenario was playing out before my very eyes. Somehow, Antonio’s people had captured and incapacitated Kellan—what thehellwas he doing here, anyway?—and Aaron, the two men who should have been most equipped to fight back. Their brashness surprised me—if they were here, they would know the FBI had been on site just moments ago. Antonio must have felt very secure in his position to risk capturing Kellan this way. We had to be missing something.
A vicious smile lit up the woman’s face as she took me in, racing toward her with my enduring bodyguards in tow. She quickly shoved the remaining limbs of Kellan’s body into the cab and turned swiftly on her feet, drawing a small pistol from her back and aiming it directly at the guard to my left. Without a single second of hesitation, she fired, and the man—Luis, I think his name was—dropped immediately to his knees, the kill shot through his forehead barely shedding a drop of blood.
Another crack whistled through the air as the guard on my right took a shot through the neck, the Kevlar vest he was wearing not high enough to protect his throat. Hot blood sprayed from his jugular in an arc. The sticky liquid coated the side of my face as he fell to the ground with a resounding gurgle.
Terror crackled through me as I crouched to the ground, with no shelter, no gun, and two guards down. The remaining man behind me must have done the same, because the metallic pop of a silencer broke through the din beside my right ear, my eyes only able to follow the bullet’s path in my periphery.
When nobody shrieked in pain or dropped in the distance, another shot went off, this one embedding into the side metal panel of the vehicle. I didn’t need to see her responding shot to know it had killed the last guard when the resounding thud of heavy weight crashing onto pavement echoed behind me.
I lowered my torso slowly to the ground with my palms over my head to gain time while my brain calculated my odds of survival. My racing pulse thrummed in my ears as I drew in shallow breaths in a pathetic effort to remain calm. The blood of three men spread across the asphalt in search of a burial ground. It seeped into the fabric of my skirt instead, the weight of their sacrifice pulling down the already sodden material from my throbbing thigh wound.
I hadn’t just survived the demon twins to die in a puddle of my blood in a parking lot. I needed to stay alive to get my men out of here. Otherwise, we were all dead. With two remaining daggers strapped to my thighs beneath my skirt, I had weapons, but I’d be shot through the heart before I could grab them. If only I could get closer—
“The Queen graces us with her presence,” the woman purred with only a slight Spanish accent, the sneer evident in her tone. When my eyes finally rose to take in the carnage in front of me, Aaron was no longer on the ground, presumably shoved into the cab by the bald man while this woman unleashed her bullets. “I see I shouldn’t have sent men to do a woman’s job.”
The woman held herself confidently, her brutal stare empty and cold. Instead of pointing the pistol directly at my head, she let the gun hang loosely by her side, grinning the toothy smile of a predator who had cornered its prey.
Come on, Hill. You’re trained for this. Decide you’re not a victim. Step One: Stop the threat.
Krav Maga. It might be my only possibility of survival. I stared back at her with lazy eyes, tapping into a deep well of endurance. My thigh burned with the heat of a thousand suns, and I was out-manned and outmatched, but I wasnota victim. Not now, not ever.
I slowed my breathing and took in my surroundings as best I could while maintaining eye contact with evil-incarnate in front of me. The dead guard to my left was onlya foot away, a gun loosely tucked into his belt just another six inches from my hand. If I could just reach it…
“You are quite pretty. I can see what he sees in you.” She cocked her head as if I were a curious creature in a cage and continued to smile at me with razor teeth.
The comment took me off-guard, but I refused to show it, fixing my stare on hers so long my eyeballs felt like they’d dried out like raisins in the sun. If I could stay a curiosity, I might get enough leeway to move and grab the gun. At least bide enough time before the FBI came around the corner—surely, they’d heard the shots?
Ironically, I’d been running from their discovery moments ago, and now I hoped with every fiber in my being they would show up in the nick of time. What was taking them so long?
Every girl who’d survived high school knew how to be a mean girl without saying anything directly mean. It was in the tone, the presence. I dug into the barbaric teenager I once was and channeled her, tightening my smile with a pout of my own.
“I’m afraid I know nothing about you,” I volleyed, keeping my voice even and level. “You are?”
“Forgive me, Princess.” The smirk that consumed her face showed she was indulging me. Good. The longer she could underestimate me, the better. “Yes, allow me to introduce myself. Carmen Delgado. Longtime associate of your lover here.” She dipped her head toward the rear doors of the cab, still open, the shadows of shoes the only thing visible from this angle. The bald man watched me with careful eyes, but made no move to interfere.
“Even after he tried to kill me,” she added, amusement dancing in those cold, brittle eyes. “As you can see, I am still very much alive.”
Was this the woman Lucky had supposedly killed? Hot rage infiltrated every blood cell in my body as I stared up at the person who’d dared to carve Aaron up like he was ameaningless piece of collateral instead of thecaballero oscurohe was. I would slice through her skin like she had done to him and record her screams as sweet music for him to listen to when he needed a pick-me-up.
Carmen Delgado, whoever the fuck she was, was going to die. I just needed to reach—
The abrupt screech of car tires behind me nearly tore me out of my skin. The killer’s attention whipped to the new presence and I used the distraction to tuck and roll, grabbing the gun tethered to the corpse’s hip and releasing its safety as I landed on the other side of the body. A scream of agony ripped from my throat as the burned flesh of my thigh tore with the movement. My heel fell off, but I had no time to grab it and put it back on.
The crack of another bullet rocketed through the space above my head, but this time, it wasn’t Carmen’s gun doing the shooting.
“Coño!” she cursed as she raised her gun to fire back at our newest addition to the standoff. She projected her voice across the parking lot to greet them.
“You have come to finish the job, have you? I am unkillable,culicagado.”
A Gaelic curse flew back with another shot.Lucky!Lucky had arrived. Relief and fear coursed through me, a mixture of incompatible drugs. I needed to save my men, but I didn’t want to risk losing Lucky too.
The gun in my hand was slippery, still warm from the coating of blood along its barrel, but I kept it still as I aimed and fired two shots in quick succession. One ricocheted off the dinged rear metal door at Carmen’s back. The other grazed across her left shoulder, leaving a jagged hole at the edge of her flesh.
“Bitch!” Carmen screamed, ignoring the threat at my back to instead lunge across the twenty feet of pavement to get to me. The gun slid in my grasp, bounced off the asphalt and skittered to a stop well beyond my reach. I desperatelyclawed at the dagger sheathed beneath my clothing and crab-walked backward through the fallen bodies, unable to rise on my feet in the skirt and the now single heel. I’d barely moved five feet before she was on top of me, fingers wrenching the hair off my scalp in a tight hold.
“Blondie!” Lauchlan’s terrified shout was only a muffle in the distance as I grappled with the killer in front of me, her sharp nails scraping into my scalp and drawing more blood.
