Wild Card by Lora Leigh
He saw the shadow behind it and smiled. Yeah, there were a lot of shadows moving in these mountains tonight.
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty minutes.
Finally, the ATVs turned off into a small canyon and pulled in front of an opening into the base of a nearly sheer cliff.
They hadn’t known about this one. It was perfectly hidden by the brush and bramble in front of it and the ledge of the cliff over it. There was a faint light coming from inside.
The restraints were cut and a rifle shoved in his face as he was pointed to the opening.
How easy it would be to shove the barrel of the weapon up the deputy’s ass while he took out the other two. Silently. It could be done so silently.
He grinned instead and turned, walking into the entrance and waiting for the contacts to adjust as the light deepened. Sabella’s abductors’ precautions against the light showing from the outside allowed the contacts time to adjust until his vision was clear when he turned into the main cavern.
He stepped in, his gaze finding Sabella immediately.
Someone had hit her. Her cheek was bruised, blood still marred her nose. Her gray eyes were dark with anger. And fear.
The cavern was large enough. She was tied to a small cot, her wrists cuffed to the metal frame, though she had been left sitting.
Across the room Mike Conrad grinned back at him. He hadn’t bothered to cover his face. Sienna sat between his splayed legs, playing with the ends of her hair as she stared back at him maliciously.
“All that leather just looks hot,” she drawled. “Come on, Mike, let me make him fuck me before you go hunting. That illegal ass you kidnapped last month did it. His wife cried so pitifully. I want to see Belle cry while her lover fucks me. Just like her husband did.”
Noah had never touched her. There had always been something about Sienna that just put him off. There had been no challenge. No sense of depth.
“Strip.” He shrugged, staring back at her. “I have time if you do.”
Head games. He knew head games.
She pouted and sniffed. “Not on your life. You’re probably diseased after fucking that heifer.” She nodded to Sabella.
He lifted his shoulder negligently and turned to Mike.
This had once been his friend. Strange, he’d never seen the bloodthirstiness in Mike’s eyes before now. What had changed? What had changed him?
Mike grinned. “As you can see, she’s alive. She’s not very talkative though.”
He glanced over at her as he felt the tracker on his right shoulder heat. He shook his head at the setup, looking around again.
Mike and Sienna watched him, obviously less than pleased at his reaction.
“I told you the bastard wasn’t as easy to intimidate as you thought he was.”
Noah didn’t tense. He didn’t turn. He stood still, relaxed. Yeah, he knew that voice. Gaylen Patrick. He waited long seconds before turning just enough to see the other man.
He waddled in, his thick lips creasing into a smile, followed by the shorter, trimmer form of Federal Judge Carl Clifford and the paunchy Marshal Kevin Lyle.
“Quite a little group,” Noah drawled.
Smug satisfaction filled Patrick’s beady hazel eyes.
“Yeah, we have some pretty good boys that like to play.” He walked over to Mike and Sienna. When he reached out and twisted one of her hard nipples she moaned like a bitch in heat and leaned into him.
Camp whore. Damn, he just hadn’t seen this one coming.
“I want a minute with Sabella alone.” He stared at Patrick, aware of who was running this show.
“Why would I do that?” Patrick stared back at him in amusement.
Noah smiled. The smile of a man with more confidence, more ability, than those around him suspected. And Patrick’s eyes gleamed at the challenge.
“This is a hunt?”
“Boy, we’re gonna be hunting you.” Gaylen laughed. “If you can keep your ass alive until dawn, then we’ll just put a bullet in your heads. We won’t rape her and we won’t make you watch if you’re still alive. Real simple. You get caught before dawn, or dead. Then she’s a nice little plaything, just like that female agent was.”
Noah nodded and held his smile. “You’ll want a real challenge then.”
“We love a challenge,” he chortled.
“Give me a minute alone with her. I’ll give you your challenge.” He let his voice lower, let the monster inside him echo in his voice.
Sienna shivered as though in arousal. “If you catch him before dawn, do I get to rape her first?”
Gaylen stared at her, rather like a man stared at his favorite pet.
“We’ll hold her for you,” he promised before turning back to Noah.
“You think you’re a challenge, do you?”
His brow arched. “You’ll never catch me.”
Gaylen grinned. “Other men have made that promise.”
“I’m not other men.” He was already a dead man, and he knew who was going to die tonight.
Gaylen’s fat lips widened before he nodded shortly. “You have three minutes. I’m gonna be nice about it. Let you kiss her real sweet before she gets to listen to you die.”
He nodded to the radio set up in the corner of the cavern. “She’ll get to listen to you scream like a pig.”
Noah just stared back at him.
The old bastard laughed before wrapping his arm around Sienna’s shoulders. “Come on, sugar. You can blow me before we head out.”
She giggled like the damned cheerleader she had been in school.
Noah moved to Sabella. Knees bending, he hunched down in front of her and cupped her cheeks. Tears filled her eyes. And for just a second Noah allowed himself to feel.
He went past the rage that threatened to overwhelm his control. He went past the murderous fury at the thought of how frightened she was. And there, tucked into his soul, was the love he had felt for Sabella since the moment he had seen her.
