Avenged (Altered #2)(60)

He understood. If she walked away, if she hid, she’d regret it. She’d been afraid of this guy for months. She’d been afraid of standing up for herself for months, years…maybe her entire life.

If this is what she needed, he needed to help her do it.

He loved her.

“Fine.” Christ. “We go together.” He wasn’t letting her out of his sight. Not after what had happened. She wasn’t falling out of any more helicopters on his watch.

His instinct was to go first, to be the first one to face whatever was inside. But he had to admit she might be better equipped. “Do you know where he went?”

Tapping her temple, she smiled, and it lit the chaos like a ray of sunshine. “Yep. Let’s go.”

She threw open the door, and he glanced behind them before he followed her inside.

He couldn’t shake the sick feeling in his gut.

They twisted through the compound. Kitty didn’t speak, so he followed her lead. She turned corner after corner. Her face pinched tighter, and she cocked her head a few times, the way she did when she was listening to people around her.

Finally, the hall ended in an exit.

His instincts flared. There was nothing good on the other side of that door. But before Nick could tell Kitty to wait, she threw it open and dove outside into the dying daylight.





Chapter Eighteen


Fields was leaving.

As if he’d done nothing wrong. As if he’d had some innocuous business appointment and he was now ready to go home. A military-style Humvee waited for him outside, behind the compound where he’d perfected and sold a drug that killed people.

He’d left reinforcements inside. While his contingent of changed fighters had been outside, he had a back-up plan.

Those reinforcements had followed him out. Now, they trained their rifles on her and Nick.

Behind her, Nick stiffened. He didn’t like this one bit. But he’d come with her. She’d told him it was important. It was important…to her. She needed to do this, and he seemed to understand what it meant to her.

Besides, he agreed that Fields needed to be stopped. He only worried that it was them—her—that was doing the stopping.

Now, gazing down a dozen rifles, she had to wonder if he wasn’t right.

She’d followed the sound of Fields’s fear-tinged thoughts through the compound to this rear exit. As he ran, other thoughts joined his, until she sensed at least a dozen people around him.

He’d planned to abandon them all. These guards were expendable to him. Like the people he’d changed were expendable to him. The monsters he’d created.

Hatred rose in her chest, like a snake coiling. Her hands shook with it.

“Doctor Fields,” she called. When he continued to climb inside the Humvee, she stopped him. Get out, get out…

He did as she asked, turning to face her. Though his thoughts were cautious, he smiled. “Miss Laughton. I didn’t expect you.”

“I bet.” She clenched her fists. “You sold me to a terrorist.”

He didn’t comment. He wasn’t sorry. “Why are you here?”

“Ahmed’s pilot decided he couldn’t fly.” She shrugged, even though the sound of the helicopter grinding into the ground and exploding still echoed in her memory. They weren’t good men, the men she killed. They would have come back for her, for Fields’s information. They planned to kill a lot of people.

But even as she sent them to their death, she couldn’t help wondering if they had people who loved them, somewhere. People who would miss them. Killing them hadn’t made her feel better. After everything that had happened to her, she still wasn’t bloodthirsty.

Turned out, searching for the best in people was a habit that died hard.

“A shame.” A lie. He didn’t care that they were dead, but he did care that a large chunk of his money was gone. “This is enlightening, Miss Laughton, but I am late in my departure.”

“I don’t think so.” She widened her stance. “You’re staying here.”

When she said it like that, she almost believed herself.

Behind her, she heard Nick prepare to fight.

Suddenly, she was paralyzed. She recognized the feeling. Nick had practiced this on her over and over. If she’d never had that experience, she might have been afraid. Now, it only made her mad.

If Fields thought that would scare her into backing down, he would learn.

Let us go. Let us go, she told him. He did.

Two could play this stupid game. With a glare, she forced him to throw himself against the car with enough force that he fell down.

As he rolled, shaking his head and trying to get to his feet, the guards next to him readied their weapons. Safeties clicked off around the field.

Under the weight of so many firearms, she should have been afraid. But she only felt heady anger.

This man, this horrible man, had stolen her parents. They weren’t perfect. In fact, they were completely dysfunctional, but it hadn’t been his right to take their lives. To take them from her. He’d imprisoned her, for months. He’d drugged her, poked and prodded her, used her as his personal lab rat.

He thought he would have her shot? He wasn’t even going to do it himself. He was going to have one of these other guys do it?

Her fingers fisted at her sides.