Or did it have everything to do with me?
Julius had claimed that they were protecting me, and while I’d assumed it was an unnecessary precaution, maybe I’d been overly skeptical. What if this attack wasn’t an attempt to capture or kill them, but to do those things to me?
A sharp cry of pain split through the air. Was that Blaze?
Logic told me to continue forward, but my body balked. Even highly skilled fighters could be overwhelmed when they were greatly outnumbered and taken by surprise. I might be able to make a break for it, but the four men who’d brought me here wouldn’t necessarily survive this attack.
They’d held me here, refused to let me leave… but they’d also helped me after the car crash. Patched me up. Made sure I was reasonably comfortable and well-fed. They’d even catered to my request to walk around the mansion and then go buy those damn cookies yesterday.
It might be because of me that whoever was attacking them had even identified this apartment as theirs.
I hadn’t been able to save anyone in the household. I hadn’t even known the massacre was happening until every single one of them was dead or as good as it. This time, it wasn’t too late to step in.
I didn’t have to let another group of people die around me. I could save someone.
My chest clenched around a sudden rush of determination. I didn’t second-guess the emotion. This was what I’d trained for. This was the one way I knew I could make a difference in the world, and I wasn’t going to fail again.
Springing to my feet, I took in the room. As I swiveled, I made out thinning patches in the smoke.
There—that guy with the ski mask was one of our enemies.
I dove at him, reaching for his head. He didn’t even see me coming. My fingers dug into his jaw, and I wrenched his face around so sharply his neck snapped even as he made his first movement to buck me off.
As he crumpled to the ground, Garrison scrambled up from where he’d been knocked down at the attacker’s feet. He stared at me, but I didn’t have time to worry about what he thought of my kill. There were more sounds of fighting all around me.
Another masked man hurtled out of a thicker patch of smoke. I struck first, knowing that my advantage would come from the man’s shock.
He swung at me with a knife. I ducked and snatched his wrist with my left hand to prevent him from using the blade. At the same time, I swung my brace around, pummeling his temple with its stiff surface. The throb of the impact ricocheted up my arm, and my ribs groaned with the effort, but the man stumbled to the side, slightly stunned.
He lashed out at me again, but I had already moved, yanking his body off balance. I squeezed his wrist, twirling it around his back in a maneuver that I knew would jerk his shoulder out of its socket. A pop sounded through the room, and a groan spilled from his mouth.
“The fuck,” he screamed, the knife dropping from his twitching fingers. I kicked the back of his knees, and he collapsed forward, a strange sobbing gasp coming from his lips.
In an instant, the knife was in my hand. I plunged it straight into his back, angled perfectly to ram between his ribs and into his heart.
I knew I’d hit home when the body beneath me sagged.
The smoke was clearing more, drifting out the shattered windows and the open doorway. A hint of a fresh breeze tingled in my throat.
As I spun around, I noted the three other bodies already on the floor—all of them masked, to my unexpectedly intense relief. One of them was bleeding out from a deep slash across his throat. Another had a bullet wound in his chest. The third might have only been unconscious, but these cops clearly didn’t hesitate to fight to the death when their lives were on the line.
Exactly as it should be. Hopefully that’d mean they wouldn’t get too judgy about the bodies I’d added to the collection of corpses.
On the other side of the sofa, Julius and Talon were fighting side-by-side. For the first time, seeing them from the sidelines rather than as their opponent, I could observe the way they worked in sync. Talon moved with swift but powerful precision, and Julius was the direction to his storm, leading with pure strength and skill as he smashed his knee into one attacker’s face and jabbed out his gun hand to put a bullet in another.
Together, they were a force of nature. Outnumbered two-to-one, they still maintained the upper hand in the fight. I’d never seen anyone fight quite like that. It was almost beautiful to watch.
But not so beautiful that I didn’t notice the man charging at me from the direction of the kitchen, wielding a switchblade in one hand and a butcher knife in the other.
I turned to meet the guy head-on. As I swiveled, I glimpsed Blaze holding his own against another assailant with a skill that I hadn’t anticipated from the tech expert, even though his movements were slowed by a wound bleeding on his side. To be a cop, of course he needed to be somewhat physically adept, but it still surprised me.
My attacker was coming too fast for me to completely dodge him. I caught a blow to my shoulder and stepped back from the force of it. Shaking off the impact, I deflected the next one with my bare forearm. Up close, catching sight of my face in a way none of the invaders before had gotten a chance to, he jerked backward with startled eyes. “Who the fuck are you?”
It wasn’t me they were after, then. They hadn’t expected some chick to be fighting alongside the cops, let alone kicking their ass. Too bad for them.
His hesitation was all I needed to swing back and execute a perfect roundhouse kick that rammed into his head. I landed with bent knees, and the man toppled to the ground, unconscious without an ounce of fight remaining in him.
I glanced around the room with a nearly clear view now. All the guys were fending off other assailants, even Garrison, though the motions of his right arm looked awkward, as if he’d been injured too.