Flawed (The Mercenary Series Book 3) Read online

  Nicole was gone.

  He spun toward me, his face puce with anger. “What did you do with her?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. She was right here when I left her. She wouldn’t even speak to me.”

  “You tried to talk to her?”

  “Of course I did.” I looked at him in derision. “I wasn’t going to ignore her.”

  Mickey gave Vee a shove, and she stumbled away from him and fell to her knees in the dirt. She turned her head to look at me, her dark eyes imploring. She was asking me where her sister was, and I wished I could give her an answer, but I didn’t know. Nicole must have taken my advice when I’d told her to get away from here. Perhaps she hadn’t trusted me either, which was why she’d waited until I’d left before running. I wished she’d taken some of the money with her. I hoped that was what had happened to her, anyway, and it wasn’t that some other player I hadn’t previously considered had come onto the scene.

  Mickey Five Fingers stormed toward me, walking with determined strides, until he was close enough to get his face in mine, his gun pointed at my head. “Don’t fucking talk to me like I’m stupid,” he snarled, spittle hitting my face, breath of stale coffee washing over me. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ve got two guns pointed at your head, and you don’t even flinch.”

  I was flinching plenty inside. I was just good at not showing it. “Shouldn’t you be looking for your daughter?”

  He gave another roar of rage, and I was sure he was going to pull the trigger. But instead, he turned away from me and marched up the road, heading toward the turnoff that took us back onto the main road. I half expected a car to come roaring out of nowhere and mow him down, but there was no traffic here in the middle of the night.

  “Nicole!” he yelled. “You’re going to get lost out there, sweetheart. Come back and we’ll talk about this.”

  I glanced down to Vee on the ground. She’d managed to get to one knee. The other man—Large, or otherwise known as Bruno—was still behind me, with the gun pressed into the spot right between my shoulder blades. I could sense indecision radiating from him, trying to figure out if he should leave me and go and help his boss.

  “Nicole!” Mickey yelled again. “Stop messing around. We’re miles from anywhere and it’s freezing. You’ll die out here.”

  He walked toward the line of trees on the other side of the road, opposite where we’d emerged. “Come on. This is madness,” he continued to call out. “Your sister is here. Verity wants to see you.”

  He stood, turning in a circle, trying to work out which direction to move.

  Movement came from behind him as someone stepped out from behind a tree.

  My mouth dropped.

  Nicole held a large branch—thick and heavy. It must have taken all of her strength to lift it. With a banshee’s scream, she swung the wood just as her father turned toward the sound. The branch collided with his head with a sickening crack, like a baseball bat off a ball. Mickey looked at his youngest daughter with a strange kind of blank surprise. He began to sway, blinking at her a couple of times, his mouth opening and closing. Then his knees gave way and his legs folded, dropping him to the ground. He sat back on his haunches for a moment before it seemed his head weighed too much for the rest of his body and he fell forward, pitching face first into the dirt.

  Nicole stood over him, still holding the branch. She stared down at him, and then the branch fell from her fingers and hit the ground. Her mouth opened and she let out another scream, the sound filled with rage and grief.

  I used the distraction and elbowed the man behind me in the gut. The gun went off, deafeningly loud, but I didn’t feel any pain. I hoped the bullet had missed its mark. I spun on my heel to find Large doubled over from my elbow in the gut. I delivered a swift kick to the hand holding the gun and sent the weapon flying.

  I was barely aware of Vee managing to get to her feet, staggering to her sister. She pulled her away from their father’s crumpled body, enfolding her in her arms, protecting her from seeing him. I’d heard the crack. That must have been his skull.

  I couldn’t worry about it now. I needed to get my hands on that gun.

  Both Large and I dived for the weapon, grappling for it, but I got there first. Without thinking, I twisted onto my back and fired.

  Large jerked back then dropped dead in the dirt.

  I allowed myself a breath, but Vee’s cry snatched my attention. “X, watch out!”

  Movement by the bushes drew my gaze, and I barely caught sight of the flash of another weapon in the moonlight, hidden within the branches of a bush. I rolled to one side just as another gunshot went off. It hit the dirt where I’d been on my back only moments before, dust and small stones flying into the air. Damn it. The guy I’d thought of as Little must have found us. I couldn’t see him between the trees, but I had to take an educated guess. He had us at a huge disadvantage, with him having the cover of the trees, while we were exposed.

  Vee staggered toward me, her arm around her sister, though I couldn’t be sure who was holding who up.

  “No, Vee, get down.” I was terrified for her safety.

  But then I saw she had her father’s gun in her hand. She lifted the weapon and covered me, allowing me to get behind the corpse of the man I’d shot, pulling him half up onto his side to give us all something to shelter behind. More bullets fired in our direction, and both Vee and I lifted our newly acquired guns and returned fire.

  From in the bushes came a cry and a snapping of branches as something fell.

  We got him.

