In His Keeping (Slow Burn #2)

Restless, Beau started down the hallway. Toward Ari. Toward his life, leaving Zack to catch up. Or not. He wasn’t waiting another goddamn minute. He trusted Dane and the others to do their job and keep the men creeping toward them at bay long enough for them to tag Ari and get her the hell out.

No sooner had they taken two steps down the corridor than the floors buckled and rolled like ocean waves beneath their feet. The walls shook, knocking already askew paintings down to clatter on the tile below. The ceiling and rafters creaked and groaned in protest, swaying until it felt as though the entire building was in motion. The sound was ominous, the signal of impending collapse.

Relying on Zack’s techno recon, Beau ran toward the end. Toward the one closed door that Ari was behind, paying no heed to the barren rooms that lined either side of the hallway. Zack was hot on his heels, guns in both hands, arms up, his piercing gaze missing nothing. Beau knew he was being reckless, but he counted on his partner to cover his stupid ass. Zack had never failed him yet in their rather short acquaintance.

Beau slowed only enough to let Zack catch up so they could kick the door in. But before they made any motion to do so, the door splintered apart, breaking free from its hinges and sailing down the hallway in pieces.

Both men ducked, barely in time to prevent their heads from being taken off.

“Down!” Zack yelled, shoving at Beau as he started to get to his feet once more.

A man went flying down the hallway after the door, crashing into the far wall. He punched a hole straight through the Sheetrock, forming a cavernous opening.

“Holy shit,” Beau said, his face a mask of shock. “She’s kicking some serious ass!”

“Uh, yeah. What was your first clue? Three dozen heat signatures suddenly vanishing? Oh wait, make that one more in the ‘ticked off the list’ column. Ari thirty-eight. Bad guys ten. Or maybe it was the huge-ass hole in the roof with an inferno blazing and erupting like a fucking volcano. Or perhaps—”

“I get it,” Beau muttered. “Smart-ass.”

Zack snickered but cautiously rose, humor disappearing from his features when he stared inside the now-open doorway.

“Beau,” Zack murmured. “You need to get in there. Now.”





THIRTY-SIX

EVEN Goon A’s smirk was now gone. Where before he’d been smugly assured that Ari didn’t have the guts to actually kill someone, uncertainty now marked his features and fear was stark in her eyes.

Good.

Because she meant goddamn business. Gone was any squeamishness whatsoever over causing the deaths of the assholes who’d killed her parents and dragged their bodies off like discarded trash.

Fury sizzled and boiled, hissing through her veins until a warm throb reverberated through her entire body.

“What did you do with them?” she demanded, her tone so frigid that she could discern an actual temperature change in the room.

A puzzled look furrowed his brow and then pain rapidly took its place when she applied pressure to his throat, momentarily cutting off his airway. He was solidly plastered to the ceiling, incapable of moving. He was completely paralyzed and capable of doing her no harm whatsoever.

“Tell me what you did with them or I swear to God, you’ll die an agonizing, long death and you’ll beg me to kill you and end it all,” she said in a dangerously soft voice.

She let off the pressure on his throat, but twisted his testicles painfully until his face was a mask of pain.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he ground out, his jaw clenched and bulging as he breathed through the agony she was inflicting on him. “You saw what I saw. Whatever the hell kind of voodoo you performed rendered bullets ineffective.”

The mental strain she was under was fast sapping her strength and taking its toll. Blood seeped in a continuous stream from her nose and she could feel the warm slide of liquid down the sides of her neck.

She wiped her nose with the back of her arm, smearing some of the blood over her lips. It was a metallic, sickening taste in her mouth. The floor beneath her feet reacted to her psychic energy, vibrating and buckling, tiny cracks forming and then growing larger.

An ominous creaking sound filled the room as if the building were expressing its weariness and weakness. Lightbulbs popped, shattering and sending shards of glass in all directions. A few hit her, inflicting cuts, but she ignored everything, never wavering in her focus on the man above her.

The entire area was responding to the restless, wild energy flowing through her and around her. Her skin tingled as if the air was electrically charged and a continuous current flowed in a cycle.

She felt . . . otherworldly. Like someone in a fantasy movie. Magic or witchcraft. Whichever of the two fit. In this moment, she felt a rush of power so strong that she nearly fell to her knees. It filled her, consumed her, nearly overwhelming in its intensity.