Page 50 of To Claim A King
She pulled me forward by my tresses. Instead of fighting against her motion, I leaned into it. She hadn’t anticipated the dead weight falling into her and I used the element of surprise, shoving my dagger upward, aiming at whatever bit of bone I could pierce while she held me in a headlock. The blade cut through her muscle like butter, and the piercing howl of pain split my eardrum even as she refused to let me go.
Another set of hands gripped my shoulders and yanked me up, throwing my body over his shoulder as he raced toward the waiting van. White-hot pain rocketed through me like I’d been shot again as my thigh bounced against the tight bone of his shoulder, but my screams were muffled into the fabric at the small of his back.
I frantically tried to shift in his hold and gain purchase onsomething, but he held me too tightly for me to gain any leverage. The flash of a bald head came into my vision, the stale smell of sweat and strong astringent laundry detergent forcing bile into the back of my throat as I bounced off his torso with each jarring movement.
“Let’s go, Carmen,” he ordered, the gruff demand in his tone showing he was the one with the ultimate authority. “The boys will take care of the feds. Get moving!”
He was bringing me toward the van. Dread deadened my senses and honed in on basic hindbrain instincts. If I was put into that vehicle, I was never getting out. None of us would be.
I had two seconds to give our fourth the information he needed, provided he didn’t leave here in the back of the van too.
“Lucky! They have Kellan and Aaron! Get backup!”
Fighting for my life and the chance for Aaron and Kellan to escape, I pressed my head into the small of my attacker’s back, taking hold of a patch of fat and biting as hard as my incisors could penetrate. The man arched his spine in pain, digging his nails so deep into my calves tears stung my eyes, but he didn’t miss a step. I squirmed every limb in his hold, my desperation to escape my only priority as he fumbled with something in his right hand, the crinkling of plastic barely audible over the din of gunfire.
“You’ll die today, bitch.” The vibration of his grunt reverberated through me as I hung against his tall frame, and the pain in my thigh and the prick of a needle were the last sensations I felt before my entire world went dark.
Ihad no idea what in the feck was happening.
Three minutes ago, tucked away in our getaway car, I’d debated if I should storm into the building and search the bloody place, since both Roboto and Blondie hadn’t shown up on time. Two minutes ago, I heard shots inside the building, followed by shots fired on the other side of the parking lot and pushed my arse in gear. I hadn’t anticipated the sight of a dead woman with a gun trained on the woman I loved, the whole damned army of bodyguards in a dead pile around her like a scene out of a bad action movie.
Seeing the killer I’d thought I’d shot dead through the heart was one thing, but my lass on the ground, about to diebecause I’d failed to do the job properly? Not on yer life.
I drove the jeep right to the edge of the makeshift shooting range, braking hard before hauling my gun up to sight and shoot the bitch dead out of the driver's side window. If I was as good with a gun as I was with my mouth, the woman would have been pushing up daisies, but I didn’t much love weapons that could immediately kill me, and it was one area of my training I could have used a bit more gusto. I picked a hell of a time to have regrets.
The shot went wide and hit the side mirror of the Dexter killing van instead of tearing through her heart like I’d intended.
“Trasna ort féin!” I cursed in Gaelic as I took aim at her a second time. The shot just barely missed her this go around, redeeming my shyte shooting skills just a wee bit. My lass—the brilliant badass she was—had used the confusion to grab a gun from the ground, and one of the two shots tore through the flesh of evil-girl’s arm.
“That’s my girl!” I muttered, shifting my position in the front seat to take aim to get Carmen’s chest this time, when my own heartbeats froze. Carmen grabbed Hillary in a headlock, and there was no way I was risking my shyte shots to take a piece out of my woman. The unkillable witch wrenched her forward, tufts of her beautiful blonde hair tearing out with each pull.
“Blondie!” I let out an embarrassingly schoolgirl shriek, but that was the least of my troubles. Did I try to run them over and hope Hillary didn’t get the brunt of the impact? Did I shoot anyway and hope my goddessEponawould give me a little grace?
Think, Locke. THINK!
I scrambled out of the SUV and used the door as a shield to line up my next shot through the still-open window. I just needed to get a little closer to mymark—
Carmen screamed, pulling me out of my moment. Hillary had embedded one of her knives in Carmen’s torso. Feck me, this woman was tough. My heart swelled with pride as I scrambled to leave the vehicle, but before I could train my gun on the witch’s head to blow her brains out, a bald man came out of nowhere, hauled Hillary off her feet and threw her spent body over his shoulder, then turned on his heel, running toward the back of the van.
Feck me, the assassin was quick on the draw. She now had her gun trained on my head, and we both knew she was a far better shot. A deer in headlights, I debated my next move, while the mafia version of Dr. Evil got further and further away. Hillary’s plea pierced the air as another punch to my already churning gut.
“Lucky! They have Kellan and Aaron! Get back-up!”
Fuck. I was not only responsible for saving Blondie’s life, I now had the blood of my whole family on my hands. I drew in a deep breath as she retreated from my periphery, my helpless gaze fixed on Carmen’s watchful eyes. If I made one wrong move right now, she’d kill me, and if she killed me, we were all dead. I had a lot of brutal things on my conscience over the years, but nothing nearly as rough as being the arse that got my whole family killed.
Over the pounding of blood in my ears, I heard the distant muffle of car doors slamming followed by the shuffle of many pairs of boots along the pavement. My blood ran deathly cold. This was it. Antonio sent another crew to finish us all off and—
“FBI! Guns on the ground with your hands up!”
Carmen’s sneer could have curdled milk as she stared at the new arrivals behind me. She flipped her hair, then mad-dashed toward the van, evading the hailstorm of bullets that rained down on the parking spaces between us. I dropped to the ground, barely avoiding being pierced as they tore through the cab of our getaway car. The sharp ringing in my ears dulled all exterior sounds, except thevapid screech of tires on the other side of my temporary buffer.
Within seconds, some buffoon in a uniform wrenched my arms behind my back and clipped them into metal handcuffs at the base of my spine. A large pair of meaty hands raised my body forcefully.
“Lauchlan O’Donnell, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”
I couldn’t hear a word the officer said after that, focused as I was on the van tearing down the street and off into the sunset. My one last drop of hope drained into the sea of blood all over the ground.
It wasn’t the icy pebbling of my skin that roused me from my drug-induced slumber, or the agony radiating through each of my limbs like a hot brand had been inserted between my ligaments and into my bones.
