Rough Edges Read online

  He waved his hand toward the operating room behind the wall. “With the lives of men hanging in the balance. With death only a few feet away. With you using me to stop thinking about the other men in your life.”

  “It’s not like I’m romantically involved with them.”

  “Apparently that doesn’t matter to me.”

  She glanced down at his crotch. There was no mistaking that he wanted her. He was thick and swollen, the outline of his cock easily visible beneath his pants. “Are you saying you don’t want me? This is a onetime offer I’m making here.”

  “And I thought I was cold thinking we could work each other out of our systems if we slept together a few times.”

  “Works for me. I can’t guarantee I’ll want you after today, but—”

  He lifted his hands. “Enough, Bella. It’s not going to happen. I have too much self-respect to be little more than a dildo for you. No matter how fun it might be.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, she heard the sound of suppressed gunfire coming from the back of the building, followed closely by the unmistakable terror of a man’s grating scream.

  The building was under attack.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As soon as Victor heard gunfire, he knew the secret medical facility wasn’t a secret anymore. Random punks looking to steal pain pills didn’t use suppressors.

  Bella had already pulled a gun and was headed for the door when he grabbed her arm.

  “Body armor,” he said, picking up her tactical vest from the chair where she’d laid it. “I’m not letting you walk into a gunfight naked.”

  “There’s no time,” she said, but shrugged into the vest faster than he’d ever seen anyone do before.

  He slid his own over the scrub top he’d borrowed earlier. There were only two of them here to deal with this threat and no way of knowing how many bad guys they would face.

  Another scream tore through the hallway. Victor blocked it out and focused on his training.

  Bella started to barrel through the door, but he grabbed the handle and held on tight. “We go in organized.”

  “Fine. Me first.”

  He wasn’t going to argue with her. She was already looking a bit wild-eyed and overeager. “On three.”

  “One, two, three,” she said in rapid-fire succession, then pushed through the door.

  Victor covered her and fell in line right behind.

  The building was silent now. Doors lined the long, wide hallway. They were closed, but through a window at the far end of the hall, Victor could see orange, flickering light.

  “They’re torching the place,” whispered Bella. “We have to save those men.”

  Victor doubted there was anyone left to save, but kept his fears silent. There was no way to know for sure until they got there and saw the situation for themselves.

  Progress was slow down the hall. They checked each door as they went, ensuring that none of the bad guys were going to pop up behind them and trap them inside a burning building. Most of the doors were locked, but three were open. Each one took up precious seconds.

  Smoke began to fill the hallway, curling along the ceiling.

  “We’re running out of time,” said Bella. “Need to move faster.”

  She picked up the pace, moving fast enough to be on the verge of reckless. Victor pressed forward with her, choosing to back her up no matter how reckless she got. At least she wouldn’t be facing armed men alone.

  The operating room was at the end of the hall. One of the double doors was blocked from closing by someone’s foot. It was covered with a blue fabric bootie—one of the doctors or staff. The room immediately to the left led to the recovery area. To the right was the back entrance to the building.

  Victor poked his head around the corner for a split second, taking in everything he saw. There was a trail of blood leading out, but no bodies. No shooters. The door was closed. His guess was it was also wedged shut or barricaded.

  Most of the flames seemed to be contained to the operating room. He could see them glowing through the open doorway.

  “There are oxygen tanks in there,” he said.

  “There are also men in there. I’ll take the operating room. You take recovery.”

  “No. We stay together.”

  She glared at him, then eased the swinging door to the recovery room open. There were two men in here hooked up to IVs. Both were covered in white sheets punched with bullet holes and drenched in blood.

  The heart monitor hooked to one of them still beeped. He was alive.

  The wall adjacent to the operating room—the one closest to the survivor—began to burn. The paint bubbled and blackened, spreading fast.

  “I’ll get him,” said Victor. “Cover me.”

  He unhooked the man from the machines. He was still bleeding, so Victor folded a clean blanket he found and shoved that against the man’s wounds. He draped him over one shoulder and did his best to balance the heavy load. The man was packed with dense muscle and bone, nearly too heavy to be real. If not for the faint groans of pain and sticky blood, Victor might have though him a fabricated distraction.

  “Ready,” he said.

  Bella led the way out, but the flames in the operating room had spread too much now to even step foot inside. Smoke was pouring out through the opening created by the dead man’s leg. It was down to their heads now and sinking lower with every second.

  “We have to get out now,” said Victor. “We’ve done all we can.”

  She nodded and ran to the rear exit but not before he saw a sheen of tears in her eyes. They could have been caused by the burning smoke, but something told him otherwise. There were at least five dead men in here, and neither he nor Bella had been able to do a thing to stop it. Chances were the man over his shoulder wouldn’t survive either.

  They’d deal with the emotional fallout of this later. For now, all they needed to concentrate on was getting out.

  “It’s stuck,” she said, leaning all her weight against the door.