  I waited for a moment, cautious in case he’d faked it to lull us into a false sense of security. Then I left Vee and her sister where they were and approached the area where I’d heard the sound. I pulled the branches to one side to see Little lying on his back, a dark patch of blood spreading across his chest from where either Vee or I had shot him. I couldn’t be certain which of our bullets had hit home, but it didn’t matter which of us had shot him.

  He was dead.

  They were all dead.

  We were safe.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  V

  I held Nicole tight as she sobbed against me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Hush, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

  “No.” She pulled away from me, blinking up at me, with tears in her dark eyes, her lashes matted together. “I was such a bitch to you. I can’t believe how horrible I’ve been.”

  “I’ve made mistakes, too, Nickie. I should never have left you at Tony’s place. I should have dragged you with me.”

  She shook her head. “No, it was my fault. Everything I’ve done has always been wrong.”

  “That’s not true. We all get things wrong. None of us is perfect. We’re all flawed in our own way. We just try to get by however we can.”

  Nickie gave another sob. “I don’t know why I took it out on you when it was him the whole time.”

  “We can talk about this later. It’s over now. He can’t hurt us anymore.”

  I turned to look to where my father’s body had fallen. My stomach lurched.

  The spot where he’d been was empty.

  “Where is he?” I cried, dread tightening my chest, trapping the air in my lungs. “Where the fuck is he?”

  X turned to me and followed my line of sight, realizing what was wrong. “Fuck. He can’t have gone far. We were only distracted by minutes.”

  But minutes was long enough to get lost in this place.

  X ran over to the spot where my father had vanished then ran into the forest beyond, passing the place where Nicole had been hiding. I could see him for only a few moments before the trees and darkness swallowed him up. Though I wanted him to find our father and finish what had been started, I didn’t want to be left here alone with Nicole. Her crying had grown harder, almost hysterical now. I wanted to go and help X, but I couldn’t leave her, and there was no way I could b
ring her with me. After everything I’d been through, I was too weak to look far.

  Even though I held my father’s gun, and he was injured and unarmed, I still felt the threat of him as clearly as though he was standing over us both. After what Nicole did, I’d allowed myself a moment of relief at finally being free from his tyranny, but he couldn’t even let us have that peace of knowing he was dead. Nicole and I crouched in the middle of the road, me with my arms around her, as though I could physically shelter her from harm. I wanted X to come back, but the thought of him not being able to find my father made me sick to my stomach.

  “Come on,” I said to Nicole, trying to get up off the hard ground. My body shook from the cold and adrenaline, and my muscles kept threatening to cramp. “Let’s go and sit in the car while we wait.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not going back in that damned car. I’m not going near anything of his ever again.” Fresh tears flooded her eyes. “He killed Mateo right in front of me. Shot him.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry. I should never have left you at the house.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. You wanted me to go with you. We should have both gone with you. I’ve been such an idiot, and it cost Mateo his life. He didn’t deserve that.”

  “None of us deserve what our father has put us through. And none of it was our fault either. I know it’s hard, but we both need to remember that.”

  Nicole sniffed and nodded.

  Crashing came from the direction of the trees, and I released Nicole so I could aim my father’s gun in the direction of the sound. My heart pounded, my mouth running dry. If it was my father, I would shoot him the second I saw him. I wouldn’t even pause to say something dry and cutting to him, to finally try to make him see what a cruel and nasty human being he was.

  But it was X who emerged from between the trees, breathing hard and shaking his head.

  “I didn’t see him, but if he’s unresponsive or dead, he could be lying in a patch of bushes and I might have walked right past him. It’s dense out there, and dark. It’s easy to miss someone.”

  “Oh, God.” I pressed my knuckles to my mouth.

  X walked up to me and pulled me into a hug. “Hey, try not to worry. He’s badly hurt and he won’t get far. He’ll collapse and die of exposure.”

  I nodded. He was right. I’d been expecting that death for myself.

  “We have to go,” said X. “We can’t hang around here.”

  Dead bodies littered the ground, and there were more back at the cabin. If someone tipped off the authorities and we were caught like this, we’d go down for a very long time.

  X looked at my father’s car. “We’ll take the Mercedes for the moment. We’ll switch it for something else, as soon as we’re able to.”

  But Nicole shook her head. “We don’t have the keys. Our father took them.”

  What remaining energy I had slumped out of me. “Shit.” When were things going to start going our way?

  “It’s only fifteen minutes back to the cabin,” said X. “The truck is there. We can take that.”

  I nodded. We didn’t have much choice.

  The three of us were slow going. I had to let X half carry me, his arm around my waist, me leaning against him. I was terrified my father was about to burst out of the trees, covered in blood and screaming at us, like something out of a horror movie. I flinched at every movement around us—the crack of twigs as small animals moved in the undergrowth, the flap of nocturnal birds’ wings in the trees, even our own footsteps on the ground. My exhausted mind conjured everything into something terrifying.

