Page 26 of To Claim A King
Enough chatter in my head—I had to speed up this process. I opened up the back of the computer tower and doused the last of the system with the propane and took out the lighter. This beautiful setup wasn’t going to take long to become a blaze of glory, and I had a beautiful woman’s bed to return to.
I grabbed a fresh sheet out of the linen closet that likely cost more than my bloody apartment back in Dublin and rolled it tight into a rope, leading it into the panic room from the closet. Luckily, it was Egyptian cotton and not silk—silk was a bitch to burn. I tucked the detonator in the sheet, which I’d flick on once safely in the elevator, and admired my handiwork for a quick moment before leaving it behind.
Walking out of the bedroom on quick feet, I halted at the reflection of tiny headlights headed down the condo drive through the twelve-foot windows. Two sets, speeding down the lane toward us, screeching into the condo building parking lot.
An esteemed resident getting home late at night?
At three a.m. on a Wednesday? Bloody unlikely.
Running back to the panic room, I struck a match and lit the sheet manually, then I raced to the double doors leading down to the garage. We were officially out of time. I launched into the elevator, pounded the button, and willed it to go fecking faster than two kilometers an hour.
Come on, come on…
Kellan and Aaron knew how to handle themselves, but I had no idea who was down there—the FBI? Alvarez’s men? Kellan’s fucked-up family? Some unknown party we’d pissed off just by breathing funny?
Adrenaline returned like a fresh hit of fun, and I let it sweep through me like Superman on red kryptonite. Whoever they were, the bad guys were here.
Time to show the pecker-heads what we’re made of.
They’d been watching the building.
It was the only way my brothers could have found us in this position. I made sure we weren’t followed on our way here. So, they’d been laying in wait, hoping for… What, exactly?
The claws of fear dug into my chest when I realized why. They’d been watching for Hillary to return. My tenuous relationship with her over the last six years hadn’t been announced, but it wasn’t a secret, either. Antonio had known she was someone of importance. A person they could use to get to me. Here they were, finally hitting the jackpot—had they bargained they’d get two of their actual targets? Orwas this a lucky coincidence of fuckery we’d now have to fight our way out of?
The abrupt metallic grate of a pistol being cocked resounded through the cab of the vehicle. I shifted my weight only slightly to catch Aaron in my periphery, positioning his gun against the window behind me.
Lauchlan’s gaze hadn’t left the group in front of us, a calculating gleam in the sea-glass of his eyes. I scanned our surroundings. Two SUVs, three men in each, no other way out but through. At least, no other way out in a vehicle, and I wasn’t risking our men in here by commanding them to leave our protective cage. None of my vehicles were ordinary models—bulletproof glass and reinforced steel made them harder to penetrate. But only for so long.
It wouldn’t matter, anyway. The muffled, tinny sound of the fire alarm several floors of concrete above us would rouse the entire building. Lauchlan had to set the explosion in the condo before the fire department showed up, or we’d have more than our capture to deal with—my Killer would be compromised too.
My brotherswereintent on capture, no doubt—Antonio would have already set up a torture chamber with our names on it. He wouldn’t lose the opportunity to make Aaron and me suffer for our insolence. Lauchlan would be dead before we made it out of this building. Just another casualty in Antonio’s many battles for ultimate power.
We could play a game of chicken and see if they’d back down. Jonah would be smart enough to save his own skin and try another day, but Mical would leap at the chance to knock me down a peg, even at his own peril, driven by bloodlust and the undisguised envy he’d harbored for me all these years. As if being the prodigal son was a position anyone actually wanted, instead of being cursed with.
I reconsidered my thoughts about leaving the vehicle. We all had guns, and Hillary had ten of her personal vehicles in this garage—we could use them as cover andhope the fire department showed up in time to rescue us from an actual fire. Lauchlan assured us the fire in the elevator was just to trigger the suppression system, which would immediately put it out, but the fire department would show up anyway as a precaution.
It would be pointless to make it out of a gunfight alive, only to get burned to a crisp in the moments after.
Without blinking or looking down into his lap, Lauchlan dialed a number on the cellphone and pressed the call button. A light click resonated through the line, followed by dead air.
“Explosion activated,” he declared nonchalantly, as if this was our most pressing concern at the moment. “One job done for the night.”
I drew my attention back to my brothers and their men. No movement yet on their part or on ours. My brothers’ beady little eyes assessed us through the mild tint of their windows a good hundred feet away. I couldn’t see them clearly, but I could feel the laser beams of their stares burn through me even at this distance.
Lauchlan’s rustling beside me captured my curiosity. He jutted his ski-masked chin toward our guests, who were no doubt getting restless at our lack of movement. “Why don’t we play a little fire with fire with them too?”
Before I could ask what the fuck he meant, he held his backpack tight to his chest and crouched, opening the passenger side door and rolling low to the ground. Terror gripped my heart in its claws, but I couldn’t stop him—he was already outside of the mediocre protection of our vehicle.
“Cover me!” he yelled as he ran toward the nearest vehicle, Hillary’s prized Jaguar.
“Fuck!” I shouted, ducking down as gunfire echoed across the cement landscape. A spray of bullets rained down over Lauchlan’s previous position beside the car and riddled the still open door with holes. The abrupt pings of metal onmetal added to the cacophony as Antonio’s men continued shooting at the Jag instead of my truck.
I couldn’t keep my eyes on the crazy fucker and still protect his ass from becoming my brothers’ newest shooting dummy. The acidic scent of fear-tinged sweat dripped down my brows and soaked into the mask covering my face, distracting me and forcing my well-aimed bullet to veer too far to the right.Fuck!
“COVER ME I SAID!” Lauchlan screamed through the noise, and I mentally castrated him before lowering both Aaron’s and my windows so we could return fire. If he died tonight, he’d rob me of the chance to kill him myself. That thought spurred me on, improving my aim to distract Antonio’s goons long enough to get Lauchlan some cover.
The vehicles didn’t come any closer, my brothers and their crews choosing instead to open their doors and shift their positions, shooting at us now as well. Three bullets embedded into the modified glass windshield.
