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  Water was trickling onto the floor. I closed one eye and tried to focus with my right one. The hose that supplied the water mask had a hole torn into it.

  As I noticed the leak, so did the other men in the room.

  “I’m sorry. That’s my heel. I’m so klutzy.” I think it was then that things were going to go down, and fast.

  Despite the threat of another slap, I lifted my head and opened both eyes.

  The men in the room felt the shift. She was not as she appeared.

  The alarm started in the men in the room, but T knew it. She snatched the necklace off her neck and twisted it until it formed a blade.

  Her high heels were also weapons.

  This was a girl who knew how to kill people. I was in pain, half-dying, but I knew she’d win this battle. At least, the first wave of these four men.

  She sank her heel into one man’s abdomen, and the blood instantly expanded on his white jumpsuit.

  Her necklace/blade took another man down, right across his throat. His blood spurt was more spectacular.

  The man who grabbed her up from behind just helped her attack the tallest with a slash of her heels again. The last man’s body language became more frantic. He grasped at T’s throat. I tried to kick my leg out, but it was useless, just a meaningless effort. I had no way to get any leverage.

  T was an obstetrician of death. She was incredibly capable at delivering it.

  The last man didn’t stand a chance. She hit him with the blade she hadn’t dropped right into the center of his chest.

  The electrodes that had been used to shock the fuck out of me lay on the nearby counter. They were attached to a powerful voltage.

  Both T and I heard the pounding of Breston and/or Feybi soldiers coming our way. The door was closed and a pool of water was at our feet.

  T finally addressed me, “Can you lift your feet?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure.

  She wasn’t really asking, though. T ran to me and leaped up, grabbing the rubber chains above my wrists. I crunched my abs and lifted my feet out of the water.

  Together we hang as she used one hand to toss her knife in the direction of the wire on the electrodes. As the door opened, the water spilled into the hallway. In the same instant, the wire touched the water.

  We could feel the electricity zap through the water and hear the instantaneous screams of the men with their feet in the electrified water.

  My legs started to fall despite my best efforts. I had been through too much.

  We were chest to chest, and she used her legs to hook under my knees. She was sheer strength, keeping me from touching the water.

  The fuse in the room popped and the lights went out.

  T let my legs drop. It was wet, but we weren’t dead.

  “You got to get out of here. I can’t move.”

  I heard her splashing around in the dark, the hallway light giving just a hint at what the torture room contained.

  She ignored me.

  In a second I had a flashlight in my face, then it was aimed above me. T had the small light in her teeth while she worked out the release system.

  I heard more voices. “T, go.”

  My voice was gruff and grumbly.

  She got both locks undone, but let my hands stay up as she kicked a body out of the way to wheel over a table.

  After she positioned it behind me, she totally ignored my directions. Male voices were shouting and orders were being issued.

  At least the water’s electricity had subsided. If the power came back on, maybe T could live through that.

  By the time she was done with me, she had me on the wheeled table and dragged it behind her. She kicked bodies out of the way, only pausing to grab guns. She put a machine gun on my stomach. I tried to flop my stretched arms in the right direction.

  She tossed another gun from a dead man across her chest. She swung the table around her so she was pushing it.

  I forced one hand to hold the trigger. “Lean left.”

  I sure as shit didn’t want to shoot her dead by mistake.

  T shifted her shoulders and I started shooting up the hallway behind us.

  She kept running me down the hall and seemed to know the layout.

  The place was a fortress, though. This was an exercise in futility.

  She skidded us to a stop and made a quick right. The door wasn’t locked, and behind it lay a line of about ten four-wheelers. Breston probably used them for grounds maintenance or security.

  T acted like she and I had practiced this whole thing ten times before. Her movements contained so much precision.

  Instead of going straight out the door we had come in once she had the four-wheeler, she threw it in reverse.

  “We’re not going to make it.” I was trying to get her to understand. Instead, she pulled my head to her chest and covered me as we flew backwards through the glass window.

  “Shit!” We bounced clear of the building and halfway down the sprawling hill.

  She pulled it to a stop despite the fact that we were starting to take fire.

  “Listen to me.”

  T grabbed my jaw. “I have to light a few fuses. I have a different way out, okay? You’re going to go on this, and when you stop, you’ll be near a boat. Take it through to the river. There’s a cell phone taped under the steering wheel. Call Becca and tell her to track the phone.”

  She stopped her instructions to fire off some return volleys. “You hear me? I know you’re messed up, but do this for her. And for him.”

  “Light the fuse. We’ll go together.”

  She shook her head and threw the four-wheeler into reverse. “Tell him I only love once.” T jammed something down on the gas pedal and I was off.

  The vehicle started the descent backwards. When it flew through the fence unhindered, I realized that the hole had been prepped for this very thing.

  I grabbed the steering wheel and tried to keep it even, straight.

  Sure enough, the four-wheeler drove into the river as far as it could go.

  I heard bombs going off back at the Breston building, one after another.

  The man in me wanted to go back and help T. The realist in me knew I was too injured to help. My eyesight was blurry, and I was the most tired I’d ever been in my life.