  After what felt like forever, the road opened up into the clearing, revealing the dilapidated cabin where I’d been kept prisoner. Our truck sat in front of it, and several bodies littered the ground. I took great satisfaction in seeing one of them was Giovanni’s. If I’d felt stronger, I’d have walked over and spat on him. I was glad he was dead. Men like him only brought misery to others.

  We made it back to the truck, and Nicole climbed into the back. X opened the passenger door and he helped me inside. I had to place my feet around a couple of cases on the floor.

  “What are they?” I asked, though I had my suspicions.

  “The money I brought here to release you. We never got that chance to hand them over. Giovanni sent one of his men down to bring you up, and discovered you were gone.”

  A slow smile spread across my face. “Was he furious when he realized I’d escaped?”

  “We all were. I thought he might have already killed you and was saying you’d escaped as a way of trying to cover his back.”

  The pleasure I’d experienced at imagining Giovanni in that moment vanished when I realized the sort of pain X must have gone through.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d hoped to get to you first.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. You’re safe. That’s all that counts.”

  “And we have a shit load of money.”

  He gave a small chuckle. “That, too.” He leaned in and kissed me. “You’re crazy, you know that, don’t you? Incredibly brave, but also totally insane.”

  I gave a wry smile. “I’ve had to be.”

  He leaned in and kissed me again, until someone cleared their throat from the back seat, and we both remember Nicole sitting back there.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I guess the cases belong to us now.”

  “Too damned right.”

  The keys to the truck were still in the ignition. X turned them, but instead of roaring to life, the engine choked. “Shit,” he swore, banging a fist down on the steering wheel.

  My stomach churned in a familiar sensation. What would we do if the truck didn’t start? We’d be stuck. I was in no state to walk much farther. We needed to get out of here.

  Then he tried again, and this time the engine roared to life.

  I felt faint with relief. “Oh, thank God.”

  X cranked up the heat. Though I wore X’s jacket, I was shivering, the rest of my clothes still damp. The hot air felt amazing, though it only penetrated the top layer of my skin when I felt chilled right down to the bone.

  X turned the truck in a sharp circle and drove away from the cabin. We passed the Mercedes, still in the exact same spot. There was no sign of my father. I hoped what X said was right, and he’d collapse and die somewhere out in the forest. The not knowing for sure was ripping me apart, but I had Nicole back now, and both X and I were still alive.

  I was going to take my blessings where I could.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  X

  I drove with no destination in mind except to get the hell away from the Catskill Mountains. With the heating in the truck on full blast, Vee’s skin soon began to pink up again from the pallor it had been when I’d first found her. She slept with her head against the passenger window as I drove. Nicole, too, slept curled up on the back seat. They’d both been through a lot, and now they needed to take time to heal.

  I wanted to take Vee somewhere she could get some proper rest, but first I needed to ask her something.

  Though I didn’t want to disturb her, I shook her awake.

  “Vee,” I said. “I want to take you to get checked over.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I need to take you to the hospital. You need to get checked out.”

  She hadn’t mentioned the baby to me, or how she was feeling. I didn’t want to bring up the subject, worried it would be bad news, but we couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening.

  “There’s not going to be anything more they can do for me tonight,” she said. “I might need to have surgery on my finger to help the scarring, but it’s not as though they can sew it back on.”

  I remembered something and awkwardly reached into my pocket to pull out the small piece of tissue wrapped flesh I’d carried with me.

  She paled and wrinkled her nose. “Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”

  “I couldn’t just leave
it.”

  She grimaced at the dead little piece of herself I had carried around with me. “It would have needed to have been on ice and done a lot sooner than now for a doctor to do anything with it.” She glanced down at her injured hand. “I guess I’m just going to have to live with having an ugly finger.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not ugly. No part of you could ever be ugly.”

  She lifted her finger in front of my face and cocked her eyebrows.

  “Okay,” I admitted, trying not to pull a face at the finger which was now black with crusted blood and scabbing. “It’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  She smacked me with her good hand.

  “Hey,” I protested. “But it is a good thing I don’t just love you for your finger.”

  She jabbed me with her elbow this time, but I could see from her repressed smile that she wasn’t taking my teasing seriously. I was serious about one thing, though. “I still want to take you to the hospital.”

  She sighed and sat back in her seat. “Please, X. I just need a hot bath, food, and to sleep for twenty-four hours. Then we’ll go and see a doctor, I promise.”

  It lay unspoken between us—the possibility the baby was no longer alive. I had Vee back, which was the most important thing. How the loss of the pregnancy would affect her worried me more than anything. She’d already been through so much. I didn’t want her to have any more pain in her life. I knew we could try again, but that wouldn’t matter to her. She was the one who’d experienced the pregnancy, while I’d just been a bystander.

  With my eyes still on the road, I reached out to place the backs of my fingers against her cheek. “Okay, we’ll do what you want. Whatever happens, I love you, remember that.”

  She nodded, me feeling her movement against my hand rather than seeing it. “I love you, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine