Shadows (Black Raven Book 1) (19 page)

“You ok?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He gently let go of his agent’s head, stood, and glanced around the kitchen. “Agent Lewis isn’t here.”

Sebastian turned away from the three dead men, and walked through the kitchen. He found him after going through a large living room, down a short hallway, and inside a door.

“Holy shit,” he said. For a moment he froze. He’d seen death in all forms, but the blood bath that confronted him was a shocking display of violence and depravity.

“Sebastian. Wrist up,” Ragno said. “Keep the camera rolling.”

He didn’t realize he’d dropped his arm to the side, or that he’d turned off the camera. “Brace yourself.”

“Is he alive?”

“Don’t know. Naked. Spread-eagle tied to a bed. Castrated,” Sebastian seethed with anger as he restarted the video footage for Ragno and approached the bed. Something crunched beneath his foot, “Oh fuck,” he paused, looked down, and was relieved that he had only stepped on a discarded finger. He was thrilled beyond words that he’d killed knife-man, but wishing the man’s death hadn’t been so clean, efficient, and painless. “Face up. Every finger on his left hand severed. Three on his right hand. Hundreds of thin slashes all over his body.
Fuck
. Whoever did this was having fun. Sheets are dripping with blood. Neck’s got a thick gash. Wait. He’s still bleeding.” Sebastian lifted the man’s still-warm wrist. He glanced at the gash where he thought he’d seen blood pumping out. His eyes had played tricks on him. Maybe. “There’s no pulse, but I think he’s just bled out. Send this footage to forensics and get them here. Call Zeus. ASAP. We need his brains on this. This is more important than him babysitting the marshals.”

“Will do,” Ragno said, “Now we know why Agent Lewis kept talking to us as though everything was fine. He was tortured into it. Wait.” Her pause lasted only a few seconds, which he used to make sure the camera recorded everything in the room. “Get in a vehicle. Move fast. There’s a situation outside. It’s escalating.
Go. Go. Go!
”

Chapter Eleven

Relief flooded through Skye as Pete drove away from the safe house.

Finally.

“What’s happening?” Spring asked. “Why aren’t we going with Sebastian? I thought he was bringing us there.”

“He’s going in to make sure it’s safe,” Skye said.

She turned to her left and watched Sebastian walk into the brightly lit garage of 211 Orchid Street, the house she never planned to enter. If she did, they were doomed. Once she and Spring were inside, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to get away from the combined force of marshals and Black Raven agents. And get away she must, because she needed to get to the lake house on Firefly Island in just eight hours. She might not have the fighting capabilities, weapons, or skills of these men, but she sure as hell had the ability to disappear and never be found again. If only she could get away from their immediate grasp.

Her eyes met Pete’s eyes in the rearview mirror, which he had adjusted so that he could see her. Sebastian’s younger, quieter sidekick was an obstacle, but he was shorter, lighter, and seemed like less of a hard-ass. He broke eye contact with her as he stopped at a stop sign, then slowly drove away.

She faced forward, her eyes caught Pete’s again, and she tried to appear nonchalant as she worked her left boot off with the toe of her right boot. Throughout the ride from the airport, she had visualized how she was going to use her boots—her only weapon—on the men in the front seat. Kicking wouldn’t work. Their heads were partially blocked from her by the front seat headrests. Besides, by the time she had lifted her legs and raised them into a kicking position, they’d have noticed. Using one of the boots as a club could work, but first she had to ease the boot off her foot, and it was hard to do with only her other foot for leverage, because her heel was…stuck. She pressed her toes harder against the stubborn boot. Not one centimeter of movement.
Hell.
She was going to have to bend down and use both hands.

As she bent forward, Pete glanced in the mirror at her. “Everything alright?”

She nodded and straightened in the seat. When he refocused on driving, she started working at the boot again with her foot, and tried not to grimace with the effort. “What’s going on?” she asked, keeping her voice normal. “Why are you driving away?”

“Just giving time for a routine site check,” Pete answered as he drove further away from the house. “Making sure everything’s safe.”

“Seems like that would have been figured out earlier, since you guys have been calling it a ‘safe’
house all day.”

No way.
There was nothing routine about what was happening. Throughout the day, she’d grown accustomed to Sebastian’s low monotone voice, even while saying words that signified tension. Throughout the high-intensity day he had seemed calmer and calmer as he dealt with adversity, until a few seconds before stepping out of the car.

