Page 86 of Assassin's Game
He never saw the punch I threw at his temple coming. “Nighty night, asshole.”
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Eli —
The man who’d threatened my family, who’d put us through hell at a time when our focus should have been on our own, was somewhere in this fucking building. We’d gone through two teams of six soldiers to get to the stairwell, jogged down two flights, and probably faced another maze of hallways before we reached the man we needed to kill.
I stopped at the stairwell exit door and turned back, assessing our team. Mikaela’s men were in top shape, not even breathing hard. Though Mikaela brought up the rear, watching our backs—and the couple of darts I’d heard from her vicinity as we descended to stairs said she was watching well—I didn’t even wonder if she was out of breath. The woman could run circles around me, I had no doubt. Still, I swept her with my gaze, unsurprised to find her ready and waiting to move forward.
That same sweep moved past her to the stairs, steel-gray against the stark white walls. And yet the stairs weren’t pristine—wet red drops glistened against the steel, caught by the blinding fluorescent lights mounted at each floor.
“Who’s bleeding?” I barked. It had to be one of us; we were the only ones here. I glanced down at my feet.
Clear.
“Who—”
“I got it,” Mikaela muttered, bending over.
My throat tightened, threatening my breath as I shoved through the team. “What happened?”
She was tying a bandanna around her left thigh. A small puddle of blood had dripped from her boot and collected on the step. “Just a little nick, no worries. Fucker didn’t like getting his ass kicked by a woman half his size.” She tilted her head back as she jerked the knot tight. “Bigger isn’t always better.”
“She would know—we always save the big ones for her,” Titus joked.
I took my cue from him; I had to because, yeah, my first instinct was to totally lose my shit. Only the fact that no one else seemed concerned help me to keep it together. “But sometimes bigger is definitely better.”
She winked my way, and I noted that her eyes were clear. “Sometimes.”
“How deep?” I asked roughly.
Mikaela straightened. “Not even a hitch in my step. We ready?”
I admit, I hesitated. I mean, the woman I cared about was bleeding with every step. But this was an op, and Mikaela was a soldier. “All right, let’s go.” I moved back to the door, the team ready behind me. “Monty?”
He glanced at the screen of the FLIR, squinted. “Looks like they’re in a line along both sides of the hall, same amount as before.”
Six more. I nodded an acknowledgment of the intel and clicked on my computer’s screen. The red light on the box to one side turned green.
I opened the door.
Rhys went through first. We entered one by one, and I flanked Mikaela as she passed into…not a hallway like we’d expected. Instead it was one enormous room filled with tiers of desks, glassed-in offices, conference areas, and a large, clear area near the front where Levi stood with Sullivan and a tall black man I immediately identified as X.
While I was taking in the room, Mikaela’s team was taking out the guards converging around us. I headed straight down the center aisle, darting the two guards who stepped into my path before a one-two punch shut off their lights. Neither man pulled their weapons—not that I cared. The bastards could be Mother fucking Theresa for all I cared; I turned back, hit them each with a second dart, just for the hell of it.
“I told you we wouldn’t play nice,” Levi said, watching my approach. I raised a brow at him. We had played nice; no one was dead. Yet.
“Yes, I see that,” X murmured. He, too, was watching, his dark eyes intent behind Clark Kent glasses, but not only on me—he was watching the team perform. Assessing. Weighing every action, no worry or concern on his face. The lack sent rage through my entire body, and I dropped my dart gun on the last step, raising my GLOCK on the return.
“Eli, no!” Levi stepped toward me, and only his body blocking my aim stilled my finger on the trigger.
“The bastard needs to die,” I growled. For what he put us through, what he put Mikaela and her team through. Hell, just on fucking principle, he needed to die.
“You don’t want to do that,” X said, voice a cultured slide that put my back up.
“Why fucking not?”
