"Don't blame you, sweetheart." I dropped my palm on her knee and squeezed. "You don't want it, I sure as hell won't think less of you. But if you want to keep this with you for protection, it's yours."
"You think I should?"
I shrugged. "I'm not gonna lie to you, shit could very well get worse before it gets better. This has been way too damn easy so far. I'm just offering it to you. Choice is yours."
She stared at the heavy black .40. After a moment's thought, she gingerly nudged it back toward me with an index finger. "I think I'll let you do the shooting, if that's okay. If it comes down to it, I'll do what I have to, but if I don't have to shoot anyone . . . I'd rather not."
I slid the pistol back into my pocket. "Fair enough. I'll do my damnedest to make sure you don't have to use it, how about that?"
She smiled at me. "I would appreciate that."
At that moment, my ever-wandering gaze latched onto a pair of men across the street, seventy-five yards away. The way they were eyeing me, the brisk, crispness of the way they walked, and the way both of their right hands remained shoved into the pockets of identical black windbreakers . . .
"Layla," I snapped, raising my voice just enough to be heard. "Incoming."
"I see 'em."
"I'll handle it, but be ready," I said. I nudged Colbie with my knee. "Go over and sit by the others. Follow Layla's lead."
She didn't hesitate but also didn't obviously hurry. She stood up, strolled over to where Layla and the others were, and found a seat on the arm of the bench, immediately engaging in conversation.
The two men were close. Their eyes flicked from me to Temple and back, and then scanned the rest of the park. One of them said something to the other, gesturing with a free hand, and the two men separated.
The last thing I wanted was a public shootout, especially with so many innocent people around--aside from the nineteen women in my care, there were other pedestrians on the sidewalks, cars passing back and forth, bicyclists. All I had aside from the pistols was the three-inch folding blade I'd taken from Anton on the plane, which was better than nothing but not much against two armed assailants.
I was sitting on the bench closest to the street, so I remained where I was for the moment. I cast a quick glance behind me at the park, doing a headcount and a scan of the layout: the park was a rectangular lot between two rows of buildings, with a walkway bisecting the rectangle from the sidewalk to the center of the park, where there was a brick-paved courtyard, three rows of benches arranged in a semicircle around the center, facing in. A giant oak tree served as the centerpiece of the park, with a few smaller saplings around the perimeter of the park. The sides and rear of the park were formed by brick walls, the back and sides of buildings, with only the street side facing open. Most of the women were sitting on the benches closest to the oak tree.
As the two men approached the park, crossing the street, I stood up and slid my hands into my pockets. I had the folding knife in my hand, thumb ready to flick the blade open. The men had separated far enough apart that their tactic was obvious: one was going for me, the other for Temple. I decided to trust Layla to handle the one headed her way, and focused my attention on my immediate opponent.
He was a similar height to me but slimmer by about thirty pounds, and probably a decade younger, although the coldness in his expression made me think he was no novice to these kinds of situations. I stood my ground and let him approach. He got within six feet and then stopped, withdrawing his hand from the windbreaker pocket. He had a nine, finger on the trigger.
"Hands," he barked, in a thick accent. "No funniness or you die."
I kept my expression neutral as I raised my hands slowly. Of course, I had the little folding knife in my right fist, and it was just long enough that it didn't quite fit in my fist. His eyes went to my hand, and he jerked his chin at the hint of black peeking out from the bottom of my fist.
"What is?"
I lowered my hands and opened my right palm to show the knife. "Here."
He held his gun low, at his hip, aimed at me, and shuffled toward me, arm outstretched. Dumbass. Had he told me to drop it, kick it to him, or toss it, I'd have been fucked, but he looked young enough and naive enough to maybe fall for this little trick. And yes, he did. He inched toward me, reaching for the closed knife in my hand, trusting the threat of the gun to be enough of a deterrent.
Dumbass.