She had strode into his garage, her smile flashing in the sunlight, her eyes mysterious and watchful. He’d had eyes for no other woman since that day.
He leaned close, his forehead against hers, and smiled back at her confidently.
“They’ll die,” he promised her, every one one of them.
Her lips trembled and more tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Be ready.” He kept his voice low, for her ears only. “Stay low. Don’t anger them.”
She nodded jerkily, her eyes locked on his, fear, fear for him, filling them.
“It’s going to be okay, baby.”
She nodded again and when her lips trembled this time, he wanted to kiss them. He wanted to cover them, to ease her past that fear for just a moment. It was a need he couldn’t afford. Kissing Sabella would strip him down to that final, darkened core where hunger pulsed in an eternal need. Just for her.
“Noah—” He put his finger over her lips.
“Nothing will happen to you. I swear it on what little is left of my soul, Sabella. Nothing will happen to you.”
“Rory?”
“Safe.”
She nodded again.
Noah smoothed a tear from beneath her eye then brought his thumb to his lips and let the salty taste of her pain and her fear harden the icy core of rage.
“Who hit you?” He wanted to know who to kill first.
“Sienna.”
And he nodded. He touched her lips with his thumb, touched her hair then drew back slowly as Mike stepped back into the room.
He rose to his feet, the sound of her muffled sob raking over the ice inside him. Hardening it. Colder. Icier. There was no flame. Nothing hot or fierce burning inside him. This was death.
He turned back to Mike.
“So, are we gonna go play, or are you too busy getting blown next?”
Mike’s eyes narrowed before his gaze flicked to Sabella. “When you die, I’m going to stretch her out and come in her mouth. She’ll die swallowing me.”
He headed to the entrance. He left Sabella behind him. For now. Just for now. And the look he gave Mike was a promise. He would be one of the first to die.
Killing him would be incredibly easy. He’d known that when he first arrived back and saw the drunken abuse the other man had heaped on her. He had trusted his family, his friends, to watch out for the woman who was his life.
As they entered the narrow entrance Noah watched as Gaylen Patrick moved from deeper inside the cavern. His face was flushed. Expression smug.
“Doesn’t take you long to blow, does it?” he observed mockingly.
Patrick glared back at him. “Boy, I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
The monster lifted its head inside him. Icy, murderous determination infused him. It wasn’t a surge of adrenaline. It was a surge of intent. A hard, brutal core of calculated deliberation.
Noah grinned. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you.”
Sabella lowered her head and fought her tears. Her body ached from the abuse she had suffered. Her shoulders, her legs and hips, her upper back. So far, Sienna hadn’t gone for her stomach.
Was the pregnancy too early for a blow to her stomach to hurt her child? God help her if Sienna learned she was carrying Noah’s child.
The other woman was insane.
Sabella stared across the room as the psychotic imitation of her best friend played with Mike Conrad. Rubbing at his crotch, letting him bury his head in her cleavage. They were all but fucking in front of her. And they had no idea what they had unleashed when they had taken her.
Sabella had seen it though. In his eyes. The flecks of green in the blue were artificial. There was no green in Noah’s eyes. But the blue. The blue had been like ice lit from inside with a cold, brutal flame.
There had been no rage, no fury. Just calculated death.
Those weren’t her husband’s eyes. Whatever had happened to him during his imprisonment with Diego Fuentes had changed him. Changed him in ways that sent a shiver up her spine. Six years ago, her husband hadn’t had that hard core of icy rage inside him. It was there now. There was death in his eyes now.
Sweet Jesus, he was going to kill tonight. She knew it. She had seen it in his eyes. Not that every damned one of the bastards involved in this didn’t deserve to die. They were so confident. They had killed for so long that they didn’t even care if they let their victims see their faces. They were that certain of themselves and had succeeded for so long in these hunts they conducted.
“Poor little Belle,” Sienna crooned in a mimicry of compassion as she moved across the room.
The other woman gripped Sabella’s jaw and jerked her head up. Her green eyes glittered with excitement, with almost maniacal pleasure.
“Poor Rick,” Sabella whispered. “He loved you, Sienna.”
Not that Sienna appeared to care. She rolled her eyes.
“Bastard hasn’t touched me in over two years,” she huffed, her lips thinning. “The only reason he even still lives in the house with me is because I have just enough on him to make him wary.”
She released Sabella’s jaw and plopped down on the cot beside her. Sienna leaned back as Sabella shifted, protecting her side and her stomach by pushing herself farther into the corner of the wall.
“I’ve so wanted to tell you what a weak-kneed little bitch you are.” Sienna giggled. “Crying for your lost Nathan. Haunting that house of his like a damned ghost.” She lifted her nails and checked them carefully before looking up at Sabella. “I fucked him in your bed, you know.”
No. She hadn’t. Nathan would have never fucked another woman, especially Sienna. And Sabella would have known if he had.
But she lowered her head, let the other woman think she had gotten her jibe in.
“You are so fucking boring,” Sienna breathed out in irritation. “Come on, Belle. Admit it. You’re sick because you know I fucked your husband. I’d have fucked your little punk biker, but I bet he doesn’t even have a dick.”
