Crucible, p.39
CRUCIBLE, page 39
The adrenaline that had been rolling through me since I’d first realized me and the guys had been under attack, surged at his words, reaching a whole other level I hadn’t even known existed. It felt like my nerve-endings were on fire, sparking with such ferocious intensity. My pulse that’d been pounding in my ears since he’d slammed me up against the wall, faded into the background and a stillness took its place. A calm slicing through the storm.
Everything shifted into a crisp focus.
It was my instincts coming alive.
The panic Rick had sparked in me had opened the door to it. Just like during the invasion.
I felt the shift of the air before I saw the action, as he brought the syringe down.
I let that intense awareness take me.
My hand shot out, snagging his wrist an inch before it made contact.
His wide-eyed shock bought me the split-seconds I needed, and I thrust my knee up into his gut. He grunted, his abs absorbing most of it, but not enough to prevent him from jerking at the impact a little, his grip around my throat also weakening.
It was all I needed to rip his hand off my throat.
As he fell back slightly, I used the opportunity to spin into him, my back smashing into his front. I delivered a brutal chop to his inner forearm. His hold faltered just enough for me to rip the syringe from his grasp, spin it around, then plunge it into the side of his neck.
He slammed his hands into my chest.
But I’d already managed to press the plunger and deliver the sedative into his system.
As I staggered back, he growled, reaching up a shaking hand to pull it out of his neck.
I might’ve been able to save myself with a sneak attack, but I wasn’t fool enough to think that I could take the infamous Rick Walker down in a full-on hand-to-hand battle. His skill level completely eclipsed mine at present. As much as it killed me, I couldn’t go the fight route. The saner option was flight, the only chance of me making it through this.
I bolted for the front door, sprinting at top speed, almost tripping over my own two feet in my haste.
I fumbled to unlock it.
I was a hair’s breadth away from hauling it open and planning to hightail it to my car.
But then I was wrenched back by hands digging into my shoulders.
I lost my balance and crashed onto the stairs, crying out as my lower back slammed against the wooden step.
“You’re not leaving me!” Rick raged, stalking over.
Closer.
Closer.
And then he lunged.
I thrust my foot at him, my boot scraping across the side of his face.
He stumbled back.
It was all the window I needed to scramble to my feet.
He was blocking the way back down the stairs, either through the front door or the back door. But there was one other exit. It just wasn’t ideal.
I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
In the next second, he snagged my ankle and ripped it right out from under me. I grunted as I smashed onto the steps.
“You’re making it worse for yourself.”
I kicked back at him wildly, managing to dislodge myself from his grip.
Adrenaline propelled me onward, and I made it to the landing.
But the bastard was there all too soon again.
He was relentless! Too fast! Too skilled!
He grabbed my shoulders and hauled me through the open bathroom door.
I landed jarringly hard, skidding across the floor and smacking into the side of the bathtub.
Before I could even catch my breath, he was there, yanking me up by my hair, pain tearing through my scalp. He spun me into the full-length mirror adjacent to the door. It shattered at the impact, cutting into my head and face.
“Fucking well submit to me!” he roared, roughly releasing me.
“No,” I choked, slapping my hand to the sink to steady myself.
“You’re making me do this,” he said, closing the distance between us, his boots crunching on the broken glass all over the floor now.
“No one can make you do anything. You’re a fucking abusive psychopath all on your own.”
He snarled and got in my face, looming over me. “That’s the last time you’ll say anything like that. You brought it here. This is the way you want it, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll break you. All you’ll know is me, all you’ll feel is me. Nothing else will exist. I’ll make you love me. I’ll make you damn well worship me. And you’ll fucking well beg for it, for every fucking thing from me.”
A shudder rolled through me at his threats of psychological torture and twisted conditioning. With Rick it was always a promise. He didn’t just posture.
He reached out to touch me, but I reacted in time, batting his hand away.
“That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl! I never will be again! Stop this! Just stop all of this, Rick!” I screamed, everything finally slamming into me.
I’d been trying so hard to hold it together, to focus on dealing with one thing at a time, not lingering or allowing myself to think about anything else but the next step in front of me. Not the abuse, not the kidnapping, not his assault, not his twisted obsession that was doing everything it possibly could to ruin my life.
He roared, absolutely incensed.
And then his fist flew, coming right at my face.
I brought my arm down, deflecting it.
Next, I used the instability that a miss had caused him to take my own swing, my fist slamming into the side of his face. He grunted at the impact, and the ring he’d given me scraping across his cheek.
He pressed his hand to his cheek. When he drew it away, his palm was coated in blood. His stunned expression morphed to a pleasurable one. “Mmm, yeah, love your marks on me, darlin’. Don’t stop now.”
He shoved his hands into my chest, knocking back through the open bathroom door and into the corridor. He strode toward me as I jarred against the wall. “You never should’ve stopped our training.”
He swung at me then.
I brought my arm down, deflecting the blow.
