Page 29 of Cruel Games

Now.

I pulled the pin and rolled the canister gently across theground, ducking back around the side of the door to the storage unit as the knockout gas began to hiss out of the grenade, filling the air in seconds with a huge cloud.

“What the fuck?”

Jackal and the others didn’t have time enough to react. They didn’t have masks that would protect them from the effects of the chemicals rapidly entering their lungs. They were toast, destined to be my victims from the moment they stepped foot on my father’s property.

And now, they were all mine.

I listened as one, two, three bodies fell to the ground, their systems already fighting a losing battle against the gas. I pulled a second from my bag and tugged the pin out of it, too, holding it like a beacon in my hand as I strolled around the side of the door and into view.

Dingo was leaning against an old trunk in the corner, his hand over his mouth, a futile effort, though I had to hand it to him. His eyes were hidden behind his mask, but I could see the moment he realized they were screwed, because his whole body went rigid, and he uttered a single word from behind the cheap plastic as his hand fell to his side and his body went limp.

“Fuck.”

Jackal knelt beside an already unconscious Coyote as I moved to stand in front of him. His mask lay on the floor beside him, abandoned without a care in the confusion. His eyes pinned me in place, though his movements were sluggish and obviously not a threat.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his hands balled into fists on his thighs as he struggled against the effects of the gas. “What the fuck do you want with us?”

My arm rose as if possessed by a demon, perhaps one of his making, even, and pointed the gas straight at his face. He inhaled it and laughed, perhaps finally resigning himself to his fate.

“Fuck you,” I spat, anger taking over me in the moment. “I want to make you pay.” I shoved a single booted foot in the center of his chest, sending him sprawling on his back with a groan of pain. “And now,” I continued, settling that same booted heel against his throat, the urge to stomp out his life suddenly very real. “Now, I will.”

The last thing he saw was the incoming side of my bat as I took it to the side of his head and knocked him the rest of the way out, my snarling laughter echoing in the metal box as the lights went out behind his eyes, sealing his fate.

I finally had them.

And now, I would make them pay.

TWELVE

JACKAL

“—is too much?”

Fuck.

My head was splitting, I was dizzier than fuck, and up felt like down. It wasn’t my first rodeo waking upin a weird position, but it most certainly was my first time waking up this way involuntarily. And another first—I was pretty confident I was chained up from head to toe.

But the rest was . . . a bit fuzzy.

I didn’t dare open my eyes, since there was no way to tell what I’d open them to, so until I was convinced opening them wouldn’t hurt, I stayed still, flexing one small muscle at a time to see what predicament I’d wandered into.

And tried to remember what the fuck happened to me.

Last thing I remembered was dragging that fucking sleazeball into the storage unit, just like the contract said. We propped him up against the chest in the corner–or was it a cabinet? Fuck, I couldn’t remember.

And then . . .

And then something bounced across the floor, and before I could react, the place was full of gas, hissing out of the top of that fucking thing, choking my airway and blinding us.

And the face of?—

“Dammit, I don’t need to know how much to use; I need to know if I used too much!”

I knew that voice.

“Did I interrupt something?”

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