Page 77 of Worth

Like they were listening to my command, the commandos stop shooting.

“We’re just here for the Skin. We just need the girl,” one of them calls out. “Hand her over and we’ll leave without harming either of you.”

“Go fuck yourself with a rubber foot!” Aiden yells back, fuming at the idea.

The confusion is palpable from the kitchen, and my lips twitch with amusement.

“We have no reason to kill either of you,” the same man shouts. “Just send out the girl.”

Aiden pushes his gun around the corner of the wall and fires blindly a few times. Movement from the corner of my eye has me swinging my aim to the back door as one of their men slithers through.

Every fucking gun goes off while I try to take cover behind the chairs at the counter, shooting at the intruder while he showers bullets across from me to Aiden. Bullets striking next to my head, I take one deep breath, aim, and pull the trigger. The bullet goes through this asshole’s left eye and his gun sprays more bullets up the wall and across the ceiling until he hits the ground with a thump.

Frantically, I check on Aiden as he crawls back to the wall from where he rolled to the dining room table for cover. His breathing is no longer steady, and he’s clutching at his bicep, but he gives me a nod. He’s all right. For now.

I check myself over. Somehow, I miraculously escaped being hit. I check my clips.

Big fucking problem. The guys in the kitchen are far from out of ammo, and I’ve only got a handful of bullets left in each gun.

“How about now?” the lead commando calls again. “We take the girl and leave you in one piece.”

Aiden and I exchange a glance. One of his pistols has been abandoned, telling me he’s only gotonewith ammo left. The guy in the kitchen keeps yammering while I try to fucking think how to fix this. There’s movement behind Aiden and I raise to shoot, stopping short of taking out Blake when I realize she’s come back downstairs, now fully dressed.

Aiden whips around when I do, raising his gun too. When he sees her, he bares his teeth, waving her away, mouthing something at her. She ignores him, focusing on me. Her demeanor is so calm that it rivals how Aiden was a few minutes ago. Carefully, quietly, she sets her bat down against the wall.

“Go,” I urge silently, pointing back at the stairs.

She shakes her head and walks forward. “I’m here,” she says, her tone panicked while her expression is anything but.

What the fuck?

Blake glances back at Aiden, who is having a total meltdown, thrashing and screaming at her in complete silence. She holds up her hand, which doesn’t have the slightest shake to it, and then steps out from behind the wall, wailing and falling to her knees.

“Please! Help me! They’ve been holding me here for months!” she cries, crawling into the kitchen until I can only see a sliver of her.

What in theactualfuck?

“Hey there, sweetheart,” the lead commando coos. I hear shuffling and tense up. Aiden stares at Blake, his gun down at his side, his mouth hanging open. “Come on now with me. We’ll save you from the bad men.”

I can tell that he’s put an arm around her and is trying to get her to her feet, to take her out of the house; to take her away from us. Everything in me wants to shoot at him, but I’ll hit Blake if I try.

“But,” Blake sniffles, still on the floor but being jerked around. “If you save me from the bad men, who’s going to save you from me?”

There’s total silence, and more of that same confusion that Aiden caused earlier, right before I see her arm arc upwards with a switchblade in hand. A gurgle tells me she landed that knife in the son of a bitch’s throat. I feel like time moves in slow motion, the sounds of guns shifting into place echoing in my ear.

Aiden and I both leap to our feet and open fire at the remaining two men. With their attention focused on Blake, we pick them off in three shots.

When it falls quiet again, Blake peeks up at me from where she took cover under the lead commando’s body, her skin and hair painted in his blood.

“It worked!” she says brightly, right before I snatch her up off the floor and spank the fuck out of her.

Chapter 26

I dart out the front door on Blake’s heels, holding tight to the bag of clothes in my right hand and heavy ass bag of weapons in my left.

“Get to the SUV!” Zander bellows behind us. “More could be here any minute!”

No shit, Sherlock.

---