“Hooah.” She pushes to her feet, and I reach into my holster for my backup piece.
“Take this. It’s got a full mag.”
“What’s that leave you with?” Her brow arched, Inara accepts the gun, checks the safety, and waits for me to answer.
“Enough to put a bullet in that blond shithead’s brain. Now go, soldier. That’s a goddamn order.”
By the time I manage to stand, she’s gone. Every breath is agony. Rounds to body armor hurt like a motherfucker and leave one hell of a bruise, but my ribs aren’t broken, and the wound in my arm is manageable. Compared to being burned with a blowtorch, almost anything is manageable.
Silently, I creep down the hall, weapon ready, listening for the slightest sound out of place between the alarm’s ear-piercing clangs. A creak of a floorboard. Heavy breathing. Four quick cracks sound from the first floor, then shouts. God, I hope they make it out. I hopeImake it out. Make it back to Wren.
Shut it down, Ry. Focus!
Directly under a metal speaker, the high-pitched wail makes me cringe, and I can’t hear a fucking thing. I have to get to the fourth floor. If Kolya’s anywhere, he’s there.
With a quick check of the stairwell, I take off at a sprint, pausing only for a moment on the landing to check above me for any movement. Nothing.
Until I clear the last step to the third floor, and the barrel of a gun presses to my temple.
“You took my precious ruby away,” a heavily accented voice says.
Kolya. Fuck.
“Drop the weapon, face the wall, and lace your hands behind your head. If you believe in God, big man, you should tell him you are coming to meet him.”
44
Wren
Almost there. I tune everything out, my focus on the screen in front of me. And the progress bar creeping along at a snail’s pace. Eighty-five percent. Eighty-six. Eighty-seven.
“Please, please, please…” I’m a cliché again, but I don’t care. Another few seconds and we’ll have comms, and by then…maybe West will be back for me.
Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine.
Kolya’s encryption falls away, and I scramble for a terminal window, starting the shut-down process. The machine throws up another password prompt, and my heart seizes in my chest. No.
Get it together, Firefly.
I can almost hear Z urging me on, and his voice in my head helps calm me down. Digging into my bag of tricks—all the data I stole from him over the course of the past two days—I let my password cracker go to work.
“Cyka!”The growl from behind me turns my blood to ice in my veins. Blondie. His hand wraps around my hair, yanking me to my feet and hauling me against him. “Boss will be very happy to see you again.”
“Let…me…go,” I scream and try to elbow him in the ribs, but he spins me around and shoves me into the wall hard enough to daze me. I crumple to the ground, and before I can get my legs under me, he grabs my wrists in one beefy hand and slides a zip tie around them with the other. The plastic bites into my skin—hard, and I cry out, feeling my life slip away with every pulse of pain. I can’t survive Kolya again.
Blondie grabs the tablet and thrusts it into my bag, loops the long strap over my head and around my neck, and uses it like a leash. “We go see boss now. You fight me, and maybe I do what he could not.” His cold, blue eyes bore into me, and nausea churns in my belly.
If Kolya gets his hands on me, he’ll do what he couldn’t back in his bedroom. He’ll destroy me. I’ll never be…me again. I won’t have Ryker. Won’t care either. A sob wells in my throat, but the strap digs into my neck and burns, and the sound comes out closer to a squeak as Blondie yanks—hard—and I almost go down.
“You want me to teach you lesson now? I can do that.”
“N-no…Kolya,” I say, my voice barely audible, “can make me…feel good.”
It’ll be better…won’t it? If he brings me back to Kolya rather than destroy everything I am here? Now? Kolya wants me docile. Wants me dependent. Maybe he’ll take the pain away first. Blondie won’t give me that.
Hold onto something real.
Ryker’s real. But…is he even still alive? Wheezing breaths scrape over my throat, and the walls start to spin and tilt around me. Tears burn my cheeks as Blondie drags me into the elevator and punches the button for the fourth floor. Twisting my hands, I use the pain to keep me focused, try to feel my pulse under the plastic, count the beats.
