Page 3 of Room Nine: Masters of Control

“Bitch!” Kerr growls, gripping a handful of her hair and yanking her to her feet. She kicks back, narrowly missing his knee, and that’s when I get pissed. I kick the back of her knee, causing her legs to crumble underneath her, all while Kerr keeps a firm grip on her hair. He shoves her face first into the dirt, again, this time with his knee between her shoulder blades to pin her down. I grab her wrist, securing one and then the other, and then Kerr yanks her up on her feet.

She continues to cuss us out. “Fuck you, you fucking pieces of shit! Now, you’ll have to use one of your other kiddie porn, sex trafficking shit holes to tug each other’s microscopic dicks!” She kicks back again at the same time Dem’s voice is in our ears.

“EMS is en route. Get the fuck out of there unless you want to blow our entire cover.”

I turn my glare on her. “Listen up, Cupcake. You have two choices. Either you shut up and run with us like a good little captive, or we’re going to bind your legs, gag you, and drag you through this fucking forest by your ankles.”

“Fuck you!” she screams as loud as possible.

“That’s it.” I pull a rag out of my back pocket and use my thumb and fingers to pry her mouth open, shoving it in while Kerr holds her in place. Securing it with Coban wrap, I grin as Kerr throws a shoulder into her solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her and giving me precious seconds to secure her ankles before she flails and hurts one or all of us.

“Why does everyone always opt to do it the fucking hard way?” I grumble as Kerr hoists her on his shoulder, carrying her out of the field in a fireman’s carry.

As soon as we hit the trees, I look back at the house that is quickly engulfed in flames. High-pitched squeals sound off as what I presume are the duct taped fireworks igniting—minor explosions and bright colors sparking from behind the blazing inferno.

Kerr laughs beside me. “A good fight and a show. Must be our lucky day.”

I side-eye him, because this is anything but lucky. Three months’ worth of surveillance—fucked. What does this mean for the investigation or our involvement? Not a fucking clue.

All I know is Townsend is going to be pissed, and if this spooks the DiFallo family into changing everything about the operation, this chick just painted a huge target on me and my partners. We aren’t the only ones who have been performing babysitting duty for last few months, although we are the only ones without a woman waiting for us back home—a sticking point Reese and Lee, my counterparts as team leads, have made multiple times as we’ve reported in to our weekly debriefs. They and their partners—who like all former PsySpecOps teams—share their lives and their woman.

And the lucky bastards found women who would marry their dumbasses.

I can’t even imagine.

Well, that’s not true. I can imagine as I often do when fantasizing about the day Kerr, Dem, and I find a perfect woman of our own to complete our family.

I glance at the hellcat tossed over Kerr’s shoulder and wonder—have we finally found her?

2

KERR

Ilove nothing more than a sexy woman who likes to tumble around on a mat before we tumble around in the sheets, but this chick has pissed me off. My cheek throbs as blood rushes through my veins, exertion causing me to breathe heavily.

“We should get her vehicle off the road before EMS takes note of it.” I throw out as a good idea.

O’Dell purposefully makes eye contact with her. “Especially if we have to kill her.”

We’re not going to kill her, but the threat is out there and has the intended effect if the way she stops squirming is any indication.

I guess he’s pissed, too.

The three of us—Dem, O’Dell, and I—are natural predators. We love nothing more than dominating a defiant woman, breaking her down until she submits, and then rewarding her. But this little exchange went from cute to dangerous quick. I guess there’s the whole “she’s not our little submissive and obviously wants to kill us” to bring the mood down, too.

Damn, it’s been too long since I’ve gotten laid, and ever since the first time this hellion popped up on our video surveillance, I’ve been fantasizing about her.

“I don’t suppose you’d tell us where your vehicle is parked so we can avoid your license plate being run in conjunction with a house spontaneously blowing up?” he states behind me.

She’s still as the dead for a few seconds and then tries to speak through the gag. I stop my forward progression, taking a small breather as I set her down on the ground. We’re well hidden in the trees, halfway to our safe house on the hill, so O’Dell removes her gag.

“Silver Nissan Sentra parked up from the house, not down. I drove in the back way off Wheeler Road.”

“Smart. EMS won’t drive past it.”

“Neither will your piece of shit boss, Bobby.”

“Boss?” I exchange a glance with O’Dell. She thinks we’re employed by that scumbag, which means she thinks we’re traffickers too. She has no idea what kind of shit storm she’s stumbled into, but at least we know she’s not on their payroll.

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