“Let’emBurn”—NothingMore
Talk about fucking with someone’s head. If I wasn’t screwed up enough about my identity before, the shit I’d learned was enough to finish the job. The entire time in witness protection, I learned to reinvent myself. The one piece of sanity I held onto was the life I’d had before it had gone to shit.
Now, I didn’t even have that.
Though I always knew my parents loved me, I wasn’t theirs and they didn’t tell me. My mother died before I had a chance to know her. I had a right to know the truth. Instead, I was left feeling it was all a lie.
Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies.
Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled to get the chant to go away. All that could wait. I’d process it later. The matter at hand was a bit more pressing.
I’d always been a little claustrophobic, and it wasn’t helping that I wasn’t truly being held in the cell in the dark. The red bulb outside the cell shed very little light in the cold room. The drain in the center of the floor was a dark hole that appeared sinister in the eerie glow.
My gaze lifted to stare at the camera in the top corner of the room that was half cage with the bars across the front. I knew Facet was watching, but it was little consolation.
“Are you still here?” I whispered.
A feathering touch moved down my cheek, and I startled. “I’m here,” the emptiness whispered back.
It was easy to forget he was there when I couldn’t see a damn thing. Another fortifying breath, and I nodded. The sound of a bullet being chambered made me gasp.
“Just me.” The whisper blew over my neck before an invisible kiss pressed to my skin.
Fingers curled tightly around the edge of the wooden bench I sat on, I waited. Finally, footsteps echoed in the stairwell leading to the dank basement. Despite knowing someone was coming, my heart jumped in my throat when the door opened.
Venom was first, and in his gaze was a brief reassurance. Three men in suits followed, with Voodoo and Raptor behind them.
“That’s her?” the first man asked. His nose was flat, giving the impression it had been frequently broken. “She looks like a stripper, not a hacker.”
My teeth were clenched, and my lip curled.
“I told you we had her. Our man went through her computer, and we have that for you to take to your boss,” Venom said.
I glared.
“She looks like she’ll be fun to break in,” the second one said, and I wanted to jump up to tell him to fuck off. A soft touch on my back had me biting my tongue and staying seated.
“Open the door. We have a plane to catch. The rest of the money has been transferred as you instructed,” Flat-Nose said.
Venom looked to Voodoo and gave him a lift of his chin. Voodoo stepped forward and unlocked the barred door.
“Bind her,” Flat-Nose told the third guy, who stepped forward with chains and shackles I hadn’t noticed initially. He had yet to say anything.
As he advanced, I shrank back on the bench. Though I knew this wasn’t really going to go through, it was truly terrifying thinking anything could go wrong. When he reached for my arm, I panicked and started to jerk away. My foot shot out, and I kicked him.
He shouted in surprise and dropped to his knees. The second man rushed in to assist him in subduing me.
Feeling like a caged animal, I stood on the bench, and my gaze darted back and forth. It didn’t matter that Ghost’s club told me to play along. It didn’t matter that we had a plan. And in their defense, they did ask if I thought I could handle the plan. Living my life constantly being afraid had caught up with me. The second man approached, and I kicked out at him too.
Flat-Nose seemed to curse in a foreign language. “Fuck’s sake,” he grumbled and stormed in. A fist with brass knuckles drawn back to hit me, he stared at me with cold dark eyes. They sent a chill through me as I braced for the impact, forgetting Ghost and the others were there.
Before he could make contact, he was clutching at his throat with his eyes bulging. A thin indent crossed the column of his neck. After that, everything happened so fast, I lost track of it all.
By the time the metaphorical dust settled, Voodoo and Raptor had the other two facedown and arms zip-tied behind their backs. The first guy had dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, and his lifeless body lay across one of the other guys, who was screaming.
“It’s okay,” Voodoo said as he held a hand up to me. Trembling, I took it, and he helped me off the bench.
“I’ve got her,” Ghost damn near growled as he immediately appeared next to Voodoo, who smirked at him. He took my hand from Voodoo, and we skirted the men on the floor.