Head On (Strength And Love)(44)

“You didn’t think to check her pockets and take her phone from her?” he yells at Dave.

Dave rolls his eyes. “I needed her to come with me. How would I explain that, genius?”

The blond man slaps Dave across his face, sending him reeling, and I squeal behind the gag. The behemoth goes and picks up my phone and stamps on it, crushing it completely.

“We’re probably going to have company in a few minutes.”

“Shit. Who?” Dave asks.

“Who do you think, shithead?” Rick pushes past Dave and heads for some stairs in the middle of the room, leading up to an office with glass windows that look out over the warehouse.

“Is that gun still in the drawer up there?” he asks the giant.

The big guy grins and laughs. “Of course, but you don’t know how to use it. You’re more likely to shoot your foot than hit Ethan Foston. Watch her.”

And he goes jogging over to the stairs, taking them two at a time. I’m struggling and screaming now. If they’ve got a gun, they’ll kill Ethan, and I can’t let that happen. I jerk about so hard the chair falls to the ground and I hit my head hard on the floor. Pain bursts behind my eyes but I can’t let it distract me.

I’m moving my legs like crazy, trying to loosen the rope around them. It isn’t too tight at my ankles, the piece around my arms is so tight it hurts, but the blond guy did my ankles loose.

The door to the warehouse is only half closed and light is streaming in through the bottom. From my position on the floor, I see two cars pull up and three pairs of legs come pounding out of the vehicles and toward the warehouse.

Ethan!

I scream and scream trying to tell them to turn back, but the gag makes my cries useless.

Luka drops and rolls under the door and runs to the wall on the right, Ethan follows him, and the third person, some man I don’t know, rolls and goes to the left, followed at a dead run by the two big men flanking the blond giant.

As I’m watching this unfold, a huge bang rocks the space, followed by two more, and blinding white flashes out my vision. My ears are ringing and my eyes kill. What the hell? For a moment, I wait for the pain of an explosion to hit, but when it doesn’t I blink and try to focus. The room is full of smoke and I can’t see anything.

Struggling again with the rope around my ankles, I kick my shoe off and finally manage to wrench my already damaged ankle free. The pain of pulling it out of the rope makes me bite down against the gag. It burns my flesh, bad, even through my socks. I kick off my second shoe and the remaining bit of rope and try to get my bearings.

I hear shots ring out, and Ethan’s voice shouts out. “Stay down, Isla.”

I remain on the floor, every single cell of my body thrumming with the awareness of how exposed I am.

“Fucking give me the handgun,” Dave says to someone.

The smoke is clearing and I see Rick turning the dial on a safe I hadn’t noticed before. He draws out a handgun and instead of giving it to Dave, he aims it. I follow the line of the gun and see he’s trying to get a lock on Ethan through the rapidly clearing smoke. Ethan and Luka are moving along the back wall, both holding guns, which are trained at the office window up the stairs.

I glance up and see why. The giant has smashed the glass out, and has a rifle trained on me. Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Put the gun down,” Ethan shouts.

“No, you put the gun down.”

“You shoot her and you’re dead. I don’t have a beef with you. We can work something out. Both walk away from this,” Ethan says.

The giant laughs. “I’m not scared of you. Do you know who I am?”

“No,” Ethan admits. “But I can guess what you are, and who you work for. And you’re wrong, you should be scared of me.”

The smoke has cleared even further, and Rick’s aiming the gun with a shaking hand right at Ethan. I see his finger tighten on the trigger, and with a scream I push up to my feet and run at him, the chair on my back. My ankle screams, but I don’t stop. I barrel into him.

A shot rings out, and I go down to the floor with Rick. The wind is knocked out of me, but the blond man didn’t shoot me, and I can only pray Rick didn’t get the shot off in time to hit Ethan.

Another shot rings out, and burning pain hits my side. Holy shit, that hurts. At first it feels like a sharp bee sting, but in mere seconds my lower back starts to burn as if on fire from the inside out.

“No, no, no.” I can hear someone shouting, and there’s more gunfire.

Someone pulls me up, and the world spins as I try to focus, but I’m feeling sick and panicky.

“Jesus, Isla. No.”

I try to tell him I’m okay. It burns, but I’m okay, only I can’t speak around the gag.

Gentle fingers pry it out of my mouth and I gasp and choke, then start coughing. Tears are streaming down my face and Ethan swipes at them with his thumbs.

“Keep looking at me, babe. Keep breathing, okay. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.” He says it like a litany and I try, I really do. But I’m tired, and I close my eyes.





Chapter Twenty One



Ethan



I’m holding her in my arms and praying to a God I stopped believing in a long time ago to keep her alive. She’s passed out, but I’ve checked the wound briefly, and it doesn’t look too bad, so I’m hoping she’s passed out from shock and not internal bleeding.