When he guards, p.22
When He Guards, page 22
He remained focused on the scene out front. “My job is to make sure you don’t get out this door. Bear can handle himself.” Then, “Shit, Cass has his gun pressed to the idiot’s chest.”
What? To her brother’s chest? After Ryan had signed that she was his sister? No, no, no. Agnes backed away from the window, moving with silent steps. Javion had now opened the front door wider, and the man was clearly thinking about rushing out to help Cass. Though, from the sound of things, Cass didn’t need help.
Her brother did.
Agnes pivoted on her heel and went creeping down the hallway. She reached the storage room and—
The shop’s back door hung open.
Her gaze darted around the storage room. Raz wasn’t there. No sign of the tattoo artist. And Bear had his back to her as he braced his big hands on a nearby counter.
So, she could just slip right on out that open door, except… “Where is Raz?”
“I let him go.” Low.
What?
“Seeing as how he covered for me and kept my secrets, his job was done.”
Covered for me and kept my secrets. Shit. Shit.
“Well, not quite done. He is getting the van ready for transport.” He glanced over his shoulder. “So I guess he hasn’t really gone that far yet.”
Her darting gaze looked for a weapon even as she opened her mouth to scream.
But Bear was on her in an instant. For someone so big, he sure could move incredibly fast. One massive hand clamped down over her mouth and her nose, and the bastard cut off her air. Enraged, desperate, she kicked at him. She punched. She clawed.
“I outweigh you by an easy one fifty, FBI Agent. And, unlike Cass, I’m not fucking you, so I don’t particularly care if I hurt you.”
Newsflash, she didn’t particularly care if she hurt him, either. So her frantic fingers stopped punching and clawing at him, and she grabbed for the hammer she’d just spotted hanging on the wall near his head. She could almost reach it…almost…
“You’re gonna say night, night,” he told her.
Night, night? What was she? Two?
“And when you wake up…”
Oh, wait, she got to wake up? She’d figured he was just intending to kill her then and there.
I need air. I need to breathe. She’d almost reached the handle of that hammer. Almost…
“You’re gonna be in hell. He’s gonna stab you again and again. He’ll finish the job he started. Wants to do it personally because you have really pissed him off.”
She touched the hammer even as black dots swirled before her eyes.
“And then Cass will come and find your bloody body. Think he’ll lose his mind?”
She swung the hammer and brought it careening toward his head. I’ll make you lose your mind.
“You fucking bitch!”
His grip loosened. She fell to the floor on boneless legs and sucked in air, but she couldn’t suck in air and scream at the same time. He plowed his big boot into her stomach, making her wretch and choke as she tried to breathe. She swung out the hammer that she still clasped. It hit him in the knee, and he almost went down. Hell, yes. Now she just had to—
“Night, night, bitch,” he snarled. His big hands came at her again. Slapping over her mouth and nose. No air. No freedom.
Darkness.
She didn’t even feel it when the hammer fell from her grasp.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cass pressed the muzzle of his gun into the stranger’s chest. A stranger who’d just signed that Agnes was his sister. Cass was pretty sure the bastard had signed just to prove how much he knew about Cass. Proving you know all my secrets, you bastard? “You don’t look a damn thing like her.”
“Um. Aren’t genetics fun that way?”
Was this jerk truly her brother?
“This is how the scene will work,” the man told him. No accent touched his words. “You’re going to take me inside. You’re going to let me see her. You’re going to let me take her away.”
“No.” Just that. To all three orders. As if this jerk would order him around. “You’re not the one in charge here.” But it was fun that the guy had confidence. Sort of the same wild confidence that Agnes so often possessed.
But while Cass loved a confident Agnes, this guy just annoyed the hell out of him.
You’re going to let me take her away. Nope. Not happening. No one was taking her away.
“Your enemies are gonna kill her.” Flat. “They don’t buy that she’s turned away from the Feds. Or maybe they don’t care. She stays with you, and she is dead. Do you hear me? Dead.”
