Rose of Jericho (Lilith Adams Series Book 2) (26 page)

“To hell with the fake one. Where’s the real one?” Cohen either had no patience left or, more likely, he was just playing bad cop. Whatever the case, it was working.

“I told you before that they are coming. There is no way in hell that I want to end up like Chris and Brandon. The buyer is supposed to meet me here, so I left directions and a key for my mailbox downstairs on the table. Now, please, can we get the hell out of here?”

“You show us and we will.” Cohen grabbed Stephen’s arm and yanked him roughly to his feet. Nicci and Lilith fell in step behind Cohen as he shoved Stephen toward the door.

Almost as if on cue, Timothy pushed the door open and leaned into the room. “Are we about done here? I don’t think we should stay much longer.”

“Yeah. We’re heading out now, Tim.” Lilith helped handle Haverty as he struggled harder the closer they got to the door.

“Cool. I got a place we can take him if you have more questi…”Lilith turned just in time to see Timothy fall to the floor like a redwood tree. When she looked up, she was staring down the barrel of a semi-automatic and it felt like her heart just stopped beating.

Chapter 21

I
n a split second, Cohen threw Haverty at Lilith, kicked the door closed and dove to the side. Lilith saw Cohen land on his back with his gun trained on the door just before she hit the ground in a jumbled mess with a very surprised Haverty.

Pain lit Lilith’s head up like the fourth of July, cracking hard on the floor. Dimly she heard bullets tear through the door showering them in splinters. For a moment, the world just stopped, pulling her under in a dark wave of nausea.

When she finally managed to pull herself away from the edge of unconsciousness, she felt elbows and knees digging into her. Feet pounded around the floor, but she still couldn’t focus. All she could do was roll onto her knees and crawl away from the deafening gunshots. Her eyes slowly opened just in time to see Haverty awkwardly get to his feet and run at breakneck speed for the backroom.

She just stared at him, her cloudy brain thinking ‘Huh. Why is he going back there?’ Then it clicked. The emergency line. Things snapped into focus and Lilith skidded and stumbled trying to get back on her feet. She crashed to the floor as the whole room spun. “Shit! Grab him!” Lilith shouted as Cohen rocketed over her. “He’s going for his emergency escape. We still need him!” Lilith pulled her gun back out of its holster and tried to force herself up on unsteady legs when a hand grabbed her by the hair.

The man yanked her backward, sending searing sparks through her scalp as she screamed. Without a second thought, Lilith raised her gun and squeezed the trigger, watching the bullet tear through his throat. Hot blood splattered across her face as the hand in her hair jerked and then fell away. The car crash scene flashed through her mind. Why did they always go for the hair?

The uniformed man grabbed at his throat, wide eyes meeting hers in shock, as he gurgled and choked on his own blood. Lilith kicked the body away from her feet as blood quickly pooled around him on the hardwood. She was fed up with anonymous men in tactical gear. It was like she was stuck in a Steven Segall movie or something.

“Lilith! Get down!” Nicci’s panicked voice came from behind the couch. Her little brunette head peeked around the edge of the sofa, firing a couple shots through the door. A spray of bullets lit up the back of the couch, as Nicci leapt back out of view. Lilith plastered herself against the wall as bullets blazed through the doorway again, splinters and couch stuffing flying through the air. The hailstorm of shrapnel held Lilith fixed to her spot.

“Lilith!” Nicci was peeking around the couch again. Her muddy brown eyes caught Lilith’s with a look of urgent concern and frustration. “I’ll give you some cover. When I fire, get to the back room. You have to move.” Nicci was right. She had precious seconds to get to cover or she might as well tie the toe tag on herself.

Lilith swallowed her fear and gathered the strength to run for the back room just as Nicci popped up, pistol blazing. Lilith ran, stumbling as the door behind her exploded. She heard boots storming in but she didn’t dare look back. She just kept running with her blood pounding like thunder in her ears and a prayer on her lips. She wasn’t the religious type, but if it helped, she’d pray to whoever or whatever was listening.

“Get down!” Nicci shouted the words desperately and immediately Lilith slid to the floor, her arms covering her head, as bullets ripped through the air above her. She scrambled around the door frame, fighting for every breath. Her lungs were burning as her hands trembled around her gun. She could hear shuffling, a couple shots, something big hit the ground, more sounds of a struggle.

