A second later, he was out of the room.
Fairchild had to make a choice. Her blood told her to go after Slayn, but her brain told her freeing her teammates was a better option.
She went with her brain.
One heartbeat got her back on her feet. Another got her to the control panel on the wall. She’d seen the button Slayn had pushed to free her from the examination chair. That meant the other buttons were for the guys. She had just enough time to push one at random before Rook was on her from behind.
From across the room came the sound of latches unlocking. Reece’s slab. He shouted her name as he sprang to his feet.
Rook’s right arm was around Fairchild’s neck. She was trying for a chokehold. Fairchild tucked her chin and pushed off from the wall. They tumbled backward, slamming into the floor. This time, Rook took the brunt of the impact.
“Free the others!” Fairchild shouted. “I’ll handle Rook!”
Something soared through the air above her, naked and huge, all smooth skin and rippling muscle. Reece. Even locked in deadly combat, Fairchild’s body responded to that sight with a surge of arousal.
Focus!
The fall had loosened Rook’s grip on Fairchild’s throat. She flung her head back hard, smacking the back of her skull into Rook’s face. The hold loosened more. Enough for Fairchild to twist and drive her elbow into her opponent’s ribs, one, two, three times.
Rook let go.
Alarms were wailing in the corridor outside. Slayn’s footsteps were lost beneath the sound of other, heavier footsteps. Dozens of guards were headed this way.
As Fairchild rolled away from Rook, she glanced briefly across the room. Reece was at the control panel, rapidly pressing the remaining buttons. He freed Dutton first, followed a split second later by Nash. Whether that ordering was intentional or just blind luck, Fairchild couldn’t say, but it worked in their favor.
Dutton’s slab was positioned nearest the entrance to the room. As soon as the clamps were off, he bolted up and met the first guard in the doorway, which was too narrow to admit more than one person at a time. Dutton forced the guard’s rifle up toward the ceiling just as a spray of bullets erupted from the muzzle. The rounds tore through the overhead lighting, raining sparks and shards of broken glass.
Then Nash was there. In one quick motion, he snatched the rifle out of the guard’s hands. Dutton stepped aside as the younger Merc opened fire into the doorway.
The Mercs had a gun now.
“Fairchild, look out!”
Reece’s warning came just in time. Fairchild turned her head, and Rook’s blade skewered the empty air where her face had been a nanosecond before. Bootknife. Should have known. Fairchild spun once, then crouched in a fighting stance, facing her adversary.
Rook was standing with the blade in her right hand. Her face was still stained with Nash’s cum, but she had already managed to clear the fluid from her right eye. Now, with the back of her free hand, she wiped the other side clean as well. There was blood too, from where Fairchild had butted her. It drew a red streak from the corner of her mouth.
“I’m going to enjoy gutting you,” she snarled.
Fairchild kept her attention focused on the woman, but she could see Reece out of the corner of her eye, watching.
“Help the others,” she said. “This bitch is mine.”
She could tell he didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. It was the right move. Nash was still mowing down guards in the corridor, and Dutton had retrieved a rifle of his own, but they would both be out of ammo soon, and there were still lots of guards left to kill. They needed Reece’s help more than she did.
Besides, revenge was the whole reason Fairchild had taken this mission in the first place. At the time, she’d thought that meantkilling Slayn—and it still did—but now she had an even bigger target to contend with. Slayn may have been responsible for killing her teammates, but Rook had betrayed them. And for a Merc, that was even worse.
Reece headed for the door.
The two women started to circle, keeping one of the metal slabs between them as they sized each other up. Rook had several advantages. Clothes, for one thing. A weapon for another. But Fairchild had practice fighting with her clothes off, and her anger was sharp as any blade.
Rook stabbed across the table, a flicker of steel in the half-light. Fairchild dodged out of the way and continued to circle.
A slash. Fairchild ducked beneath the gleaming blade, spun, and came up with a spinning kick. Her leg was just long enough to reach across the width of the slab. Her heel slammed into Rook’s jaw like a hammer.
Fairchild vaulted over the slab, going for the knife, but Rook recovered from the kick and rolled underneath, putting them on opposite sides again.
Rook wiped the blood from her mouth.
