Page 46 of Power Term

Bits of crumbled cement and a thick layer of dust brush against my fingertips as I place the gun on the floor. Glancing up through my lashes, I lock onto those wet hazel eyes and wink. Straightening, I give her a confident smirk.

“Don’t worry, Mess. We’ll get you out of this.” A hard mask slips over my features as I shift to Whit. “You won’t get away. Even an arrogant ass like you can see that. You’ll be dead before you even step a fucking foot out that door. There are at least a dozen snipers out there itching to take out the fool who took her. And when they see her, see what you did?” I click my tongue and shake my head. “Not only did you hurt the president, but you hit a woman. A bastard like that doesn’t deserve a quick death. No, that bullet will hit where it hurts, to incapacitate. The killing will come later.”

“Good thing I don’t plan on walking out of here. On your knees,” Whit growls, the confidence in his tone and choice of words confusing me. “Hands behind your head since I know you have more weapons on you than that one.”

Slowly lowering to the ground, I don’t look away from Randi. Dust wafts up in the wake of my knees crashing to the floor.

“Baby, you’re okay. Maybe need a shower and a couple ice packs, but you’re okay.” Something blooms in my chest at the sight of her lips twitching upward in an attempt at a smile.

“That’s what you’re going with?” she wheezes. “Get off the floor, Trouble. Kill him. Don’t let him take me.” The tremble in her usually strong voice shreds my heart. “Don’t let him take me. I can’t—” A scream vibrates through the still air. “Fuck you,” she pants like each breath is more difficult to take in than the last.

“Later.” He laughs into her hair while raising a single brow in my direction. “Your turn, Davis, or Trailer here will have a perfect bullet-sized hole in her ignorant little head.”

“T, kill him.”

“Can’t do that, Randi,” Tank’s deep voice rumbles.

“Think of your wife. You can’t leave her. He’ll kill you and then rape me,” she cries.

My shoulders stiffen at that word. Sweat slips down my spine and temples from the need to kill burning through my veins and the stifling heat inside this shithole. Eyes narrowed, I shoot a glare across the room to my friend, begging him to do what that fuckstick asked.

A minuscule nod eases the grasp fear had around my chest. Smith is out there, watching, waiting. I know that, Tank knows that, but Whit does not. He thinks he has us trapped, but we might still have the element of surprise on our side.

The moment he swings that gun to me, thinking both Tank and I are unarmed and the threat’s only outside these doors, Smith will take the shot.

In my periphery, Tank sets his gun on the ground, then sends it skittering across the floor with a hard shove.

Deep breath. This is it. We’re both disarmed, prime targets for Whit to take the kill shot.

But the shot doesn’t come.

Shifting my focus from Randi, I narrow my brows at Whit, who’s still focused on me, a wide smile on his face.

“Don’t look so surprised. You’re worth more to me alive than dead. Plus, taking you will make that coward livid that I took your life instead of him. Serves him right for leaving before the contract was fulfilled.”

Come on, move the gun. Move the motherfucking gun from her head.

All Smith needs is one clear shot and all this will be over. Once Whit is dead, the merry band of idiots along the wall will run back the way they came.

“Trailer here wasn’t as… forthcoming as I hoped. Yes, you just might break what little resolve she has left.”

“No.” Randi’s cry is a bullet to the heart as she jerks in Shawn’s hold. “I’ll do it, whatever you want.”

“We’ll see about that,” he says as a new guy, walking with an air of importance, strides from an office-looking room. Whit chuckles at Tank and me on our knees. “If either of you make a move, I’ll paint the walls with her blood.” The new man, dressed in all black like the others, stops beside Whit and whispers something in his ear. “Good. We’ll need it after all. Search those two, leave cell phones and any guns you find, and then tie them up. They’re coming with us.”

The man beside Whit calls out to the others. They shove off the wall, eager to do his bidding. Five march in my direction while eight or ten head for Tank.

Where did these fuckers come from? There’s no way they got through the secured perimeter the military and agency have set up by now, and their laughter and sick jokes tossed back and forth would’ve been audible if they were here earlier, even with the thick walls of the warehouse.

Two of them scan Randi with a blatant lust-filled once-over as they pass Whit. My jaw muscle pulses from clenching to keep me from bolting off the floor and cutting their eyes out of their heads. But that wouldn’t do me or her any good. I’d be dead before I stood from the floor. No, to help her, I play it safe and stay alive. I fought all morning to find my girl; I won’t risk dying, leaving her alone once again.

A stolen look across the room to Tank tells me he agrees.

The five stop directly in front of me. One toes my discarded gun.

“Ten dollars.” One eye squinted to block out the blinding light, I smile up at the bastard. “It’s the government’s, so really I’d be making money. Not like I bought it.”

Brown stains coat his crooked teeth, his rank breath pungent even from a couple feet away. Stale body odor floats on the air as another one of Whit’s hired hands steps closer. Features scrunched with disgust, one spits, the brown sludge splattering on the floor near my knees.

---