A black van hurtled away from the shopping center, with its tires screeching. What in the hell?
His eyes narrowed.
“Cass!” Javion’s shout. “Cass, she’s gone!”
“He better not be talking about Agnes,” his new enemy snarled.
Cass whirled toward Javion.
“Gone!” Javion bellowed as he launched out of the tattoo parlor. “She snuck to the back of the shop, and I—shit…” He rushed to Cass, breathing hard. Blood dripped from his cracked lip. “Bear took her. She wasn’t moving, man.”
“You’re dead,” the man claiming to be Agnes’s brother fired at Cass. “Dead.” He shoved past Cass and ran toward the tattoo shop.
Cass still gripped his gun with his right hand. With his left, he grabbed Javion’s shirtfront and hauled him forward.
“She’s not in there!” Javion spoke quickly. “He was hauling her out back, toward a van. I tried to stop Bear, but he punched me—you know how damn hard he hits. I blacked out a second, and when I got up, shit…he was hauling ass and…she wasn’t moving. I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry. I’m personally responsible and—”
Cass’s bellow of rage cut through Javion’s words. All of his crew members surged toward him. “The van!” he roared at them. “Track it. Find it. Stop it. Now.”
Men leapt onto their cycles. Engines growled and howled, and Cass jerked on the t-shirt he still held. He gripped the gun and jumped on his own motorcycle.
The stranger with the dark hair flew out of the tattoo shop. He raced toward Cass even as Cass throttled his motorcycle. The prick launched into his path.
Cass nearly mowed the dumbass down right then and there.
“Blood is on a hammer!” The man’s eyes were wild. “What did you do? What did you do to Agnes?”
What had he done? Failed to protect her. Let her fall into dangerous hands. Served her right up to the monsters from his past because it sure as hell seemed that Raz and Bear were working together.
I am so sick of this two-headed cobra shit. Traitors, everywhere he turned. “I’m cutting off the head of the freaking snake. And I don’t care if it’s a dead man’s head or not.”
The guy gaped at him. “Are you crazy?”
Maybe. “Move or get run over.”
He moved. He also whipped out a phone. “Tell me you have eyes on the black van that just left,” he blasted into the phone. “Tell me, tell me…”
Cass tensed. His feet slammed into the ground. His whole body vibrated.
“Yeah, I think she’s inside the van.” The man’s gaze flickered to Cass. “But I don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”
That was the moment when rage completely took over. Cass didn’t know who the guy was talking to on the other end of the line. Maybe a Fed. Maybe someone connected to Gray or Agnes. What he did know…
Alive. She has to be alive. Because if she wasn’t, if Bear or Raz had killed her…
I will slaughter them. They will beg for mercy.
“Stay on them. Give us directions. I’m getting the Strikers, and we’re coming after them,” the man said into his phone. But then he glared at Cass. “Are there any actual Strikers we can trust? Because I damn well know that Bear jackass the other guy was yelling about—I know Bear was one of yours.”
This guy knew far too much about him. And his crew.
“And he took Agnes?” Rage twisted the man’s features. “He took her?”
Yeah, according to Javion, Bear had. Cass’s fury threatened to burn away his very flesh.
“I got eyes on the van,” the man said. “Let’s go get her the hell back.” He leapt onto his motorcycle. They roared away together.
Bear is a dead man. But Agnes, she has to be alive. She has to be.
Because she was the only good thing he had in his world. The one bit of brightness that had come to him. She’d said that she was falling in love with him.
He’d said nothing in return. But the truth was…
If I could love, I would love her.
But monsters didn’t love. They just destroyed. He was ready to destroy for her.
Hard fingers squeezed her jaw. “You’re not dead.”
Agnes cracked open her eyes. Her body jumped, bumped, and hit the rough metal beneath her. Because I’m in a freaking van. She could see the metal outline above the hulking figure of Bear as he crouched over her. Light poured from the front of the vehicle. Probably coming from the front windshield. The one window she could see in the back was tinted.
