NOELLE STAYED EXACTLY where she was, totally unfazed by the new arrivals. Of course. They were running toward me, obviously on her command.
As I backed up, looking to put myself in a better defensive position, my thoughts whirled. Why would Noelle have come with trained fighters ready to attack me—to capture me—when I’d shown up with every intention of following her out of this tunnel? If she’d approached me with an ounce of concern, I would have followed her demands to the ends of the earth. I’d done that for so long that breaking the trend tugged at something inside of me.
But I refused to be a slave.
Two of the men, one on either side, drew ahead of the others to reach me first. I didn’t see guns or knives in any of their hands—no, they didn’t want to kill me. Only to force me to obey where Noelle’s special phrase had failed.
Then I couldn’t think at all, my body switching over into the grips of my well-honed combat instincts. I squatted and veered, raising my brace to deflect a blow aimed at the side of my head, ducking away from grasping hands.
The men were obviously well-trained, but nowhere near as practiced as me. Too bad they had the numbers to make up for it.
My arm didn’t ache in the way it had on the day I’d sprained it, and the pain in my ribs was barely detectable, but there was enough of the injury left to slow my motions. I caught a glancing blow to my cheekbone—avoiding the full brunt of it by pure luck. The other men were pressing in on me, ducking and weaving around each other to snatch at me in an attempt to gain the upper hand. I was outnumbered severely, and I couldn’t dream of winning this fight if I fought fair.
It was a good thing that I knew how to fight dirty.
My fingers closed around the knitting needle I’d wedged into my pocket. I slashed out with it, slicing the tip through one man’s palm, jabbing it at another’s gut. It stabbed into his flesh, and he grunted in pain, but then he jerked it out and tossed it aside, out of my reach.
Fuck. I dropped down again and scanned the ground for any debris that could be used as a weapon. It was hard to make out much in the hazy light with attackers coming at me from left, right, and in front. I spun and kicked one way while aiming an uppercut in the opposite direction, moving my body at the fastest possible speed, scrambling to find an advantage.
In another scenario, I’d have been looking for my best chance to make a break for it. There was no point in fighting a battle where the odds were stacked against you if you could get out of it. But fleeing would mean losing track of Noelle. I hadn’t wanted to go with her like a puppy on a leash, but she knew something about the murders at the household. She was the only connection to my old life that I still had.
If I left here with just as few answers as I’d turned up with, I’d be even more stuck than before.
As I whirled, wincing when a blow I couldn’t completely deflect caught me in my ribs, my gaze caught on a chunk of broken concrete about the size of a fist. I dove for it, snatched it up, and swung it at the nearest head. It slammed into the man’s skull with a crack of breaking bone. He dropped, and I knew he wouldn’t be getting back up again.
That left… way too many more fighters.
My other hand groped and collided with a rusted pipe protruding from the wall. I yanked at it, only intending to use it for leverage, but it snapped off in my hand. Water gushed from the wall in a powerful burst.
The spray hit two of my attackers. I darted under the arc of water and swiveled to come at them from behind, but my left foot landed on a blob of slick sewage material—okay, being totally accurate, I stepped on shit—and slid. I barely caught my balance, and then the nine remaining men were closing in on me again.
I tried to dodge around them or dash between them to get at Noelle. Maybe if I could take her hostage—if I even could overpower her—her attack dogs would back off. It wasn’t a strategy I’d used often, but I was running out of options.
I dipped and wove, jabbed out with an elbow and snatched a handful of hair to ram one head into another. Tripping one guy, I used his back as a springboard to launch me free of their tightening ring.
The move would have worked perfectly if I hadn’t hit my landing right on another gross glob.
My feet skidded, my torso jerked around in an attempt to catch my balance, and pain flared through my freshly banged ribs. A solid body rammed into me, tossing me onto the ground where even more putrid liquid soaked into my shirt. My groan was both pain and disgust.
“Got her!” my attacker shouted.
Oh, he thought so, did he?
In a motion that Noelle had drilled into my mind years ago, I hooked my foot over his leg and pivoted my hips. The man lost his balance, falling off me and allowing me to switch our positions. I sat atop him, and he reached for me, but I pushed his hands under my knees, grabbed his head, and snapped his neck in one swift motion.
I was tempted to slam it into the muck for good measure, just for being such a prick, but the other men were hurtling toward me.
Snatching up the nearest of my makeshift weapons, I sprang to my feet, wobbled, and heaved off the wall to add power to my heel kick. I lashed out with the broken pipe end at the same time. It carved a gash in one guy’s cheek, but all he did was wince and keep coming.
I’d ended up out in the open with no wall to protect my back. My breath was coming in short spurts now, burning in my throat, and not just with the stench. I flung another punch, ducked, and slipped right onto my ass.
In an instant, four hands gripped my arms. I thrashed between the two men who’d grabbed me, but another wrapped his arms around my torso. They dragged me toward Noelle, one clamping his hand around my wrist brace so tight the tendons pinched with a lancing agony.
