Page 68 of The Bait

Predictable.

While one guy was on his knees before Harry, feeling around his boots and calves, Harry smirked at Asher. “Do you think while he’s down there...?”

The one with the gun stepped closer. “Shut the fuck up.”

Asher sighed. He had no idea how Harry could be joking right now. But then the guy with the gun sneered at him and lowered his gun, and before Asher could blink, Harry took his gun, shot him in the neck, then shot the other guy who was supposed to be aiming at them. In that split second of surprise, Asher disarmed the other guy, and before the fourth and last guy could even move, Harry had his gun pointed at the idiot’s head. “Don’t even fucking blink,” Harry growled.

“A little bit of warning would have been nice,” Asher said.

“I didn’t know I was going to do that until the first guy got into my reach zone,” Harry said. Then he spoke to the now-pale unarmed idiot. “First rule of combat. Don’t get in my reach zone.”

“Well, now the back-up welcoming party’s gonna be here any second,” Asher said flatly.

“If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead already. The factthey didn’t kill us in the Jeep means they want us alive.” He shrugged. “Where is everybody, anyway?”

Asher nodded to inside the shed. “There’s a bunker door in here.”

“You’ve been here before?”

Asher gave a nod as a swarm of guys came bursting out of the darkness, but they also came from both sides of the shed. They were outnumbered now and surrounded.

They had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. If one of them opened fire, they would die right where they stood. Asher knew it, and from Harry’s mumbled, “Fuck,” he knew it too.

“Put the guns on the ground,” one of the masked men ordered.

Goddammit.

Asher did as he was told, and for a brief moment, Asher wondered if Harry was about to send a spray of bullets into the men. He seethed, growled at the closest guy, then reluctantly put his gun down and his hands up.

A tall figure came out of the darkness then. Smiling, smug.

He looked older than his forty-something years, but Asher knew that face. It still haunted his dreams. Radovic. He clapped his hands and held his arms out as if greeting a long-lost relative. “Stranac,” he said. “Itisyou.”

Harry growled and his fists clenched, but two guys moved closer, directly aiming their guns at his head.

“It’s okay,” Asher said to Harry, urging him to stay calm.

“Yes, it’s okay,” Radovic said with his slimy smile. “We are old friends. We go way back, don’t we, stranac.” Then he looked at the three dead men. “What have we here? You killed three of my men.”

“I slipped,” Harry said flatly.

Radovic stared at him, his expression now cold and calculating, in a way that Asher did not like one bit. But then he turned to the fourth guy who Harry didn’t kill. Radovic took a pistol from the back of his waistband and shot him, the back of his head turning to red mist.

Fucking hell.

“I don’t tolerate incompetence,” Radovic said, and the words sent a chill through Asher.

Those words had been uttered countless times throughout Asher’s childhood. From their instructors, their trainers, their abusers, and as they got a little older, from Radovic himself. When he was put in charge of the younger boys... of Asher and Daris.

Radovic waved his hands at the bodies and ordered some men to get rid of the mess before he smiled at Asher and gave a pointed nod to Harry. “I did tell you to come alone. Still defying orders, I see?”

Asher stared at him. “Where’s Yunho?”

Radovic stared at him and his cold eyes and slimy smile never faltered. “So impatient. And,” he said cheerfully, “I saw your cameo at the press conference earlier.” He sighed as if it was a small inconvenience he now had to deal with. “It’s made some people rather unhappy with you. Which is a shame, because I was hoping our little reunion would have been a happy one.”

Asher hated this overly cheerful demeanour he portrayed, because it was usually followed swiftly with cruelty. He knew it was coming...

Radovic’s smile died and his eyes hardened, and he gestured towards the inside of the shed. “Walk.”

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