Handcuffed by Her Hero (14 page)

Funny how that happened when
words acted like arrows in a guy’s chest.

He spun around. His brain whirled
too, feeling like an onion peeled by a coked-up chef.

Stupid little
squaw.

Rayna was a crazy-smart woman,
but even she didn’t have an expression like that laying around for fun. She’d
used it on purpose. Because it meant something to her. Because she’d heard it
before.

And damn it, so had he.

“Shit.” It was a hoarse punch of
sound into the fog. He wagged his head, maddened by his inability to match the
trigger to a memory. He only knew his heart suddenly pounded and his body
dropped its lethargy like a snake shedding skin. As he turned and stared
through the fog, his stomach filled with its special bile for those occasions
when something or someone needed protecting. The last time he’d felt all this
at once, he’d been carrying Rayna through the jungle, speeding her as fast as
he could to the transport back to Bangkok—only minutes after he’d met her for
the first time.

Right? Or not?

Christ. Did she know the answer
to that? Was that what had brought her here? What
wasn’t
he remembering?
What hadn’t she told him?
No, you bastard. You mean, what didn’t you let her
tell you?

“Rayna.” Her name barely made it
out past his constricting throat. On the second try, he forced out a full
bellow. “Rayna?”

The summons rang along the alley
walls, but she didn’t answer. He couldn’t hear her boot steps anymore. Thanks
to the thickening mist, he couldn’t see her, either.

Another moment went by. No
discernible
whump
of her car door or quiet start-up hum of her hybrid.

Shit. The Triple Crown of dread
pounded harder in his gut. Burned deeper in his veins.

He raced for the gate and hurdled
it. When her shriek sliced up the alley, he broke into a full run.

Rayna shouldn’t have assumed the
night wouldn’t get crappier. As she emerged from the alley and crossed the
sidewalk to her Jetta, a man emerged from the shadows behind her, proving that
assumption wrong.

Really wrong.

Horror spurred her stunned cry. A
second later, she choked it short. This couldn’t be real. Her mind had been
wrung like putty tonight. This had to be a sick aftereffect of that. Or maybe,
please God maybe, she was just dreaming. Maybe all of this—the bizarre session
with Sally, the massive mess of a confrontation with Z, and now this—was just a
hideous dream. All she had to do was wake up.

Do it. Wake up. This
isn’t real.
He
isn’t real.

But the monster with the tailored
suit, proud stance, and slicked black hair curled a very real and disgustingly
familiar smirk at her. It spread across a face of smooth sienna skin and part-Asian
features that could be considered exotically handsome, if they didn’t mask a
soul that was blacker than an adder’s.

How was this
possible?
She’d wiped that sneer from the bastard’s face three and a half months ago—when
she’d fired a bullet into the face that framed it. She’d watched them zip a
black body bag over its lifeless pallor before they dragged him away, filling
her with a relief that was so complete, she’d been sapped of the energy to even
wipe her tears. A couple of FBI guys had stayed with her, murmuring praise for
her courage in putting the monster down. She didn’t have the mettle to tell
them the truth, about how courage had nothing to do with it. She couldn’t
verbalize how she’d become someone else when watching King drive a dagger into
Zeke’s gut, her body and thoughts filled so savagely with rage that she’d
turned into an unthinking animal.

The agents had assured her King’s
torment was part of her past. He’d be great worm food in a week, and they were
already transferring his twin, Mua, to the darkest cell they could find inside the
max security block of the Clallam Bay Corrections Center. It would be
Armageddon before the cockroach saw freedom again.

Apparently, Armageddon had begun.

“Ms. Chestain.” The criminal
drawled it in a silky tone as two men materialized and flanked him like
security at the elbows of a Fortune 500 CEO. They fixed her with stares that
matched their muscles for steely hardness. “You are more lovely than your
pictures, my dear. I’ve gazed at so many, you know. Surely you remember my
brother’s enthusiasm for photographing his treasures before he parted with
them?”

Revulsion knifed her. King’s
photo sessions would haunt her forever. The monster would croon at Sage and her
like they were in a Parisian fashion studio instead of his jungle warehouse, making
them pose in their chains, recording their humiliation beneath flashbulb
strobes and oily compliments.

You’re not there
anymore. And this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

She shook her head. That forced
the memories away but the three men in front of her, stepping slowly closer,
remained horribly real.

“I’ll scream,” she threatened.

