And she's sparing me… I should be dead right now, but she kept me alive. The irony isn't lost on me. That young girl I left alive became my downfall in the organization. I might as well be scum to Barone now. And this woman just beat the shit out of me and almost killed me, but she stopped. The least she could’ve done was finish it.
"And I need your help."
I can't help it.
A deep belly laugh that shakes my whole body starts low in my gut and rumbles upward. It's loud and shakes the nightstand beside me, and Sabine isn't amused. She plants a hard thumb on my thigh and I scream, actually reaching for her wrists.
"Fuck's sake, bitch. That hurts."
"I said, I need your help." This time, she's clear, and she's not just asking. She's giving an order she thinks I'm going to follow. But she moves her hand, so I relax and listen. "You have the muscle to help me convince the others to work with me. I need that muscle."
My head spins a little so I close my eyes. Thinking takes too much energy. "What 'others' are we talking about?"
"The others on the list…" She huffs, then she says, "They're all getting hunted for a reason. We fucked up badly, and then we had to cover it up… Our CO, Captain Bryan, he made us cover for him, and for some reason, I think he's having us killed…"
When I look into her eyes, I see with dead certainty that she believes what she's saying. This Captain Bryan dude sounds likea total douche, and no doubt, he really did hire that broker to pay me to kill the people on that list. But the pieces just aren't lining up for me. Maybe it's because I’m so weak.
"Look, lady, I was given orders. If I don't finish the list, they end me." It's harder to breathe now too. Every breath is labored, my chest so tight I could feel it snap if she even touched me.
"You don't know what you're up against. This man… If he finds out you know who he is, he'll come after you next." She's scrambling now, struggling to find a way to make me work with her.
"I hate him. I hate everything he stands for… And I've been trying to take him down for years. I need your help."
"I don't see how it's my problem…" I cough weakly, and the shaking jars my ribcage, still bruised from the other man's fists and now battered even more from her.
"You're right… not your problem." She's getting desperate now. I can hear it in her tone. "But I'll let you do whatever you want with the ones who don’t help me. And the ones who do help me will take down the man who hired you, so you don't have to worry about retribution." Sabine is panting as I open my eyes to stare into her face. "Or I could kill you right now."
I watch her pick up her weapon again and press it to my chest. "You pick."
I don't think she'll really do it, but I won't take a chance. Sabine Hart is a trained killer just like me, and she's really fucking hot when she holds that gun.
I can use that sort of spit and vinegar when it comes to hunting these fuckers down, and if she can get me intel on where to findthe few I've been unsuccessful at locating, all the better. The man never said they had to be killed in order, just that they all had to disappear. Who's to say Ms. Hart won't make a really beautiful sidekick for a few days while I dispense of the remainder of the names, and then a sexy corpse when it's all said and done?
"Do we have a truce?" she asks, and I let my eyes flutter shut again. I'm too tired to give a fuck right now. It's something I can sort out when I wake up.
So I let the blackness consume me, knowing when I wake, I'll have a massive pain in my thigh and most likely, a gun to my head.
4
SABINE
The coffee maker gurgles to life while dawn breaks through the kitchen window, and I stand at the counter waiting for the pot to fill with my hands wrapped around my middle and exhaustion pulling at every muscle in my body. Sleep never came last night despite trying, and the couch offered nothing but stiff cushions and the constant awareness that a man I tried to kill was bleeding in my bed down the hall.
My bed—where I lifted him after he passed out on my bedroom floor. His dead weight required every bit of strength I had left after the fight and the stitching. His blood is still on the hardwood in there, dried now into dark stains that I'll need to scrub out later when I have the energy to care about something other than the fact that Jason Bryan is hunting us down one by one.
The coffee finishes brewing and I pour a cup, cradling it between my palms and letting the heat seep into my skin. My knuckles are bruised from where I hit him, and the muscles in my back ache from hauling his unconscious body onto the mattress. Guilt rolls through my stomach, though I know I have no reason tofeel guilty. That bastard came into my house to hurt me. Of course I stabbed him.
But I'm not like him. I'm not a killer.
The rational part of my brain says the guilt is misplaced. The knife was self-defense, and if our positions were reversed, he wouldn't be standing in his kitchen feeling bad about it. But the irrational part, the part that still remembers what it felt like to patch up wounded squad mates and carry them to safety, won't let it go. Human life is precious and valuable, even when the one living is a vile, wretched soul.
Bryan's tying up loose ends now. All of the men who are dead by this psycho's hand were on that mission, and every one of them knows Bryan forced us to cover his tracks. The only logical explanation is that he's being reviewed and he can't have any loose ends.
The compound was supposed to be a hostile holdout. Intelligence said the target had hostages and a weapons cache, and we were supposed to go in and neutralize the enemy, taking whatever we could back to base. We went in quietly, a small team moving through rooms, and everything was fine until it wasn't.
…"Lookthere!" Ham-dog caught my attention after clearing another empty room. We were supposed to search and destroy and down the barrel of my gun were two eyes showing in the darkness.
"My God…"