  “I bet they’ve made sure it stays that way. Don’t waste time trying to open it. Let’s go out the front. They can’t barricade a wall of windows. We can at least break our way out.”

  She turned and led them back the way they’d come.

  The path to the front door seemed to take forever. Even without checking all the side rooms as they went, they were still forced to move slowly due to the weight over Victor’s shoulder.

  They veered past the waiting room and out into the reception area. The second they stepped foot into the space, he saw the pair of men with fully automatic assault rifles standing outside. He tried to shout a warning to Bella, but he was too slow.

  The wall of windows along the front of the building erupted in shards of flying glass. Bella’s body slammed back into the wall and slid down to the floor.

  She’d been shot.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Victor’s roar of fury kept Bella from passing out. She pulled herself together and dove blindly toward the sound of his voice.

  One strong hand wrapped around her arm and pulled hard, dragging her across the floor out of the range of gunfire.

  “How bad?” he asked.

  “Hit the vest. I’m fine.” It was one of the biggest lies she’d ever told, but that was just too damn bad. Her battered ribs and burning lungs were going to have to take a backseat to getting out of here alive.

  Victor had dropped the unconscious man beside him. The blanket pressed against his chest fell away, showing far too much blood.

  “He’s not going to make it if we don’t get out soon,” she said.

  “Neither are we if this smoke gets much thicker.”

  She looked up and sure enough, the smoke was right above their heads. If they hadn’t been on the ground, it would have cons
umed them from the waist up. “Got any brilliant plans?”

  “Not unless you’ve got a battering ram or tank in your pocket.”

  “I guess my equipment has been called worse things,” he said. “What if I did?”

  “I’d blast a hole through the wall. Make our own door.”

  “It’s a prefab building. That could work.”

  “Except for the part where we don’t have a battering ram.”

  “We might. Stay here. I’ll be back in a second.”

  Before she could argue, he was gone, back down the hall. Anxiety bore down on her, making it hard to breathe. The walls seemed to close in on her. The man beside her opened his eyes, and when he did, flames poured from the openings. He smiled, showing multiple rows of jagged teeth like a shark. Smoke billowed from his nostrils as though he were burning from the inside out.

  Bella knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She’d hit her head when she’d been shot and all those things were just the concussion talking.

  She breathed through the panic, wishing Victor would hurry the hell up. She didn’t like being alone with a man who was probably going to die.

  Just like all the others.

  So many men had died because she hadn’t stopped Stynger. Men had died helping her hunt the bitch down. No one could find her. No one could stop her.

  By the time Victor came back, she was rocking on her heels, hugging herself and taking up the smallest space possible.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She glanced at the dying man. No pointy teeth, no flames, no smoke. “I’m fine.”

  Victor nodded once, but looked unconvinced. He set down the oxygen tank he’d carried out here and propped it against an exterior wall. “We’ll have to retreat down the hall when I set this off. The smoke is thick. We need to cover our mouths.”

  Bella ripped both her sleeves off and gave one to Victor. She grabbed the unconscious man by the arm and dragged him back down the hall to the first room. Each yard was hard won. She had to crawl under the smoke now, and the guy was so freaking heavy, he practically tore her shoulder from the socket with each tug.

  She heard Victor move something heavy—a desk or bookcase, maybe. A few seconds later, he barreled into the room and dove for her, covering her body with his.

  The explosion shook the walls. Nearby, several items rattled and fell from a desk. A chair danced across the floor.

  “Move fast!” he shouted. “We can’t let them block our exit.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. She raced out the door, drawing two weapons to cover him as he hefted the man over his shoulder again.

  She ran awkwardly, staying as low as she could, holding her breath until her lungs burned with the need for air. She ducked to suck in a few breaths and saw a pair of feet in the new opening Victor had blasted in the wall.

  Bella aimed and fired at them. Her shots were off, but close enough to make the man outside dance like a monkey. He hopped around, then disappeared beyond her view.

  Cool, fresh air rushed into the building. She hurried toward it, glancing back to make sure Victor was still right behind her.

  The second she stepped through the ragged opening in the metal siding, she saw one of the bad guys steady his rifle.

  Without a second thought, she aimed and fired, hitting him right above his body armor, squarely in the neck.

  His weapon fired a couple of times as he fell, dead.

  Tires squealed on the adjacent side of the building. Bella raced toward the noise, hoping to stop whoever was fleeing. By the time she cleared the corner, all she could see was a bloody haze of brake lights through the smoke of burning tires.

  They were out of range—too far to risk a shot in an area this populated.

  Sirens whined in the distance. She didn’t want to be anywhere near this building when the authorities arrived—not when Victor had been taken into custody for shooting someone so recently. Such things were bound to look bad.

  She sprinted for her truck. Victor was already halfway there, even with his heavy burden in tow. She opened the rear door of the crew cab for him and helped him push the bleeding man onto her leather seats.

  Good thing she knew firsthand that blood washed off of her leather without too much fuss.

