Following the source of the smoke down the long, winding hallways of the house, I eventually found the door and lifted a foot to kick the door down.
Smoke billowed up from inside of the dark room.
“Lennon!” I bellowed, coughing as I stared inside.
Descending the stairs quickly, I found that the flames were climbing up the back wall of the basement and out of the window that she’d broken like she’d directed them that way. Smart girl.
But where the hell was she?
“Brooks?”
I turned, looking for the source of her voice.
And there she was, standing just behind the stairs with a l-shaped pipe gripped in her hands.
Letting my rifle hang at my waist, I swept her up in my arms and squeezed her to my chest. “Lennon.”
“I knew you guys would come for me,” she sobbed, her voice tiny.
“Of course, we promised you we always would,” I said, trying to catch a whiff of her scent underneath all of the dense smoke to reassure myself that she was real. “Now come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Pulling her fully into my arms, I climbed the steps back up into the hallway only to be immediately knocked upside the head by something hard.
My world spun as Lennon screamed my name.
A man in a vest stood over me, blood streaming down his face as he gripped a baseball bat.
“You fed-fucking bastards!” he shouted as he glared at me.
Lennon was on the ground next to me, her back against a wall as she glanced between me and the man, her fingers gripping the pipe.
I tried to shake my head, telling her not to do whatever she was thinking about doing.
He lifted the bat over his head again and I closed my eyes, hoping Lennon would close hers too.
Then I heard her feral scream and the man’s grunt.
“Leave. Him. Alone!”
Thud! Thud! Thud! Crunch!
The sound of her hitting the man over and over with the pipe filled the hallway mixed in with her heaving wails as I rolled onto my stomach and managed to get onto my knees, the world spinning around me.
I was definitely going to have a nasty concussion from taking a bat to the dome, but for now I needed to get Lennon out of here.
“Lennon, love,” I said as I hooked an arm around her waist. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”
“No, I’m so tired of this shit.” She continued to cry as she weakly brought the pipe down again, her hands and face covered in the guy’s blood.
“Shh,” I told her as I pulled her up in my arms and she let the pipe drop to the floor.
I barely gave the man a look as I stepped over his unmoving body because, frankly, he deserved it for being a part of kidnapping an innocent woman. I had no sympathy for an asshole like that.
Gunfire echoed in my ears as I moved through the house and bullets whizzed past us as agents overpowered the men and flames continued to steadily engulf the rest of the rooms, smoking out anyone who might have been hiding.
“Hell of a distraction,” I told Lennon once we stepped outside, my breathing suddenly catching as I felt a pain in my side like I had a cramp.
“Thanks,” she said quietly as she held on tightly to my neck, her tears wetting the skin. “My dad taught me to do that.”
