“Be good, bitch. Or I’ll cut out your tongue before we go anywhere.”
“Go ahead and try.” Dana got to her feet, dizzy, but standing under her own power. Yanking on her left index finger, she saw stars as the bones realigned, but took several quick steps away from Gravelly. The second finger was worse, and he managed to grab the front of her sweater, ripping the cotton from her shoulder halfway down her arm.
Dana rammed her knee into his balls, but he anticipated her move and threw her to one side so she only grazed him. “You think you can hurt me? You’re nothing. A little fly on the wall I’m going to crush.”
How long had it been since she’d talked to Terry? Pushing up onto an elbow, she got her legs under her, but fell over as soon as she put pressure on her left hand. Gravely’s knee pressed to her lower back, and even though she flailed wildly, he managed to capture her right wrist and pull it behind her. Before he could get a hold of her left, though, all hell broke loose.
16
Terry
Dana wasn’t answering him on comms. Raine and Flynn had been able to spot Otto’s second surveillance vehicle, and they’d waited ten full minutes with Terry growing increasingly frantic before Flynn had slipped out a panel in the van’s floor, raced around the block, and had taken out the single enforcer behind the wheel.
He couldn’t tell Dana they were coming in. In fact, he’d lied to her the last time he’d heard her voice. They had only been a few minutes away then, but even though Terry was certain Dana would have found a way to tell him if anyone else was listening in, Xavier wasn’t so sure.
So instead, moments before they’d breached the house, Terry had whispered her name. “Dana? Don’t give up. No matter what.”
He and X went through the front door with Raine and Flynn taking the rear. The old, run-down house on the outskirts of North Las Vegas looked abandoned save for the lights burning in three rooms on the main floor.
“Clear!” Terry called when they’d swept the main room, but gunfire came from the back of the house.
“Four hostiles,” Flynn said over comms. “Two down. Two headed for you.”
Xavier went left down the hall, and Terry pressed himself against the closest corner, gun trained on the kitchen. A bullet sent bits of plaster flying three inches to his right, and he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before executing a quick cornering move to drop a tall, angry-looking man with blond hair. The center mass shots would kill him in seconds from the amount of blood soaking into his gray shirt.
One left on this floor.
From below, Dana screamed, and in the moment of distraction, another man popped out from behind a narrow door. The impact hit Terry in the right shoulder, and fuck. It was like being run over by a freight train. Pain radiated down his arm, and the gun fell to the ground, his fingers numb.
Three more shots, and he flinched, expecting the hits, but there was only a weak groan and the sound of a body hitting the floor. “Clear,” Xavier snapped. “Kids and Dana must be downstairs. This is gonna be bad, mate.” He offered Terry a hand, pulled him to his feet, and ordered Flynn and Raine to search the outside of the house for basement access.
“Ready?” he asked Terry.
Flexing his fingers, Terry prayed he had the strength to shoot straight. The bullet hadn’t pierced his skin, but Kevlar didn’t protect from extreme bruising or broken bones. For Dana, he could stand the pain. “Go.”
X yanked open the door and shouted, “Otto Armin! Your men up here are all dead. Give yourself up and you’ll live.”
Dana’s cry shattered Terry’s control.
“If you do not toss your weapons down the stairs, the woman dies,” Otto said calmly. “You have five seconds. Four. Three…”
X nodded, and they both cleared their pistols and threw them into the basement.
“Now come down with your fingers laced behind your heads. Do it now.”
“Terry, don’t—” Dana’s desperate words were cut off, and a second later, he heard a muffled wail.
“I have to, sweetheart. I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” Terry went first, Xavier at his back. His leg was unsteady as fuck with all the adrenaline pumping through his system, but he managed to get all the way down without falling.
A large man had Dana held tightly against him, one hand over her mouth. Fuck. She looked so much worse than on the video. A split lip, swollen fingers, bloody wrists. Her hands were bound in front of her, the plastic stained red, and her sweater was torn at the shoulder.
Otto stood a few feet away, Micah kneeling before him, head down, a gun pressed to the back of his skull.
“Where are the other boys?” Terry asked.
“Somewhere you’ll never find them.” Otto jabbed the gun harder against Micah’s neck, and the teen whimpered.
Over comms, Raine snorted. “They were in the basement of the house next door. We’ve got ‘em. Ten kids, including the one who showed up at the motel.”
