Page 120 of Lethal Game

Chapter Twenty-Five

“How do I know you haven’tkilled them already?” Sophia asked. There was no trusting a man whose only goal was death on a mass scale.

Akbar glanced at Len. “Show her.”

The mercenary grabbed her by the arm and hauled her into the refugee camp.

At this rate, she was going to have bruises on her arm for the rest of her life. That struck her as so ironic, she laughed.

“What’s so fucking funny, sweetheart?”

“You’re gonna die, asshole, and I think that’s hilarious.”

“You should be a little nicer to me,” he said in her ear. “I’m the only thing standing between you and all these sick, hungry, desperate people.”

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Good News today.”

The idiot thought that was funny.

They passed down a narrow walkway between makeshift tents and shanty-type dwellings until they arrived at a ruined collection of buildings made of rock and clay.

People drew back from Len like he was the carrier of a deadly disease.

So, he was known to the populace. That meant he’d been working for Akbar for a while, maybe even the entire length of time he’d been here. Perhaps he’d used Dr. Blairmore and his aid group as a cover.

“You do know that as soon as your usefulness ends,” she said to Len, “he’s going to kill you.”

“Only if I don’t kill him first.”

Wonderful, she was dealing with two sociopaths instead of one.

He dragged her past two men holding Russian-made rifles into a stone-walled room with a roof made of rotting wood. Four vaguely human shapes huddled against the far wall, either lying on the sand or sitting up at awkward angles.

She recognized two of them immediately. Connor and Smoke.

She surged forward, but Len yanked her back.

“Con? Smoke? Are you all right?”

“You touch her, you motherfucker, and I’ll make you hurt for a very long time,” Connor said in a voice so broken and ragged it was barely discernible as his.

Len leaned close to Sophia’s ear and said, “He’s got a thing for you.”

She ignored him, her focus on Con. The shadows created by the uneven roof made it hard to see. “Are you injured?”

“We all are,” he said.

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