Page 51 of Unmade

Before I could say or do anything, he grabbed hold of my hand, dug his thumb into my wrist, and twisted my arm so that I spun around, and then I had my back to his chest. What the fuck. There was nothing slow about that at all!

“This is a good stop,” Tenley noted. “We’ll replay it later slowly, but for right now, can anyone tell me what Operator Beckett is doing and what he could do next?”

“Watts isn’t restrained at the moment, so he could wrench himself free if he’s fast enough,” Caleb said.

That wasn’t the question!

“I’m definitely restrained,” I gritted out. My arm hurt behind my back!

“But you have one hand free,” Tenley pointed out. “How’s his grip on the other?”

“Really fucking tight,” I said, sucking in a breath. “He’s digging his thumb into my wrist too.”

Tenley nodded. “That’s a good little extra. By applying a lot of pressure on the wrist, you can loosen someone’s hold on a knife or another weapon. Disarming someone should come before pulling an enemy close to your body, though, so we’ll set that aside for now.” He turned to the others. “What should Operator Beckett do next?”

“Go home,” I muttered under my breath.

Beckett chuckled quietly, and his mouth was only an inch or two above my ear. It made me acutely aware of his body warmth and how close he was.

Miguel jerked his chin at us. “He could fish-hook Watts’s cheek and punch his temple.”

“That’s an option,” Tenley replied. “He’d need both hands for that, but it’s definitely an option. Which makes that an important moment to already know your next move. Are you keeping the enemy alive for interrogation or arrest? Don’t use a fist. The temple is a very sensitive area where four parts of the skull meet. A blow forceful enough can kill a fucker. So, if you need the enemy alive for whatever reason after the fight, choose an open-palm strike.” He faced us again. “But in the spirit of keeping a fight short-lived, which is always the goal, Operator Beckett has positioned Watts in a way that he’s ready to go down in just two more moves.”

“Are you ready to go down?” Beckett whispered in my ear.

Fuck me, he drew a whole-body shudder from me with that one, and I had to clench my jaw.

“Can you guess the moves?” Tenley asked the others.

“Swoop his leg,” Miguel said. “Maybe a knee to the back of Watts’s knee too, but that would depend on how the fighters line up. Since Operator Beckett is significantly taller… I don’t know, in that position, I’d just swoop his leg and shove him forward.”

We could also be nice to each other. I mean, that was an alternative— I yelped as the floor disappeared underneath me, and before I knew it, my knees hit the mat, and my hands followed.

Beckett didn’t stop until I was flat on the floor and he was straddling my ass.

I swallowed a groan of discomfort and dropped my forehead to the mat too.

Welcome to my personal hell.

THEIR PERSONAL HELL

August 20th, 2024

Bo Beckett

“You can’t keep me here forever!” Nassim yelled.

“You won’t live that long.” I walked out of his cell and locked the door. Shira was still standing by the one-way mirror, and I had only one thing left to say. “The reason he won’t give us anything is because he doesn’t know shit. He’s low-ranking cannon fodder.”

She inclined her head. “We’ve come to the same conclusion. What do you want to do with him?”

I eyed the fucker through the window and sighed. “We’ll give him another week or two, and if nothing else comes up, I’ll take care of him.”

“I support that decision.” She gestured for the next door. “Go grab your lunch. If you don’t mind, I’ll let the Tenleys have another go at Nassim.”

By all means. Not that I thought it would lead anywhere. “All right, see you later.” I walked out and headed for the elevators.

What little intel we’d gotten had come from Nassim’s personal belongings. We’d traced two phone calls to Cairo, one to Stuttgart, and one to Galveston. But we already had eyes on the two other Hahn associates there, and they hadn’t moved since they’d arrived in Texas. We believed that was because of the lack of a signal, possibly from Nassim—or a higher-up who was supposed to hear from him. And now, they undoubtedly assumed he’d been captured or killed. What that meant for their next move on US soil, we didn’t know. But at this point, we could no longer justify lockdown protocol or extra protection for my sister and mother.

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