Page 5 of Black Site

When the first guy comes back over to say something to me his eyes go to the phone. The voice inside is screaming for him not to notice the red light but I realize when he straightens up and calls the other guy over I am not going to be so lucky. The second guy looks at the light and then his eyes narrow. He slides them back to me and I'm reminded of a snake. His eyes are cold and they hold no humanity in them at all.

He reaches across the desk and grabs me by the shirt. I wrap my hand around his in a futile effort to stop him from tugging me closer.

"You know where the Archer is, don't you?"

I start to shake my head no but he yanks me across the desk and I am beyond surprised that I actually go. How much effort must it take to yank an adult across a partition? I am so fucked! My shirt is ruined and I am going to have bruises all over me if I make it out of this alive. Which isn't looking likely. The other man is behind the desk where I used to be.

"She put us on speaker, Vladilen."

It cannot be a good sign that they are using first names around me. At least I think it is the first name of the man who shakes me now like I am nothing more than a ragdoll. He wraps his thick meaty fingers around my neck and squeezes down until it becomes harder and harder to breath.

"You will tell us were the Archer is, now." He slams my back against a wall that I am pretty sure is on the other side of the room from the desk. It's kind of hard to keep track because my feet haven't touched the floor since he yanked me over and with his hand squeezing the life out of me I'm lucky to even be conscious at this point. I work up enough nerve to spit at him and tell him to fuck off in his native language. He slams the back of my head into the wall causing everything to get fuzzy.

"You will talk or else I will take great delight in showing you all the ways a woman is vulnerable to men like me."

Oh, like that's not going to make me push him until he just kills me. Wow, the choices a girl has these days. Stay alive and get raped and beaten, or push the guy to just snap my neck and put me out of my misery. And why the fuck am I doing this to myself again? Keeping someone from killing a man who is a complete asshole and who would rather see me dead than smile at me. Why? Oh yeah, right thing to do and all that crap.

I'm trying to gasp for breath but he's making sure I get none. I kick my foot out at his thigh but the effort to breathe takes all my energy and the kick does nothing to him. As the black around the edges of my vision creeps in closer and closer I hear the sound of shattering glass and something small ting on the floor behind Vlad. Then a loud bang and a bright light fills the room and causing my ears to ring. A gun goes off and for a second I am sure one of the men has shot me but Vlad's head actually jerks to the side and pink mist sprays out one side of his head.

I'm released and slide down the wall in time to watch Vlad hit the ground too. His eyes still open, staring at me. Holy shit I just saw someone get killed right in front of me. It hurts to swallow and I still can't hear very well. Everything sounds like it's in a drum or far away. I'm sitting in so much glass one wrong move and I'm going to look like I went a couple of rounds with a porcupine.

Men crowd into the room, dressed in black with masks and helmets on. There’s no skin showing at all. They look a little like insects with the goggle looking things covering their eyes. I count five of them before I am jerked up by the hair and held tightly to the second guy. I try to resist but it's too painful and brings tears to my eyes when I do. He has a pretty good hold on me. I don't know if it's the thing they threw in the room before or the lack of oxygen from Vlad choking me but I don't feel the blade of the knife right away. By the time I realize he has a knife pressed to my neck almost all of the smoke has cleared the room and five scary as fuck men are pointing guns at me and Guy Number Two.

"I'll kill her." He leans in on the blade and something warm and wet runs down my neck. I can guess what that is.

One of the men reaches behind and takes off the mask and helmet. Green eyes stare back at me and Two with so much calm and control that if I had a weapon I would want to hand it over. Apparently, Two doesn't feel the same way and shakes me a little bit like maybe the guys didn't notice me standing in front of him.

"Go ahead and do it if you're going to do it." That bastard. I should have known not to literally put my neck on the line for him. Of course, this is no big shock either. I understood from day one that if something happened I was going to be the least of the concerns to these men. Hell, after the other day, I think my boss wouldn't give a shit either. God, what an undignified way to go out. My shirt is torn open so I'm giving everyone in the room a hell of a show, I'm streaked with blood, and I am sure by now those bruises have had plenty of time to form making me black and purple.

"Stupid," Two jerks behind me when I call him out, if I'm going out I might as well finish this so at least it wasn't all in vain and the dick lives. If he dies after all of this I am going to be so mad. "He would shoot me just so he could get to you. You picked the wrong person to be your shield buddy."

He shakes me and yells for me to shut up. Jim shrugs but never lowers the gun in his hand. He isn't wearing his glasses and for an insane second, I wonder if he can even see well enough to shoot me and this guy. Hell for that matter he doesn't have the fucking cast on his arm either. I knew something was off about that damned thing. It felt more like a prop he was using than an actual injury but I wasn't going to be a dick and say anything about it.

"You won't shot with the girl in the way. You're bluffing." There is a hint of a quiver in the guy's voice. He's starting to wonder if he did pick the wrong person but when none of them shoot he just pulls me in closer to him, wrapping his arm around my waist.

"Why would you think I wouldn't shoot you, Nikola? You know who I am, you've heard of me. Have you ever known me to hesitate to pull the trigger because someone stood in my way?"

Okay. Two, or Nikola, and Jim clearly know one another. I am so fucked! The guy standing in front of me is never going to let this guy go and Nikola isn't going to smarten up and realize we are both going to die.

"I don't want to have to kill you, Nikola. I want answers and if you drop the knife and answer my questions I will let you walk in the end."

That is a good deal. I would take it. But not my Russian buddy, he just spits out slur words in Russian and squeezes me tighter to him.

"If you let me go the man who hired me will hunt me down and kill me. Either way, I am a dead man." I spot the interest flaring up in Jim's eyes. He wants the name of the man who hired Nikola bad enough he would do anything to have it. "But you haven't shot me yet so I am thinking she means more to you than you let on. Why else would she try so hard to save you?"

What a fucking idiot. "Maybe I just have a hero complex, have you ever thought of that?" I'm rewarded for my sarcasm by being shaken again and told to shut my fucking mouth.

"Fine, you don't want to talk to me then you can eat a fucking bullet, Nikola." Jim's eyes are clear and unclouded with guilt and worry for another human. Man, I wish I could be more like him. It doesn't really matter now though because I have a choice of either getting my throat cut or being shot to death. Today just really hasn't worked out for me in the either/or category.

"And yet you still don't fire when I am right in front of you. You aren't a soft man, Archer. If you really didn't care you would have shot me already and stepped over her body to come after me. I think maybe I will call your bluff this time." He switches to Russian and yells one word that causes my stomach sink and chills to run all over me in this overwhelming sense of dread. He isn't holding me so tight anymore and starts to back up away from the room full of men.

"What did he say?" oh, now he wants to know how good I am at speaking Russian. I lock eyes with him and tell him what Nikola said. "He said shoot."

The silence in the room is almost deafening and no one moves. Men still have their weapons pointed at me and Nikola. Jim is still standing with his gun raised but somehow time seems to have slowed down. Every tick of the clock is a reminder of the closer I come to death. I wiggle to try to get further away but he still has a death grip on my hair.

I close my eyes and take a breath, knowing what I am about to do is the stupidest thing I have ever done. When I open them I am hit by how beautiful Jim's eyes really are. It's easy to see them now because they are locked on me with an intensity that would make my panties wet if I wasn't about to die. He is a stunning man.

I say a prayer of thanks that he is looking at me and I do one last thing before I go all stupid. I mouth a request to him that I hope he allows. He watches as I let the large piece of glass I was able to pick up off the floor before Nikola grabbed me drop out of my shirt sleeve and into my hand.

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