Nicci and Timothy were still out there and they needed help. Lilith had to get it together or she was going to lose yet another partner and one of Chance’s best friends. After a few steadying breaths, she peeked around the door frame. All she could see of Timothy were his blue Nikes. Hopefully he was unconscious but still breathing. Two guys in tac gear were dead on the ground and a third was pinning Nicci to the floor. Shit.

Lilith took a deep breath to steady her rattled nerves before leaning out again and firing. After a couple shots, she scored a hit to the man’s hip just as he was about to crack Nicci in the jaw. Not a fatal wound but it would sure as hell be distracting. The man howled in pain and collapsed against the floor, writhing in agony. Nicci quickly put him out of his misery and scrambled back behind the couch.

Lilith collapsed back against the door frame in the back room, catching her breath. The main room was quiet but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Where the hell was Cohen? Lilith scanned the command center, catching sight of Haverty sprawled out face down on the floor. Cohen was crouched next to him, staring at the climber’s rope under the window.

“Cohen! Nicci and Timothy are still out there.” Lilith crawled quickly across the floor and checked Haverty’s vitals. They couldn’t lose their only leverage. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found his pulse. He groaned and started to come around as Lilith pinned him to the ground. She looked up to see Cohen still staring at that rope with laser focus, oblivious to anything else.

Gun shots lit up the door frame sending more splinters flying and Stephen panicked, flailing and kicking. An elbow caught Lilith in the chin sending her reeling back with the taste of blood in her mouth. Why the hell did everyone keep hitting her in the head? What happened to a good ole fashioned blow to the gut? It certainly would be a somewhat welcome change of pace, at least when compared to the alternative.

She leapt onto Haverty’s back, slamming him roughly into the floor. With a forearm firmly pressed against the back of his neck, she leaned down, speaking in a clear and ironclad voice. “Stop or you’ll get yourself killed.” He kept fighting with the surprising strength of true terror and desperation, high on adrenaline.

“Andrew! I need a hand here.” Lilith’s heart pounded in panic as she watched his tense back. He knew where the book was. He could take that line down to the street, break into the mailbox and get out. Of course, that would mean leaving the rest of them to die. Right at that moment she wasn’t sure that Cohen saw that as a down side. The memory of Cohen’s cold face staring her down at Phipps Bend flooded her mind. He had stood there, ready to mutilate her to save himself, with a smile on his face.

Finally Cohen turned around and pulled Lilith aside. He casually yanked Haverty to his feet and shoved him into the wall before meeting Lilith’s eyes with a heavy look. “Take the escape line.”

“What?” Lilith blinked in complete shock. That definitely wasn’t what she expected to hear him say. Ever.

“You know where the book is and you know where the cipher is. Take the escape line. Get out of here. I’ll buy you some time.” There was a defeated tone to his voice that clearly said he considered ‘buying her some time’ to be a suicide mission. She thought he’d been seriously considering taking his chance to escape just a minute ago. Could he actually have been weighing the choice of self-sacrifice? It didn’t fit the Cohen she’d constructed in her mind.

When she didn’t respond, Cohen grabbed her shoulder in exasperation, his almost handsome face looming right in front of her. “Take it! If you die and the council never finds the cipher I’m dead anyway. Go!”

Lilith gritted her teeth and backed up against the wall. Cohen pushing her to take the easy way out brought the fire back to her belly, burning away her fear and hesitation. “No. I’m not leaving everyone behind. Not this time.” She ignored Cohen’s speechless look of confusion and peeked around the corner again.

Nicci was now crouched behind the end of the couch just a few feet away from them. More bullets tore through the sofa as Nicci jerked back, curling into a ball, arms hugging her head to her knees.

When the bullets stopped, Nicci looked toward the back room, catching sight of Lilith. She mouthed silently that she was out of ammo, a slight look of panic clear on her face. Movement caught Lilith’s eye. Five men piled into the door, one of them dragging Timothy into the apartment. She could see his chest rise and fall which flooded Lilith with relief. So far they were all alive. Now if they could only stay that way.

If they wanted any chance at all of skipping the direct route to the morgue, they had to drop the rest of the henchmen. Lilith squeezed off some shots at the guy closest to Nicci, but her shaking hands betrayed her fear. Her new found bravado certainly hadn’t lasted long. She missed several times before finally scoring a shoulder hit. The man spun on his heel and cried out in pain as his gun fired erratically before clattering to the ground.