“I was worried I’d stopped your breaths for too long. Thought you might be dead.” His head tilted. “You’re not dead.”
No, she was not. She was very pissed off. Her hands lifted. Duct taped. Really? The tape bit tightly into her skin, threatening to cut off her circulation.
The van swerved. Hit a pothole. Her body bumped again.
“We got a motorcycle behind us!” A shout from the front of the van. From Raz. She recognized his voice. “He’s been tailing me ever since I pulled out of the lot! Sonofabitch!”
“Fuck,” Bear bit out. “I told your fool-ass to leave softly. Softly does not mean hauling ass with tires squealing, you moron! They would never have known if you had just left softly.”
“You’re the one who attacked Javion. What the hell did you think that jerk was gonna do? Not go running straight to Cass?”
She was trying to assess the situation. What she’d figured out…Her hands were duct taped. So were her ankles. She’d somehow lost her shoes, and she had no idea where those were. Also…zero weapons. She had zero weapons. Oh, what she would not give for a hammer or for a gun.
“The motorcycle is getting closer! That bastard is right on my ass!” Raz yelled. “Do something! He’s—oh, shit, he has a gun! He has a gun! He’s gonna come up beside us and—he has a gun!”
“Don’t go anywhere, would you?” Bear growled at her. Then he laughed.
His joke had not been funny.
He maneuvered to the back of the van, and he threw the doors open. Cold air whipped inside the van, and she twisted and rolled so that she could look back. She saw a motorcycle rider. One who was aiming a gun at the van, at Bear.
“He’s not a Striker.” Fury coated Bear’s words. “Who the hell is this guy?”
Bam.
He was a man who’d just shot at Bear. Missed him by inches.
“Do something about him!” Raz screeched.
Bear fired back. He’d yanked a gun from his waistband, and he fired once, twice. The man on the motorcycle swerved and darted, and she was pretty sure both shots from Bear had missed the rider. About seventy-percent sure, anyway.
In the next instant, one of Bear’s giant hands grabbed for her, he yanked her up and hauled her in front of him.
Fantastic. Now she was a human shield.
“You shoot at me, you’ll hit her!” Bear roared. “Cass will kill you for hitting his woman!”
“Yeah,” she snapped as she twisted her hands in the stupid tape. She could barely feel her fingertips. “What do you think Cass is going to do to you, Bear?”
But the man on the motorcycle had fallen back, and he’d lowered his gun. He was clearly afraid of hitting her. And too much distance was now getting between the van and the rider. She could hear other motorcycles growling, but they were too far away for her to see them clearly. Raz was flooring the van. It was bumping and shaking, and she was only upright because of Bear’s grip on her. One wrong move, and she’d be falling out of the van.
Or he will be.
“Cass won’t do anything to me. He’ll be too out of his mind when he finds your body.” Bear fired his gun again. The blast was sent from right near her ear, and she screamed because Agnes was pretty sure the sonofabitch had just busted her ear drum.
And then…he laughed.
She could barely hear him over the loud ringing in her head and that just infuriated her all the more. “Enough,” she snapped. She couldn’t maneuver her feet behind him to trip him. Her ankles were bound and she was basically just dangling in front of him. But she wasn’t just going to be a good little kidnap victim and let him haul her away to some brutal kill scene. “You don’t go to secondary sites.” That was like, FBI 101. “Victims taken to secondary sites have over a ninety percent chance of getting murdered.”
“You have a one hundred percent chance of getting murdered!”
At least, that was what she thought he said. And since the bastard was planning to kill her anyway… “I’ll choose my own exit, thanks.” Hers, and his. And maybe his massive bulk would cushion her, and she’d somehow make it out of this mess.
The motorcycle driver suddenly revved forward. He flipped up his visor. “Agnes!”
Her heart froze in her chest. She could see his face. A face she knew and loved. Of course, her brother Nash would not be far away from Ryan. Her brothers were always close. Had been the best of friends from the day that Nash had walked into their house as a scared and far too thin thirteen-year-old. And was she really surprised that Nash had found her? Her brothers were always looking out for her. It was what good, big brothers would do.
