Yeah. We’d have to get creative this time around since we’d killed people in front of the cops. But hopefully self-defense would work in our favor. Right now, I was more concerned about the rest of the women that they hung around with. Harlow and crew were too nosey for their own good.
We watched as she got into the cage and slowly drove away. “We have to go around the back way,” Cypher told the group. “If those deputies see us we’re going to get wrangled into giving statements while they fill out their damn reports all night. Or end up in their jail cells. Either is a possibility.” His eyes flashed in the headlights. “Let’s go get Pyre’s old lady back.”
Everyone piled into rigs, though this time Jury took the wheel, refusing to let me drive. I reloaded my rifle magazine as we drove, steeling myself for the fight ahead. Those motherfuckers better hope they hadn’t hurt my girl. If they had, they were going to have an even worse night than the one that was already ahead of them. I’d make each and every death slow and painful.
CHAPTER 28
Raeleen
“Ow,” I groaned as I woke up. The blinding pain in my head was throbbing in time with my heartbeat. But my heartwasbeating and I considered that a win.
“Here.”
Jerking at the sound of the voice near me, I peeked open my eyes and found Forge squatting there in front of me. He was holding out a bottle of water. I took it and drank nearly the whole thing in one go. “Where are we?”
We were in some kind of building. I didn’t recognize it, though the scent of lumber was heavy in the air.
“Old saw mill out off twenty.”
I focused on him again. “You seem to know your way around Sentinel.”
“Been here a lot over the last year,” he replied, standing up to his full height and forcing me to crane my neck.
I set the water down and started to stand up. The world took a lazy tumble and I had to slap a hand against the wall to keep from toppling over.
“Careful. You took a couple blows to the head tonight. I’m no doctor but you probably have a concussion.”
Nodding, I blinked hard a few times, trying to clear my vision. “Why did you try to help me?”
“Still helping you here, Lady.”
“But…why?” It wasn’t that I wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I didn’t understand and I needed to. “You killed your own men to protect me.”
He scoffed and shot me a disdainful look. “I’ve been waiting to kill those two assholes. Higgins is lucky he wasn’t down there with them or he’d be floating down the fucking river, too.” He twirled a knife in his hand absentmindedly, then tucked it away behind his back.
I had no idea who Higgins was. I shook my head in disbelief.
He sighed and scratched his chest absently. “I have…desires.” When I raised my eyebrows, he clarified, “Some people mistake them for a moral line.”
Before I could unpack that very ominous statement the door slammed open and a man eyed us with suspicion. “Forge you piece of shit! You were supposed to let Dunn know when she woke up-”
Forge snapped his arm out and the man’s words stopped as he started making a gurgling noise in his throat. He fell to his knees, hands scrabbling at his throat as he tried to pull the knife now embedded there out.
Forge’s hands were empty a second ago, I saw him put the knife away. I hadn’t even seen him grab the knife.
“Higgins,” Forge said by way of explanation as he jerked his chin at the dying man.
I stared at Forge in silent shock.
“No one ever said it was a straight line,” he told me with a grin, going back to our conversation before Higgins joined us. “It’s more of a…” He made a zig zag motion with his finger.
“Well…I’m grateful,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I watched in silence as he walked over to the dead body and pulled the knife out.
“That one doesn’t belong to you,” he told the dead body as he bent and cleaned the blade on Higgins’s shirt. “Don’t be grateful yet,” he said, turning toward me again. “We still have to get you out of here.”
“Okay. Is there a window we can crawl out of or something?”
His lip curled in disgust. “I’m not climbing out a window, Lady.”
