Page 380 of Hell Hath No Fury
Finnegan
It took me a disorientated moment to realize the gun wasn’t at the back of my skull anymore. The interior of the old arcade was so dark, I couldn’t make out anything even though I could tell by the rustling noise that the man at my back was moving around to my side.
“You try to fuck with me, I’ll end you,” he growled, right next to my left ear.
A moment later, there was the softsnickof a switchblade opening and the cold edge of a knife against the inside of my arm. I shivered, expecting the worst. The painful restriction of the zip tie fell away from my elbow on one side, then the other, before he did my hands and feet.
I rubbed at the sore abrasions on my wrists as I asked, “Did it work?”
“Won’t know until we know, c’mon,” he grunted, pulling me roughly by the arm.
I didn’t know how the hell the man could see in this darkness, but he seemed to have a sixth sense for where to go, and before I knew it, we were at the glass door, weak light from the street spilling in.
It was immediately obvious that we were in Vancouver’s Chinatown, a dumpling place across the street along with the signature red lamp posts and Chinese signage.
What the hell were we doing here?
Then, I recalled that there were rumors the 0bs1d14n Sw4n worked for China and it all fell into place.
“They were keeping her hostage?” I surmised, asking the brawny enforcer that was bent to undo the series of locks around the front door. “She used me to break her out.”
“She’s not out yet,” he said, quiet and somber.
As he stood, he twisted to face me slightly, the blue and yellow streetlights illuminating his face with broken Mandarin symbols. I noticed he was Caucasian with some kind of Latin ancestry, swarthy with anglicized features.
“Where is she?”
“In there.” He jerked his head across the street at a restaurant called The Golden Key. “You got past the code. Now, I’m up.”
He pulled two guns from under his leather jacket, one from his waistband and the other from a proper holster under his arm. I watched as he deftly checked the magazine and unclicked the safety.
“You’re going in alone? How many people are inside guarding her?” I demanded.
I didn’t know why the hell I cared for this random guy who’d beaten and threatened me since we met, but the woman behind S1gn3t and 0bs1d14n Sw4n clearly cared about him.
And the truth was, I cared about her.
In the long, lonely twelve months since mum died, she’d been my only constant.
The guy flashed me a surprisingly arrogant smirk and spun one gun in his palm. “Not my first rodeo.”
Fuck.
“I can’t just let you go in there alone,” I protested. “You could get killed. You could getherkilled.”
“She’ll die, I don’t go in there,” he supplied simply.
I sighed and rubbed my hands over my face so hard it hurt. But the pain grounded me.
“Fine,” I decided, offering him my open palm. “Give me one of those. Like hell I’m going in there unarmed.”
He arched a thick brow at me. “You’d risk your life for a nameless girl?”
I pinned him with a sober stare. “Names don’t mean anything on the web. Actions do. And Swan took me under her wing when I had no one and nothing. She gave me directive and the tools to accomplish my goals.” I shrugged a shoulder casually when I felt anything but.
“You don’t owe her anything, she wouldn’t want that,” he countered.
“It’s not about owing her anything. It’s about human connection.”