Mua smiled. “Oh, please do.” He
stopped but motioned his henchmen to continue. “My fantasies of this moment
have been filled with many of your cries, dearest, though I wonder if they’ll
touch the real pleasure of hearing your terror on the air. I highly doubt it.
Being locked in a stone box does become limiting, even with the dream of
avenging one’s brother’s death.” As the hulks approached and backed her against
her car, the bastard emitted a silken hum. “So please, my little Rayna, indulge
us with a vocalization or two.”

Out of sheer defiance, she only glared.
That officially completed the circuit on her stupidity tonight. Terror blazed
through her as the hulks moved with speed that defied their size, snaring her
arms in meat hook grips. Fighting them was an instant lesson in pain. She had
no doubt they’d snap her bones if forced. She pulled in a lungful of air, reconsidering
the scream, but the taller goon clamped a hand over her mouth. He didn’t let up
there. His fingers squeezed into the back of her jaw.

 “Shut up, slut.”

Thanks to her freshly-ignited
memories of King, it only took those three words to ignite her from dread to
rage. The fire exploded into the vicious bite she twisted into the inside of
the henchman’s middle finger. The lunk howled and released her, allowing her a
full-scale fight against the other guard. She went for the obvious, raising a
knee toward his groin, but Mua’s men were better trained than his brother’s
ever were. The asshole was ready. He caught her knee before it got anywhere
near his family jewels, hooking an elbow beneath it and yanking hard. The
ground ceased to exist beneath her feet. In a dizzying sweep, the whole word
was upended. Her breath was pounded out of her from behind, and her view
consisted of nothing but mist-shrouded street lights.

She blinked, realizing the
assailant at her back was actually the hood of her car. The smaller guard now
shoved her knee close to his chest. He kept her pinned to the hood with his
other hand, his palm shoved between her breasts, his round face consumed by a
conquering leer.

“Didn’t King’s notes say she was
the docile one?” he drawled. “No wonder he had such a high ticket on the pair
of ‘em.” He let his fingers trail over the swell of her breast. “Such a hot
package. I bet she’s a fine little ride.”

Her head continued to spin. Her
blood was a tribal cry of fear and fury.
The docile one?
  That had probably
been true—at one time. When she and Sage were first captured, she’d been the
one to calm Sage, to exhort to her friend that compliance would keep them alive.
But what kind of living had it been? Shackles and fear, humiliation and dread,
the constant unknowingness of what the next minute, let alone the next hour or
day, would bring. 

She wasn’t going back to that.
She wouldn’t. She’d make them kill her first.

With that resolve locked into her
mind, she glared up at Round Face. “Guess you got the
little
part right,
asshole.”

The guard’s nostrils flared.
“Don’t tempt me to show you otherwise, baby.”

“Gee, I’d love that. But I don’t
think there’s a microscope handy.”

She had at least three more
zingers lined up, but Round Face erased them with a backhand that thrashed her
head to the side. Rayna grunted with the explosion of pain. Stars cavorted in
her vision.

“Idiot!” Mua’s shout was a razor
file of fury. “I said no marks on the merchandise!”

“What’re you so pissy about?
Nobody’s gonna look at the bitch from the waist up.”

The bastard was making this too
easy. Rayna rolled her face center again, cocked a weak smile, and muttered, “Well,
nobody’s looking at you
below
the belt, buddy.”

Being prepared for his next blow
made no difference on the impact of it. As the agony radiated up from her
cheek, the stars in her vision mutated into cartoon-style birds. She was
stopped from laughing by the creatures’ bloodred eyes. They told her conscious
mind what her gut already knew. If she kept goading the goon on, her death
wasn’t going to be pretty or painless.

Maybe if she scraped up the
strength for one scream, it would reach down the alley and—

What? Zeke was ready to go back
into the club as she left the patio. He was on his way back to Luna now, if not
tucked at her side already. He wouldn’t be listening for her any more than he’d
heed a flushing toilet.

Mua’s roar thickened her
hopelessness. “Barbarian!” he shouted at the henchman. “Were you raised in a
puddle of shit? When you are on my time, you are not an animal!”

“Well said, cocksucker.” The
words cut into the air like a sword of black steel. Very sharp, very pissed off
black steel. “Good thing I’m not on your payroll, then.”

Rayna craned her neck and tried
to focus her vision. “Z-Zeke?”

Her sob was diluted by a bestial
snarl that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The next second, Round
Face’s weight was yanked from atop her. Before the bastard got out half an
oath, he was cut short by a punch she’d only heard in movies as a sound effect.
The real thing made the air shudder and vibrated down to the pit of her
stomach, too. When Round Face blew out a rickety moan, she decided the nausea
was worth it.

