Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(59)

I didn’t know what the correct answer would be to protect the dog. For all I knew he was a dog murderer too. Why the hell not. Most serial killers started out killing smaller animals. I shook my head. No. It wasn’t my dog.

“Ah, good!” He was actually petting the dog’s head! Tormenta sat on the stool next to me, his knife forgotten in his hand, and he petted the dog! The dog even jumped up and put his paws on Tormenta’s knee.

That was when the kitchen door from the garage exploded inward. The three of us were so taken aback we jumped a few feet in the air, dog included.

The dog yelped and shot like a putt toward the back slider. Tormenta automatically jumped to cover my body with his—like he was suddenly protecting me?

Sax busted into the kitchen like the Incredible Hulk. To my injured brain he looked so massively pumped up on steroids, his eyes bulging like intestines, he looked almost cartoonish. I had to crane my neck groggily to see around Tormenta’s stupid f*cking shoulder, and I realized he stood in front of me so Sax wouldn’t shoot him. This idea was confirmed when Tormenta shrieked out, “I’ve got your f*cking girlfriend!” and ducked behind me, knife to my throat.

Sax’s Glock was at his side. His voice was a low boil. “You’re not touching my future wife, you scum-sucking shitpickle. You’ve done enough damage to the women of Arizona. After I kill you, I’m making your head into a dart board and hanging it in my clubhouse so all the sweetbutts forevermore can play darts with your low-IQ, uneducated face.”

The knife cut into my throat like butter, but I barely felt it. I just felt the trickle of blood between my breasts. “Not until I slice your ugly flat-chested girlfriend like a bologna.” Maybe I was too delirious by that time, but it sure seemed like he said “bologna.”

“Over my dead f*cking body,” Sax said, simultaneously as he whipped his Glock in a split second to shoot Tormenta through the forehead.

Tormenta’s blade still pressed for one microsecond into my throat, and then fell onto of his crumpled body. I could breathe freely now, and the rush of air that came from my lungs threatened to topple me over, too. Suddenly the husky was back, jumping all over me, urging me to play more games, as I fell into Sax’s arms. He had to take Tormenta’s blade from his body to slice the gag and zip ties that bound me.

“Honey, honey, honey,” Sax kept murmuring, rubbing life into my arms. Suddenly Harte and Wolf were there too. Apparently they’d snuck around other sides of the house as backup to come through different doors, but wanted to leave the glory of the hit to Sax.

“God!” cried Harte, apparently unused to seeing blood. “Are you okay? Let me find some Neosporin or something.”

Wolf said, “We’ve got to get her to a hospital,” as Sax carried me to a more comfortable loveseat.

“Call Maddy,” Sax ordered. “I’ve got bandages in this guest bathroom, Harte. A roll of them, rubbing alcohol, and Neosporin. No hospital, Wolf, at least not for now. It’ll be a long explanation how we came to be in this predicament.”

“True,” said Wolf, kneeling at my side. “And we’ll be connected to those bodies on the Mogollon Rim.”

“You got them?” I said groggily, and it felt like I was smiling. “Were any of your men hurt?”

Wolf was eager to tell the tale of derring-do. “A sniper shot at all of us. Sax here has about ten bullet holes in his cut—see?—but not one scratched him! He doesn’t have a drop of blood on him! It’s a miracle.”

Sax chuckled as he poured some rubbing alcohol onto an absorbent pad. “This’ll sting. Harte, can you help sop up the trickles of blood? Yeah, like that. Maybe not ten bullet holes, maybe five in my cut. Oh, holy Jesus on a stick.” He’d been saying that around me lately. I thought it was cute, him trying not to swear. “Did something happen to your head too?”

“Concussion,” I said, my fingers feeling where the blood emanated from.

“Don’t touch. Yes, your old friend Santiago Slayer was there. He put himself in harm’s way to warn Tobiah, to warn all of us.”

Wolf sounded almost jovial when he said, “Got his f*cking ear cut off for it, too.” Standing, he looked with a sneer at Tormenta’s body. Then he kicked it. And not lightly. Viciously, with the steel toe of his engineer’s boot. I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. He kicked it again and again, never losing his bemused smile. “You seriously going to make a dart board out of his face? I think that’d be hilarious.”

Sax said tightly, “The women would think so, too.”

“And Roman Serpico,” added Harte, mentioning the guy whose father had been turned into a soccer ball by Tormenta.

“Is my dog in here?”

A stranger’s voice cut through our brotherhood. With great force I managed to open my eyes. Some guy in a plaid shirt was standing in the sliding doorway. It seemed to me he was one of the hikers from yesterday—damn, was that scene only yesterday?

“Is this your dog?” said Wolf. “Yeah, come get him. He wants to play. As you can see, we’re not up to playing.”

The guy came forward. “Yeah, I know. I was hiking by when I saw some guy—oh, maybe this guy here—tying your girlfriend with zip ties and forcing her into the house. Sure didn’t seem like you were enacting a scene, you know?”