“No, stop!”
He had me pinned to the ground. I was fighting and squirming far more than I had a decade ago, but he was just so much stronger than me. He grabbed me by the neck and squeezed.
“Hold still, you stupid bitch, you might even like this if—”
He paused, rolled to the ground, put me in a headlock, and then stood me up.
And then I saw why he had.
Mason and a black man I didn’t recognize, but one that I presumed was on his side, were standing in the doorway, their guns cocked. Eduardo’s headlock quickly turned from a headlock into an arm around the neck, but the other hand held something much worse—a gun that, with just a single pull of the trigger, would splatter my brains on the ground and kill me.
“Drop her, now,” Mason said.
“Or what?” Eduardo said with a snicker. “You trust your accuracy from this distance? You might get lucky. Or you might have to live with having killed the girl you’ve fought so hard to help.”
He laughed. It was the most wicked laugh I’d ever heard in my life. God, what a dick.
“I said fucking drop her!”
“And you know what I said.”
“What the hell do you even want?” Mason said.
For as angry as he sounded, he also sounded in control. I trusted him, but it was easier to believe I trusted him when there wasn’t the barrel of a gun pressed into my forehead like this.
“Listen to the noise around you, Eduardo. Your men are falling like flies. It’s only going to be a matter of time before we have you surrounded, and then it’s just a matter of who gets to kill you. And I can assure you, I care far less about getting the kill shot than in making sure you are a dead man.”
Again, Eduardo laughed.
“I’m no fool. The instant that your friends from California came by, I knew that we were on the fast course to hell. But I also know that while we may fail, the man that gave us all the support we have will come for both of your little clubs. And he will squish you like the fucking flies that you are.”
Mason had no reaction. The black man, though, twisted his lips in a grimace. None of this meant anything to me, but I was just trying to breathe and stay calm. If Mason needed me to do anything, I couldn’t do it in a state of panic.
“I’ve long ago made peace with my maker; I’ve lived life the way I’ve wanted to.”
“Raping women and terrorizing the town you grew up in?”
I couldn’t see it, but it felt like Eduardo was taunting Mason with a questioning expression.
“Don’t forget you and I were once one and the same, Mason.”
Mason showed no expression at that. I just tried to look for a way out, but that gun being trained right on my forehead made any sort of resistance, even squirming, a frighteningly dangerous proposition.
“In any case,” Eduardo said, sounding disappointed that his goading of Mason had failed, “I’m going to kill you and your friend over there. I’m going to take the girl. And then whatever happens from there, I can live with. It’s a shame, really. You were once a close friend of mine, but no more.”
I stopped looking around at the room and stared right into Mason’s eyes. He locked with mine, and somehow, perhaps I was desperately reading too much into it, but his eyes seemed to say, “trust me.”
“I would suggest staying where you are for now,” he said. “I am going to put on a show for you like I put on for Brock all those years ago. You’re welcome to leave at any time, you know. Perhaps you’ll even save your own life.”
“If you think you’re going to fucking touch her again—”
“What do you call what I’m doing now?” Eduardo cackled. “It’s certainly not magic that’s holding us together!”
Eduardo reached the hand holding the gun around toward my chest. Mason charged forward in an awkward hobble. I tried to think of something to do, but I couldn’t, I—
“Ah!”
A loud explosion went off right by my ear, and an incredible pain shot in my right foot. It took a good couple of seconds for me to realize Eduardo had shot me in the foot. Mason stopped where he was.
