Make Me Yours Evermore, Book 3 (32 page)

“I have.” The big man climbed to his feet.

Success. Thank god. My muscle tension cranked down a notch. My heart beat a little slower.

“Good.” Scrim stepped back in my direction. Metal gleamed in his fist. “Now you shoot her, Pieter. Blondie? Chris?”

Calling us for support?

Shoot her?

Fuck.
Plan number two, Scrim? Wish you’d warned me. A yard from Scrim. Four from Pieter. More from Blondie who was on the other side of all of this. Blondie already had his hand swinging up with his weapon in it. This was a better plan than Scrim’s first one. Scrim already had the man in his sights. And if Pieter refused, I suppose that proved who the traitor was. Cause the man had to be in love to do what he did. Didn’t he?

Could I kill him? I had to or risk losing everything if Vetrov decided I’d been bad. Even losing Zoe wasn’t an option. She wasn’t just Kat’s girlfriend but a way to wash away some of my dirty past. Save her. Kill Pieter. Simple, as long as I shot straight. Three against one.

But Pieter was in love.

Love.
Weird. I admired a man who went there. Who could feel like that, who could dedicate himself to a woman. It was one step from obsession…

I expected the man to say
what
and look baffled while he weighed up his options. Unless he was truly uninterested in the woman…and callous, had to add in callous if you could shoot a bound and helpless women for no particular reason. My heart and mind, by now, had caught up, wound up, to fighting speed. Waiting, waiting, for something to happen. I was rising from my crouch and calibrating distances.

Thinking this didn’t take long.

By the time I was standing, Blondie was down with a knife in his throat. One choked cry from him – then down, falling on his back, writhing. Hard to breathe with a knife in your windpipe.

Scrim had missed two important points. Pieter thought and moved like lightning.

But so did I.

Life is full of choices. Which? The side of shooting helpless women, or the side of an almost obsessive love?

I brought Scrim down with a kidney punch to his back and a chokehold as he fired skyward. The silenced gun made a small
phut
noise. Then I smashed the side of his head with one blow and kept him as a shield. I’d never killed anyone before. I had today. Knew it. It drove an ice spike directly to my soul. But I was glad. One cockroach less in the world.

Now I had Pieter breathing hard over there with a gun almost up, from the way the light flickered along its length. I shone my little flashlight in his eyes and heard the
phut
of his weapon.

Behind me, Zoe shrieked then cut off.

Shit oh shit. Had she been hit? For a few seconds, I fought the screaming need to turn and check she was breathing.
First. Stay alive.

Pieter had dived earthward and was no doubt aiming where he thought I was. I bet he’d ripped off his goggles.

“Stop,” I grated out but I kept my volume low. “I can see you. I can shoot you, before you get past Scrim’s body. I’ve killed him.”

Scrim gave one last gurgle and stopped breathing as if to put a neat full stop on my statement. Fuck, I was a murderer – another notch on my belt of evil fucking deeds. Pieter hadn’t shifted. “I’m letting you go, man! I’m on your fucking side. I could’ve shot you already. Now go!”

All the while I was aware of that other man Scrim had ordered to return. If he came now…

“Go! Just make sure she doesn’t go to the fucking cops. Okay?”

I probed backward with my foot and was sure I heard a gasp from Zoe. Didn’t mean she wasn’t hit though, or bleeding.

Finally, I saw him rise. Slow. Careful.

He tucked away his pistol, strode to Jazmine and stripped away her bonds with a quick flick of a second knife.

Must remember to invite him over if I ever needed something sliced and diced.

“Thanks. Got your back, man, if you ever need it. Zoe said you weren’t a
doos
. That counts with me.”

I nodded even if he couldn’t see it. And made a note to find out what a
doos
was.

Then the two of them jogged away.

When I was game to turn, I found Zoe breathing. Now what? I had her, but maybe I’d crapped all over my chances of keeping her? Vetrov…if he found out what happened, I’d be duck slash croc food at the bottom of a river. Two of his men were dead. One gone missing with one of his women.

How could elation feel so bad? I may have signed the death sentences of everyone. Me, Andreas, Kat, Zoe. The women would be made to wish they were dead.

I shook away my dread of the future. Clear head. Think your way out. There
must
be a way. Only my stomach kept rolling like it was filled with something rotten that wanted out.