He’d suddenly sat erect, with tension emanating from him. In the visor’s mirror, she’d only been able to see his lower face. His lips were pressed in a thin slit. And since Spring was a master at picking up nuances from people—especially her sister—she was also aware the very second that things changed, and she had sat up, her eyes focused on Sebastian. Skye had forced herself to mentally block his tension, telling herself that none of his problems were hers. Her problem was getting away, and his tension and subsequent absence from the Range Rover spelled nothing but a lucky break for her, no matter what it spelled for him.

It was a lucky break she needed to capitalize upon. As Pete turned out of the residential section of the neighborhood and onto a street that had four lanes of traffic, Skye glanced at her watch. Two minutes had gone by since Sebastian had entered the garage. How much longer for him to check the house, talk to the marshals and his agents, and call Pete back? One more minute? Two? Dammit. She had to act now.

Without Sebastian in the SUV, the interior was darker, because the light from his iPad wasn’t on. There was also an odd silence. They’d driven to the jet from the hospital, he had sat across from her on the jet, and they’d been in the Range Rover for almost an hour. He was a large man, but he wasn’t loud. Yet there was a constant hum of energy around him, whether it was finger clicks on the keyboard he used with his tablet or the low voice he used in phone conversations. He stretched, he shifted his long legs, and he often touched the fingers of his right hand to his right temple and dropped his hand when he realized what he was doing. Without Sebastian there, without his serious eyes on her and Spring, she felt less…safe, as though whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to end in her favor. Odd, because he was who she needed to run from.
Away.

She had to get away, and Sebastian’s absence gave her a small window of opportunity that she better not blow. This might be her last chance to make a run for it.

Finally. Her heel was almost free. She pressed harder against the back of the boot with the toes of her right foot. She just needed one more little bit of give, and precious seconds ticked away as she worked towards that goal. There. With a profound surge of relief, her heel slipped out of the damn boot. She used both feet to lift the boot into her lap.

“All good,” Pete said, talking to someone who was mic’d to him, his eyes trained, for a second, on the rearview mirror and the traffic that was behind their SUV.

“What are you doing?” Spring asked, her gaze on the boot that now rested on Skye’s lap.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she said, focusing on Pete and waiting for an opportunity to strike. “Everything’s fine.” He was a quarter mile from the next stoplight. Curbing impulsiveness wasn’t a strength of hers, but as she gripped the boot, she took a deep breath. Her father’s words of wisdom resonated in her mind.

Figure it out.

She came up with a plan. She’d hit him on the temple like she meant it. Grab Spring’s arm and encourage Candy to follow. Run like hell. At the stoplight, a strip mall had a three-story Barnes & Noble, a Starbucks, and a two-story Cheesecake Factory. The parking lot was crammed with cars. Two women and a dog could easily get lost in plain sight there, but the light didn’t turn yellow. He drove right through it.

Pete sat up, erect. “Where are our men on the inside?”

Here we go. More news that wasn’t good. At least not from Black Raven’s perspective. Great from her perspective, because maybe if the news became terrible, maybe, just maybe, Pete would stop glancing at her in the rearview mirror every other second.

The busy four-lane street seemed to have every chain store she’d ever seen. She had used the stores as landmarks on the way into the neighborhood, and they ticked by as Pete drove faster. Applebee’s. Chick Fil-A. Kohl’s. Bed, Bath & Beyond. None of the locations seemed as prime as the huge strip mall they’d just passed. Maybe it was a better option to keep the SUV, once she immobilized Pete. Sweat dripped down the back of her neck. Her heart pounded as she tried to think through another plan, one that didn’t involve having the luck of getting a red light.

“Spring,” she whispered. “Push over a bit. You’re crowding me.”

Spring pushed Candy to the right and wriggled a bit to the right. Her sister’s left side was still practically touching Skye, but at least now Skye could cock her arm back and have a good aim at Pete.

Figure it out.

If thinking through a scenario had ever been important in her life, now was the time. Okay. She could do this. She’d pound the wooden heel into his head, once to startle him, another time to knock him out, dive into the front seat, open his door, and kick him out of the SUV. His pistol, which he wore in a holster at his hip, wasn’t going to be an issue because he was going to be disabled by the boot. She’d get it from him if she could, but the more important goal was to get him out of the Range Rover. Pound his head, figure out a way to open his door, kick him out.

Pound, dive, open his door, kick him out of the car.

She was going to be a one-woman army, so effective he was going to be glad to get out of the car. She gripped the boot, tight, in her right hand.