Nicci moved with lightning reflexes and reached for his weapon but bullets erupted across the floor. She pulled back behind the couch just in time with a look of sheer panic as she flexed her hand. One split second of hesitation and she would have lost that hand. Bullets exploded across the door frame inches from Lilith’s head sending her scrambling backward in surprise but not quite fast enough.

One of the bullets caught her in the left shoulder. Thankfully, it hit the meat of her shoulder, missing all the major blood vessels. Somewhere past the blinding pain and the flare of numbness down her arm, she managed to shove herself back against the wall. Lilith clenched and unclenched her fist, breathing slowly through her mouth until the wound settled into a bone-jarring ache. No major damage.

Lilith popped the clip from her gun and counted her bullets. One. Plus the one in the chamber. Shit. “Cohen. I need your gun. I’m almost out.”

Cohen was still struggling to keep Haverty pinned. The man was in a blind panic, fighting to run anywhere that wasn’t here. From the look on Cohen’s face, he was about to just let him, no matter the consequences. “I lost it in the living room when I tore after this fucking coward.” He snarled the words through clenched teeth as he shoved Haverty hard against the wall, watching his head bounce off it with a smug smile of satisfaction.

Dread was slowly knotting in Lilith’s stomach as she fought to keep her focus. “What about your backup?” She already knew his answer before he even opened his mouth and the knot of dread grew.

“I don’t…” There was anger in Cohen’s face that was only aimed at one person. Himself.

“Now!” An authoritarian voice boomed from the main room. Lilith edged closer to the door frame and peeked out. The four remaining guys were grouped around what was left of the front door. They were digging in their pockets for something. Then it occurred to her that they might not need to take them all down. There’s no way that one of the neighbors hadn’t called the police. If they could hold their position a little longer…

Lilith cautiously watched the men shove something in their ears a split second before a shriek tore through the air. Her eyes went wide as the sound turned her blood to ice. No. Anything but that. Lilith swallowed the lump in her throat, eyes glued to the doorway, praying that the sound was just her damaged psyche playing tricks on her again.

Another ear splitting shriek rang painfully through the rooms, doubling her over. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nicci curling into a ball, covering her ears in a silent scream. God no. Dread exploded in her gut as her lungs burned like they were dipped in napalm.

Very slowly, Lilith looked over her shoulder like a victim in a horror movie. The matching looks of lost adoration on Cohen and Haverty felt like a stab to the gut. Another scream tore through her brain like razor wire.

Lilith collapsed on the floor as the panic seized her lungs, leaving her wheezing and desperately trying to take even a single breath. She clawed uselessly at the hardwood as the banshee screech tore through the air. Dimly, she saw Cohen and Haverty step over her into the living room. Then her eyes fell on the personification of her nightmares wrapped in a skin tight, baby blue dress.

Pure, good ole fashioned hate burned in Lilith’s veins as she clicked the clip back into her gun. The noise coming out of the
chanteur d'âme
’s mouth was like liquid fire in her ears, making her vision blur as she leaned back against the wall. Warm fluid trickled from her ears and, for a moment, she thought her brain might just explode into mush.

Lilith took slow and steady breaths, trying to push back the blinding pain. She still had two bullets. If she could just steady herself, she could shoot that bitch right between the eyes and never have to worry about her again. Lilith and Chance would be free from her threats forever.

Weakly, she managed to peek around the door frame again, her shaking hand wrapped tightly around the gun. Nicci was unconscious on the floor or at least Lilith hoped she was. Blood trickled from her ears but it seemed like her chest might be rising. If she was breathing, it was shallow.

That was it. She wasn’t going to lose another partner. Not now. Not like this. With a feral grimace on her face, Lilith pushed past the oppressive pain and aimed her gun. Just as her finger began to squeeze the trigger, Peisinoe’s ocean blue eyes swung to meet Lilith’s. A sadistic smile that felt like knives twisting in Lilith’s gut slid across the siren’s face. She opened her pouty lips and released a forceful screech that blasted through the air like a shot.

The pain was so immense that Lilith collapsed on the floor. She couldn’t hear anything but a high pitched echo that set her teeth on edge. Hands grabbed her but the blackness swallowed her whole in the desperate need for relief.