It hit her then. He’d come in alone.
Oh, shit a brick. Now she was on the verge of crying again. “S-sorry,” she sniffled, calling herself ten kinds of sniveling, soggy, want-to-kick-her-own-ass damsel-in-distress. Yuck.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he assured her, flicking the knife open with a snick. The blade gleamed menacingly under the fluorescent lights. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I should never have left you alone.”
She’d thought it wasn’t possible for her to love him more. But in the moment, she did.
He didn’t waste any time putting the knife to use on the restraints around her wrists. She couldn’t help herself. She turned her face into his neck and breathed him in. All those pheromones and that sweet bad-boy smell.
“No, I sh-should apologize. I’m the one who g-got you into this mess. I’m the one who l-lied.” Her voice was muffled against his warm skin. When her hands came free, the first thing she did was try to wrap her arms around him and hold him close. To her surprise and consternation, she hugged nothing but air. He was down on his haunches, using his knife to cut through the duct tape around her calves.
“When did you lie?” he whispered, never looking up, concentrating on the task at hand. He was sawing one-handed because he refused to drop his weapon.
She wanted to run her fingers through his hair but didn’t dare distract him. Instead, she gripped the edge of the pool table and gritted her teeth when he ripped the tape and barstool leg off her right leg.
“When I told you I wouldn’t leave my desk and—”
He shushed her, cocking an ear to the sirens that were coming closer every second. “Let’s both agree to be sorry that any of this happened and leave it at that.” Rrrrrip! The second barstool leg came free, and Samantha felt like a weight had been lifted. The last vestiges of Venom and what he’d intended to do to her were gone.
Ozzie was up in a flash, grabbing her waist to hoist her from the table. Her legs wobbled when he set her down in front of Venom’s lifeless body. Even though he was dead, she could feel the evil presence of the biker at her feet. And her silly heart ran a never-ending race as the electric squeal of the sirens grew to eardrum-bursting levels. The sound of car doors slamming was unmistakable.
Before they were overrun by the law and made to answer questions and give statements, she had one thing she had to make absolutely clear. It couldn’t wait another second. She couldn’t wait another second. Her fingers shook when she grabbed his leather-clad arm. “Ozzie, I—”
That’s all she managed before the door separating the flower shop from the basement burst open with a bang. The douchecanoe from earlier stood in the threshold. And he wasn’t alone. He had a mean-looking handgun with him. It was aimed straight at Samantha’s head.
Her heart had just enough time to trip over itself before Ozzie yelled, “No!” and stepped in front of her, lifting his weapon and pulling the trigger.
A massive roar of sound filled the room, and something hot and sticky sprayed across Samantha’s face, making her wince. When she blinked open her eyes, it was to see two things. The first was the asswipe on the top step dropping dead from the bullet that entered below his left eye and exploded out the back of his head, splattering blood and brain matter onto the door. His lifeless body crumpled like a rag doll, hitting the stairs and tumbling into the basement. The second thing was Ozzie going down on one knee like his bad leg had given out on him. He made a sound. It was a cross between a puff of air and a moan. What happened next seemed to be in slow motion.
He toppled forward, seeming to take forever to hit the concrete floor and lie motionless. Police burst in through the door to the flower shop, weapons up and aimed. Someone was screaming their head off, but it was a dull sound, muted like a shout through a goose-down pillow.
Then time righted itself. The world righted itself. And Samantha realized she was the one shrieking like a banshee.
She hit the ground at Ozzie’s side, her knees crying out in agony. She paid them no heed. After all, it was her heart that was the problem. It had stopped beating the moment she saw the pool of blood growing on the floor beneath Ozzie’s head.
It hadn’t been one massive roar of sound that filled the room, but two booming shots as both men discharged their weapons simultaneously. And that hot spray she had felt? It was Ozzie’s blood.
“No! No, no!” She screamed, struggling to breathe while simultaneously attempting to turn him over. His big body weighed a thousand pounds, but finally, she managed it.
Is he breathing? She couldn’t tell. His eyes were closed. His mouth hung slightly open. And there was blood—a lot of blood—smeared along the left side of his face, matting his hair in a gruesome crimson tangle and running down to stain his beard.
“Ozzie!” She pulled his bloody head into her lap and shook his shoulders. “Ozzie! Ozzie!” she shrieked his name over and over until her vocal cords shredded. She angrily shook off the hands that tried to grab her and lift her away, instead rocking Ozzie’s limp body.
She had survived her father’s murder, two kidnappings, and Venom’s assault. But she wouldn’t survive this. The pain of this would kill her.
Then…he moved. Or at least she thought he did.
“Ozzie!” she yelled for the bazillionth time, touching his face.
One brilliant blue eye popped open. Then another. She brushed away some of the blood from his cheeks and brow.
He seemed to have trouble focusing on her. Lifting a hand to his temple, he pushed back his hair to finger the shallow groove of raw flesh where the bullet had grazed his head.
“Oh, Ozzie!” She cupped his wonderful face in her hands. His whiskers tickled her palms. The heat from his tan skin reassured her.
Then he said the most wonderful, welcome word she’d ever heard. “Ow.”
