“Run!” I gasped. “It’s right behind me.”
“I don’t hear any…”
When he didn’t move, I let myself collide with him, collapsing into his arms like beauty running from the beast. That way he was too busy holding me up to go for his gun. But I wasn’t. When he stood me up, I grabbed the 9 mm from his waistband—my third capture in half an hour. Not bad for a girl, huh?
“What the…”
“Shut up and face the shed.” I shoved him around by one shoulder. “You even look like you’re gonna move, and I’ll shoot you through the thigh.”
“Look, I don’t have any cash, and you have no idea what you’ve stumbled into.”
I laughed softly. He still didn’t recognize me. “Oh, I have a pretty good idea. I also have a pretty good idea what Malone’s going to do to you when he finds out what happened to your gun.”“Faythe?” The guard started to turn, but stopped when I shoved the barrel of the gun into his back.
“One more word, and you’ll be fighting blood loss and hypothermia. Got it?” He nodded silently, and I had to work to keep my teeth from chattering. “Good. Take off your coat. Slowly.”
The guard slid first one arm, then the other, from his sleeves.
“Drop it, then kick it backward. And keep in mind that if you can take it off one arm at a time, I can put it on the same way. The gun’s still aimed at your back.”
“You’re not gonna shoot me.” He let the jacket fall, then slid it backward with his right foot.
“Haven’t you heard what a crazy bitch I am?”
After that, he had nothing else to say while I bent for the coat and put it on one arm at a time, doing my best to keep the gun aimed, just as I’d promised. “Now, open the door.”
“It’s locked,” he said, and a glance at the shed confirmed that.
“Unlock it. And drop your handcuffs.”
He dug his cuffs from one pocket and dropped them on the ground at his feet, then pulled a key from the other. “Malone’s going to have your head for this,” he said as he twisted the key in the lock, his fingers already red and stiff from the cold.
“Yeah, what’s he going to do, kill me twice?” Of course, death wasn’t what I really had to fear from Malone and his men, but nothing I did or didn’t do was going to change what they wanted from me.
A second later, he pulled the padlock from the shed door.
“Okay, open it and step inside. And don’t touch a motherfucking thing.”
The guard opened the door and stepped in. I followed, only pausing long enough to pull the door closed behind me. The dim light bulb dangling from the ceiling was a shock after the dark of the woods, and I stood for a moment to let my cat eyes adjust. But before they could, I heard shuffling from directly ahead.
“Faythe?”
Marc. And Jace was in the cage beside him.
I forced my eyes open wider and smiled. “Surprise.”
Thirteen
My blood boiled, in spite of the below-freezing temperature, at the sight of Marc and Jace locked up in five-foot-tall animal cages. Like me, they’d been marched out of our cabin without coats, and in separate cages, they couldn’t even huddle together for warmth. After less than two hours in the cold, they were both pale and shivering, and only warmed by the scorching rage clearly burning behind their eyes.
“How’d you get out?” Jace’s teeth chattered as he stood hunched over, fingers curled around the steel-mesh sides of his cage.
“Through the window.” I nudged the guard in the back with his own gun. “Let them out.”
“I don’t have those keys.” He started to turn, but stopped when I shoved him again.
I glanced around the shed and spotted an open, rusty toolbox in one corner, holding a hammer and an assortment of wrenches. “Get the hammer and knock the locks off. One blow each.” Because if anyone heard him, we wouldn’t have time to waste with dainty little taps. “And if you even look like you’re going to hit anything other than those locks, I will shoot you in the back.” I couldn’t kill as easily as Malone’s men seemed to, but I could and would kill in defense of myself, or either of the men in the cages.
“What about Alex?” Marc asked, as the guard picked up the hammer and hesitated, probably trying to decide if I was serious about killing him.
“Come on!” I snapped at the guard, then glanced at Marc. “Alex is a victim of his own stupidity and arrogance.”
“He’s dead?” Jace asked, his voice thick with a mix of regret and relief—they fought on opposing sides, but they shared a mother.
“Just unconscious. Same with the goon outside my window. Thus the rush.” I glared at the guard. “Do it. And if you have to take more than one swing, you’re going to regret it.”
