Page 6 of Black Site

Take care of my sister.

3

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Libby

I turn into him and thank God he relaxed his hold on the knife he had at my neck. Before he can bring the knife up I've stuck the piece of glass into him and pulled it out to stab it in him again. He's a big guy and I don't know how many times I'm going to need to do this before he dies from it. The glass is getting slippery with a mixture of his blood and mine, the sharp, jagged points cutting into my palms with every jab and yank.

I had the element of surprise on my side for the first couple of stabs. He let go of my hair and I got far enough away that I can see what I am doing a little better than the first time. He tries to cut me with his knife still clutched in his hand but I move away from him. I drive the shard into his stomach one final time. I'm so afraid I'm going to lose the glass, that it's going to be ripped from my hands and used against me that I bear down harder to make sure I can keep hold.

He lashes out with the hand that doesn't have the knife in it and knocks me down but he comes down too. I hit so hard that my head bangs against the hard floor and causes my teeth to clack together. I take a second to be amazed that stars really do pop up when you hit your head, just like in the cartoons. Not dancing around your head but they are definitely dancing behind my closed eyelids. I have no idea where my shard of glass went but I need to get it back. I roll over right as Nikola brings his knife down. He barely misses me but from the streak of fire I feel on my hip I don't know if he did after all.

The pain burning up my body is enough to make me forget about my search for the glass or a replacement piece. Nikola grabs me by the ankle and pulls me back and I don't have the energy to roll away again or crawl or fight him off. I've been choked, shaken – repeatedly -, had my head knocked against the wall and the floor, stabbed, and now I just don't have anything left in me to fight with anymore. Hell, I can barely even see the guy as I have to blink hard to keep him in focus.

He raises the knife to bring it down on me one more time. Behind him a dark shape comes closer. It worries me that it takes me a minute to recognize it as Jim. Thinking hurts my head and moving too fast makes me want to throw up. Out of all the things that have happened in what amounts to about ten minutes' worth of time I can tell something is really wrong with me.

Jim takes Nikola by the hair and slides something seamlessly across his throat. It isn't until the sight of the long red line blooming across his neck from ear to ear that I realize he's cut his throat. I look up at the man that was going to kill me and even though I shouldn't some small part of me, that I will go to church to take care of after all of this, delights in the look of fear in his eyes. I would be laughing and pointing my finger in his face telling him to suck it but I just can't move anything right now. The effort that would take is too much for me to care about actually doing.

Jim jerks the man away and drops him in a place I can't turn my head to see. God this place is such a mess. They are going to have to hire more cleaners for this one. The other men fall behind Jim and start handing things back and forth between them. Jim hovers over me and it's not until something presses into my hip that I realize they got something to help stop the bleeding. Someone on my right takes my hand and does the same thing. It burns and I try to jerk my hand away but whoever has it is strong and won't let go.

There's a lot of yelling back and forth. Jim finally looks away, taking those hypnotizing eyes with him and my vision starts to waver. A man is throwing something through the air at him and another bandage goes on the hand that is nearest Jim. Someone asks if they need any more hemo...something or other. Jim shakes his head.

"Ace, bring the doctor." Aww, he doesn't want me to die after all. Either that or one of his men was hurt when they broke the windows and came through. Might not be for me at all.

"He's already on it boss, he'll have him here in forty minutes." I wonder where Evie is if Ace is here. He doesn't let her go very far without him being right beside her. It could be considered creepy but I found it cute and sweet.

"Tell him to make it thirty." Jim barks back before turning his eyes back to me. "Stay with me. Stay awake."

His voice sounds far away and his form in front of me is blurring with every long blink I take. Lord, I am so tired. I just want to close my eyes for a little while but when I do pain lances up from my hip and jerks me back awake. I open my eyes to give the person pushing on my hip a go to hell look.

"You got to stay with me, Libby. I need you to focus on the pain until Doc gets here and checks you out." God, his eyes are intense. No wonder people do what he tells them to when he looks at them with those eyes. I do another slow blink but I feel pressure again and jerk my eyes open.

"Get her up. I want her out of this fucker's blood and I need to clean her so I can see if she's wounded anywhere else." The way he's snapping orders it's not hard to figure out that Jim is in charge of all of these guys. His unit or team or whatever they call them in the military seem to jump in line when he orders. Makes sense, he was the one asking the questions the other day when he kidnapped me and wouldn't let me leave his cottage.

Hands lift me up and place me on something hard causing my body to seize up in pain. Jim isn't one of the men carrying me instead he walks beside me constantly monitoring my level of consciousness and telling the men where to go and how to go there. I lose him for a second as I'm taken through a door. He has to hang back so the guys carrying me can get in without dropping me.

As soon as we're through the doorway he's back and watching me like a pissed-off guardian angel. But Jim is no angel. He's more like Death dressed in all black combat fatigues. My body is picked up again and placed on the cold floor of a shower. It takes me a while but I eventually identified the shower as one of the nicer ones in the cottages. Water is turned on and Jim is back hovering above me. He is definitely Death.

4

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Jim

God damn it, talk about everything being a cluster fuck. I knew the minute this girl showed up at the door she was going to be nothing but trouble. And didn't I try to tell the woman to stay the hell away from us. Someone still standing hands me the dual shower head sprayer so I can run the water over Libby and make sure she's not bleeding out anywhere we can't see.

I don't have time to worry about her dignity. I take out the safety cutter hooked to one of the loops on my belt and slice through her shirt and slacks. I try to stay away from her hip. I couldn't see how deep the damned thing was before I had her pants ripped open and slapped the hemostatic pad to the wound. Even though the water is still running red I can't find another wound on her body.

Fucking redhead. I should have tied her to a chair and not let her out of my sight when she came to the cottage telling us Nikola and his henchman was in the area snooping around. If I had tied her to the chair she wouldn't be all cut up with a busted head and handprints around her throat. I trace the bruises forming there with my fingers. They piss me off.

As soon as Remy ran to tell me what was going on and we heard her talking to the two Russians I gave the order to suit up and went through the plan of attack with everyone. We've been together a long time; we've gone on missions where some of us didn't come back. We work pretty well together and we work in tandem almost thinking like one mind and working like one body. You don't do as many missions as we have and come back if you aren't good.

My team used to be the fucking best. They were the men sent in when no one else wanted to go in. We’ve saved hostages, found hideouts, and took out so many bad guys there's not a place we can go in the world that someone doesn't want to kill us, which in this instance is a good thing - means we're doing our job right. We used to be the best because about a year ago some government spunk monkey decided it would be fun to sell the names of covert agents and black ops teams to the highest bidder. My men were on that list so the government we worked so well for decided it was time we 'retired'.

It took us six months or more before we realized something wasn't right. It was one of the only times I feel like I let my team down. Three of our men died and they almost got Ace and his woman too. It seemed that the lynchpin who controlled the network of stolen names, women, guns, and money was someone my team and I knew. And that someone didn't just want us burned they wanted us dead.

This whole thing was set up to draw someone out to try to kill us again. We all knew it was going to happen so why not use it to our advantage. When they came we had planned to force them to tell us who had hired them but our chance of learning any names is laying in a puddle of his own blood and that's too good for the fucker.

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