Page 54 of Meet Me In The Dark

“Just one problem, professor. I’m not dead,” said Kara. “But I don’t know if you can say the same for long.”

17

Where the fuck was Micah?

As Kara glared at Chris, she worked to keep her face calm and body alert but relaxed. She was surrounded by masked, armed guards, dressed in military fatigues and holding guns. They were at the end of a long, dark corridor that split off into another perpendicular hallway. The whole place was grey and musty; cement dust and dirt everywhere. It reminded Kara of where she’d been held the last time she’d seen Christopher. The guards clustered in a semi-circle around Chris, Luke and Conor across from them, perfectly situated to be target practice.

Chris glared at her from the center, angry, but not worried. Understandable, given his backup, but he wouldn’t feel that way for long.

Luke and Conor had both whipped around to look at her. The utter relief on Luke’s face quickly turned to terror when he took stock of the situation. And the disbelief and love shining from Conor’s eyes, the way his hand shook as he raised it to brush her cheek, almost broke her resolve. All she wanted to do was turn into their arms, check them overto really prove they were alive. They both looked worse for wear: Luke cradling his left arm, dried blood crusted over one eye, cuts and bruises everywhere. Conor, dirt and blood smeared on his left side, didn’t look much better. Both were thinner, muscles and bones more pronounced. Had they even been fed? But at least they were there, standing, breathing. Alive.

She was determined to keep it that way.

“Sweetheart, run,” Luke ordered.

“Kara…” Conor trailed off, like he’d seen a ghost, and he wanted her to haunt him forever.

Good. She was going to.

“I’m not going to run,” Kara said. “I’m done running.”

“That’s a beautiful sentiment, sweetheart, but we didn’t sacrifice ourselves just so you could get yourself killed or taken again. We’re blocking the guards, go,” Luke said.

“No. I’m not letting either of you die.”

Conor growled. “Get the fuck out of here, brave girl. What the hell happened to following orders?”

“And where the hell is Micah?” Luke added.

“The whole point of this was to keep you safe,” Conor said.

Kara shook her head, making sure to look into Conor’s dark eyes and then Luke’s green ones, not letting herself get lost in either. “I’ll let you boss me around for the rest of our lives, I’ll submit to you whenever you make me, but not this. I won’t leave you behind, and I won’t ever give you up. I’m not heroic, either, boys. I’m fucking selfish and vindictive and I refuse to lose the men I love, especially to this asshole.”

Conor choked. “The men you…”

Before he could finish, the true villain interrupted. “As much as I hate to break up this little lovefest,” he sneered, “Ifeel it behooves me to point out that none of you are going anywhere. It seems you’re on a fool’s errand, Ms. Blum. A quite entertaining one to watch, but a fool’s errand all the same.”

Oh, this motherfucker.She couldn’t fucking wait to kill him.

“A fool’s errand? Do you know that as we stand here, your brothers are currently being held for treason and espionage? Seems that even though you killed Jean Pierre’s widow, you didn’t get rid of all the evidence. She left a USB in a safety deposit box at Johnathan Bank. Kind of like the irony of that.” Kara laughed, shaking her head, shocked at how much she was enjoying this. “Anyway,onthe USB were files upon files of evidence, including a conversation between you and your brothers about the Frankfurt mission. They’re, of course, about to cut a deal with the DOJ that their fancy lawyer arranged for them. Turns out brotherly love only goes so far.”

Chris’s face turned a very satisfying red, and then grew redder. Kara used his shock to begin unzipping her jumpsuit.

Confusion filled her men’s eyes, but she shook her head, stepping away from them so she was between them and Chris and his guards, directly in the center of the melee.

“It’s not possible,” Chris scoffed. “My brothers and I destroyed all the evidence of the Frankfurt mission after we had the widow killed. There’s no trail connecting any of us to it, or evidence that we bribed the military to send Conor, Luke, and Micah there in the first place. You’re the same little lying bitch you?—”

Kara pulled the gun out from beneath her unzipped jumpsuit and fired a shot. The blast sounded, followed by a scream—Chris’s scream.

“Sorry, did you need that knee?” she asked. “Piss me off again, and I’ll shoot the other one.”

A rifle was shoved in her face. Well, she’d been expecting that.

She inhaled, then exhaled. It was funny; it wasn’t long ago that a gun in her face would have spiraled her directly into a panic attack—and probably one of the worse ones. Now, a gun in her facesteadiedher. As if the actual risk of danger convinced her body that a panic attack was not only unnecessary, but unhelpful—and her body listened.

Something worth considering later.

“Don’t shoot,” Chris groaned from the floor. “Don’t kill her, I want to play with her first.”

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