Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(79)

Go. He stumbled drunkenly out into the roadway, flapping a roadmap as he strode toward the guard, slurring his words.

“Ah, exshcuse me! Hey, sir? I, uh, crashed my car a few miles back, and walked here, can you believe it? No offense, but this place is the ass end of nowhere. I can’t get any bars on my cell and I was wondering if you—”

“Fuck off, dickwad,” the guy snarled.

Noah staggered closer. “Dude! Don’t get uptight! I’m not gonna rob you, I’m just—whoa! You don’t need . . . Holy shit, dude, put that f*cking thing down!”

The guard pulled his gun. Noah shrank back, angling his body so that the other man wouldn’t see the tire iron slide out.

With a blow too fast to see, he whipped it down and shattered the man’s arm.

The gun dropped. The guy stared at his arm, startled. It dangled, floppy and useless. His eyes rolled to the whites as he sucked in air—

Noah whacked the tire iron across his throat, crushing his windpipe.

The man dropped, gasping. He made a choked, wet sound, lips turning blue.

Not his lucky day. Shouldn’t run with a pack that laid hands on Noah’s woman. Bad call. Die alone and gasping, shitbag.

He grabbed the guy by the ankles, dragged his twitching bulk behind the Jeep. Jerked up the man’s pant leg, took the knife in his boot sheath. Scooped up the guy’s Glock. Two more in that front room to deal with. One stationary, one moving.

He ran back, snatched up the coil of rope, checked the tree limbs over their parked Jeep. He clambered swiftly on top of it, the rope around his shoulder.

His leap from the Jeep’s roof had all the power of Braxton’s enhanced muscle gene cocktail behind it. He caught a branch several feet above the Jeep and nearer to the building. He swung there, fingers scraped by the rough bark, his body dangling over the overgrown path. The smell of pine pitch stung his nose. The branch bent dangerously under his weight as he crawled higher into the sticky boughs, seeking a clear drop onto the path. He uncoiled the rope.

The knot didn’t need any enhancement to remember. Just a hangman’s noose.

He held himself still until the branches stop swishing. Patience was a bitch, with Caro inside, suffering and afraid. He shut that thought down when it threatened to unseat his mind. After several agonizingly slow minutes, the screen door squeaked as it rasped wide. A tall, skinny guy in black leather with buzz-cut black hair peered out.

“Matt!” he bawled. “Where the f*ck are you? You’re supposed to check in!”

Matt made no sound, being too busy dying behind the Jeep. The man in the doorway cursed. Someone behind him spoke in a sharp questioning voice.

“How the f*ck do I know? He’s not answering,” Buzzcut complained, gesturing with a gun as he emerged from the house and peered through the early morning gloom from the top of the. “Matt! Where the f*ck are you?”

He got no answer. Noah, peering down through the pine needles, holding the end of the rope he’d draped over a strong branch, saw the man’s sig shift colors. It shrank, went from greenish to snot gray. The guy was unnerved.

He clattered down the steps and onto the path, no longer calling out, the gun kept close to his body in case he had to shoot fast. Preoccupied and antsy, he didn’t look up—until the noose thudded down onto his shoulders, around his neck.

Noah dropped himself down as a counterweight, yanking the guy up off his feet.

The man dangled and danced as Noah’s weight pulled him higher. They swung together. Holding the rope with one hand, Noah stared into the guy’s purpling face as he swayed there helplessly, clawing at his throat.

“I hate this shit, man,” Noah said to him softly. “But your number’s up.”

The guy twisted, groping desperately for a hidden knife. Noah saw it flash, seized the man’s wrist and torqued it until bones splintered.

The knife thudded to the ground.

It would take too long for the guy to suffocate on his own. Noah didn’t have the time to wait. He hoisted himself up, let the guy drop a couple of feet further down, wrapped his legs around Buzzcut’s neck, and finished him off with a lethal squeeze.

The man’s neck snapped with a sickening crunch. Noah let him hang for a moment just to be sure. The wind sighed. The rope that Buzzcut dangled upon creaked.

Noah secured the end with a strong knot and dropped to the ground. He snatched up the knife. Sharp. Notched. Good.

The thermal splotch of the last guy in the front room was approaching the closed door. Noah dove for the open space under the building and scrambled behind the temporary stairs.

The door rasped open again.

Noah peered out through the space below the top step. Black leather boots appeared in Noah’s field of vision. They stopped a few steps down. Noah could see the back of the man’s thighs.

Creak . . . creak . . . the hanged man swayed in the morning breeze.

Noah felt the moment that horrified realization exploded in the guy’s mind as he dragged in breath to yell for help.

Just before Noah stabbed through the open space under the stair and sank the notched blade deep into the guy’s hamstring. The man lurched forward with a gurgling cry.

Noah slithered out and jumped him, knocking him to the ground. The leg wound had crippled him, spurting blood and sapping his strength. Noah snapped his bull neck after less than a minute of pitched wrestling.