“Zoe, are you hit anywhere? Tell the truth.” I crouched beside her and tried to check her.

She shook her head then waited, rigid.

I squeezed her arm. “You’ll be fine. I’m taking you to Kat.”

Christ. Close call. No holes in either of us. No knives even. All I had to do was find that perfect excuse for Scrim’s men, and for Vetrov.

Think, fuckit, think.
There had to be an answer that would convince Vetrov.

I rolled Scrim’s body down into the darkly shadowed creek bed for the croc to snack on when he felt like it. A long, gray lump surged forward and lumbered for the body.

Croc. Huge one.

I did what every man does after he escapes almost certain death. Hands on knees, I puked. Then I wiped my mouth, and decided to buy a lottery ticket next time I had the chance to.

I rescued the goggles, found car keys in Blondie’s pocket, then walked out with Zoe on my shoulder. Met the other guy before he even made ten yards from his vehicle. After I put Zoe in my 4WD, we returned to the creek. He believed me when he saw the knife in his man’s neck. Guess he never figured me for a knife man. I told him I’d run away when the gunplay started as I couldn’t hit the side of a barn. The mean and doubtful look in his eyes dissipated when I stood there and stared back. I guess Pieter had a bad rep.

“You better have a bloody good way of explaining that to Vetrov.”

Yeah, good point. It was one I was working on.

We looked down at the massive croc doing its death roll with Scrim and decided, wisely, to leave it to eat.

“Vetrov can figure this.” On the way to the 4WDs he sent off a text or two. “Okay. I’m volunteered to clean up this mess. And you, you poor bastard, Vetrov says explain.”

“I will. When I get back to the lodge.”

My heart beat so forcefully it hurt my chest.

“You can get the fuck out of here. Me and Red will get Blondie. There aren’t too many roads out of the Daintree. The changeover men were coming in from up north tonight to take the girls to the airfield. Pieter picked a bad place to start a run from.”

After that, he seemed more concerned with getting a blanket to carry Blondie’s body and leaving ASAP. I drove back with Zoe on the passenger seat next to me. Though her eyes were dark and she still had the gag in, I’d put her head in my lap. That might, possibly, be reassuring. Plus I told her a few more times that she was now mine, and Andreas’s, and…Kat’s.

But there was still Vetrov. Fucking Vetrov. The man who could have us all killed on a whim. How did I explain this in an email and sound utterly convincing?

I had a thought. One possibility. It might work. Fucking had to.

We’d been a five-minute drive from the house at most. And a world away. Two people had died since I’d left them. By the time I walked in the door, with Zoe over my shoulder, my shaking hands were still again. The triumphant scaredy cat Dom returneth.

I had a sudden vision of me chucking a match on this place and letting it burn. Of walking away with the lodge afire, and flames lighting up the sky behind me.

If only.

I kept going down the hallway with Zoe and met up with Andreas and Kat.

“Scoot.” I ushered them both ahead of me. Andreas took the girl. Once I had Kat curled up with an untied and ungagged Zoe on the couch, I bear hugged Andreas for a second. My throat closed in.

“You okay, mate?” he asked.

Hated weakness. I shut it down. I’d tell him about the exact details of the killing later, if he wanted me to. I said everything all nice and loud despite Andreas raising an eyebrow. Zoe knew it all and Kat was tough.

“Bad things went down. We caught two of the women but two people got killed – Scrim and another man. Pieter, one of Scrim’s men did it. Tough bastard. He wanted to get away with one of the women. Once the shooting started, I ran.” I screwed up my face and shook my head as if disgusted at myself.

Andreas looked taken aback. His eyebrows went up so high they disappeared under his hair. “You ran?”

“Yep. I can’t hit the side of a barn with a pistol. Scrim never asked me but it’s true. Give me a down-and-dirty hand to hand and I can do it, not guns.” I dragged the two pistols from my belt and handed them to Andreas. “Store them somewhere secure while I go email Vetrov.”

“Wait.” He put up a hand. “Are we safe? I mean there are people on the loose who might give us, as well as this whole operation, to the cops.”

