―Ben, please. Let Nora go and use me instead. I‘m the one who took the flash drive, not her. She‘s not involved in this—‖
―Tell me where you put the drive, and maybe I‘ll let her go, how‘s that, Doc? Fair enough for you?‖
―I don‘t have it,‖ she murmured. ―I took it out of the examination table where you hid it, but I don‘t have it anymore.‖
He fixed that unfeeling stare on her, a muscle ticking in his jaw. ―What did you do with it?‖
―Let her go,‖ Tess hedged. ―Let her go, and I‘ll tell you whatever you want to know.‖
Ben‘s mouth lifted at the corner. He eyed the knife he held, toying with the razor edge of the blade. Then, in a flash of motion, he pivoted around and stuck Nora in the stomach with it.
―No!‖ Tess screamed. ―Oh, God—no!‖
Ben swung back to her, cool as could be. ―That‘s just a gut wound, Doc. She can survive that if she gets help soon enough, but you‘d better start talking fast.‖
Tess‘s knees buckled beneath her. Nora was bleeding badly, her eyes rolling back in her head from shock. ―Goddamn you, Ben. I hate you.‖
―And I no longer care what you feel about me, Tess. All I care about is getting that flash drive back. So. Where the fuck is it?‖
―I gave it to someone.‖
―Who?‖
―Dante.‖
That caused a spark of animosity to flicker in Ben‘s dull gaze. ―You mean that guy—the one you‘re screwing? Do you have any idea what you‘ve done? Any idea what he is?‖
When she didn‘t reply, Ben shook his head, chuckling. ―Well, you‘ve really fucked up, Tess. It‘s out of my hands now.‖
With that, his arm shot out and his blade arced back toward Nora, making good on his earlier threat. Tess wailed as her friend was dropped, lifeless, to the floor. Ben and one of his companions grabbed Tess before she could reach out for Nora—before she had even a moment‘s hope of saving her with her touch. They carried her away from the carnage, trapping her legs and arms as she fought them in a burst of animal desperation. Struggling was futile. In moments, Tess found herself on the floor of one of her exam rooms, then heard the metallic click of the lock as Ben shut her inside to await her fate.
Nikolai drove like a bat out of hell, speeding the Breed‘s black SUV through the city at a breakneck pace. The temptation to watch the sunlit streets and buildings fly past through the dark, UV-tinted windows was tempting—a sight Dante had never seen, and one he sincerely hoped he never would need to again—but he kept his head down in the passenger side of the vehicle, his thoughts trained on Tess.
He and the others were outfitted in head-to-toe black nylon protective clothing: fatigues, gloves, ski-mask
head
coverings,
and
close-fitting
wraparound shades to shield their eyes. Even so, the jog from the vehicle to the back door of Tess‘s clinic building was intense.
With weapons at the ready, Dante wasted no time. He led the charge, planting his booted foot in the center of the storeroom door and kicking the steel panel right off its hinges. Smoke swirled from the fires that Sullivan had begun setting inside. The roiling plumes grew thicker with the sudden influx of air from outside. They wouldn‘t have much time to finish this.
―What the hell is going on?‖
At the crack of splintering metal and raining debris from the door, a Minion came running in to see what was wrong. Niko let him know without the slightest hesitation, firing a round of metal into the guy‘s skull.
Now that they were inside, Dante smelled blood and death through the smoke—not the fresh kill lying at their feet and, thankfully, not Tess either. She was still alive. He sensed her fear like his own, her current state of sorrow and pain tearing into him like heated steel.
―Sweep the place and put out the fires,‖ he ordered Niko and Chase. ―Kill anyone who stands in your way.‖
Tess tried the tightly wound cords that bound her hands and feet together behind her on the examination table. They wouldn‘t budge. But she couldn‘t stop trying them, even when her struggles only seemed to amuse her captor.
―Ben, why are you doing this? For God‘s sake, why did you have to kill Nora?‖
Ben clucked his tongue. ―You killed her, Tess, not me. You forced my hand.‖
Sorrow choked her as Ben came over to where he had trussed her up on the table.
―You know, I thought killing you was going to be difficult,‖ he whispered near her ear, his hot, stale breath assaulting her nostrils. ―You‘ve made it very easy for me.‖
She watched nervously as he went around to the front of the platform and bent down to her level. His fingers were rough in her hair as he lifted her face up off the slab of cold metal. His eyes were those of a dead man, a mere shell of a human being, no longer the Ben Sullivan she once knew.