Smiling with patronizing amusement, he took another shot.
When I managed to deflect again, he didn’t stop, picking up the pace and intensity instead, each move coming rapid-fire.
And, much to his frustration, I was able to meet him blow for blow.
I still couldn’t break through it, though, and manage to get in a hit.
We were at a standstill, just holding off one another’s blows, neither of us getting anywhere with it, still in the same position outside my bathroom.
Then he jumped back, breaking the standoff.
In the next second, he snarled and swept his leg at my ankles.
I leapt up, avoiding the attempted trip.
A smirk played on his lips a second before the awful realization that it had been his intention kicked in. Before I could land stably, he was there at the most vulnerable moment, rushing me and lunging at me in a football tackle. The brutal impact of his body weight slamming into mine and at speed too, ripped my feet out from under me. I lost my footing and we crashed down the stairs, him on top of me, every brutal slam of my body against the unforgiving wood of the steps magnified several times over.
When we finally came to a stop on the lower landing, I was sputtering and choking up blood.
Rick rolled off me and stumbled to his feet.
He just wouldn’t stay down. How was he doing this? He had a sedative running through his system as well. He’d said it was half the dose Adam usually used, but still.
It had to be a combination of the adrenaline and the primal part of him that was continuing to fuel him in spite of it all. He was virtually unstoppable.
And I clearly wasn’t.
Not at this stage of the game.
He was already up, while I was still lying in a pained heap, struggling to breathe with a sharp pain tearing through my side with every breath I tried to take.
I watched wearily as Rick took a brief beat, then made his way back to me. He pulled a pair of cuffs from his inner jacket pocket.
As I shuddered at the awful implications, he grinned. “Remembering the pair we used, or you worried what I might use them for now when you’re less… enthusiastic?”
“Hate… you,” I struggled to utter.
“Don’t worry, that’ll change sooner than you can imagine and then—”
His words caught in this throat.
He stilled, eyes narrowing in concentration.
And then he pulled his gun and spun toward the bay window.
He didn’t even get to cock it before the remaining glass pane shattered and then a bullet drove into Rick’s Desert Eagle, blowing it from his grasp. As it skidded across the living room floor, Rick tore open the front door.
“Hell of a shot!” he bellowed out into the night. “Clearly you, Adam! There’s no way you’re recovered enough after the beating I gave you to be field-ready! You know I’ll rip you apart if you come at me now! Let it go! Let her go! I’m taking her with me!”
There was no response.
He listened carefully, not moving a muscle, barely breathing, the intensity of the whole thing heightening to an unbearable level.
And then he abruptly jerked back, using the wall as cover.
A split-second later, a bullet bit into the door frame, taking a chunk out of it.
Holy shit.
“Whoo!” Rick exclaimed. “What a rush!”
Another bullet fired through the bay window, this time narrowly missing his shoulder.
“Damn!” he whooped, an unhinged laugh following.
I didn’t know how the hell Adam was even managing to make any of these shots. They were another level of skill, bending bullets it seemed. And the fact that he was managing to gauge Rick’s position each time too, given how fast and efficiently he moved… it was insane.
“Shame you can’t just get it over with and kill me, huh?” Rick called out. “We both know your real forte is using lethal force. But you’ve gotta be real careful here, not only to subdue me but to subdue me enough given what I’m capable of. It’s a fine line.” He laughed. “Damn, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. It’s impossible and you know it.” He slid his knife from his holster and spun it around in his hand. “I, on the other hand, don’t have that problem. I’ll give you one last shot to walk away for old time’s sakes, let me take my girl. Otherwise, you’re done. I won’t hold back. Final warning.”
Silence.
It stretched.
Rick was immersed in concentration, scanning what he could of the front of the house with his limited viewpoint in his current position.
Swallowing down a groan, I very carefully forced my body to move, against all rhyme and reason, against the pain tearing through me, the overwhelming need to stay down.
I managed to make it up onto my knees and without Rick even noticing, because he was so immersed trying to see through Adam’s subterfuge. I eyed the Desert Eagle on the floor at the far end of the living room about twenty feet away. Making it that distance seemed like a hell of a feat in my current state.
A shot rang out again, startling me, and pulling me up short.
This bullet smashed right through one of my dad’s vintage vases on a shelf parallel to the TV unit, driving into the wall behind it.
Another followed in the next couple of seconds, driving into the glass coffee table and smashing it to pieces, glass spraying all over the floor. I winced at the ear-piercing sound.
It didn’t stop either.
Shots fired all over the place.
All missing Rick by a mile now.
That maniacal laugh burst from the twisted shit again. “Wow! Told you, Adam, you aren’t field-ready! Can barely stand now, huh? Your hands shaking under the strain? Give it up!”
He thought the misses were a result of Adam losing it, not being able to bring it in his current state.
I didn’t think so. Not at all.
