Wild Dirty Secret(96)

“A gun lesson.” She sounded giddy. She turned to Major. “You mean you can teach me how to use one?”

“Your enthusiasm is disturbing but irrelevant,” I told her. “We can’t do a lesson now.”

“I’m going,” she whispered. “You can’t stop me.”

“Very mature.”

“Look at it this way,” Major murmured. “I’m going, so she’s probably safer with us than alone.”

We got out of the car. Every car door closing made me wince, and I waited for men to come running out. When nothing happened, I let out a breath. We crept along the line of the trees until we reached the fence. It was still cut away where we’d entered before. An odd lapse in security, but I supposed Henri had already evacuated this place for the most part. If he was just coming here for a meeting, he wouldn’t need to establish a perimeter.

Slipping inside, we made it to the first hangar before Major put up his hand. He lifted his gun, signaling for us to stay back while the shadows enveloped him. I heard a low voice and then a brief scuffle. I blinked, my eyes wide, but I couldn’t make him out. Pushing Jenny behind me, I was about to get us the hell out of there when Major reappeared with his arm around another man. I saw the red bandanna first, then noticed the rest of him.

“Rico,” I said with relief, then realized Major was basically choking him. “What the hell?”

Rico threw Major off him and echoed my shock, but with more profanity.

“Was it you?” Major asked. “Don’t fuck with me right now; just tell me I can trust you.”

Rico grew still. “You saved my ass, literally, when I was nine years old. I told you then that I had your back, and that hasn’t changed.”

Major stared at him, measuring, and finally blew out a breath.

“Now,” Rico said. “What in the actual fuck was that?”

“Someone betrayed us,” Major said.

Both men turned to look at me.

“Yes, okay,” I said. “Be a stereotype and blame the hooker.”

Rico frowned. “It doesn’t make sense that it would be her or Luke, not with their asses on the line. And if it wasn’t you or me, then…”

“It was Jeff,” I said. “He must have put something in my water.”

Rico shook his head in frustration. “He said you’d been shot, but we couldn’t find your…” The word body hung in the air. “Luke was frantic. He almost got killed because he refused to leave without finding you first. We had to drag him out of there.”

He’d thought I was dead? “Where is he?”

“I heard some of the guys talking,” Rico said. “The meeting is happening in the middle hangar. We have to get over there before he does something crazy.”

We turned to go around the back. That was when I saw it. A faint red light glowing from the ground, the remains of a cigarette. Which meant the guards were nearby. I opened my mouth to warn them, but before a sound emerged, a shot rang out. Rico fell to the ground. Major jumped over Jenny to cover her. Heavy hands closed around my neck.

Gleaming white teeth shone in the dark, the Cheshire cat holding a machine gun. “You’re back.”





Chapter Eleven





The dark of a windowless room enveloped me, followed by a humid stench strong enough to gag me. Mold and copper—it smelled like pain. Henri’s shoes clipped the concrete softly from behind me, incongruously civilized compared to the almost dungeon-like atmosphere…but it was a lie. This place suited him more than the well-guarded penthouse where he conducted business. It was how he saw the world, darkness and death inescapable.

An elbow rammed into my back, and I fell to the floor, landing in a thin film of grimy water. From the floor, I heard the drip-drip from somewhere else in the room. Slowly my senses sharpened, revealing a counterpoint—low, harsh breathing. Labored breathing.

My voice wavered. “Luke?”

“Don’t worry.” Henri’s voice came from beside my ear as he bent to speak to me. “I punished him for taking you without payment. I know you were very concerned about that.”

“Luke.” I shuddered, feeling bone-deep revulsion for the breath on my ear, mourning whatever unseen pain had been inflicted. This was my fault, not his. My pain, and my body craved it with a kind of gnawing hunger—anything but have him suffer. I couldn’t stand it.

I had to.

Summoning my strength, I stood. In the center of the room, I could make out a shadow. A chair. A man, slumped over.

He didn’t register my approach. He was not conscious. At least, his eyes looked closed, but they might have been too puffy to see. He might have heard me call his name in horror and pain, but for the blackened blood dripping into his ears. He must have felt me when his head jerked away from my hand—though it might have been an unconscious move, like the leaves that fold at the touch of a finger.