“I’m shooting that sonofabitch,” Bear vowed.
No, he wasn’t. No one hurt her brother. She launched her body forward, out of the van, heaving with all of her strength. And because he was holding onto her with one arm, he had one ham fist tight around her even as he gripped the gun in his right hand, Bear was whipped forward, too.
Her bound hands flew toward the side, toward the open van door with its handle that she could see. She was leaping for that door, hoping that, somehow, she could grab the handle and hold on, and even if she didn’t, then maybe Bear would cushion her fall.
Or, worst case, he’d die…and her brother would be safe.
Bear will die…and I might just die, too.
She grabbed for the handle, a desperate lunge. She actually managed to catch the handle, and her sweaty fingers tightened around it desperately, but Bear…he would not let her go. His grip tightened. That powerful grip yanked her away from the handle. They were both falling, tumbling down, slamming out of the van, and flying toward the pavement.
Agnes didn’t have a chance to brace for impact.
He hit the ground first.
She dropped on top of him.
“Agnes!”
Her brother Nash’s scream.
Cass saw her fly out the back of the van. The back of the moving van. The doors opened. Cass was racing after the van as fast as he could. Her brother—the guy had said his name was Ryan—had been given directions by whoever had eyes on the vehicle. Another motorcycle rider.
He and Ryan had chased after the van, and just when Cass got it in his sights…
The van’s rear doors flew open. Bear fired his gun at the rider Ryan had sent to tail the van. And then, as Cass pushed his motorcycle desperately forward and strained to see, Bear grabbed Agnes. He dangled her in front of his body. Cass could barely make out her form as he forced his bike to go faster and faster and faster and…
She jumped. Hurtled forward. Agnes seemed to grab and hold onto the open, right door for one, stark moment.
He roared her name even as someone else screamed it.
And Bear dragged her down because when she’d leapt forward, he’d lost his balance. Bear was falling, too, and Bear hauled her down with him. Bear slammed into the pavement. She crashed on top of him. They both fucking bounced, their bodies careening. The van’s tires squealed as it sped away.
Cass almost lost control of his bike as he stared at Agnes in horror. Agnes, now partially sprawled on Bear. Not moving.
Agnes…dead?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Oh, she hurt. Hurt so incredibly badly. Her left shoulder. Her left forearm. Her left knee. That whole side of her body hurt. She was also pretty sure that she—and the cushion for her that had been Bear—had bounced after hitting the pavement. Had they bounced once? Maybe twice? Agnes hadn’t even realized that a human body could bounce that way, not when it slammed into the unforgiving pavement.
“Agnes!”
There were lots of yells going on. Lots of squealing tires. She could smell burnt rubber. And she really, really hurt. But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? If she hurt, then she was alive. Also, bonus, the ringing in her ears had stopped. So that meant no busted ear drum. Maybe?
“No, dammit, Ryan!” Another shout that she clearly heard. Nash’s shout. “Don’t stop! Stay on your bike! I’ve got her!” Hands fluttered around her. “Get after that van and the driver! Now, now!”
More roaring of a motorcycle.
Her eyes cracked open. She tried to push up. Only to have immediate, excruciating pain fly through her left shoulder and down her arm. A moan slipped from her.
She stared down and saw Bear’s neck. Bear’s face. His closed eyes. Was he breathing? As she focused, she realized there was a whole lot of blood spreading beneath his head.
“I’ve got you, baby,” a familiar voice promised as strong, but gentle fingers slid over her shoulder. The same voice that had yelled for Ryan to keep going. Her other brother, Nash.
Nash was talking. So Nash was okay. That was good. She loved Nash. He was a great brother.
But his touch was hurting her. “St-stop…”
“Agnes!” A roar. And…a crash. She wanted to turn her head toward both sounds, but she was currently trying to breathe through some pain.
