Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(55)

The man on top of me starts a body search. I don’t move, hoping to use the time to get my bearings. The pain I can handle. The dizziness—I am undoubtedly concussed—is another matter.

He finds my Wilson Combat 1911 in the holster, pulls it out, empties it so that even if I could somehow get it back, it would be useless.

The other man, the one with the gun, says, “Check his lower legs.”

He does so. It takes some time, but he finds my small gun, the Sig P365, in an ankle holster. He pulls it into my blurry view and again empties out the ammunition. Still on top of me, he leans down near my face, the wool of his mask against my cheek, and whispers harshly, “Anything else?”

A move I could make if my head was clear: Bite him. He is that close. I could bite him through that flimsy mask, rip off a part of his cheek, turn my body, throw him toward the gunman so as to block what might be an incoming bullet.

“Don’t think about it,” the gunman says.

He says this matter-of-factly, shifting toward the side in order to prevent the sort of attack that has crossed my mind.

Conclusion: The gunman, the one doing the talking, is good. Trained. Paramilitary perhaps. He stays far enough back, so that even if I was a hundred percent—right now I would guesstimate that I’m at best forty to fifty percent—I wouldn’t have a chance.

The man on top of me is larger—bulkier, more muscled—but the bigger threat, I realize, is the trained man with the gun.

I stay still. I try to clear some of the cobwebs, but it really isn’t happening. I feel lost, adrift.

Then the big man on top of me surprises me with a kidney punch.

The blow lands like an explosion, a bomb going off, shards of hot razors slicing through my internal organs. The pain paralyzes me for a moment. Every part of me hurts, wants to cover up and find relief.

The big man hops off me and lets me writhe in pain. I roll up against the divider between the front seats and the back. I look back toward my two abductors.

When they both take off their ski masks, two thoughts—both bad—hit me at once.

First, if they are letting me see their faces, they don’t plan on letting me live.

Second—no doubt because I can see the resemblance—these are the brothers of Teddy “Big T” Lyons.

I try to stay put because every move is agony. I try not to breathe because, well, the same. I close my eyes and hope they think I’ve passed out. There is nothing to be done right now. What I need most is time. I need time without suffering further injury so as to recover enough to counter.

What that counter might be, I have no idea.

“End this,” the larger brother, the one who’d straddled my back, tells his well-trained sibling with the gun.

The smaller brother nods and aims his gun at my head.

“Wait,” I say.

“No.”

I flash back to another time, when Myron was in the back of a van, similar to this, when he too asked someone assaulting him to wait. That man had also said no. I, however, was following them in a car and listening in via Myron’s phone. When I heard that, when I heard the perpetrator say no and thus realized that Myron would not be able to talk his way out of it, I hit the accelerator and smashed my car into the back of the van.

Odd what memories come to you under duress.

“A million dollars for both of you,” I blurt out.

That makes them pause.

The larger brother says in a semi-whine, “You hurt our brother.”

“And he hurt my sister,” I reply.

They share a quick glance. I am lying, of course, unless you are one of those Kumbaya types who believe that in a larger sense, we humans are all brothers and sisters. But my lie, like my million-dollars offer, makes them hesitate. That’s all I want right now. To buy time.

It’s the only option.

The larger brother says, “Sharyn’s your sister?”

“No, Bobby,” the gunman says with a sigh.

“She’s in the hospital,” I say. “Your brother has hurt a lot of women.”

“Bullshit. They’re just lying bitches.”

Gun Brother says, “Bobby…”

“No, man, before he dies, he should know. It’s bullshit. All these bitches, they come on to Teddy. He’s a good-looking guy. They want to close the deal with him, you know what I’m saying? Lock him down, get married. But Teddy, he is—or he was before you blindsided him like a chickenshit—he’s a player with the ladies. He doesn’t want to settle down. When the bitches don’t get the ring, suddenly they’re all complaining about him. How come they don’t complain right up front? How come they go out with him voluntarily?”

“I didn’t blindside him,” I say.

“What?”

“You said that I—and I quote—‘blindsided him like a chickenshit.’ I didn’t. We went man-to-man. And he lost.”

Big Bobby makes a scoffing sound. “Yeah, right. Look at you.”

“We could settle it that way,” I say.

“What?”

“We stop this van somewhere private. You know I’m unarmed. You and I go at it, Bobby. If I win, I go free. If you win, well, I die.”

Muscled Bobby turns to Gun Brother. “Trey?”

“No.”

“Aw, come on, Trey. Let me rip his head off and shit down his neck.”