I waited until he made his move, stretched his hand out to snatch at the knife. There was a split second when his attention was on my hand, on the knife, rather than on me, and that was when I struck. I lashed out with my left fist, batting his gun hand away and darting forward into him. My left hand fastened onto his wrist, and I crushed down with all the force I had, hard enough that I felt bones grinding, and he cried out. The instant I made my move, I flicked open the knife blade that thankfully had a nice, smooth action and decent spring to the blade, so one little push of my thumb sent the blade snapping into place. My hand was already low, at belly level, which made a throat shot tricky. I crashed into him, keeping a crushing grip on his gun hand wrist, and jamming the knife between us, angling down, down. I felt the rough scratch of denim and the bulge of his zipper; I angled a little lower and then drove the blade into the meat of his inner thigh, high up. He grunted in pain and I twisted the knife, dragged it back toward me through muscle, and then I withdrew the blade, my knuckles dripping hot and wet with blood. I slammed the blade into his throat just beneath his Adam's apple, and his groan and scream of pain turned to a nasty wet whistle. I backed away, dropped him, stripping him of his pistol as he fell, blood spurting in thick, bright red gushes from his severed femoral artery.
I heard a shout and turned my attention to Layla and Temple. The other thug had Temple held in front of him against his chest, arm across her chest, but he didn't have his gun to her temple. He had orders to bring her in alive, obviously, since she wasn't worth anything dead. Which made his posture as a hostage taker an empty bluff.
I made sure he got a good look at his buddy, bleeding out. "Let her go, dickhead."
"Nemaye . . . vpadit' nizh," he said, jerking his chin at me.
"I don't know what you're saying, bud, but for your sake, I hope it was 'I'm a pussy, I give up.'"
Colbie snickered. "Actually, he told you to drop the knife."
"No shit. Some things translate themselves." I met her gaze. "Tell him to let her go, or I'll kill him slower than I did his friend."
Colbie rattled something off in Russian, and the dumbshit was foolish enough to pivot away from me to face Colbie, leaving most of his torso open. I chucked the knife at him, and as soon as the knife left my hand, I drew the .45 from behind my back. Life ain't like the movies, though, and folding knives aren't weighted for throwing, so unless you're an expert, that shit ain't sticking blade first into anything, and even experts would say that was nearly impossible. And in my case, I wasn't an expert knife thrower. So the knife hit the asshole right in the center of his chest with the handle. Didn't do jackshit to hurt him, but it did provide exactly what I needed: a distraction. He jerked his attention back to me, and the moment Temple felt his focus shift, she tore herself out of his grip and hit the ground. Smart girl. Now the playing field was even. By the time the stupid fucker realized what was happening, I was already inside his reach and had my pistol barrel shoved up under his chin. He blinked stupidly for a second, and then raised his hands.
"Shit," I groaned as I took his weapon. "This complicates things."
"What does?" Colbie asked.
I grabbed the guy by the hair and shoved him into the ground at the base of the oak tree. "This cockmuncher," I said, gesturing at him with the barrel of the pistol. "He surrendered, so I can't just shoot him, now."
"Oh," Colbie said. "I suppose that wouldn't be very nice, would it?"
"No. It'd be downright unfriendly, I'd say."
People watched, staring at the dude bleeding out, wondering what was going on. I had to
make this whole scene less conspicuous right the hell now or we'd have to find somewhere else to sit, and I was kinda starting to like this park.
"Hey hooker, grab his ankles," I said to Layla.
"Don't call me a hooker, dickhead," she retorted.
Layla tucked her pistol into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back with practiced ease and grabbed the now-dead dude by the ankles. I grabbed him by the armpits, and we carried him to the back corner of the park and dumped him. Not much I could do about the giant pool of blood on the sidewalk where he'd bled out, but at least there wasn't a body lying out in plain view. He wasn't exactly hidden where he was; mind you, just . . . less obvious.
A quartet of men in business suits drifted past the park just then, and my heart slammed in my chest as one of them glanced our way, but he didn't seem to see anything amiss, and they all kept walking. This park was some distance from the busiest roads and didn't have much traffic, pedestrian or vehicular--thank god, too, because that hadn't exactly been the most unobtrusive of situations.
Layla sat back down on the bench with Kyrie and Lola, who were comforting Temple. Layla had her pistol out and was positioned to keep an eye and a gun barrel on our hostage, who seemed content to sit and not be dead, for the moment, at least.
