Page 64 of Furever Loyal
People hurriedly got out of his way as he approached the door. He was about to violently kick it in when he realized there could be innocent staff back there. So instead, he tore it off the hinges and dropped it behind him, entering like a demon freshly released from hell.
The commotion from the next story told him they were aware of his presence, but he didn’t care. He didn’t stop. He took the stairs, kicked in the door, and raised the camera in his hand, snapping pictures rapidly of all the occupants. Krawll. Laurent. MelanieGirard. Together, in the same room.
“Say cheese, motherfuckers!” he shouted happily, yanking the memory card from the unit and shoving it in a back pocket, even as he tossed the camera at Laurent to keep him distracted.
Krawll came at him wildly, but Kincaid was ready. He’d taken a measure of the man during their trials and found him to be wanting. Twisting to the side, he snap-kicked out, taking Krawll just below the knee and sending him spinning to the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing!” Laurent bellowed. “You cannot come in here.”
Kincaid snapped up a piece of the door and in the blink of an eye had the sharpened edge against Laurent’s throat. “If you test me one more time, I will shove this so far into your jaw you’ll look like a tootsie-pop. Understood?”
The terrified Canis lord nodded frantically and backed away as Kincaid turned to deal with Krawll. “As for you, you won’t be so lucky. You’re going to face justice before the Queen, and I will gladly play the role of executioner,” he snarled, meeting the wild charge from the traitorous bear shifter.
The two went down in a crash, Melanie taking that moment to escape, leaving her mate cowering in the corner. Kincaid drove an elbow into Krawll’s side, taking a knee to his upper leg in return. Plunging his hand into the floor, he ripped up a piece of the hardwood and stabbed it into Krawll’s calf.
Ignoring the splinters in his own hand, he made a fist out of it and drove it into Krawll’s face. The impact sent pain lancing up his arm, but it also drove some of the giant pieces of wood deep into Krawll’s face. One of them even gouged the massive vein in his forehead and blood started pouring from the wound.
Kincaid rolled free and the two of them got to their feet, thick red blood flowing freely down the right side of Krawll’s face, blinding him even as he tried to wipe it away. Kincaid came close, ducked and went at the blind side, hitting him hard in the ribs. At least one cracked under the blow.
The slightly smaller shifter doubled over in pain, only to receive Kincaid’s shoulder to his jaw as he drove upward. Teeth clacked, several breaking, and Krawll’s eyes rolled back into his head as he fell backward in slow motion.
“Timberrrrr!” Kincaid shouted, giving him a lazy push in the forehead.
Krawll hit the ground limply, out cold from the brutal impact.
Kincaid took a moment to savor his victory, then grabbed the unconscious Ursa traitor and tossed him over his shoulder with a grunt.
“You’ll pay for this!” the Canis lord shrilled.
Kincaid looked over at him. “I didn’t touch you. But I still could. Are you sure now is the best time to start acting tough?”
The man stood up, brushing himself off, for once acting like a shifter.Now that the fighting’s over.
“You can’t do anything to me. Do you know who I am?”
“That’s the only reason you’re not a corpse on the floor,” Kincaid snarled.
“You’ll regret this.”
“I doubt it,” he spat, turning toward the exit.
It was time to go home.
To end this.
31
Without Kincaid, the safehouse felt cold and unwelcoming. Even as she put her weight into the steel panel, sliding it closed to block the stairs, the room began to close around her. There were no windows, nothing to let daylight in. Gloomy and a little dank, despite the attempts to make it feel light and airy with bright colors and furnishings, it did little to help her mood.
Not that she was feeling depressed. Dismayed at the way her situation had become, worried over what her employees were thinking about her absence, those were emotions she should be feeling.
Should be.
To an extent she was, it was not like they didn’t exist. The problem was, they weren’t her priority. Not even close. In fact, they were shoved far to the back, her brain creating space for her to worry and fret over something else.
Kincaid.
Wandering over to the cupboard, she started rummaging through it. “Why the hell couldn’t he stock this place with some booze? Wine. Red wine. That would be perfect,” she muttered to herself, continuing the search even though she knew it was pointless, that alcohol was not on the list of things a safehouse needed.