Until the next moment.

She finally raised her head
enough to recognize that the incredible had come true. Zeke really stood there,
his wrath so palpable that the mist itself followed suit, turning into violent
rain. Round Face still lay on the asphalt, clutching his gut and his groin at
the same time, but the larger henchman clearly hadn’t gotten the “back off”
memo. The guy came at Zeke with single-minded purpose, eyes slitted black,
teeth bared white. He was surrounded by the night’s heavy tears—which made a perfect
camouflage for the thick silver chain he swung in one hand.

“Zeke!” she screamed. “Watch—”

Her breath clutched as the bastard
whipped the weapon with a vicious underhand. Zeke caught the chain with
stunning reflexes, but not before a half-foot of it whipped around his forearm
with a sickening
chink.

“Oh my God!” The words tumbled
out as she scrambled off the car and started toward him. Two steps later, she
froze in her tracks from the force of his fiery glower.

“Run!” he ordered. “
Now,
Rayna. You know what to do!”

Her sobs stuttered then stopped
in her throat. The boom of his voice was a reset button on her instincts. He
was right. She did know what to do and standing here like a melodrama damsel
wasn’t it. The only way to help him was to get help. Lots of it.

Despite the anguish of doing so,
she spun from him and ran back toward the Bastille’s entrance door. She half
expected to fight Mua himself on the way, but the cockroach seemed to have
disappeared, a fact that disturbed more than comforted. She doubled her speed
to Max’s black portal.

The cold made her hands sting as
she beat frantically on the steel. She barely noticed, not letting up until it
was opened. Her breath of relief was cut short. Max’s hulking form didn’t fill
the doorway. A curvy woman, looking like Rihanna’s doppelganger complete with
gold boots and a matching fetish mini, flashed a friendly smile.

“Hi. Can I help—oh hell, sweetie,
what happened to your face?”

“Where’s Max?”

Rihanna frowned. “He’s at the
back bar. Who are—”

“I need Max. And Garrett Hawkins.
And the police.” She was shocked at the control in her voice. Her heart
hammered and her nerves were strung tight as live electric wires. As she
stalked past the counter, she scooped up the phone on the counter and thrust it
at the woman. “Call them. We need them out front, five minutes ago. Do it!”

By the grace of the Universe,
Sage appeared again. “Ray, how did you get back—
ohmigod
, your face!
What’s going on? I thought you and Zeke were in the—”

“We were. Now we’re not. Sage, I
need Garrett. Z’s in trouble.”

“Z’s
what?” Her friend
blinked. “I don’t understand. How can—”

“Get. Garrett.
Now
.” Dread
trumped calm again. Round Face was probably getting his second wind by now. The
image of him and Chain Man going at Zeke together charged her like a Pamplona
bull. “They’re going to kill him!”

“What?” The exclamation came with
the Midwest inflection for which she’d been praying. Garrett. Fate had smiled
and hauled Max with him. “Who’s getting killed? Holy fuck, what happened to
your face? What’s going on?”

“Thank God,” Rayna blurted.
“Zeke. He—”

It was all she had to say. The
two men raced out the door in a cloud of gritted oaths. Rayna was right behind
them, with that bull pummeling every one of her heartbeats. Had she moved fast
enough? Were Garrett and Max in time to help Z from getting pulverized or would
they find him sprawled in the street, bloodied and beaten? Her mouth was dry.
Her head careened. Her imagination screamed.

None of it was ample preparation
for the real scene they encountered.

There was blood, all right. Lots
of it. Impossible to miss across his bare torso, even in the rain. Rayna’s
stomach turned as she forced herself to look. But after a frantic scan of him
from head to toe, she couldn’t figure out where the goons had gotten him aside
from one nasty nick between his shoulders. His legs formed a hard, long,
leather-clad triangle with the pavement. He held his torso in a proud inversion
of that shape, arms braced at forty-five degree angles, shoulders so rigid, the
rain formed dark puddles atop his muscles. Breaths ripped in and out of him,
making the chain in his fists clank a little despite how taut it was pulled. The
goon who’d just been wielding it was curled in the gutter nearby, groaning
softly. Round Face had disappeared, along with Mua.

Confusion struck again. Rayna
didn’t know whether to hang on to her terror or surrender to a wash of lust. He
looked movie-god good. Maybe that meant the rest had also been pretend. Maybe
the stress of this whole night had finally sent her over the edge and she’d
wake up inside the club somewhere, realizing she’d dreamt everything and—