37. Lamb

Chapter Thirty-Seven

LAMB

Five Minutes Earlier…

I was drowning.

I was suffocating with an abundance of air around me. Poison sat on my tongue, numb and thick in my mouth, burning with an acrid taste that made me want to spit bile to mask the tang.

With each step I took farther from that door, iron nails tore through the flesh of my feet, desperate to lock me into place, to not leave. To not abandon her.

I kept walking.

My mind was thick and sludgy as we moved down the hallway, but I couldn’t shake the hyper-awareness of the man following behind me. On the outside, I looked calm and unconcerned, and even though a war was razing everything inside of me, I had a task to do.

I had a plan.

The mercenary’s steps were silent. Ghostly. Only my footsteps filled my ears as the darkness loomed behind me. I caught glimpses; tiny flickering snippets of his figure behind me in the reflections of the glass covered paintings hung on the wall. It was like a stop motion. Frame by frame slid by and, with each one, the small gun in his hand raised higher and higher.

The barrel looked too long in the warped reflections—a silencer.

I looked down at the red carpet, wondering if my bloodstain would show in the fibers or if the color would be a perfect match and my death would vanish as if it had never happened at all.

I lifted my hand, my brain working through numbers and calculations as I forced that incensed volcano spilling out of my chest under the surface, letting cold and logic flood to the surface; this was me. This was what I was good at. This was my nature.

A break in the paintings and a row of bare walls started the reaction.

I spun on my heels, my hand fast as lightning, gripping the handle of my gun, yanking it from the back of my shirt, lifting the barrel, finger pressing down on the trigger as I lifted to aim, pointed to kill, and—

The gun leaped from my hands as if it scalded me, clattering to the ground, cushioned by the soft carpet as I stopped myself just in the nick of time.

“ Jax? ” I snapped, trying to make heads or tails of the mess of bodies tangled behind me.

“What’s up, brother?” Jax smirked, revealing his face from a messy mop of dark hair.

“Hold him properly!” Mint snapped, his limbs wrapped between Jax’s and the mercenary. Mint pressed an elbow to the back of the mercenary’s head, smothering the man’s face into the carpet as he yelled and growled into the cushioned fibers.

“For God’s sake,” Hunter snapped, appearing behind my back. His booted foot cracked hard across the man’s head. His neck snapped at an unfortunate angle, and his body softened beneath my two other brothers.

“How many more of you are there?” I grumbled, rubbing my finger and thumb between the bridge of my nose.

“Just us.” Jax beamed.

I sighed. “You’re an infestation.”

“Love you, too,” Hunter grunted, offering an open palm to help Mint off the floor.

Jax sprung to his feet, his dark suit rumpled, and hair freed from whatever gel he’d tried to run through it. Hunter and Mint stood wearing their normal clothes—dark jeans, shirts, and jackets, with wind-ruffled hair and combat expressions. Despite their soft words, they weren’t here to fuck around, and I knew they’d be packing beneath their jackets, too.

I stared down at the man and saw his chest moving ever so slightly beneath the protector vest he wore. Unfortunately, he’d survive.

“So”—Jax leaned forward, clasping a hand on my shoulder—“surprised?”

Jax was dressed in an expensive black tuxedo with a couple buttons undone at the top and his shirt untucked around his waist. If it weren’t for the heavy boots hidden beneath his trouser legs, he’d have looked the part.

“No,” I grumbled, shoving off his shoulder and leaning down to retrieve my gun. I’d have taken the shot if I’d known it would just have been Jax I was hitting. He was like a cockroach one couldn’t kill or shut up. “You’re late.”

“You knew we were coming?” Mint frowned, mirroring the shocked faces of all three brothers.

“No, but I know Wolf.” I sighed, turning and walking back down the hallway. We’d gotten far on our walk from the suite, and with every step closer, that rippling heat threatened to rise again. I clamped it down tight. “There’s no way he’d let me go and not send a babysitter.” I glanced again at the brothers as they fell into step beside me. “Or a few.”

My pace was brisk, but I shied from running. These halls carried noise, and I doubted Maximus Rothwell would have only brought one bodyguard. The less attention we attracted, the better.

I glanced at Jax. “How’d you get in?”

“I smiled at the receptionist, and then she told me where the staff elevator was.”

“That’s it?” I frowned. I was surprised, but thinking back to all the work I’d gone through to make this moment happen made me feel bitter.

Jax shrugged. “You have a habit of overcomplicating things.”

I ignored the unhelpful insight. “So, what’s with the rest of you?”

“If you think we’d let you do this on your own, you need a good old lesson in brotherhood.” Jax laughed, his paw catching my shoulder and giving it a bruising squeeze. “Because if our brothers have our back—”

“Then we have our brothers’ backs,” I cut him off, knowing the club mantra better than any other. They might have been Wolf’s words, but I had been the inspiration, after all.

“So, genius,” Hunter piped up, his deep baritone reverberating down the empty shafts, “what’s the plan?”

“Get Ash. Get out,” I grunted, retracing my steps through the corridor.

“And how are you going to do that?”

I didn’t stop, but my feet felt leaden, and for a moment, that burning speared through my chest, and that taste crawled up the back of my throat, sharp and painful in my nose.

I hadn’t slowed because of Hunter’s words per se but from the resonance within. Hunter brought to air the words I’d dare not speak; the thoughts I’d dared not have.

“I don’t know yet,” I whispered, my muscles burning under the weight of my chest. “There were too many variables, too many gaps in our knowledge. There was no way to make a single infallible plan. We have several backup plans, but—”“Wait, you’re telling me you’re just winging it ?” Incredulity filled Hunter’s low whisper over my shoulder. “You never do anything without thinking things through. Ever . It’s the most annoying thing about you.”

Two men dressed head to toe in black and armed with weapons not suited to the bodyguard industry walked past the hallway, a corner from my destination. Maximus’ goons, I assumed. All of us pressed into a vacant hallway, against the wall, disappearing.

“I wouldn’t say the most —” Jax chipped in, his tone low and hushed as he waited for our que to move, but not before Mint hopped on the whispering bandwagon.

“Ash has this habit of making him an idiot,” he grumbled, folding his arms over his chest. Though not as tall or as wide as Hunter, Mint was still a bulky man, and his shoulders stuck out like mountains as he folded his hands into his chest. “Whenever she’s around, his brain stops working.”

I ignored their chittering remarks, not because I didn’t care to argue, but for the first time, Mint was right.

Ash made me blind when I needed to see the most. Drove me mad when I needed to stay calm. And made my mind blank when my brain was most required. She undid the seams that had held me so tightly together my entire life, and now she was alone against a man who had brought her to the edge of death with no remorse once before.

It made me uneasy.

The guards vanished from sight.

“Good, let’s go—”

“Wait. Hold up.” Jax grabbed me by the lapel of my jacket, tugging me back out of view. “You came here tonight to do what? Show up, dance a little, and hope you put a bullet through the biggest crime lord in Europe?”

“The plans aren’t for Ash to kill him.”

“Does Ash know that?” Mint interrupted.

I turned to look at him, his piercing mint green eyes having seen more of Ash’s true self than any others. He had seen into her just as much as I had and knew what I knew.

“She’s unarmed,” I answered, as if that was enough.

Mint’s eyes hardened; he knew I was dodging the answer.

“She’s unarmed with him?” Jax repeated like a parrot in helium, his pitch high enough to rattle the glassware on the coffee table. “He’ll kill her. For real, this time.”

There was little I knew about our enemy. With enough information, it was often easy to predict people’s actions. People were driven by self-interest, and with the right leverage, it was possible to guide them however you pleased.

Maximus Rothwell had not even been a shadow. He was like the wind—unseen, unstoppable, and powerful enough to move whatever powers he pleased. The only evidence he left behind was the destruction and carnage in his wake. And it was impossible to predict which way the wind would blow next.

I didn’t know what drove him. Nor what his goal was. I didn’t know what leverage would work against him.

I was powerless.

“That’s why I have to get to her.” I stared hard at Jax and at Mint. “Now, if you’ll stop asking me stupid questions, I have work to—”

“INTERPOL! OPEN UP!”

I froze.

Interpol?

I spun on my heels, and the world disappeared around me. One second, I was talking to my brothers; the next, I was throwing my head around the corner.

Two meaty paws clamped onto my shoulders, the sheer weight tackling me up against the wall. A painting cracked behind my head, but I didn’t care. Couldn’t care.

“Don’t stop me!” I hissed, shoving off the glass.

“That’s Interpol! You’ll get arrested!” Hunter snapped, throwing me forward, my chest pinned between him and the wall.

“I know,” I snapped, shoving at them both, my lack of physical prowess bogging me down. “But they’re not supposed to be here! It was just supposed to be the FBI, not Interpol! That wasn’t the plan. The second Interpol sees her, she’ll be dragged overseas before any of my contacts can stop it. I need to get there. I need to get to her!”

Jax frowned, his brow a tightly knitted line. “What type of plan did you come up with?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Mint’s expression was fierce. “You go in there now, and you both will get arrested! You won’t be able to help her from the inside.”

“But—”

B ANG.

I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t breathing. But the world around me moved. Pure instinct took me over as I raced around the corner, toward those pearly white doors, and—

Pain burst across my neck, the wind snatched from my lungs as my body came to an abrupt stop. I was lurched back by my collar, my hand extended as those white doors were yanked away from me. One moment, I was reaching for her; the next, I was pinned flat against the wall, Mint’s forearm braced against my throat.

“ Get off of me!” I growled, shoving all my strength into my hands as I lunged for the large bastard.

“Lamb, stop!” Jax growled, joining the effort to hold me down.

“She’s in there!” I snapped, my brain firing every neuron at once in a tangled mess of thoughts all overlapping each other. “I have to get her! My plan —I promised.”

“Lamb!” Hunter growled, his meaty paw grabbing me by the scruff as he easily hauled me back to the corner, his strength outclassing Mint and Jax together. “ Look .”

He shoved my head just enough around the edge to see. And see them, I did.

Over four black SWAT tactical units were funneling in through the door. Bold white letters blocked “ INTERPOL ” across their backs. Dispersing smoke poured through the door in low tidal waves as several disappeared into the fog, a mixture of shouting and commands rising from the air like howling ghosts.

I’d failed to hear their shouts nor see their presence at my initial start, but even seeing them now, that fire to escape, to run through the fog, consequences be damned, only burned brighter. I’d get arrested the instant they spotted me, and it would take only a few to grab me.

But I couldn’t stop it.

Maggots ate through my stomach as my heart rattled in my ears and a thick lump knotted at the back of my throat. The pain burned in every muscle, nerve, and fiber of my being as the images rolled through my mind. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong, like raining gunfire in my brain.

Ash only had a knife, small and thin, good enough only for close quarter self-defense. So, if someone had shot …

A different man stood in the doorway, the smoke rolling in plumes around his ankles, staring into the dense cloud. He had no gun in his hand, but a large radio blasting through the air. “ALPHA APPREHENDED TARGET. CONFIRM, WE HAVE TARGET IN CUSTODY.”

Someone was arrested.

“BETA CONFIRMING ONE DOWN. I REPEAT ONE DOWN.”

“Beta!” the man yelled back into the radio, his finger tight on the button. “Do we need medical attention?”

A short pause.

“BETA CONFIRMING, TARGET IS DOA. NO MEDICAL ASSISTANCE NECESSARY.”

“ No, ” I breathed, and even Hunter went rigid behind me. His grip fastened tight like a noose as those words rang over and over in my head.

TARGET IS DOA.

Dead On Arrival.

It felt like nails had been hammered through the soles of my feet, staring at the traveling fog. Noise shifted into the background as my brothers moved in a compound mass around me. I was an immovable rock in a turbulent tide as icy-cold rain hammered against my skin and skies blackened around me. I felt cold. I felt heavy. I felt … wrong .

Ash was dead.