Page 121 of Stripping Bare
He didn’t seem to have his real gun, so the worst he could do to her now was some kind of fake kill. She, however, would inflict some very realdamage.
He raised that wicked sword again, exposing his torso and giving Tessa an opportunity. Putting everything she had into it, she chopped him in the throat with her forearm. That opened him up for an elbow to the solarplexus.
Oomph.
Score one for Tessa. The contact jarred her, sending waves of pain up her arm. She ignored it and was going in for a knee to the nuts when he gathered himself and brought his sword around. Time seemed to slip into another dimension as it arced through the air a centimeter at atime.
But she clearly heard Jonah say, “Game over, Benery” just before the sword sliced her head from herneck.
The pained crythat came from Benery as he crumpled to the ground was high-pitched. Too high-pitched. Jonah reached up to remove his goggles but was interrupted by the feel of a gun barrel against histemple.
“No, Steele, the game isn’t over. In fact, I’m just starting. By the end, I’ll have you begging me to killyou.”
Jonah turned his head toward the voice, which positioned the gun against his goggles. Benery, who appeared to be a light-haired zombie with part of his scalp torn from his head, was upright and apparently unharmed. Jonah glanced down at the person sprawled on a mattress of dead leaves and pine straw. “Thenwho…”
Matter of factly, Benery said, “I don’t think she’s dead yet, but her sensors are set on the highest level. You may not have actually taken off her head, but the electrical impulses will eventually fry her heart. How does it feel to kill someone youlove?”
As much as he wanted to yank off his goggles to discover if he’d just hacked through his mom or Tessa, he knew Benery would put a bullet through his eyeball if he did. He wasn’t scared to die, but he’d be damned if he would leave Benery standing. “You said yourself that she’s notdead.”
He reached to remove his gauntlets, and Benery shifted the trajectory of the gun to aim it at the woman. Jonahfroze.
Benery squatted down and punched the prone figure in the kidney. “You’re not doneplaying.”
She groaned and rolled onto her back, but in Jonah’s virtual world, her head remained unattached. Fear that what he was seeing was somehow real rose up histhroat.
Benery looked up at him with a smile. “Or maybe she’ll get lucky and stopyourheart.”
Did the sensors really have enough juice to do that? He’d easily endured the blisters on his skin, but if the power were crankedup…
“Why don’t you put on the gear?” he taunted, so he wouldn’t give away how fucking scared he was right now. “Hell, I’ll even trade you my pansy-ass gear for that set.” He gestured carelessly toward the ground. Anything to remove one of the loves of his life from this sickgame.
“Nah. Because I want you to live the rest of your life knowing you were the one who killed her, just like I killed my brother.” Benery’s head was tilted at an angle as he shook it in a mocking motion. “And to think you invested so much time and money into her. But she didn’t know about all that, didshe?”
“Jonah?”
His name was a hoarse whisper, but that single word confirmed which woman Benery wanted him tokill.
Tessa.
Somehow Benery knew about Jonah’s machinations. All his internal organs felt as if they were making a break for the exits. She would never forgive him for what he’d done. That was if he could get them out of this gamealive.
“Let’s see,” Benery said. “There were five of them, right? Shaw, Johnson, Bledsoe, Levine, andCartwright.”
How the hell did he know anything about Tessa’sattackers?
“I already let it slip how you screwed over Shaw and paid for Tessa’s education. By the look on her face, she wasn’t all that happy aboutit.”
“God, Tessa, I’msorry—”
“But I didn’t have time to go into all the details. Charlie Cartwright’s LSAT scores were questioned. Oops, there went law school and his political career. Some pictures of Johnson’s johnsonaccidentallyended up on MySpace back in the day. Levine—who was a 4.0 student—somehow flunked out of Davidson. Last I heard, he was selling used cars in Raleigh. Such a shame. And Bledsoe…the one Steele here lured into a couple of porn sites… Well, he couldn’t seem to shake his addiction to paying for pussy pics. That poor bastard blew his head off not too long ago.” Keith’s gruesome grin was sharp-edged. “Oh, I see neither of you knew about thatone.”
Jonah had wanted to make them pay, but he’d never intended for things to go this far. Shaw deserved prison and the others deserved to have their lives cut down to size. But death?No.
“Keith,” Tessa said. “I don’t think this is about me. It’s about your brother, isn’t it? Why don’t you tell me aboutSteven?”
“I told you every fucking thing about him at SteeleTrap.”
“How did hedie?”
