ALL THE RAGE (writer: T.M. Frazier)(71)

“I’m gonna rip your f*cking throat out with my bare hands!” I screamed.

“Awe, baby. Now, is that anyway to treat someone who went through all this trouble for you?” He held up the remote, his thumb hovering above the button. Again, I paused, looking back at Nolan whose eyes focused and unfocused as he struggled to stay conscious. I closed my eyes tightly.

In order to save Nolan, I’d needed to take some control and attempt a different approach. Anger was my zone, my center.

But it wasn’t Cody’s.

Cody’s weakness…was me.

He must have seen the shift in me. Maybe it was when I turned back around to him and my shoulders fell in defeat. He smiled. “When we were kids, I was going about this thing with you the wrong way. Instead of teaching you how to be a normal kid, we should have been learning all this stuff together. Instead of running off with that son of a bitch” he said, fire dancing in his eyes as he stared daggers at Smoke who thankfully closed his eyes in time. Suddenly, I had hope. Hope I could get all of us out of here alive. I knew what I had to do. I just hoped Smoke was with it enough to catch on before it was too late.

“We could have been together all along,” Cody continued. “And I know, I know, I pushed the sex thing too soon.” Cody looked me up and down from my Keds to my ponytail, pausing between my legs and my chest. “But you’re just so f*cking beautiful, Hope. I couldn’t help myself.” He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and flicked my ponytail off my shoulder with the tip of his gun. I cringed. He circled around me slowly, appraising me like cattle.

“But we didn’t,” I spat. “You let me believe that. What you did, Cody, while I was zoned out? You came on my leg. I’d thought I’d given you that part of me, but I was wrong. Found that out when I gave it to Nolan.”

My stomach rolled at what I was about to do.

But my stomach was no match for my will.

Cody’s face turned red with embarrassment. He was about to say something when I interrupted. “So…let’s try again,” I said. I stepped back and unhooked my bag from my shoulders. I grabbed my T-shirt and sports bra at the same time, pulling them over my head. I put my hands on my hips and pushed out my bare breasts.

“What? What?” Cody stammered, waving his gun at me and staring down at my naked chest. “What are you doing? Is this supposed to be some kind of trick?”

I pressed my palms to his chest. He’d lost so much weight, he was a fraction of the baseball player he used to be. “No, no tricks, Cody. You’re right. This is all right. I didn’t even give us a chance last time. Since we didn’t make it happen on prom night. Let’s try again.” I stood on my tiptoes and pressed a small kiss to the corner of his mouth, praying that Nolan was too unconscious to see what I was about to do in order to save two of the three only men I’d ever cared about.

The other was going to die when all was said and done, but first things first.

I’d taken out hundreds of people, but saving lives required a lot more than just a need to destroy and some wiring or bullets. It required tact. Something I wasn’t sure I had, but I was about to find out.

“Rage, if this is a trick, I’m gonna blow that motherf*cker up so fast…” Cody warned, raising his detonator in the air.

“Sssssshhhhhhh,” I said, pressing my index finger to his lips. “I tell you what. You can frisk me if you want, but all my supplies are over there in my bag.” I pointed to where I’d tossed them both to the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Smoke was slowly getting up. He rolled o to his side and noded at me. As much as I wanted him to start blowing holes in Cody’s head, I knew he wouldn’t. I was too close to both him and Nolan. If he started shooting, I was either getting shot or getting blown up.

Cody’s lust blazed in his eyes and I knew I had him. “Get on the f*cking table,” he ordered roughly, gesturing to the picnic table next to the one Nolan was strapped to.

“I was thinking somewhere a little more private,” I said, turning up the end of my sentence into a question. If I could get him away from Nolan long enough Smoke could remove the ropes.

Cody waved me off and pushed me toward the table. “This is private enough,” he said with a laugh. His voice turned cold. “Now get on that f*cking table.”

I glanced from Nolan who’s eyes were closed and then back to Cody. Reluctantly, I stepped up onto the bench and sat down at the edge of the table. Cody stepped forward and shoved my knees apart, standing between my spread legs. “Lean back and put your hands on the f*cking table,” he demanded. “Good girl. Now if you so much as lift a palm from the wood, and I don’t care if you’ve got a f*cking splinter or if a snake comes out and bites you, I press this button and your biker goes BOOM.”

It was the first explosion of my life I wasn’t looking forward to. The first one I was even attempting to prevent.

Smoke had begun to crawl toward his gun slowly so he would go unnoticed. I never wished someone could crawl faster in all my life because if Smoke didn’t get to his gun soon, there would be no way to get around what I’d just set in motion.

Regret flooded through me like a tidal wave of wrong.

A twig snapped, and Cody jumped back from me, waving his gun at Smoke who froze, still several feet away from his gun. “It was too good to be true to think I killed you,” he said, turning to me and sneering. “I knew you were up to no good, Rage. Maybe that’s my fault for teaching you how to be a good liar. But now you’re gonna f*cking pay for it.” He looked at Smoke and then to me. “Get the f*ck up,” he ordered Smoke, aiming his gun at me. “Get over here right f*cking now, or I’m gonna blow a hole in her f*cking head.”