Page 10 of Addiction

“Johnson?” came the aggravated male voice from the radio. “Is that you?”

“Yep, it’s me,” Johnson replied, peering around quickly before his concentration slid to the device in his left hand. For one heart-stopping second, Tucker thought he’d caught sight of him, but the fact he continued speaking into the radio reassured him otherwise. Clearly, the guy was trigger-happy but not observant.

“I told you!” Johnson sighed, apparently still unaware as Tucker slipped from behind the tree and hurried past another huge trunk so he could attack from the side.

This was his opportunity.

Tucker had to take the aggressor down before he disclosed their location. One guy with a gun was easy to eliminate, but a band of them would not be.

“I saw two targets. One m—”

The asshole’s sentence was never finished as Tucker reached his blade around him and slipped it adroitly across the enemy’s neck. An old familiar exhilaration rained over him as the life slipped rapidly from the moron, his body slumping to the earth below as the radio slid from his fingers.

“One what?” the impatient male voice demanded. “Christ, Johnson. What is it with you today? You’d better not be pulling my fucking chain…”

Tucker scanned the blood-stained terrain beyond his feet. Johnson’s lifeblood decorated the nearby earth, but fortunately, very little had covered his hand. He found a neighboring leaf and wiped the blood from his digits before cleaning the blade.

Slicing a man’s throat wasn’t usually his style, but needs had dictated that he acted. He’d done what he had to do to keep Ella safe. Now, thanks to Johnson’s sloppiness, he had an even better means to protect her, and although he loathed the look of the weapon lying by his feet, he knew he’d use it. If he had to.

“Oh my God!”

He spun at the sound of Ella’s strangled gasp, finding her mouth hanging open as she surveyed the mess.

“Didn’t I tell you to get down?” He wasn’t surprised that she’d disobeyed his order. Ella had been pushing boundaries from the first moment he’d collected her, but the idea that she’d have put her life in jeopardy riled him. “You could have got yourself killed, Ella.”

“By you, you mean?” Her gaze fell to the blade still in his hand. “I heard the gunfire and kept out of the way, but when it stopped, I crept out to see what was happening…” She hesitated. “I saw what you did to him.” Her expression crumpled as she turned away from the corpse. “How could you?”

“Sir.” His fist tightened as he fought to control his irritation. He ought to take her over his knee again right there in the woods, but they had no time. Ella should have known better. He shouldn’t need to remind her. “Don’t forget your manners.”

“My manners?” Disdain oozed from her voice. “You just slit a man’s throat, and you’re worrying about my decorum?”

“He was going to kill us.” Compelling his words to slow, he slipped his blade back into his pocket. “And he has friends who still might if we don’t move.”

“But to kill him that way?” Her hands rose to her mouth as her gaze flitted back to the aftermath. Tears filled her eyes as she met his, and for the first time, he recognized the shock etched into her pretty features. “I’ve n-never seen a dead body before.”

Shit, of course, she hasn’t.

Years of immorality and assassinations had hardened Tucker to the point that he sometimes forgot what normality looked like. Normal people didn’t think the way he did; they wouldn’t respond the same way, and in all probability, they’d have been the ones lying on the cold, hard ground in Johnson’s place. It was only his training and experience that had kept them alive.

“It’s okay.” Whatever remained of his conscience pulsed in his chest as he moved in her direction, but to his dismay, she recoiled from his hand.

“Don’t touch me!” Heaving in a breath, she stumbled backward, her face ashen as she nearly lost her footing.

“Little girl.” He let out a sigh, conscious of her vulnerability as well as the possible danger of loitering there with the dead man’s body. “I’m sorry you had to see what happened.” His brow furrowed as he imagined what she’d witnessed. A woman like Ella would never have encountered such brutality before. “But we do have to keep moving. There are plenty more men out there with guns like that one.” He motioned to the weapon on the ground. “They won’t think twice about using them.”

“They won’t sh-shoot me.”

She still hadn’t used his title, the thought reigniting his annoyance as he ushered her toward the tree he’d asked her to shelter behind.

“They’re looking for me, aren’t they? Alexander wants me back.”

“But you don’t want to go with him.”

He presented the statement as a fact rather than a question, but as it left his lips, he wondered; perhaps what she’d seen had frightened her so much that she’d changed her mind.

Maybe even Bennett looked good in comparison to him?

“I don’t know.” She pulled in air as her feet tangled in the tree’s roots, and her back grazed its trunk. “After what I just saw, I don’t know, Tucker…” Fear flashed in her eyes as she gulped back her trepidation. “How can I trust you?”

---