She’d set the briefcase on the coffee table and was now backing away from it. He eyed the briefcase, then her. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the thing. Suspicion grew, and he wondered what surprises Kade had planned for them.
Grant was watching her, too, and he narrowed his eyes. The man wasn’t a fool, and he was coming to the same conclusion Tristan was. The briefcase was rigged somehow. Tristan measured the distance between him and Skye and how many steps it would take to get to her.
Pretty Boy reached for the briefcase, and as he lifted the latches, Grant yelled, “No!”
His warning came too late. The briefcase exploded in Pretty Boy’s face, and red smoke swirled around him. Then chaos erupted as everything happened at once.
Pretty Boy screamed.
Tristan dived for Skye as Drake reached for her with a wicked-looking knife.
A window exploded, and Drake’s knife flew out of his hand.
The front and back doors of the cabin slammed open and two men in all black, their faces covered, entered, guns drawn. Tristan recognized one of the masked men as his brother and assumed the man who’d come in from the back was also an operator.
Grant got to Skye before Tristan could. He put a gun to her head and pulled her against him as he backed the two of them to the wall.
The situation was a powder keg ready to blow, and Tristan didn’t want Grant to get a twitchy trigger finger.
“I told you that you should be afraid of my brother, Mr. Grant. He even brought a friend, who I’m guessing is just as deadly,” Tristan said. “You won’t walk out of here a free man, so the best thing you can do right now is let her go.”
“Not happening. She’s my ticket out of here.” His gaze darted from Kade to the other man. “Move away from the door, or I’ll shoot her.”
“Dead man walking,” Kade’s partner muttered. Neither man moved.
When Drake put his hands on the floor to try to push up, Tristan stomped on his wounded hand, causing Drake to scream. “Freeze, asshole.” Drake froze.
“You okay?” Tristan asked Skye. Where he’d expected to see fear in her eyes, all he saw was a pissed-off woman.
“Just peachy.” She was playing with a green cylinder hanging from a thin chain, an odd necklace he’d never seen her wear before.
“I’ll take it from here,” Pretty Boy said, standing up, his face red from the dye pack. His face was probably hurting like hell, too. Good.
“Excuse me?” Skye glared at him. “You’ll take what from here?”
“The prisoners. I’ve been working undercover.”
“You’re a big fat liar, Danny.” She glanced at Kade. “Do me a favor and put a bullet between his eyes.”
“I will if you want me to.”
“While this is highly entertaining, all of you shut up,” Grant said.
“No.” She huffed an irritated breath. “You burned my apartment up, and now you’re threatening to put a bullet through my brain. I think I’m entitled to have my say. I did not take your money. Danny did, then started the rumor that it was me to throw off suspicion from him.”
“That’s a lie!” Pretty Boy yelled.
“Funny, but I believe her.” Grant turned the gun on Danny and shot him in the chest, then whipped the weapon back to her head. “No one steals from me.”
A beat of shocked silence followed as the dirty cop fell to the floor, then Skye said, “Well, Mr. Grant, not only was your trip here wasted, but now it looks like you’re going to be a guest in the chief’s jail for murder. Or you could end this farce, let us get him to a hospital, and maybe save his life. Then you might avoid the electric chair.”
What was she up to? Grant was getting angrier by the second. She caught Tristan’s eyes and slowly caressed the cylinder, and all he could think was that she was walking around with a bomb of some sort around her neck. He might put his fist through his brother’s face for that. What if it blew up on her?
“Shut the fuck up,” Grant yelled, finally losing his cool.
“Okay. Shutting up.” She yanked on the tube, breaking the chain. She winked at Tristan, then she lifted the green thing over her shoulder and pointed it at Grant’s face.
Tristan had no idea what she did, but Grant stumbled as he slapped a hand over his eyes. Tristan pushed her away from the man, and he and Grant fell to the floor as they wrestled for the weapon, Tristan trying to get the gun away, and Grant doing his damnedest to point it at Tristan.