Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 125248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
The warehouse blurred as his throat closed around a sound he struggled to restrain.
“He said that?” Xander whispered.
Free nodded. “Yes.”
Xander closed his eyes.
Cassidy loved him.
He tried to make that fact solid enough to stand on. It wasn’t.
“If they know where we are…” he said, opening his eyes, “then why haven’t they come? They can do what they did at the studio lot.”
“The studio lot was self-defense,” Tech said. “This is a hostage situation. God can’t send his enforcers to shoot up everyone.”
Curtis stirred beside him, opening one eye. “Trust me, you really don’t want my dads coming to get us.”
Xander looked over.
Curtis shrugged. “I sleep lightly when kidnapped.”
Xander dropped his head, sighing. “You are all insane.”
“Shh,” Tech said, his body sharpening with alertness.
Free went still beside him.
Curtis opened both eyes.
Xander froze. “What?”
“It’s God,” Tech whispered.
No one spoke.
Tech listened, face angled toward the floor. Xander watched his eyes behind the lenses. They moved once. Twice. Then widened.
“Holy shit.”
Free was listening too, and the expression that crossed his face made Xander’s skin prickle.
Shock. Recognition…fear.
“What?” Curtis whispered, sitting up straighter. “What’s happening?”
Tech didn’t answer right away.
Curtis’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t say the plan involves my dads.”
“No,” Tech said.
Curtis relaxed by half an inch.
“Now I know what took so long.” Tech turned towards him. “God called someone else.”
His stomach clenched with nerves. “Who?”
“They’ll be here soon,” Tech whispered. “If they’re not already.”
They?
The warehouse had been frightening all night, but now…it felt different. Xander didn’t know why. “Are they police?”
Free’s expression was grave. “No.”
He glanced over at one of the kidnappers, who’d turned halfway toward them.
“You’re going to want to steel your stomach,” Tech said. “Or just don’t look.”
Xander
Free leaned in so close his lips brushed Xander’s ear. “Here they come.”
Tech’s grin was audible. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”
The captor leaning against the far wall looked up from his phone. “Hey! I’ve already told you to shut the fuck—”
A gloved hand shot out of the darkness behind him, seized his chin, and wrenched. The crack of his neck echoed like a gunshot. His body jerked once, then vanished backward into shadow, dragged away without a sound.
Xander yelped. Before the scream formed fully in his chest, a figure in a long white overcoat slid across the concrete on his knees, coat flaring behind him as he came to a sharp, impossible stop in front of him.
A gloved palm was clamped over his mouth. “Shhh.”
The oversized hood hid all of him, except for his dark sunglasses, and full peach lips.
Footsteps pounded around the corner. The man in white tilted his head, listening. He reached behind his back with his free hand and drew a short black rod. When one of the kidnapper’s raised his pistol, the rod snapped upward and telescoped into six feet of steel with a wicked point gleaming at the end. He rotated it in three lightning-fast moves that struck the collarbone, ribs, then temple. Xander heard each bone snap before the captor dropped, unconscious to the floor.
Xander didn’t have time to recover before the front doors blew inward with an explosion that shook the walls.
Two men in black stepped through the smoke. One wore a knee-length trench coat, its low hood shadowing a dark beard. The other moved just behind him, as equally silent and commanding.
Xander had never seen men who radiated that level of danger, not even in the movies.
The bearded man reached into his coat and drew a large all-black handgun fitted with a silencer. He fired once.
The round punched into one of the kidnapper’s thighs. He screamed, dropped to the floor and tried to scramble behind a pile of rubbish, but before he could make it, two more bullets hit him center mass.
A pool of crimson spread beneath him, dark and glossy across the concrete.
Two others burst from around the corner, weapons blazing. The man in black lifted one side of his coat like a shield—bullets sparked and ricocheted of the fabric , never slowing his strides.
From the shadows, the man who’d snapped the first captor’s neck emerged with two more figures in low hoods, wearing dark brown rather than black. They fanned out and gunfire erupted from every direction.
A captor took three rounds to the chest and slammed into a support beam, sliding down it in a smear of red.
Another tried to run and caught a bullet dead center of his throat. He gurgled, clawing at crushed cartilage before collapsing.
Xander thought he’d throw up. He should’ve looked away like Tech suggested.
Another man, the one aching to avenge his brother, was shot through the knee. He dropped his weapon and received a second bullet through the eye that painted the wall behind him.
Xander pressed his bound hands over his ears, heart hammering.
The last captor staggered out from behind cover, hands raised high. “I surrender! No weapon! I’m unarmed.”
Oh no. Xander was breathing so hard, he was dizzy.