Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(152)

She kept the blade hidden in her hands, let her hair flop over her face and tried to look limp and defeated while she picked at the thick plastic tie that held his hands and feet together.

It took forever. No way could she get through it before they saw her. But she had to try. She had an atom of a chance to actually do something. She’d be damned if she’d waste it.

The tie popped loose. Zhoglo was still bellowing in Ukrainian, flinging the detached monitor screen at the plate glass window—

Crash, the window shattered. Shards peppered her arms, her back. Becca dug around until she found the tie that bound his legs together, and sawed desperately while the rest of them scrambled out of range, pulling slivers of glass out of their flesh.

The tie popped loose. She tried to reach the one that fastened Nick’s hands together, but she came up about two inches short. She willed him to shift, to wake, to help her out. Please, Nick. Please.

He just lay there. Like a dead man.

“Cut her out of that chair,” Zhoglo ordered shrilly in Ukrainian. “Get that tape off of her. Get everything off her. I want to get started.”



Nick held the hurting at bay, with all the mental muscle he possessed. He had to be ready to use what Becca had given him. Courageous goddess that she was. Chained to a chair and mouthing off to that maniac while he was in one of his rages—the chick had suicidal nerve. But then again, who knew that better than him?

Hold the position, damn it. Cuffed hands tethered to cuffed ankles, while looking limp, unconscious. His hands were still bound, but they were in front of him. And feet were a hell of a lot better than nothing.

It hurt like fire to breathe. His ribs were cracked, maybe broken. Everything hurt. Push it back. He remembered a taunt his father used to throw at him when he was young, when he blubbered after beatings.

Pain can’t hurt you, kid, so shut up.

He repeated it to himself now. Broken bones, ruptured organs, ripped tendons, who gave a f*ck. He wasn’t going to be needing his body again after this move, so he did not need any of this sensory information from his peripheral nervous system. Thanks, but no thanks.

The data was irrelevant. Pain can’t hurt you. Push it back.

Through swollen, slitted eyes, he could see that ogre Kristoff, yanking Becca by her dog chain off the chair and slicing off her snug shirt with his knife. Then, the knife snapped beneath her bra cups. The evil bastard licked his lips, chuckling.

“Mikhail. Wake that stinking turd up,” Zhoglo ordered. “I want him to watch. Everything we do to her. Every last instant of it.”

Mikhail stood at his head and bent over him, then flopped him onto his back so he could start slapping Nick’s face. Smack, whack.

Right…now.

He whipped his legs up, clamping the guy’s head between his thighs. A violent twist and jerk, and he scooped his bound hands around the guy’s off-balance body. Flip-twist again, and he yanked with desperate strength. Pure instinct, blind technique, no f*cking clue if it would work—then pop, a wet crunching sound.

A choked shriek from Mikhail, and the sudden smell of shit as the man’s bowels loosened. His spine had been snapped.

Nick panted as he rolled away from the limp body and rolled up onto his feet. Kristoff dove for him, roaring like a bull, and somehow Nick figured out, on the fly, how to counterbalance the frontal kicks with his hands bound, how to parry Kristoff’s slashing blows to the head. He danced back, swung a swift roundhouse kick that connected with Kristoff’s face, and sent that f*ckhead gorilla reeling back, blood spurting from his nose. He hauled off to follow it up with a— Bam. The gunshot rocked him. Zhoglo was brandishing a pistol.

A sensation of fire-edged cold spread in his chest, high on the right. Nick tried to breathe as he staggered back. Blood welled hot from the hole. Air, bubbling, sucking. Shit. The lung. He was gone. Oh, Becca. Becca.

The trees twirled crazily, and then the deck twisted and whirled up, and slammed right into him like a speeding truck.



Becca jerked back as Kristoff practically landed in her lap. Nick took forever to fall. He tipped and teetered, turning, and then crashed to the deck with a slow inevitability. Drops of blood flew off his chest, illuminated by the big light from the house as he hit, bounced and lay still.

Blood began to pool next to his chest. So much blood.

She was pushed beyond herself now. Beyond pain, beyond fear, beyond everything she’d ever believed or known about herself. She was conscious only of a huge, hurricane-force rage at those men for hurting him. For their monstrous, unspeakable cruelty.

She looked at the dog chain in her shaking hands. The rage threw a switch, clicked her brain out of victim mode and into terrible focus. She finally saw the thing for the deadly weapon that it actually was.

Her hands tingled.

Kristoff was taunting Nick in Ukrainian. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable. Blood bubbled out of Kristoff’s nose as he pulled himself up into a crouch. He didn’t consider her.

She leaped. Her arms shot out, looping the length of chain across the guy’s thick neck.

She jerked him backwards, almost toppling under his weight, but the strength of desperation kept her on her feet. He grunted, gasped, clutching his throat, but he was still scrambling, crablike, trying to get his feet under himself when her back hit the railing. She hooked a foot on the bottom slat, heaved herself up, perched her butt on the rail— And flung herself over backwards.