Chapter 20
Christian knew fear.
He’d lived with it most of his life. As a child, he had feared the men his mother had brought home. Feared that, even though Jessica Watson was about as nurturing as a chainsaw, she might die and leave him to fend for himself in a world that wasn’t kind to skinny, funny-eyed orphans. As an adult, he had feared what he would do with his life after theSAS fed him to the wolves. Then, more recently, he’d feared what would become of him after BKI closed its clandestine doors.
However, none of that had prepared him for the tsunami of terror that crashed over him when he felt a peanut butter and jelly sandwich squish under his foot at the same time a booming voice yelled from the front lawn, “I have the woman, and I won’t hesitate to put abullet in her brain!”
His heart stopped.
His lungs ceased to draw breath.
His vision tunneled until only darkness remained.
The sheer weight of the fear threatened to take him to his knees. He might have allowed himself to succumb if the first part of Wankstain’s instructions—oh, yes, he recognized that voice—had not demanded he remain on his feet.
Beat, beat, pause, he commandedhis heart.
Inhale, exhale, he ordered his lungs.
Blink and focus, he instructed his eyes.
When it seemed his recalcitrant body parts were back to doing their bloody jobs, he turned toward the front door. Any other time, he might have taken a moment to consider his options, but with Emily in the man’s clutches, he knew his only recourse was toobey.
“Holy duck fuck!” Ace snarledat the top of the stairs. Even through the darkness, Christian could see Ace was shirtless, his blond hair catching the moonlight streaming in through the windows. “Is that who I think it is?”
“None other.” Christian knew that if and when the time came, he was going to end the Wankstain Brothers. “Now, do as he says.”
Rusty joined Ace at the top of the stairs, and Christian didn’t waitaround to see if Angel had heard the shouted command. He resumed his journey toward the front door. Ten steps. That’s what it would take to get to there, but it felt like ten miles. Enough time for him to file away a mounting pile of regrets and recriminations.
He shouldnothave waited by the washing machine while it went through its fifteen-minute fast cycle. But he had fancied being ableto head upstairs, take out Angel’s condom, and use it on Emily with no distractions, no niggling thought that at some point he would need to traipse back down to the first floor and transfer the wet quilt into the dryer.
At the time, his plan had seemed capital. Now? Not so much. It meant he’d left her alone.
If he’d been by her side, he might have been able to fight off their aggressors.And, yes, he realized there wasn’t much he could offer in the way of defense against a loaded gun, but still… He should have been there with her—
His thoughts cut off when he reached the door. Wasting no time, he twisted its handle and threw it open. The breeze outside was cold, biting. It matched the ice that encased his heart when he saw Emily in the same position she had been in back atthe hangar’s car park. Head Honcho Wankstain was at her back, his big, meaty hand around her throat, a pistol pointed at her head.
Like a black hole, the matte charcoal of the weapon seem to draw all light toward it. Christian felt his breath get sucked out of him. Felt a gravitational pull to run across the yard and…what?
It’s not like Wankstain wouldn’t see him coming and either plughim before he made it ten steps or else make good on his threat to put a bullet in Emily’s brain. That last thought was enough to have Christian resisting the urge to fly to her side and instead hold his ground. But it didn’t stop his desire to see Wankstain six feet under.
A taste for killing was like a taste for hard liquor. Once you developed it, it never went away. The most you could hopeto do was control it. Christian thought he had done a brilliant job of controlling it over the years. Except for that time he’d gone in search of John J. Tully and his mouth full of rotten teeth, he had never had the urge to shed blood outside of battle.
He had that urge now. In fact, a hundred different ways he could end Wankstain’s life flashed through his head in rapid-fire order. All ofthem were painful and properly gruesome.
“I’m sorry!” Emily called despite Wankstain growling something, no doubt a threat, in her ear. “I was wrong earlier! It wasn’t Angel I saw in the woods; it was him!”
There was such anguish in her voice. Such self-condemnation. It stabbed at Christian’s heart like a carving knife, slicing the organ to pieces.
“Quite a show you put on for us too!”Wankstain shouted, his breath forming a frosty cloud in front of his face. “She’s a tasty little tart, ain’t she?”
Christian wanted to vomit at the thought of the men having seen Emily naked and vulnerable. And when Wankstain turned his head, pressing a wet, open-mouthed kiss on Emily’s cheek, a film of red fell over Christian’s vision.
“What do you want?” He didn’t raise his voice. Knewit would be carried out to the front lawn by his fury alone.
“What do Iwant?” Wankstain asked. “I want all of you out here! On this lawn!Now!Or the woman gets it!” As if to prove his point, he shoved his pistol so hard against Emily’s already bruised temple that she cried out in pain.
Before Christian knew what he was doing, he’d taken a step forward. Had Ace not come up behind himand slapped a hand on his shoulder, Vulcan neck-pinch style, he would’ve been off the flagstones, down the stairs, barreling toward Emily and her Cro-Magnon-looking captor, and damn the consequences to himself.