I picked up my knife off the ground, folded the blade back in, and pocketed it, then resumed my seat on the bench. After a moment, Colbie returned to sit beside me.
"You make that look so easy," she said.
"Which part?"
She gestured at the spreading pool of ruby-red blood. "That. Killing people. I'm not even sure what you did, or why he bled out so fast."
I grabbed her hand, placed her fingers on the inside of my thigh, high up, so her knuckles were inches from my crotch. "There's an artery here, the femoral artery." Colbie's breath caught, and her fingers splayed out on my thigh, digging in, as if fighting the urge to move higher yet; I released her, but her hand remained on my thigh. "The femoral is one of the biggest arteries in the human body, transporting over three hundred fifty millimeters of blood per minute. If that motherfucker gets severed, you will bleed out in less than five minutes."
She tightened her grip on my thigh, and I felt myself going hard behind my zipper even though she was inches away from my cock, and we were discussing a man's death. "So . . . if you'd severed his femoral artery and he was going to die of blood loss anyway, why did you stab him in the throat?"
I rested my palm on her knee, and then gently, slowly, hesitantly slid it up her thigh in minute increments, under the hem of her skirt; she let me, and my heart started doing a ridiculous pussy virgin teenager thumpity-thumpity-thump just from a fairly innocent palm to her leg.
"So he wouldn't scream and draw attention to us."
"Oh."
"Do I scare you?"
She nodded. "Yes, you do. It shouldn't be so easy to end a life."
I sighed. "I agree. But that's where my life has taken me. I don't do it lightly, and I don't do it easily. I'm not a serial killer or a sociopath, Colbie. But if someone threatens me or those I've sworn to protect, I will not hesitate, and I will not feel guilt. These jackholes are all stone-cold killers, and I'm doing the world a favor by getting rid of them."
"Do you have any regrets?"
"In terms of what? In general, or people I've killed?"
She shrugged. "Both, I guess."
I thought for a moment. "Hmm. In general . . . maybe not making more of the time I had with Raquel. I wish I'd been more open about how I felt, shown her what she meant to me. I was young and stupid and an emotional caveman, thought being manly and macho meant never being . . . like . . . sweet or tender or whatever. I really cared for her, but I was just a . . . a churlish dick all the time. Surly and closed off, kept my emotions shut down."
Colbie looked at me, surprised. "Wow, I wasn't expecting that answer."
I tilted my head and shrugged. "Just the truth. She deserved more from me than she got, and then she died, and I'll never be able to give her that."
She hesitated a long moment, and then her palm skated down the inside of my thigh to my knee and back up, closer to my groin, this time. "So if you were ever in a real relationship again . . .?"
I knew what she was getting at, what she was asking me. "I'd do things a lot differently. I got no problem being real about what I'm feeling. Maybe it's being older, realizing life is too damn short to act tough when you don't gotta be tough."
"So you can be sweet and tender, is that what you're saying?" she asked, with a wink and a twinkle in her stormy gray eyes.
I smirked. Slid my palm a little higher, and now my hand was fully under her skirt, up to midthigh, and her skin was silky soft and luscious and warm. "I can be a lot of things that might surprise you, babe."
"Like what?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be much of a surprise, now would it?"
She snorted. "Cop out."
"Hey, I've surprised you quite a bit since we first met, haven't I?"
She conceded the point with a tilted nod of her head, her mahogany locks swaying. "I guess you're right."
"I can't give away all my surprises right off the bat, can I?"
"Fine, fine," she said with a laugh. "So, change of subject. Tell me about the virgin."
I tilted my head back and blew out a sigh. "You're sure you want to hear about this?"
She nodded. "Yes, I do. I'm curious."
"And you'll tell me something about yourself in return?"
She nodded again. "I will. Something revealing and personal of a sexual nature."
I held out my hand, and she took it in hers, and we shook.