  I had to believe that the woman who had the foresight to get me out of a cement room surrounded by an army had a solid plan and that she would get out. I had to listen to her. I had to force myself to float toward the boat, right where she said it would be.

  I used my last bit of energy to fall into the boat close to the motor.

  I pressed start, and thank God, it cranked easily. It was a fast boat, but I wasn’t fit for driving. All I could think to do was reach for the phone. For Becca. The steering wheel was tied in place, and I was moving.

  I flipped open the burner phone and Becca was the only contact. I hit her number.

  “Nix? Nix?”

  She was in a panic.

  “It’s me, love.”

  “Nix!” My name was a sob. I heard an alert tone on the phone, like Becca was getting a notification.

  “Okay. Okay. I just got an email from T. It says to tell you to motor straight across the river. I can be at the dock. I have the directions. And it says that Animal is in the weapons cellar. Are you okay?”

  I really loved the idea of seeing Becca again, but the phone and then my consciousness fell out of my grasp. There was only blackness.

  Chapter 45

  Animal

  I woke up and had to look around the room before I knew what was going on. Before I remembered what she had done to me. She’d sabotaged me in my own place and handcuffed me to the safe handle.

  I sat and raged for what had to be forty minutes.

  The weapons door flung open and a frazzled looking Wardon was there. The keys to the handcuffs were neatly hanging on the light switch and I waited while Wardon unlocked me.

  I rubbed my wrists and shook my ar
ms to get feeling back into them. “I need an update.”

  He handed me a phone. “Becca’s on this. She has Nix.”

  I had no idea how that magic had happened. I stared hard at Wardon to try to gauge if he was lying. Nix had been so incredibly fucked that I had been on a suicide mission to Breston’s headquarters.

  I put the phone to my ear. “Becs?”

  “I’ve got him. We’re in the hospital. He’s been so hurt.” She had to stop talking for a moment. “But he’s here. He’s alive.”

  “Nix escaped?”

  I rubbed my head. It hurt so much.

  “No. T. It was T. She set it up. Do you know where she is?”

  Becca’s question echoed in my head. I handed the phone to Wardon and went to my room upstairs. My phone was still plugged into the charger. I had a text message from her.

  T: I’m sorry. I know you need him. And I need you to be happy. Just stay home. If you have him, just stay home.

  I tried to call her, but the phone went to voice mail. I tried to text, but just emptiness responded.

  My heart started to implode because I had the answers I sought. There was footage rolling in the basement.

  I ran down the stairs. There were no working cameras on any screen. I couldn’t sit, but I dragged the red dot backwards. Seeing the past, the reason the cameras were off, was a gigantic set of explosions. I went slowly, looking for some sign of her, but my hand slipped.

  The footage of Nix’s escape started with T walking into the room dressed to the nines. I sat hard as I watched her movements. An expert. A ballerina made of violence. She was exquisite. Faster, smarter than any of her enemies.

  I flipped through the cameras to watch how they escaped. My man was so boneless, it was horrifying. T moved him around like she was born to do it. Eventually, I saw her speak to him, close to his face. Then he was in a vehicle going in reverse. She turned from his fleeing ATV and took on the gunman. The dark flashing with the gunfire. Bombs started. I saw one camera after another lose its feed.

  She collapsed under the barrage of bullets.

  My T.

  I felt myself start to shake. She just lay there, motionless. She didn’t move when the men came up to her. One kicked her beautiful body, and there was no reaction. The last camera to the outside, the one that was keeping a silent watchful vigil over T’s body, cut out just as a man tried to pick her up.

  I was putting it together, the horror of it. She’d saved Nix, and to do so, she’d sacrificed herself.

  In the black screen I saw the TV on behind me.

  Part of Nix’s surveillance, knowing what was on the news, hearing the police scanner.

  Explosions at BRESTON Pharmaceuticals. Police respond to multiple deadly explosions.

  I’d just watched my T die. It was a horrible time to realize that the sheering, gasping pain in my heart was my love for her finally being recognized.

  My T.

  She’d died saving Nix. She’d trapped me here so I wouldn’t complete my suicide mission that I’d laid out with her.

  My screaming started in a young place. The girl who would steal me a muffin just so she could watch me eat. She’d killed for me. She’d killed for Nix. Her beautiful brown eyes. I was so sure she would always protect herself, but I forgot that I was the ultimate weapon to her. For her. She’d do anything to make me happy. Or what she thought was happy. My soul was sliced in half. I felt the pain deeply. Without her I wasn’t able to cope.

  She was my family. My girl. My wife. My T. My greatest love. My only future.

  Chapter 46

  Nix

  I was going to live. I knew that much. The damage that had been done to my body would heal, but it would hurt the whole damn time. My doctor actually consulted with military paramedics to get tips on how best to deal with the recovery from the torture.

  My beautiful Becca didn’t leave my side. She was very, very angry with me. I took her fuming gratefully. Just to see her. Be with her. Love on her again. Have her hand touch mine. That this love wasn’t over yet—I was so grateful.

