Hot as Hell (Deep Six 0.5)(28)

“On your knees!” Masked Man Four yelled at Rick. “Get on your f*cking knees!” He punctuated his order by jabbing Rick in the kidney with the barrel of his weapon, causing Rick to cry out.

“Lord Almighty! Take it easy!” Maddy yelled, unable to stop herself. “He’ll do what you say! Just give him a chance!”

She nodded at Rick as he sank down, hands still raised above his head. Each of her breaths came hard and fast. Her knees felt as liquid as the tepid wave that crawled up the beach to swirl around her ankles for a couple of seconds, leaving a crab to scuttle after it when it retreated back across the sand.

“All of you, put your hands behind your backs!” Masked Man Four bellowed. Then he sucked his teeth like he had something stuck in them. It was a tic. A disgusting habit that left a sour taste on Maddy’s tongue.

Or maybe that’s just fear, she decided, complying with his command.

When she felt her captor tighten a zip tie around her wrists—his hands were warm, sweaty, but his touch chilled her to the bone—she was brought back around to her original thought…

I can’t believe this is happenin’ again!

“I said shut up!” The guy—correction: the *—who’d yelled at Sally Mae bellowed at the teen again, causing Sally Mae’s mouth to gape open like an ugly wound even when no other sound emerged.

“Don’t you holler at her!” Maddy shouted. Then she winced when Masked Man Four left Rick to take a menacing step in her direction.

Full darkness had fallen. The only light on the island glowed from the crescent moon, the few spotlights on the seawall surrounding the moat, which in turn surrounded the fort, and the small lighthouse atop the garrison that warned away passing vessels. But all combined, it was enough illumination to show the threat in the man’s eyes as he leaned close.

“In case you missed it, honey…” His words were slightly muffled because the balaclava he wore was ninja style. The kind that covered everything but his eyes. Even so, she heard him clearly enough and thought, Oh, no, he did not just honey me! “You’re not calling the shots here. We are. So keep that pretty mouth of yours shut, or I might be tempted to put it to better use.” He sucked his teeth again, and Maddy was reminded of the sound a rattlesnake made when it readied itself to strike.

“Don’t you h-hurt her!” Rick gritted.

Masked Man Four—apparently he was the leader since he was doing most of the talking—looked over at Rick, his eyes cold and dark and devoid of any human emotion. Rick swallowed and tried his best to hold the masked man’s gaze. In the end, he couldn’t manage it. He dropped his eyes to the sand in front of him, his dark hair shadowing his face.

“That’s what I thought.” Masked Man Four nodded, his voice cold enough to freeze an open flame. Then he turned his attention to his cohorts. “I think we’re finally ready.” Suck, suck. Maddy was fairly certain she was going to hear that sound in her nightmares.

“Time to head out to the boat?” The other man who was guarding the girls spoke for the first time, his Southern accent thick and telling of a youth spent south of the Mason-Dixon Line. If Maddy had to make a guess, she’d say Georgia or Alabama.

Of course, where he grew up wasn’t important because… The boat? Oh, sweet Jesus! She knew the worst possible thing she could do was allow the masked men to take them to a secondary location. That was pretty much How To Survive Attempted Abduction 101.

“Please,” she beseeched Masked Man Four. Like the Temptations sang, she wasn’t too proud to beg. “If it’s money you want—”

“I warned you what I’d do if you didn’t keep your pretty mouth shut, didn’t I?” Suck, suck. The barrel of Masked Man Four’s machine gun was suddenly an inch from Maddy’s nose. Her eyes crossed when she attempted to stare down its black throat.

It was hard to determine if the whooshing sounds she heard were the waves shushing against the beach or her own blood pounding in her ears. She stopped trying to figure it out when the strangest thing happened. Movement in the surf caught her attention. And if her hands hadn’t been tied behind her back, she would’ve used them to rub her eyes.

Suddenly he was there.

Like the great god Poseidon himself rising from the sea, water sheeting off his dark head and broad shoulders. Her friend. Her hero. The man who had stormed into her life like a hurricane.

Bran…





Chapter 4


7:15 p.m.…

“Throw away your weapons, dickholes!” Bran bellowed, aiming at the guy who was drawing down on Maddy’s head.

Seeing her in mortal danger made something click inside him. Something that was black of heart and sharp of claw. Something he’d inherited from his bastard of a father.

It was a side of himself he tried to keep hidden, keep buried. But there were times like this when he gladly let it go free. It roared and slashed, filling him with deadly purpose.

Battle mode is what LT called it.

Bran simply called it his monster.

It consumed all the light and laughter in him and left only darkness and death. But it was what had kept him alive through too many blood-soaked missions to count. And hopefully, it was what was going to help him save the five innocent people on the beach.

“Bran!” Maddy choked, her Texas accent splitting his name into two syllables: Brae-yan. Her wide, heavily lashed eyes threatened to suck him in like a whirlpool when he gave her a cursory glance. “You came!”