Page 146 of Lamb

LAMB

Five Minutes Earlier…

Iwas drowning.

I was suffocating with an abundance of air around me. Poison sat on my tongue, numb and thick in my mouth, burning with an acrid taste that made me want to spit bile to mask the tang.

With each step I took farther from that door, iron nails tore through the flesh of my feet, desperate to lock me into place, to not leave. To not abandon her.

I kept walking.

My mind was thick and sludgy as we moved down the hallway, but I couldn’t shake the hyper-awareness of the man following behind me. On the outside, I looked calm and unconcerned, and even though a war was razing everything inside of me, I had a task to do.

I had a plan.

The mercenary’s steps were silent. Ghostly. Only my footsteps filled my ears as the darkness loomed behind me. I caught glimpses; tiny flickering snippets of his figure behind me in the reflections of the glass covered paintings hung on the wall. It was like a stop motion. Frame by frame slid by and, with each one, the small gun in his hand raised higher and higher.

The barrel looked too long in the warped reflections—a silencer.

I looked down at the red carpet, wondering if my bloodstain would show in the fibers or if the color would be a perfect match and my death would vanish as if it had never happened at all.

I lifted my hand, my brain working through numbers and calculations as I forced that incensed volcano spilling out of my chest under the surface, letting cold and logic flood to the surface; this was me. This was what I was good at. This was my nature.

A break in the paintings and a row of bare walls started the reaction.

I spun on my heels, my hand fast as lightning, gripping the handle of my gun, yanking it from the back of my shirt, lifting the barrel, finger pressing down on the trigger as I lifted to aim, pointed to kill, and—

The gun leaped from my hands as if it scalded me, clattering to the ground, cushioned by the soft carpet as I stopped myself just in the nick of time.

“Jax?” I snapped, trying to make heads or tails of the mess of bodies tangled behind me.

“What’s up, brother?” Jax smirked, revealing his face from a messy mop of dark hair.

“Hold him properly!” Mint snapped, his limbs wrapped between Jax’s and the mercenary. Mint pressed an elbow to the back of the mercenary’s head, smothering the man’s face into the carpet as he yelled and growled into the cushioned fibers.

“For God’s sake,” Hunter snapped, appearing behind my back. His booted foot cracked hard across the man’s head. His neck snapped at an unfortunate angle, and his body softened beneath my two other brothers.

“How many more of you are there?” I grumbled, rubbing my finger and thumb between the bridge of my nose.

“Just us.” Jax beamed.

I sighed. “You’re an infestation.”

“Love you, too,” Hunter grunted, offering an open palm to help Mint off the floor.

Jax sprung to his feet, his dark suit rumpled, and hair freed from whatever gel he’d tried to run through it. Hunter and Mint stood wearing their normal clothes—dark jeans, shirts, and jackets, with wind-ruffled hair and combat expressions. Despite their soft words, they weren’t here to fuck around, and I knew they’d be packing beneath their jackets, too.

I stared down at the man and saw his chest moving ever so slightly beneath the protector vest he wore. Unfortunately, he’d survive.

“So”—Jax leaned forward, clasping a hand on my shoulder—“surprised?”

Jax was dressed in an expensive black tuxedo with a couple buttons undone at the top and his shirt untucked around his waist. If it weren’t for the heavy boots hidden beneath his trouser legs, he’d have looked the part.

“No,” I grumbled, shoving off his shoulder and leaning down to retrieve my gun. I’d have taken the shot if I’d known it would just have been Jax I was hitting. He was like a cockroach one couldn’t kill or shut up. “You’re late.”

“You knew we were coming?” Mint frowned, mirroring the shocked faces of all three brothers.

“No, but I know Wolf.” I sighed, turning and walking back down the hallway. We’d gotten far on our walk from the suite, and with every step closer, that rippling heat threatened to rise again. I clamped it down tight. “There’s no way he’d let me go and not send a babysitter.” I glanced again at the brothers as they fell into step beside me. “Or a few.”

---