  But she was pissed. She was pissed that I had been captured. She was angry that I was incredibly fucked up. There was a haunted part of her that looked like she’d lost me, and I was sorry for that.

  Animal looked a goddamn wreck when he made it in. I told the nurses to lay off the morphine when I heard he was popping in for a visit.

  When he entered, Becca went up to him and slapped his giant arm, then gave him a hug. “Goddamn the two of you.”

  She pointed at us both, then she excused herself to go to the hospital cafeteria.

  I’d never seen Animal with the light in his eyes so dim. He was muted.

  “How’s T?”

  I’d asked Becca a few times, and she’d tried to text T, but no answer. She reminded me that T had emailed her when I was in the boat, so she must have escaped as well.

  Animal sat down like I had hit him with a bullet instead of a question.

  “Brother?”

  I tried to sit up and was met with a wall of pain.

  Animal rubbed his eyes over and over, then switched to rubbing his huge man paws on his thighs.

  He tried to start a few sentences and stopped.

  He was a mess.

  This was bad.

  This was very bad.

  Animal was cool in crises.

  “Where’s T?” My throat was still raw from the waterboard style interrogation methods. It had only been less than twelve hours.

  “She’s dead. They shot her.”

  The room was engulfed in a backdraft of silence. Animal’s shoulders started shaking.

  “Come here. I can’t get there. Come here.” I patted the part of the bed near my hand.

  Animal struggled to the floor, on his knees. He made his way to the side of my bed like he was praying.

  I used the hand I could move as best I could to hook his head and pull him closer.

  Animal put his forehead on the edge of my bed and sobbed.

  Seeing the big man on his knees made my nose burn and my eyes water.

  All I could do was awkwardly pat his head.

  “She told me to tell you something.” It came back to me in a haze. Holy shit. She had been saying goodbye. She knew the second she hit the room I was in that she wasn’t coming out alive that night. “Tell him I only love once.”

  Animal couldn’t look at me, but he shook his head, as if hearing her message made it all worse.

  He turned and sat on the floor, head in his hands. “I failed her. It was supposed to be me. She took my place.”

  T had saved my life and apparently Animal’s as well.

  We were two mobsters. Murderers. Assassins. But we cried in that hospital room together for a quiet girl who refused to let us pay for our sins.

  Chapter 47

  Animal

  Where she was supposed to be, she wasn’t. I’d taken her for granted. I relived the night she told me she loved me a million times since I watched the footage of her getting killed.

  How could I have possibly doubted how I felt about her?

  If I could only have shown the me in the past a glimpse at the pain I was going through without her. The guilt that resounded in every step, every breath all day, every day without her, maybe I would’ve known.

  A psychologist would have a field day with how easy I was to diagnose. I insisted on more than one woman at a time because I didn’t want to feel vulnerable. I was an obvious fucker.

  I was wasted. I’d been buoyant for so long, that when I deflated, I did it thoroughly.

  Wardon was doing his best. But without T and Nix, my empire was sinking as well. There was a lot of upkeep that I normally had endless energy for. I wanted the hustle. I was hungry for the balance and the control.

  But I was haunted now by the girl I loved.

  God, I loved her so much. How could I have ever let her walk through this life not knowing that?

  I stayed in my room and watched her
last moments over and over. I watched her final gift to me. Saving Nix, saving me.

  She only loved once. One mom. One man.

  She could have been anything in this life. She survived the streets. She survived homelessness. Running a company would’ve been a piece of cake for her. She had a motherhood about her. God, she would’ve been an incredible mother. No one would fight harder for her kids.

  The past tense thoughts made me ashamed that I was accepting that she was dead. Becca had broached the idea of a memorial service for T. I dismissed it. For a million selfish reasons. I didn’t want to say good-bye. I didn’t want to make it so real. Even Merck had stopped by to ask me what he could do. Nothing. Nothing was the only solution I had for everyone.

  I thought of her mother and hung my head. I would watch over her. I’d make sure I outlived her mother so that she would always be taken care of.

  There was a knock on my door. Ember entered despite the fact that I didn’t answer.

  “Oh, Animal. Look at you.”

  She was a teenager, but the empathy in her face was far deeper than her age should allow.

  “Go home, punk.” I had no bite in my words. No joking. Just flat.

  Ember went to the window and opened it. “Nix’s coming home today. Do you want to shower? Get dressed?”

  I closed my eyes to the bright light she let into my room.

  “He can’t wait to get out of the hospital. Says people keep dropping by to see his tats. He’s like a mannequin in a store.” Ember threw the bottles of alcohol into the trash can without talking about the fact that I don’t drink. Didn’t drink.

  I’d started when I got home from visiting Nix.

  The depression matched the way the booze made me feel, though time seemed longer on it.

  Ember kicked the clothes on the floor into a pile. She walked into my bathroom and started the shower.

  “I told you to leave.” Maybe I was a mean drunk. Maybe I was just mean now.

  Ember looked a little scared. I regarded her from the bed. I needed her out. She was here despite her deep anger at me for keeping the knowledge about Merck from her. That fight seemed like light years in the past now. I did my best to scare her away.