Page 118 of Reaper
Before I can react, Mayhem moves like lightning, ripping my gun from my hands with practiced ease. "Sorry, sweetheart."
“What the hell are you — "
Strong hands grab my shoulders and yank me backward. Diesel's arms wrap around me as he forces my hands behind my back. The cold bite of metal handcuffs clicks around my wrists before I can even struggle.
"Let me go!" I scream, thrashing against his grip. "You can't do this! He'll die without medical attention!"
"He'll die in a federal prison if we all get arrested," Diesel says quietly, his voice heavy with regret but unwavering in conviction.
“You selfish fucking cowards. Leave me here with him. You go, I’ll say, just put him down and let me stay with him…”
Tank draws a gun and presses the cold steel to my forehead. His voice is cold, level, a promise. “I lied when I said you didn’t have a choice. You can shut your mouth and come with us and live, or you can keep screaming and struggling and I’ll put a bullet in your head. I have no loyalty to you, Adriana. None. And I refuse to let my brother die here or in federal custody, so the choice is yours. What will it be?”
I close my mouth and nod as tears fall down my cheeks.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Adriana
I bob along on Diesel’s back like a petulant child, my eyes glued to Reaper’s body as he sits slung over Conrad’s shoulders, my heart flailing and screaming with every bounce — will he live? Will he live? Will he live?
What will I do if he doesn’t?
It’s hard to see him through the tears.
Harder still to see a future without him.
I just want a little more time with him, even if it’s just to talk and get some real closure and hear the truth about everything that happened with my sister. I don’t think I’d be happy if he died after that, but I might feel some peace.
After everything that’s happened, peace might just be the thing I need.
It feels like a moment and a lifetime on Diesel’s back before Tank’s gruff, pained voice snaps me out of a stupor and I realize we’re in a dark alley not far from Ruslan Volkov’s storage warehouse of terror and torture.
“Set her down here,” he says. Then he looks me dead in the eyes, and in his icy gaze I see the opportunity for a bright future or a lonely death. Or perhaps something else — a lonely future. But at least it’s alive, and the notion that I wouldn’t like whatever death Tank is offering takes hold of me. “Listen, you don’t like what I’m doing, and that’s fine. You saved my life, so you’veearned that right. But I’m going to need you to trust me right now. Can you do that?”
I don’t answer; I blink — which Tank takes for the assent it is. Right now, I don’t trust my mouth to speak anything but sobs or invectives. Reaper is nothing more than cargo at this point, a nearly empty blood bag slung over Mayhem’s shoulder. For a second, my eyes lock with Conrad’s and pass that Marine the question that’s burning in my heart: how could you just go along with this?
I get no answer but the look of a man who is apparently all too comfortable following orders.
Tank raises his voice as the sirens grow louder. “Diesel, you’ll stay here with me and Reaper. Mayhem, Marine, you two know what to do. Execute your orders, and we might just make it out of this clusterfuck.”
Orders? I frown. How the fuck have I been so out of it I couldn’t pay attention when they were putting a plan together? I used to be capable. I used to be able to compartmentalize and keep my shit together even when I was deep undercover or on the most dangerous missions.
But that was all before the man sprawled lifeless — no, not lifeless, he can’t be lifeless — on the sidewalk woke my heart up.
Mayhem and Conrad nod. Mayhem does a brief salute, and then the two of them jog off toting their guns.
“What plan? What is going on? What are you going to do to help him?” I say to Tank.
“If you were paying attention, you would know. But since you weren’t, I sure as fuck don’t have the time to give you a fucking replay.” The sirens grow closer, so loud that they’re screaming in my ears. Tank gets closer, seizes my chin in his grip, and holds my eyes steady with his. Looking into his eyes is like staring into a dark hole at the bottom of the ocean. I want to look away, but I feel trapped, consumed, afraid. “If you actually give a single shitabout Ricky’s life, you’ll stay there, silent, and out of the fucking way. If you don’t, or if you interfere, then I will find out how many bullets I can put in your head before your body hits the ground.”
I swallow hard, my throat raw and constricted, the taste of copper and fear coating my tongue. Tank's threat hangs in the air like a blade suspended over my neck, and I know — god, I know deep within my bones and my scared and anguished soul — he means every fucking word. His grip on my chin loosens, but his eyes never leave mine; twin pools of arctic menace that make my blood run cold.
The sirens are deafening now. A symphony of chaos that seems to vibrate through my bones, through the cracked asphalt beneath us, through the very air itself, as if my entire world is screaming and shrieking. The sound bounces off the brick walls of the alley, creating an echo chamber of approaching doom. It's like the world is ending, like every emergency vehicle in Sacramento is converging on this one point in space and time, and we're trapped here in the mouth of hell with Reaper bleeding out on the concrete and all I want to do is scream and cry.
I press my back against the cold brick wall behind me, my hands shaking uncontrollably as I watch Diesel crouch beside Reaper's motionless form. The big man's fingers hover over Reaper's throat, checking for a pulse, and the seconds stretch into eternity before he gives Tank the slightest nod.
Still alive.
