Page 87 of Elite Metal: Warriors

No. He wouldn’t. “Are all your employees tagged?”

“Naturally.”

Lovely.

“Now. Where is the file?”

She pretended to hesitate, but not for long. Then she gusted a sigh and said, “Back at the cabin.”

Ralley stared at her. Then he whirled on Jonas and slammed his fist into the other man’s cheek. “You dumbass. Did you not even search?”

“Shit.” Jonas held his cheek and glared at Ralley. “You said you wanted her.”

“You knew we needed the file.”

“We’ll send the men back for it.” He waved his hand at the other two goons. They were both scowling at her now, as though they wanted to kill her too. But honestly, it was hardly her fault they’d screwed up.

Also, they could take a fucking number.

“Where is the file?” Ralley snapped.

Michelle nibbled her lips in feigned resistance. She didn’t expect Ralley to bury his fist in her belly. It knocked the breath from her. “The soldier had it,” she wheezed. “In his pocket.”

Ralley nodded at the two men and they skulked out of the hangar. As they rounded the corner and disappeared from sight, Michelle heard a slight whizzing sound and a thump. She coughed and then coughed again.

It might be naïve of her think she could cover up the sound of two grown men falling to the ground a hundred yards away, but the distraction seemed to work.

“You’d better not be lying,” Jonas said, twirling his knife some more. Like it was supposed to be impressive or something. Like it was supposed to scare her.

“I’m not lying.” Nope. It was the truth. Ben had taken the file. And it was in his pocket.

It just wasn’t the file they wanted.

And he wasn’t at the cabin.

Thank God. Thank God he was—

Something zinged past, creating a disturbance in the air around her. A plop. Then something red and wet spattered her cheek. She was vaguely aware of a groan to her side and the fall of something heavy. She glanced over to where Jonas had been.

He was gone.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, part of him was gone.

The face part.

He lay in an awkward pile on the cement floor. A red pool formed about his head.

She barely had time to process his death, the gore, her unsettling relief, when Ralley grabbed her from behind and put the barrel of his pistol to her temple.

“Not another step,” he called.

Nerves humming, Michelle glanced up, toward Ben, where he stood in the door, backlit by blinding sunlight, with his hands raised.

And her heart dropped.

Not because Ralley had a gun to her head…but because she realized it wasn’t Ben. It was some other man. A warrior, like him, but not him.

Agony and grief roiled through her anew. She’d been mistaken. She had to have been.