The same feeling from before—the utter helplessness I’d felt when Noelle had given her hypnotic command—seeped back into me. “No,” I whispered, not able to prevent the word from leaving my lips. I never begged. Never. I’d sooner die than let someone hear me plead for my life.
But Noelle had no plans to kill me. It wasn’t my life I was begging for; it was my freedom. That was… new. I’d never experienced the sweetness of freedom before, and losing it—losing the small taste of making my own choices—wrenched me to the core.
I slammed my foot back, and it made contact with someone’s shin, but his hold on me didn’t release. The iron grip on my arms didn’t slacken no matter how I twisted and heaved. There were too many of them.
“Good,” Noelle said. “Bring her to the truck.”
My captors dragged me one more step—and the bang of a gunshot reverberated from the nearest tunnel.
The man at my left jerked, blood blooming in the middle of his forehead. As he toppled, I dropped as low as I could go, lifting my legs so my weight would put more strain on the men who held me. I didn’t know what the hell was going on now, but I didn’t plan on being caught in any crossfire.
“Seven more,” an oddly familiar voice hollered. “No, eight. Take them all down—just be careful of Dess.”
My gaze shot up to see Julius emerging from the shadows of the tunnel, pistol in hand. Garrison came into view just behind him, clutching his own gun, his nose wrinkled but his eyes as intense as his boss’s. Talon marched out of one of the other tunnels, his muscles taut, a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other, with Blaze at his heels. The hacker let out a low laugh and raised his gun.
Someone swore. The two men who held me kept their grip tight, their hands digging into my flesh. The others hurled themselves at the newcomers.
My attackers had been unarmed—it would have been too risky trying to subdue me with any kind of weapons on them that I could have grabbed and used against them—and now that meant they were screwed unless they could take control of the battle at close contact.
Having seen Julius and his crew in action, I could have told them they were screwed either way. But I kept my mouth shut.
Shots blasted through the alcove. Noelle’s voice broke through the thundering sounds: “Get her out of here, now, now!”
My captors tried to haul me the way she was beckoning them, but with only two of them, I found a weak spot as soon as they were in motion. I swung my legs up again but this time rammed them into two kneecaps.
One of the men took the blow hard enough to stagger, and the second he was off-balance, I bounded off his body into a backflip. The hold on my arms and waist snapped. As I landed, I rammed the other man into the wall of the tunnel where another pipe protruded. It neatly cracked his spine.
As he crumpled, I rotated toward the man who was clutching his knee. “You’re next,” I murmured.
He had the good sense to look afraid. I wasn’t helpless, and no one around here was going to control me.
When the man tried to lunge at me, I dodged and then came at him with a hail of punches. One, two, three, clocking him across the head, smacking him in the jaw, swinging out with my leg next and knocking him right off his feet. As he sprawled, I leapt over him and stomped on his throat with all my might. He gagged for a second before I crushed his windpipe completely.
My ears were ringing with the gunshots that had careened through the space around me. It was silent now. The other five of Noelle’s men lay in pools of blood mingling with the puddles of sewer water.
Julius and his men stepped toward me—and toward Noelle herself, who was standing there by the narrowest tunnel, staring at the guys with her lips pressed flat.
She looked… afraid. She took a step backward, glancing behind her. I knew there was nobody else—only her and the ten men she’d brought who’d all been disposed of.
She’d brought that huge force just to take me down, to compel me to come with her. I needed to know why. What was really going on here?
I saw the second Noelle made her decision in the flick of her eyes. She whipped around and sprinted into the nearest tunnel. I swiveled to chase after her, and Julius’s voice rang out at the same time.
“Talon. No one leaves.”
The other man was a few steps closer. He reached the entrance of the tunnel before I did.
“No!” I shouted, just as Julius grabbed my arms. Before I could break free, Talon had already fired the shot.
There was a thump from down the tunnel that must have been Noelle’s falling body. My gut clenched.
“You asshole,” I yelled as Talon stalked down the tunnel to check. “I needed her alive! She’s the only one who knows—who knows anything…”
But maybe that didn’t matter, not when the four men who’d already slaughtered everyone else I’d ever depended on had me surrounded.
I yanked myself out of Julius’s hold and spun around, my back prickling with the awareness of Talon somewhere behind me. When I shifted to the side, that put Garrison behind me, still with a gun in his hand, but I liked my odds slightly better that way.
Julius watched me with a thoughtful expression. “Are you okay?” he asked. As if that mattered to him. As if they’d come—
Why had they come? They’d killed everyone… except me.
Talon emerged from the tunnel and gave Julius a brisk nod. “No one left who can say Dess was with us.”
“With you?” I demanded. “Who says I’m going anywhere with you? What the hell is going on?”
“We just saved your life, sweetheart,” Garrison said. “What does it look like?”
But why? I met Julius’s steady gaze, confused and ready to do battle all over again, even if I didn’t stand a chance against four fully armed, highly skilled killers. But it was Blaze who spoke.
“You don’t need that woman,” he said softly. “She’d only have lied to you anyway. I’m pretty sure that’s what she’s been doing your whole life. If you’ll give us a chance to explain, I think I’ve found something that’ll give you the answers you need.”
