Page 381 of Hell Hath No Fury
“You met her online.”
“Yeah, I did. Of all the people in the world and on the internet, I met her and we formed a bond. I don’t need to know her name or the shape of her face or the sound of her laugh––though, fuck me, I’d like to––to know she’s the kind of woman worth knowing. Worth saving.”
He stared at me for a long second before lunging forward so abruptly, I stumbled back a step then laughed in giddy, strained relief when he embraced me in a back-slapping hug.
“Good man,” he declared as he pulled back to offer his spare gun to me. When I reached for it, he took my hand with his free one in a firm grasp. “I’m glad to know you. Name’s Aaron.”
I matched his grip. “Call me Red.”
A smirk edged up the corner of his mouth. “You must get asked all the time if the curtains match the drapes.”
A startled laugh burst out of me. “Dude, not the time.”
But Aaron smiled like he had all the time in the world. Like we weren’t about to storm a Chinese gang’s fortress with two guns and a prayer.
I was fairly sure he was a certifiable lunatic.
But I followed him.
Across the street and through the front door of the restaurant without a care, like two white boys looking for good grub. The gun he’d given me burned hot against the small of my back beneath my waistband.
“Hello, table for two,” Aaron called out as soon as we entered.
It was dead inside, just a small, old man slowly unfolding himself from a chair behind the bar where he’d been watching some Chinese drama on a small TV. He sat us without fanfare, but the second he disappeared into the kitchen, we were up and moving.
I held my breath as we crept down the hallway and almost shouted when a dark figure entered the mouth of the hall.
Aaron didn’t hesitate. He shot the man in the center of his chest.
The sound of the bullet alerted people deep inside the building, a clamor escalating to the left of us through the kitchen.
“Go,” he urged me, taking the gun from the fallen man. “She told me she’s in a basement somewhere. Find her and get out. Don’t wait for me.”
“You against a fucking army of gang members?” I countered.
He grinned that easy, charming grin and raised both guns like some kind of action hero. “You speak in code, I speak in bullets. Get gone and get my sister.”
He turned his back on me, edging into the kitchen on quiet steps.
I hesitated only for a second and then dashed around the corner. It only took me a few minutes to find a heavily chained door then another minute of figuring out how to shoot the lock off without killing myself before I pulled it open.
The air was dank and musky, cold, wet earth and dust.
I descended into the darkness.
But I wasn’t ready for what I would find.
It wasn’t some dodgy basement, Swan caged with manacles in a corner, naked and starved.
It was high tech and elaborate.
A glass box with air holes filled with the latest in computer tech on a large black metal desk. There was a full-sized bed with silk sheets in rich blue, a mini fridge stocked with energy drinks, and a small bookshelf filled with manga books.
And amongst it all, a girl.
A slip of a thing really, all tiny bones like a bird with a shock of pure white hair that streamed down her back. I could see her fingers fly on the triple keyboards at her station, but nothing of her face.
My heart thudded too hard, too slow. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.
