Page 54 of Running on Empty

“Not terrified. Wary.”

“Yeah, well, you were off base. Breathe in.”

I did as he suggested, smelling the vomit, the blood and something else. Something entirely our mate. I’d become used to the smell of her arousal, that sweet, almost peachy scent having me hard as a stone in seconds. It’d gotten to the point that stone fruit season created embarrassing reactions in me each bloody year, but right now? Drowning out all the other stinks of this place, that sweet fruity scent was so damn thick in the air I could taste it on my tongue. Because Stevie watched everything that Ronan did, dragging the man down the hallway, Snake’s legs leaving a bloody smear as they went, right up until we came to our destination.

“Smile for the fucking camera, cunt,” Ronan said, hauling Snake up and jamming his face into the retinal scanner, a part of the wall sliding open to reveal a mother lode.

I knew a command centre when I saw one. I shouldered forward, taking in the screens and the computer set up before staring down at Snake. He was making strange little incoherent noises, something that made Stevie smile. I didn’t fucking care what it took for her to do that, every time she did my heart swelled to what felt like ten times the size. But I couldn’t focus on that, not yet.

“Passwords, fuckhead,” I barked at him and Snake twitched in Ronan’s grip. He tried to mumble something, but none of us could work out what he was saying, so Jax provided an incentive.

“I want to splatter your fucking brains all over the walls, leaving a message for your brothers to see when they get here. I am fucking dying to pull this trigger. So tell my brother what your fucking user name and password are or so help me…”

Snake’s head rolled on his shoulders as he strove to do just that, my fingers moving across the keyboard as I typed in every letter, number and symbol he described.

And then I was in.

I had a one terabyte flash drive on my keyring and I slid it into the port of the computer now, creating a mirror of the hard drive and all the other drives attached to it, while searching through the browser history. Page after page of fucking disturbing and illegal porn was there, but more than that. Online distribution hubs, encrypted emails, I downloaded what I could and screenshotted the rest, moving like lightning. Then I deployed the last tactic. The computer was connected to a Spencer created closed network that I was willing to bet didn’t use the internet at all to pass information, but rather relied on a series of interconnected devices operated by those with the required level of clearance. A tricky little bit of malware a Ukrainian outfit had developed for me was downloaded onto that closed network, hopefully allowing me to open it up when I wanted to.

“You boys done with your little games upstairs?” came Blue’s voice through the comms unit. “Daylight is coming fast and we want to be clear of here before the sun is up.”

I jerked the flash drive free, not sure if it’d done its job, but the dads were right, we needed to wrap this shit up.

Which left the matter of Snake.

I hated this part of the plan, but Jax had spoken to me in the morning and insisted, so I turned to Stevie, staring into the omega’s eyes.

“He hurt you, beautiful,” I said. “We might feel second-hand pain at what he did, but you bore the brunt of it. We need to take Snake out.” Her grip tightened on her handgun. “And we can do that for you.”

“Or..?”

She returned my stare steadily.

“Or you can do it. Get it done quickly, as we need to be away.”

But as soon as I said the first word, she raised her gun, pressing it against Snake’s forehead.

“Beg,” she ordered, her voice containing a ring that was so damn close to an alpha’s bark, it might as well have been. Snake’s mouth moved, garbled sounds coming out, but she over rode him. “Beg for your fucking life, you piece of shit. Beg like you made me—” Her throat choked on that and Snake made a similar sound, deep in his chest. His words came faster and faster, mangled pleas and platitudes all jumbling up in one incoherent mess before she cut through it. “No, I won’t spare you, because you didn’t spare me. No, I won’t go easy on you or show compassion, because you gave me nothing. You used me over and over and the only thing I feel right now is an irritation that I can’t do the same to you, you rapey piece of shit.”

Snake’s life ended in a short, sharp bang, his eyes going wide, his brains splattered far further than I had hoped, forcing the three of us to flick our hands to dislodge the mess.

“Beautiful, we need to talk about getting everyone out of range,” Ronan said, taking the gun from her. “Because blowing someone’s brains out is literally that. Fuck…”

“We’ve gotta go—” I said, right as the musical tones of a video call came through the computer speakers. I stepped closer to the screen, the timing of this impeccable.

“There’s cameras,” Jax said, pointing to the ones inset into the roof that somehow we’d missed and that had me clicking on the button to accept the call.

“So you got rid of my brother?” Jack Spencer smiled on the screen, flicking his eyes around to take the lot of us in. “Wasn’t really a challenge though, was it? Take the fucking lot of them out. Each one of them is a waste of space.” His focus settled on Stevie. “I’d give the lot of them up for another night with your omega.”

“You’ll never get your fucking hands on her,” I snarled.

“Maybe.” Jack shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ve all got our aces tucked up our sleeves. I’m pretty sure I know what yours are, but you don’t know mine. Now, if you want to walk free of this to play another day, you might want to scoot along. The police are on their way.”

“Son!” came a crackle from the comms unit.

I ended the video call and then moved like lightning, my brothers, my mate following hot on my heels. By the time we reached the front of the house, our dads were ushering Snake’s guests out onto the road, their hands still bound behind their backs. And we strode out the gates after them, down the road before reaching our cars.

“Get in the back,” Stevie ordered Ronan, slamming him against the side of our car before tugging his mouth down on hers.

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