Mike chuckled across the room as he moved to the equipment on the table in the corner.
“I want him to watch while I rape you,” Sienna breathed as Sabella glared back at her from beneath the cover of her lashes. “I’m going to love raping you, Sabella. I’ll laugh and bite you.” Sienna shivered in longing. “I’ll make you scream and beg your Noah to save you.”
“You won’t have the chance,” Sabella told her softly. “He’s going to kill you, Sienna.”
Sienna licked her lips lustfully. “No one has survived a hunt, Belle. Your biker won’t last an hour. Then.” She leaned forward, gripping Sabella’s chin with enough force to bruise. “I’m going to strap on my dildo, and they’re going to hold you down while I gut you. I’m going to rip into that pussy Nathan and that biker thought was so damned good and let him watch while you scream.”
Sabella shook her head. “No, Sienna. You won’t have the chance to hurt me in front of him. You won’t even know when he returns. All you’ll know is death.”
She had seen death in Noah’s eyes. Whatever had happened to him, whatever group he was a part of, they were ready for this, and she knew it.
Sienna smirked, then before Sabella could jerk back, smashed her lips onto hers.
Gagging, furious, Sabella jerked back, and before she could stop herself, she slammed her head into the other woman’s face.
Sienna’s shriek of rage was followed by another blow to Sabella’s face.
Lights exploded in front of her eyes again, the agony of the other woman’s fist to her cheek sending screaming, white-hot pain lancing through her body.
But Sienna jumped from the bed and flounced off to Mike. He was laughing. He pulled the other woman to him and stroked her hair, kissing her abused cheek.
“My poor little slut,” he crooned. “It’s okay. When we’re done with her, you can blow all of us. Suck her blood right from our dicks.”
And Sabella saw the little shudder of pleasure that whipped through Sienna. God. She was insane. Somewhere, somehow, Sabella had missed the fact that the woman pretending to be her best friend was certifiable. It was no wonder Nathan had never seemed to like the idea of their friendship.
She inhaled roughly, tasted the blood in her mouth again, and forced back the sickness rising inside her. Noah would come back. And when he did, he’d make certain tonight was no more than an unpleasant memory.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They didn’t take him far from the canyon for the hunt to start. The militia members were masked, and they brought him a running buddy. How nice of them.
Chuck Leon had seen better days, no doubt. His face was swollen, his leg had a tourniquet tied around it. Hell, he’d have to take care of this before he returned to the canyon.
“What kind of shape are you in?” he asked the other man as they stood in the middle of a small valley.
Noah looked around. It was bisected by a stream and several deep gullies. He hadn’t seen the other members of the team yet, but with the militia wearing night vision, he knew he wouldn’t.
Cottonwood and pines grew strategically, thick in areas, thin in others.
“Bad shape.” Chuck shifted on his good leg. “They always hunt more than one. They like a quick kill and a challenge. I guess I’m the quick kill, huh?”
There was fight left in him though. His hazel eyes glittered with anger.
“Piece of advice,” Noah told him quietly. “Get rid of the mad. Use your head and watch your ass.”
Chuck shook his head. “We’re going to be sitting ducks out here.”
Noah didn’t say anything more. He watched as other vehicles moved in. There were a dozen vehicles, more than double that in men. A small group. They hadn’t branched out to let anyone into their little pack that they didn’t implicitly trust.
“Do you have a plan?” Chuck grimaced as Noah bent and checked the tourniquet on the other man’s leg.<
“I always have a plan.”
“Mind letting me in on it?”
Noah grunted. He didn’t trust anyone with Sabella’s life, especially an unknown agent.
“Head for the gully, jump in, and run north.” One of the team would be close enough to pull him out. “You might live.”
The agent stared at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”
He stared back at Chuck coldly. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“Jesus.” Chuck tunneled his hands through his hair. “Okay. Hit the gully and go north.”
“And don’t stop. This gully runs into another gully and then heads to the main road. If you’re not stopped, just keep truckin’.”
The team might let him pass and head to town for help. Hell if Noah knew what they would do. But he had seen the brush moving, waving a little too hard for the wind blowing through the valley, at the edge of the ravine. There was another sign of the Elite unit in the gully that headed back toward the canyon Sabella was being held in.
That was where Noah intended to head. Let the bastards think he and Chuck were going to make it easy for them. The team would play with them until Noah could get to Sabella and get her out of there. Once she was safe, Noah was going hunting himself.
“Looks like they’re all here.” Chuck’s voice was resigned, but it vibrated with determination now.
He was young, but he was game. Noah nodded as Gaylen Patrick got out of the powerful four-by-four he was in. Night-vision goggles covered his eyes. High-tech rednecks, he thought mockingly.
“Ready, boys?” Patrick chuckled, his thick lips stretched wide, like a maniacal clown as he waddled over to them.
Noah slipped his thumbs beneath his belt and activated the tracker there. He’d waited. He’d been searched, his chaps and jacket removed, but that was okay. He could function without them just as well as he could function with them.
He stared back at Gaylen, the green aura that transposed over the other man from the contacts he wore didn’t take away from the pure evil glittering in the man’s eyes.