Page 15 of Viral Justice

The door opened a crack.

Oh no you don’t.Anger chased all other emotions from him. He wasn’t going to let these terrorists commit any more atrocities. Not against his people.

Max rose from the bed and silently lowered himself to the floor next to it.

A figure slipped through the doorway and slowly, quietly closed it again. The hallway had some lighting, but inside his room the darkness was almost absolute. The intruder would have to wait for his eyes to adjust before they moved again.

Max didn’t.

He pushed off the floor, coming in low and grabbing the front of the intruder’s shirt. The other man moved to block, but it was too late. Max was moving too fast.

He twisted his body as Ali had taught him, flipped the intruder and slammed the man down on his bed and put him in a choke hold. The intruder tried to suck in air, but Max’s grip was too tight.

“Keep struggling,” Max whispered in his ear, “and I’ll put you out.”

His captive went limp.

Could be a ruse to get Max to loosen up on his hold. Max waited for several seconds, then asked, “Who do you work for?”

A sensual voice said, “You.”

It took a moment for the word to register, it was so unexpected. When it did, he dropped his captive and sprang off the bed. He fumbled along the wall until he found the light switch, then flipped it.

Alicia Stone lay on his bed, her hand rubbing her throat, her gaze flamethrower hot.

His hands were shaking. Her neck was red and bruised.

What had he done?

It took him back thirty years. His hands around his father’s throat, the old man’s face turning red, someone screaming in the background, a blow to his head and then darkness.

This is what happened when he let his emotions rule him, letanyof his anger determine his course of action.

Max blinked and focused on Ali. Her face was red all right, but not from lack of air. No, she looked ready to tear him apart with her bare hands.

He should let her.

Max took a step toward the bed, to apologize, to assure her that he would never touch her again, but she bared her teeth at him. “You’ve been holding out on me.” She got to her feet and glided toward him.

Not good.

“You’ve been fucking holding out on everyone,” she hissed.

He closed his eyes. She was going to kill him now. He knew it. He deserved it.

He’d help.

He opened his eyes as a whisper of breath caressed his collarbone. She stood in front of him, staring at him intently, with only a couple of inches between them. “Explain that.”

“I apologize for putting my hands on your...you,” he said, attempting to sound professional. “I thought you were an intruder. I will report this to General Stone first thing in the morning, resign my position and—”

“Shut the fuck up.” She glared at him for another second or two, then poked him very precisely in the center of his chest. “I came here to show you how easy it would be for someone to enter your room and subdue you. Explain to me where the klutz I beat up earlier went and where the deadly fucking warrior who damn near choked me came from.” By the time she got to the end of the sentence, her words were sharp enough to cut him into strips.

He winced. “I don’t know.”

Her face told him that was the wrong answer. “You owe me the truth.”

He did, even though it made plain that he was no better than any other man who gave in to his rage. “A strange noise woke me and I realized someone was trying to get into my room. All I could think was someone was trying to hurt my people, like they tried with Sophia. I didn’t think—I got angry and moved. It was instinct.”

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