Finally he shrugged, and I took a step back as he swung at the lock on Marc’s cage. The lock popped open, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I hadn’t been sure that would work. “Take off the chain, then do the other one.”
The guard set his hammer on top of Marc’s cage and unthreaded the chain as ordered. Still shivering, Marc stepped out of his pen as Malone’s man moved on to free Jace.
“Here.” While the guard unwound the second chain, I pulled one of the guns from my waistband and handed it to Marc. “Just in case.”
When Jace was free, I handed him the cuffs, and he secured the guard’s hands behind his back. “You want to put him in the cage?”
“Yeah, if either of the locks still work.”
“We should gag him, too, or he’ll scream until someone shows up,” Jace said. He examined the locks while Marc scrounged for something to gag him with.
Unfortunately, both of the locks were smashed, but Marc found a roll of shop towels and a roll of duct tape in an old plastic crate. He gagged the guard and taped his ankles together, then shoved him into one of the cages. Jace wound the chain around the lock hasp and the bar. Without the padlock to hold it in place, the guard would probably eventually kick his way free, but with any luck, that wouldn’t be anytime soon.
With the new prisoner as quiet and secure as we could make him, we stepped outside in spite of the cold, to keep from discussing the rest of our plans in front of him—another lesson learned from TV bad guys.
Behind the shed, out of sight from the lodge, I debriefed the guys. Figuratively. “Okay, we need to get rid of the guns before this new pile of shit hits the fan, although from the look of you both, I’d say finding a couple of coats is also a priority.” I would have handed over mine, but I wasn’t sure which one to offer it to. And neither of them would have taken it, anyway.
“Yes, business is obviously pressing, but first of all…” Marc looked like he wanted to hug me, even if just for my warmth, but he wouldn’t let himself. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t resist a little laugh. “For once, the double standard worked in my favor. I got a warm room, hot stew, and an idiot guard. You guys were the ones freezing your butts off in cages.”
“We’re fine,” Jace insisted through clenched his teeth, probably to keep them from chattering. “You took out three of Cal’s men by yourself?”“Brains over brawn, baby.” I grinned. “If they ever stop underestimating me, I might actually feel challenged.”
Jace returned my grin. “Or dead.”
“So I guess this means we’re moving against Malone sooner than expected?” Marc asked, arms crossed tightly over his chest for warmth, obviously unwilling to take part in the post-jailbreak levity.
“We have no other choice, unless you guys want to crawl back into those cages.”
Jace’s grin faltered, but couldn’t be completely extinguished. “Not even if you crawled in there with me.”
Marc gritted his teeth, but remained focused on the business at hand. “So…the guns. I’m guessing Malone’s keeping them close. Probably in his bedroom.”
I shrugged. “Actually, I’m thinking they’re in the shed behind his cabin. Alex said they’re locked up, and to my knowledge, none of the bedrooms have locks.” At least, the ones in our cabin didn’t.
“Alex told you about the guns?” Jace asked, through blue-tinted lips.
“Just that they have twenty of them, and brought ten here. But there are three fewer now.” Grinning, I pulled the second gun from my waistband and handed it to him.
Jace looked impressed, but he accepted the pistol hesitantly, no doubt remembering the recovery period from his last gunshot wound. “I don’t know how to shoot.”
“Me, neither, but it makes a damn good threat, and I’m guessing that, up close, your aim doesn’t have to be that good. Just make sure you know how to turn off the safety, or they’ll figure out pretty quickly that you’re bluffing.” While Jace turned the gun over in his hands, I glanced at Marc, who remained stoic against the cold. “Okay, we need to get you guys warmed up and let Dad know we’re out. Let’s go through the woods.” That way we’d be out of sight, and blocked from the worst of the freezing wind.
“So, this is going to go down without backup…” Marc whispered, as we picked our way carefully through the woods. The guys had both Shifted their eyes, too—they were among the first of my Pride members to master the partial Shift—and seemed much more adept hiking in their human forms than I was in mine, even with their limbs surely half-numb from the cold.