Was it going to work?

It had to, because she was only minutes away from being trapped, with no way out and no way to fulfill her father’s vital instructions.

Cataclysm. Run. Now.

Those three words meant all kinds of things. One thing it did not
mean was getting stuck in the custody of marshals and Black Raven agents.

Right when she was about to do it, caution bells clanged in her mind. What if the impact of the boot with his head made him jam his foot on the accelerator? Hell. Now that
would be a problem. Her goal was to take control of the car and get as far away as possible. Not to get killed in a runaway car. She needed a red light.

Don’t think. Just do.

“I’m taking off my boots too,” Spring said.

So much for subterfuge.
“No, honey,” Skye said, her tone calm and not reflecting the roiling, panic-driven need to succeed that was now fueling her rapid heart beat. “We’ll be back at the house in just a minute and we’ll be getting out.”

Pete glanced in the rearview mirror, met Skye’s eyes, then his eyes drifted past Skye, and around the area. “I’m about five miles away,” he said to someone. “Detecting no signs of trouble. How’s Sebastian doing in there?”

The four-lane highway was getting more congested with traffic, as they passed Whole Foods Co., another landmark that she’d noted on the way into the neighborhood. In about a half a mile, if Pete stayed on this street, they’d come to a large shopping mall with a Neiman Marcus and a Nordstrom’s. There was going to be a series of traffic lights at the mall, before they’d get on the interstate. She was running out of time.

Jesus Christ, please let us catch a red light.

They approached a traffic signal.

It turned yellow.

She gripped the boot, getting ready. “Spring,” she whispered, “I need you to be quiet.”

“Why?” Spring asked in a whisper that, thank God, matched Skye’s whisper.

Pete sped up and went through the light.

Hell.

She wiped sweat off her brow, before it dripped into her eyes. “Just trust me, okay? Quiet, okay?”

Spring nodded, her eyes concerned and wide, but thankfully, her mouth stayed shut.

Pound, dive, open his door, kick him out of the car.

Buffalo Wild Wings was on the far corner of the mall, and they were almost at the series of traffic lights on which she was banking. The first one was green. The second one turned yellow. She gripped the boot, and as the Range Rover rolled to a stop behind a car that had stopped as the light turned from yellow to red, Skye cocked her hand back and pushed herself forward, using her legs and feet and every ounce of strength she had. Spring started screaming, as Skye made her move. With Spring’s high intensity yell, Pete turned and ducked in the second before the boot heel made contact with his head. She missed, and without hitting the mark that would have stopped her forward momentum, she flew over the seat in an uncoordinated, arms extended heap.

As she was flying face-first into the front dashboard, a large SUV pulled alongside the left side of them, in the left lane. Another SUV pulled alongside of them, on the shoulder of the highway. She righted herself and sat sideways, with her back to the passenger side door. In the split second pause, as she was about to start kicking at Pete, she froze, while Spring screamed and Candy started barking.

The SUV that had pulled next to them had a window lowered and an assault rifle pointed in the car. Because she was facing sideways and in position to kick Pete, the business end of the assault weapon was pointed directly at her.

A car was in front of them. Another behind them. There was nowhere for Pete to go.

Pete turned to her and yelled, “Down.”

No encouragement was needed.

But instead of worrying about herself, she sat up in the seat and yelled, “Spring. Get on the floor. Now. Get down-”

She would have kept yelling instructions, and would have climbed over the seat to protect Spring, but Pete tackled her as glass shattered and bullets started whizzing through the car. “Not me. Protect Spring. Now. Spring. Get down. Now.”

He pushed her further into the foot well. Car horns blared, Candy barked, and Spring, who had been screaming ever since Skye had cocked her arm back and started her lunge for Pete’s head, was suddenly quiet.

There was a pause in the bullets, and then another barrage.

Bullets cut the air, coming from left and right. Then there was silence.

“Spring?” Skye yelled, trying to push Pete off of her.

Spring started screaming, shrill and loud, “No. No. No. NoNoNo.” It was the best sound Skye had ever heard in her life. Skye wriggled out from underneath Pete, who was heavier than he looked and deadly still, as she managed to push him up and off of her into a face-down position on the front seat. The SUV was edging forward, because he’d taken his foot off the brake when he dove on top of her. His left shoulder was riddled with bullet holes and blood was pouring out of him and onto her. He was so still he had to be dead.

Don’t think about that. Don’t think that he died saving you. Just don’t think about it.