“I don’t know.” I looked over at the couch where Kat seemed to have a handle on comforting the girl, whispering sweet nothings in her ear. “Pieter was here illegally. I guess that makes it unlikely. I think he was in love with this woman. I’ll be back in a minute. Take them all out to the deck and wait for me on the sofa there.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You want me to move them?”

“Yes.”

I left Andreas to think and walked to the study, praying I’d found the right answer to my puzzle.

Vetrov was online and waiting, from the speed of his response.

I gave him the same spiel I had Andreas. That I’d run when the gunfight started.

V: I never took you for a cowardly man.

C: I’m sensible, is all.

Then I went for the one thing I needed from him, apart from absolution for not stopping Pieter.

C: S promised Z to me if I helped him. And I did, best I could.

I had to wait a while.

V: Is not a gift. I will send you bill. Maybe you owe me another time. Rain check, yes?

Shit. I grinned. Yes! Either he’d watched the living room webcam, or he simply believed me. The webcam seemed likely. It was why I’d spoken loudly. Thank you, Scrim. You did one good thing in your life.

C: Sure. Rain check.

This was way better than being dead. If I could just forget that Vetrov probably had a whole library of BDSM porno recorded with us featuring. I sank back in my chair.

V: You are a lucky man.

C: Why?

V: Pieter did not shoot you. I have decided not to shoot you because I just got word that we caught him and her. You need to go kiss the ground and say thank you to whatever gods you believe in.

My mind went dead silent. Then my heart started up again. I didn’t know why, but Pieter’s fate made me feel dreadfully sad. I didn’t know him at all except that he’d been willing to sacrifice a lot to get his woman safe. Nothing I could do. That made me feel like shit. The man was good as dead. Maybe her, Jazmine, too.

I needed to go see and touch some good people. I levered myself out of the chair.

Out on the deck, Andreas had managed to sit at one end of the big sofa, then there were the two women with Kat resting her head on his lap and Zoe snuggled into her. I eyed them.

Andreas cocked an eyebrow. “Daddy want to come join in?” His look was questioning though.

I nodded to him in a
yeah things are good
kind of way.

“Move your fat ass, you bastard.” Then I got Kat to sit up on her elbow while I squeezed in next to him. “Put your head back down.” Gently I encouraged her to rest her head. Getting comfortable, she wriggled a bit down the sofa, taking Zoe with her. “My lap this time. He’s had his turn.”

My elbow in his side made Andreas cough.

“Ow.” He rubbed his ribs and leaned on the armrest. “Asshole, you’ve got a hard elbow. So everything is sorted out?”

Ugh. There was so much I couldn’t say to him right then and there. So much.

If it hadn’t been for the killing and the fact that I knew the human traffickers were at this moment dragging Pieter and his woman away to be tortured, or that the other women were once more slaves, I could have been content. But Scrim was dead. I had Kat. I’d found Zoe. We were alive and staying that way. Big pluses.

I pushed away my sadness, the pain I still had eating at me from the deaths and everything. I closed my eyes a second, stroking Kat’s hair. I summed up. “Yes. It’s sorted. I’ll fill you in later.”

“Okay. Great to have you back in one piece.”

“Me too.” Kat squirmed her head around. “I’m so glad to have you back too, Sir.” Then a cheeky look came over her. She sneaked her tongue onto her lip, and her eyes took on a defiant gleam as she grinned one-sided. “Can I call you asshole too?”

“Fuck no.” I grabbed her throat and growled. “If there was a wall handy I’d shove you up against it and fuck you just to show you how wrong you are for saying that…after I birched your ass with a raw stick from a tree.”

This woman was never going to stop testing me now and then. I think I liked that. The challenge. Yeah, I did.

Her reply was demure. “Sorry, Sir.”

Now that response had been beautiful. I stroked her skin, loving the smile that danced on her lips.

“Pretty girl, this is a good time to show off what I’ve given you. Kneel in front of us.”

“I’ll be back.” She patted Zoe then wriggled out from under her to kneel where I pointed. From the way she grimaced the bruises on her ass were hurting.

“Thank you.” I nodded, pleased. There was nothing wrong with thanks, as long as she obeyed quickly. The novelty of her doing that would take months, maybe years, to wear off. “Lift your dress and show Andreas.”

“What’s this?” He sat forward and studied her as she raised the white lace. The edge skimmed her thighs, revealed her pussy, and reached her waist.