HARDCORE: Storm MC(48)

“I said, get off of her. Now!” I shifted the sights of my gun slightly to the right so I would hit the wall behind him and pulled the trigger. The bullet went past him and embedded in the wall. That got his attention, and he did as told.



Like a coward, he dove behind her and the table she was strapped to. Her keening had stopped upon my entrance, most likely out of shock, but her breath came back, and with it came sobs.



I didn’t want to look at her, but I was almost forced to, considering that he was using her body to mostly shield his own from the sights of my gun.



Fuck. It was Zoe. My jaw tightened, my eyes narrowed even more, and whatever patience I might have had snapped. “Get the fuck away from her. Stand up and move to the corner of the cage, right over here.” I indicated the way with a twitch of my head. “Put your hands up over your head and hold on to the bars, feet wide apart.”



He was not a stupid man. He had used the moments of hiding behind the table to return his pants to their proper position and do up his belt. He clearly trusted that I was not a homicidal maniac like he was, so he did as ordered, raising his hands in the air on his way to the indicated corner, where he turned his back to the bars and grabbed the ones above and behind his head.



It was likely that he thought this would give him some room in which to maneuver. We were roughly the same height, although I probably had him with about twenty-five more pounds of muscle, but our reaches would have been about the same.



I could see what he was thinking: hold on to the bars above and kick out at me, or some such thing. I was having none of it. This guy was sick, and I’d use whatever I had to take him down.



In true Indiana Jones style, I smirked. I had the gun.



I gave him fair warning. “Brace, man. You’d better hold on to those bars for your life, because if you fall, you might well lose it.”



I gave him a moment to comprehend what I had just said. I saw his hands tighten on the bars. Then, standing only a few feet away from him, I shot one knee and then the next in rapid succession. He screamed but did manage to hold himself up in between shots. As soon as the second knee went out, he lost his grip and went down hard on the floor, gasping and crying and shouting at once.



I didn’t give a fuck. He deserved every moment of pain, every drop of blood loss, and so much more. I let him cry it out. He was effectively hobbled, and that was all that mattered as far as I was concerned.



“You stay in that corner, you asswipe, and get your hands back up over your head and holding on to those bars, even if you have to do it on your ass. You stay down, but your hands stay up, you got me?”



He got me. His hands went up, and he lay there sniveling and bleeding with his legs splayed out at slightly odd angles. He’d be going nowhere fast on those.



Still, I kept my gun on him and him in my peripheral sights while I edged toward the table and to Zoe, whose sobs had finally stopped, probably due to shock from the gunshots and the sudden disappearance of the sick bastard from her line of sight.



I made sure I was staying closer to the cage door than Fielding could get and managed to locate the nearest knot above Zoe’s wrist. She was tied up in a way that screamed “sex slave.” I didn’t want to imagine what she had been going through, but I was damn glad to be able to get her out of here, finally. This girl needed out of here. And Clav needed his little girl back.



After what seemed like forever, and I was getting nowhere with that damned knot, I muttered, “Fuck it.” Her hand was free-ish, so I put my gun in it, pointed it in the direction of the slime writhing in the corner of the cage, and told her to keep it there and to shoot if he started moving in any direction.



That probably wasn’t the greatest plan.



She shouted, “Die, fucker! Die! Die! Die!” And she shot. And shot, and shot, and shot.



I slammed my body away from her and the gun, not wanting to be caught by a stray bullet. I went down out of instinct while she emptied the barrel on the asshole in the corner. Not all of her shots connected—in fact, I thought most of them didn’t—but I was pretty sure she nailed him a couple of times at least.



She was yelling and crying, he was yelling and crying, and I was just trying to get my bearings again. By the time it was clear she was done, he was still making noise, so it was obvious she hadn’t landed an immediate death blow. But if he’d had any plans to counterattack, he had certainly abandoned them by now. He was toast for the time being.



As quickly as I could, I took the gun back and set it on the floor, not near anyone’s reach. Then I went back to Zoe and tried to quiet her down while releasing her from her bonds with the help of my trusty switch blade.