All those shots, while misses, had been strategic. They’d all caused a hell of a ruckus, chaos exploding forth. God, he was good. It was all a well-engineered distraction. He was trying to overwhelm and inundate Rick’s senses.
And it was working.
Rick’s twisted amusement disappeared. His eyes were darting around every which way, scanning outside, his urgency building. He actually looked worried. He was breathing heavily, blinking rapidly. It seemed he was finally feeling the effects of the sedative.
Another bullet ripped into the house, this time taking out a lamp on one of the end tables.
As Rick went to spin toward the bay window where it’d come from, he missed the shadow flitting across the door.
And then it happened.
Contact was made.
Adam lunged at him and pistol-whipped him across the side of the head and as Rick stumbled back, reeling, and disorientated, Adam hauled him across the threshold and out onto the deck.
Rick lobbed his knife.
Adam managed to dodge it by a hair as it drove into the side of the house.
Rick went at him, tackling him across the waist and slamming him into the adjacent wall right beside the front door. The agony flitting across his features had me grimacing, he was still recovering from his last hand-to-hand battle with Rick. A curse tore from his throat as Rick plunged his fist into his gut, then grabbed at his gun-wielding hand and slammed it against the house over and over.
Astonishingly, Adam didn’t break his grip through it all.
“Your stubbornness knows no bounds,” Rick gritted out, before socking him in the ribs, right where he was injured.
Adam choked and fought not to double over.
That effort was moot in the next second as Rick delivered another blow, this one more brutal than the last. It had Adam finally losing his grip on his Beretta.
Rick wrenched it out of his hand, then grasped Adam’s shoulders and hauled him off the side of the house. He spun into a roundhouse kick that propelled him down the porch steps. Adam landed painfully on his front at the bottom on the gravel driveway.
Rick yanked his knife out of the side of the house, then approached with that taunting, slow and methodical stride of his out in full force. “You’re being a real cunt about this.”
Adam spat out a mouthful of blood and forced himself to his knees.
Rick shook his head at him. “Unbelievable. You should’ve just let me go. You should stay down now too.” He spun his knife around in his hand. “What is it, huh? You like the pain? You need it, is that it? Does it make the atrocities you’ve committed hurt less?”
He scoffed and then took aim with Adam’s own gun.
Oh my God. He was actually going to kill him. Not just subdue as I’d thought would be the furthest he’d go against somebody he’d long considered not only a mentor, but a friend.
Fighting against the screaming protests from my spent body, I dragged myself across the floor toward Rick’s gun. Come on. Come on. Faster! Hurry!
“Don’t worry, almighty Commander, I’ll keep her nice and safe.”
“You overestimate your position,” Adam warned.
Rick laughed. “Seriously? You’re down, pretty much immobile. No weapons. I’ve got your own gun trained on you.”
“And you love to hear yourself talk. Wasting time.”
I finally reached the gun, my fingers closing around it.
With my free hand, I grabbed onto the couch, managing to avoid the glass shards littered over most of it.
Do it! Get up!
I pulled myself to my feet, using the furniture for support as I staggered over to the open front door.
When I reached it, I leaned against the frame, peering around as I cocked Rick’s gun, to see him scanning the area frantically.
I felt it too. Somebody else was nearby.
“Pauly!” he called out in the next second. “I can feel exactly where you are and there’s no way you can make that shot. You’re not Adam.”
“Stand down!” Paul called back.
Rick snickered. “Be smart. There’s a reason Adam doesn’t task you on the difficult ops.”
A shot rang out, but it was nowhere close to Rick, clipping a tree twenty feet away.
“Proving my point!” He shook his head and eyed Adam. “Good thing he’s got other talents.”
The shot may have seemed like a failure to Rick, but it had managed to distract him.
I was able to make it out onto the porch and take aim. Adam spotted me and I saw him struggle not to react, knowing Rick would register it. He gave a slight gesture, indicating for me not to go through with what I was about to do.
I had to.
I wouldn’t let him die.
I steadied myself, then fingered the trigger. My breath caught in my throat as Rick reacted in that rapid-fire instinctual way, sensing a threat, but not seeking out more intel, just like the incident with the kid.
He spun and threw his knife.
It cut through the air in a split-second, giving me no time at all to react.
It tore into my left shoulder, ripping me off my feet at the power he’d put behind it.
Adam roared.
I cried out as I hit the porch with a bone-jarring thud, landing on my back as my shoulder burned with searing pain.
“Fuck!” Rick cried, running to me and skidding to his knees. “Stay with me. Stay awake. Kara!” he called frantically. “No. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
My eyes were growing heavy, my breath coming in strained rasps.
I reached out to grasp the handle of the blade, but my limbs were too heavy.
Shit. I just… couldn’t.
Rick jumped to his feet, bellowing out into the night.
Then he spun and screamed at Adam, “Look what you made me do!”
I jolted as he fired off a shot.
A strained scream ripped from my throat as a bullet plunged into Adam’s chest.
