Page 121 of Lethal Game

Only Smoke moved. Were the other two so badly injured that they were unconscious or unable to move? Panic welled up, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. She shoved it down with cold logic. She couldn’t help them if she had a meltdown.

“Details,” she ordered.

“Does she give the orders in bed too, Button?” Len asked with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t know, asshole.” Con’s laugh was full of pain. “Stab wound to my left thigh and possibly a couple of cracked ribs. Smoke took a John Wayne shot to the shoulder. River caught a bullet with his arm and kept fighting. Len kicked him in the head and he’s been down ever since. Stalls got stabbed too, but he lost consciousness a little while ago.”

She finally looked at Len. “I need to check them.”

“No problem,” he said, an evil smile spreading across his face. “Just as soon as you give me a blow job.”

“You motherfucking son of a bitch,” Con yelled as he tried to get up. “Don’t you touch her.”

Len pointed his weapon at him and grinned.

Con froze with his teeth bared.

She put her face close to Len’s and said, “You put anything that close to my face, I’m going to bite it off.” She snapped her teeth a couple of times.

Len backhanded her, knocking her to the sand. Again. He came at her, violent intent turning his face into a hideous mask, and she laughed.

“How are you going to explain damaging Akbar’s prize?” she asked.

He stopped, then snarled, “I’ll tell him you tried to escape.”

“To where? We’re in the middle of a desert. If you claim I tried to overpower you, he’s not going to believe that either. I’m too small and weak for that to be a possibility.” She sat up and when that didn’t seem too difficult, she got to her feet.

“You know what your problem is?” she asked the mercenary. “You think you’re in control. You have the combat and weapons skills, so you pretend to bow down to Akbar. Until your final paycheck is in the bank, and then you think it’ll be easy to kill him and disappear.”

When he didn’t respond right away, she knew she was right. “The reality is, he’s crazy and no one’s life means anything to him. Certainly not yours, not even his own. He has no plans to let you live one second longer than necessary.”

“Shut up, you stupid bitch.”

“I’m going to examine them now,” she said. “I advise you to think about it while I’m doing that. Right now, Akbar needs me a whole lot more than he needs you.”

She checked on the unconscious men first. Stalls was dead, and from the amount of blood soaked into the sand underneath him, he’d bled out. She glanced at Con and shook her head. River was alive, but when she checked his pupils, only one reacted to light. “Concussion,” she reported softly. “A bad one.”

Smoke didn’t say anything when she looked at his shoulder. “Any trouble breathing?”

“No.”

“Good. It looks like your collarbone is broken. Try not to move around or it could pierce your lung.” She wished she could do more for him, but advice was all she could give.

He gave a short nod but never took his eerily light blue eyes off Len.

Con had his hands wrapped around his thigh, but his pants were so blood soaked she couldn’t tell where the wound was. “Is the wound on the outside or inside the thigh?”

“Outside, but it’s still bleeding like a bitch.”

He wasn’t going to be able to hold it forever.

She pulled off her shirt, leaving her in just a tank top, and tied it around Con’s leg, wadding up what she could to press against the wound he revealed when he removed his hands.

“What does Akbar want from you?” Con asked very softly.

“To make his virus easier to transmit.”

“Fuck.” He hissed as she tightened the fabric hard around his leg. “You know which one it is?”

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