"All right, then. Here it goes. I was thirty-two at the time. Working for the FBI in the forensics department. I was a field operative, one who went to the crime scene and figured out what happened based on the evidence. Kinda like Dexter, except I wasn't a secret serial killer. No attachments. I'd just finished a particularly gruesome triple homicide case, and I went to a bar to have a few drinks and see if I could find some company for the night. Like I said, the case I'd just helped close had been pretty nasty, and I'd put in a good eighty hours of work the previous week, so I was . . . not really looking for someone chatty, you know? I just wanted to have some fun and spend the weekend catching up on sleep." I realized, at that moment, that after shaking hands in agreement, neither of us had let go, so we were holding hands, my right in her left, with my other hand under her skirt on her bare thigh, and her other hand on my leg--lots of touching, none of it overtly sexual. Very weird for me. "So . . . two, three drinks in, I still hadn't scoped anyone. All the girls in the bar were either clearly with someone or in a group. I've discovered it's always more trouble than it's worth to try and separate one particular chick out of a group. I was losing hope and getting ready to just toss it in and go home. And then I saw her. Young, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, really young. A lot younger than I usually go for, but for sure legal. Pretty, sweet looking, and all alone. She was wearing this dress, not sure what you'd call it, kind of a sundress or something. Cute, flowers on it, midthigh length, with a belt and a cardigan over it. I don't know why I remember what she was wearing, or why it should be significant, but it just . . . was. Her outfit wasn't meant for anyone but her, meant to be comfortable and pretty. She was alone, like I said, sitting at the bar, nursing a glass of white wine. Long, shiny blonde hair. Cute--really cute, really pretty . . . and obviously lonely. Now, that shit is not my type. If I'm at the bar trying to score a hookup, I go for the obvious types, the easy pickings. The kinda girl you'd clearly expect to be able to pick up at a bar for quick and easy one-night company, okay? Just the facts."
"And this girl was way outside that type."
I nodded. "Way, way outside it. Probably wasn't even looking for company on the stool next to her, let alone what I had in mind. I'm still not sure what came over me. I was in a shitty mood, I was exhausted, I was frustrated, and I was horny. I'd been too busy that w
eek for anything but work, so all I really wanted, to be blunt, was to get my rocks off and then sleep for twelve hours. So why did I sit down next to a sad, lonely, cute girl? I don't do cute. Cute is a death sentence. Cute is . . . just no. But there I was. I bought her a glass of wine, and I struck up a conversation and ended up closing the bar with her. Just talking. We didn't even drink that much, or at least I didn't. She did, though. So by the time the bar closed, she was blackout drunk and couldn't even tell me her own name, much less where she lived. So, I--"
Colbie eyed me sidelong, eyes narrowed. "Puck. You didn't."
I stared at her, not bothering to disguise my anger. "Fuck no! Jesus, Colbie."
She raised both hands in a gesture of apology. "Hey, we don't know each other very well."
"If you can't see by now that I'm not the type of guy to rape a blackout drunk chick, then either you're a terrible judge of character, or I come across as a lot more of a skeezy shit-ball than I thought."
"Or maybe I was feeling you out, seeing how you'd react to the insinuation." She shrugged and smirked at me. "The vehemence of your response goes a lot farther in telling me about what kind of guy you are than anything else you might say."
I blew out a calming breath. "I'm glad I passed your test, in that case."
She reached out and trailed a finger through my beard. "So. Lonely drunk girl . . . what'd you do?"
"Took her back to my place. I couldn't just leave her there."
"You could have gotten her address from her purse."
I cocked my head to the side. "I suppose. But everything life has taught me says to never ever dig in a woman's purse. Especially one I don't know."
"You said you'd been talking to her most of the night."
"Doesn't mean I knew her well enough to go hunting in her purse." I waved my hand. "Point is, I put her in my bed, made sure she wasn't gonna choke on her own vomit, and then set some Gatorade and Tylenol on the bedside table."
"What did you guys talk about?"
I waved a hand. "Just . . . random bullshit. Politics, movies, music, surface shit. Nothing deep, nothing about ourselves." I paused. "The only reason I brought her to my place was because it seemed safest. Even if I had gotten her address, she was so clobbered she would have needed monitoring, and she'd mentioned that she lived alone. I slept on the couch and got up a few times to check on her, make sure she hadn't upchucked in her sleep."