  “Hospital?” Victor asked as he hopped up beside the bleeding man.

  “Not with gunshot wounds. Leigh is a better option. She won’t report the injuries to authorities.”

  “Dr. Vaughn is good, but she doesn’t have the equipment to treat the kind of injuries this man has sustained. He needs surgery. You take him to her and he’s as good as dead.”

  Bella let out a low curse as she flung her truck onto the highway, blasting past the speed limit and not letting up on the gas. “We can’t risk his life. But you can’t be attached to this mess, either. There’s still the little matter of you killing a man in defense of another. A jury wouldn’t look too kindly on two deaths attached to your name in the same week.”

  “I’d rather go to jail than see him die.”

  “Are you forgetting the part where he tried to kill you a few hours ago?”

  “Not his fault. You know that as well as I do. Stynger is the one to blame. Not him.”

  Bella veered around some slow traffic, trying to still her pounding heart. Her nerves were all over the place, making it hard to focus on the road as well as the bleeding man in her backseat and the equally distracting man keeping him from bleeding out everywhere. “A fact I keep repeating to myself about every five seconds.”

  “Hospital is the next exit.”

  “I know that. I’m going. But you’re jumping out before I get there.”

  “But—”

  “No arguments. Either you bail or I drive right past the ER.”

  “Okay. You win. I’ll jump.”

  She slowed down the ramp, turning right down a residential street with a lower chance of traffic cameras to catch what was about to happen. “End of the block. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Victor shifted the bleeding man so he could hop out. As soon as he did, the man let out a hiss of pain. His eyes flew open, revealing bloodshot hatred.

  “Where is Gage Dallas?” demanded Victor.

  Bella gripped the wheel and bit her cheek in an effort to stay silent and let Victor interrogate the only survivor. If she interfered, she’d only slow down the process, and there was no way to know if Gage had that kind of time left.

  She split her attention between the road and the rearview mirror, hoping no one in the surrounding homes took note of them.

  “You’ll never find him,” said the man, spittle flying in his rage. “He’s ours now. One of us.” He grabbed Victor by the throat and squeezed.

  Panic jolted through Bella’s system, clogging her brain for several seconds. She was usually cool in a fight, but she couldn’t find any of her normal calm now—not when there was so much on the line.

  Victor fought back, jabbing the man in the abdomen. He let out a grunt, but that was all. Even wounded he was still strong enough to evade Victor’s attempts to break free. He kept squeezing, blocking off Victor’s air.

  Bella slammed on the brakes and came to a skidding stop. She flung her seat belt off and pulled out the pistol she kept in a hidden compartment along the console. She turned in her seat so she could aim her weapon. What she really wanted to do was dive back there and shove her gun against the bleeding man’s temple, but that was too much of a risk. She had to keep her weapon out of his reach.

  The man still had Victor by the throat. It didn’t seem to matter that he was taking a series of brutally hard blows from close range, or that each of them made him bleed more. All his focus was on choking the life out of Bella’s man.

  Strangely, Victor showed no sign of fear or panic. His blows w
ere measured. Paced, as if he had all the time in the world.

  “Let him go!” she ordered.

  The man grinned and tightened his hold. “I’m going to kill him. Then you’re next.”

  Bella’s temper pounded at her, screaming at her to pull the trigger. Only the knowledge in this man’s head kept him alive. “Where is Gage?”

  “Safe. Hidden. He’s Stynger’s now.”

  Victor glanced her way. His face was red, and she could see from his expression that he’d had enough.

  With a flick of his wrist, he jerked the blood-soaked blanket away and shoved his fingers into the bullet wounds lining the man’s chest.

  A scream of enraged pain echoed in the cab for a second before the man passed out.

  Victor pried his hands away and leaned back, panting. His normal coloring returned quickly. “Sorry I couldn’t let you question him longer. I was about to black out.”

  “You were letting him strangle you?”

  Victor cut a length of seat belt with his pocket knife. “Thought it might be a useful distraction—that he might say something in his rage he otherwise wouldn’t.”

  “Thanks for taking one for the team, but next time, try not to scare the hell out of me.”

  He used the length of seat belt to bind the man’s hands behind his back. Muscles and tendons shifted under Victor’s skin as he pulled the binding tight. “I’m on the side of hoping there is no next time.”

  “That works for me, too.”

  He leaned the man back and put the blanket back in place to slow the bleeding. After a few seconds, his movements stalled to a slow stop.

  “What?” she asked.

  He felt for a pulse. “He’s gone. Dead.”

  The bottom fell out of Bella’s stomach. She didn’t even bother to hide her anger. “That fucking bitch! She’s led enough men to their deaths. We end this. Now. We find her and take her out for good.”

  “We have another lead, but you know what you have to do to follow it.”

  She did, and the idea made her even more furious. “Payton can’t keep me away.”

  “He’s not going to want to give you access to his secret holding facility.”