It was difficult pretending to be a damsel in distress when all Jes wanted to do was run upstairs to help Jake and Misty. From what she’d heard over the radio, it was obvious they were in trouble. Misty was locked in some kind of trance and Jake was fighting for his life. It didn’t get more serious than that. Unfortunately, Darby had moved to stand in the doorway and was blocking her path. From the way he was calmly talking on his cell phone, it didn’t look like he intended to leave anytime soon.
Jes was beginning to think the only way to get him to leave was to take him down when the whole manor shook from a second blast.
Muttering a curse, Darby turned to her. “I need to check on what’s going on out there and I think it would be safer for you to stay here, Rose.” He must have thought that sounded alarming because he held up a hand in a placating gesture. “There’s nothing to be concerned about, of course. I’m simply being careful.”
When she promised to stay where she was, he gave her a nod, then turned and left the room, moving down the hallway at a rapid pace. She darted to the door to watch him go, breathing a sigh of relief when he headed downstairs, toward the explosion, instead of upstairs, toward Jake and Misty.
Jes silently counted to ten, then kicked off her high heels and took off running for the stairs.
“On the way, Jake,” she said into the radio, praying she got there in time to help.
She hit the steps at a dead run, grateful for the long slit up the side of the gown that allowed her to move fast. When she got to the top, she slid to a stop.
The hallway was filled with a freaking army of Darby’s guards, including that big bastard Damien. He and five other men were crowded around a room halfway down, and based on the flashbang grenades two of them were holding, they intended to charge inside.
“Flashbangs coming through the door, Jake,” Jes said softly into her mic, hoping he heard the warning.
The words were barely out of her mouth before the men tossed the grenades into the room. There were two flashes of bright light, followed by two loud bangs, then all six of the men charged forward, guns blazing.
From the way some of them ducked, Jake had gotten his hands on a gun and was returning fire.
If she expected to help him and Misty, she was going to need a weapon, too.
Jes sprinted down the hall without giving it a second thought. Grabbing the last man through the door by the collar of his jacket, she yanked him backward, flipping him over her hip and slamming him to the floor before he knew what was happening.
Balling her hand into a fist, she punched him in the throat hard enough to stun him, then ripped his pistol out of his grasp while he was gasping for air. Refusing to think about the brutality of the situation, she placed the barrel of the large-caliber automatic against the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. In this position, the recoil of the big weapon was ferocious, but she ignored it—and the resulting blood—focusing instead on snagging the extra magazine from the man’s underarm holster.
Getting to her feet, she approached the room carefully. The last thing she needed was to catch a stray round from one of the guards—or Jake.
Pressing her back against the wall outside the open door, Jes darted to take a quick look inside. The room was filled with acrid smoke from the flashbangs, but she could still see the dead bodies strewn across the floor. Jake and Misty were nowhere in sight and something told her they’d taken cover behind the heavy desk that was flipped over.
The piece of furniture was thick enough to stop the spray of bullets the men were popping off, but the gunfire was so intense Jake couldn’t even try and get off a shot in return. Since the bad guys were already spreading wide to circle around and come at the desk from both sides, the situation was only going to get worse.
What if Jake had already been hit?
That thought scared the hell out of her. She’d heard a werewolf could absorb a lot of damage, but how much was too much?
“Backup’s arrived,” Jes announced loud enough for Jake to hear her in his earbud, even over the gunfire, then took aim and started shooting.
The moment the men realized someone was coming at them from behind, they turned their weapons on her. At the same time, Jake popped up from behind the desk and began blazing away with the automatic in his hand. Bodies started dropping under the combined effort.
Jes was sure they’d gained the upper hand, but then a flashbang came at her through the light haze of smoke still filling the room from the previous ones. Cursing, she leaped back into the hallway to keep it from blowing up right in her face. She hit the floor hard, the air getting knocked out of her. Ears ringing, she scrambled around and lifted her pistol, knowing a bad guy would be coming to finish her.
But no one did. A moment later, the shooting stopped. It was immediately replaced with a roar and a growl that seemed to echo through the house and make the entire third floor vibrate.
Jes quickly climbed to her feet, only to fall on her butt again as Jake and Damien crashed through the wall. Somewhere along the way, they’d lost their weapons and were now locked in hand-to-hand combat, like two enraged monsters. Jake wasn’t the only one with claws, either. Damien had them, too.
Jake had been sure the creature that had attacked Jaime and Neal wasn’t a werewolf, but seeing Damien fight, she was beginning to think Jake had been wrong.
Jes got up on one knee, trying to get a shot at Damien, but he and Jake were moving way too fast as they smashed each other into first one side of the hallway, then the other, fists slamming into their opponent so hard she could hear bones break.
She was about to say the hell with it and take a shot at Damien regardless of the risk, but then he slung Jake bodily across the hall, bouncing him off the wall. Even though it had to hurt, Jake immediately jumped to his feet and kicked Damien in the center of his chest, shoving him halfway down the hallway.
Jes didn’t waste the opportunity. Lifting her weapon, she emptied the remainder of her magazine in the man’s chest. Damien flew backward from the impact of all those rounds hitting, slamming into the floor so hard she felt it. She didn’t give a crap if he was a werewolf. That many bullets through the center of his chest had to mean he was freaking dead.
Dropping the spent clip, she quickly slammed a new magazine in and chambered a round. The son of a bitch had killed Jaime and Neal and tried to do the same to Jake. It took everything in her not to put all the bullets in the fresh magazine into him. The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that she might need them if they had to fight their way out of the manor.
She was so focused on keeping her weapon trained on Damien where he lay on the floor, she didn’t even realize Jake had disappeared back into the room until he ran out with a limp Misty in his arms. Jes’s heart sank like a stone.
