Assail shoved his gun into his belt and rushed forward to meet her more than halfway.
“Assail … is it really you?” she whispered as he came close.
“Yes. Please don’t shoot—come unto me, darling one.”
As she let out a sob, he grabbed her and hauled her up against his chest, the muzzle of that gun of hers going right into his sternum. If she pulled that trigger, she would kill him outright.
She did not.
With a sob, she gave herself over to his strength, and he held her up from the ground as she crumpled. She weighed nearly nothing against him, and for some reason, that terrified him even more.
Accordingly, he allowed only a moment of communion—and then he needed to get her safe.
Swinging her up into his arms, he turned and ran for the bulletproof Rover, ran into those headlights as if they were a heavenly safety zone.
Ehric and his brother anticipated what he wanted to perfection. They jumped out of the Rover and left open the backseat doors—whilst they removed Benloise from the rear and kept that man away from sight.
Marisol did not need to know of his presence.
Placing his female in the back, Assail broke out the sleeping bag he had packed, along with the water and PowerBars he had brought for her. Covering her nakedness, he held on to her as she fell into a fit of trembling.
“Marisol,” he said as he pulled back. “Eat. Drink. Ehric, my cousin, shall take you—”
Her nails bit into his forearm even through the heavy sweater he wore. “Don’t leave me!”
He touched her beautiful face. “I must needs work herein for a moment. Things must be attended to. I shall meet you on the road.” He wrenched around. “Ehric! Evale!”
The two males came over—and for a moment, he considered driving her away himself.
But no, vengeance needed to be served, and he was the one to balance the scales.
“My darling, look unto my relations.” As he eased back so they could lean in and show their faces, he was thankful they had his exact coloring, and that their features were so like his own. Indeed, the three of them had been mistaken for brothers. “They shall carry you unto safety and put their lives before your own. I shall join up with you anon. I shall not be long, I swear to you.”
Her frantic, harried eyes bounced back and forth as if she were trying desperately to hold herself together.
“Go,” Assail hissed, glancing at the facility. “Go now!”
And yet he found it impossible to turn away from his Marisol. She had been abused and her state of undress suggested that—
Ehric gripped his upper arm. “Be of ease, my cousin. She shall be treated as our precious sister.”
Even Evale spoke up for once. “She will be well in hand, cousin.”
Assail had a moment of connection with the males, words of gratitude clogging his throat. In the end, all he could do was bow unto them.
Then he had to lean back into the SUV. “I shall not be long.”
On an instinct, without being conscious of deciding to do so … he kissed Marisol on the mouth.
Mine, he thought.
Forcing himself to refocus, he grabbed his backpack, shut the SUV’s door, and stepped away. Ehric, bless him, was careful to turn the vehicle around so that Benloise was not illuminated in the headlights—and then the Rover sped down the uneven path.
Oh, how he wished that lane had been paved. He wished it were a fucking highway with a seventy-mile-an-hour speed limit. Or better yet, that they had come via helicopter.
After the headlights had disappeared, he took out a headset and put it on, clicking on its miner’s light. Then he went over to Benloise, grabbed him by the duct-tape straps about his ankles, and pulled him across the snowy ground to the open entry.
Dropping the legs, he palmed his gun and pointed it at the man.
“Just to make sure you stay put,” Assail ground out.
Pop!
Benloise jerked in tighter, trying to protect his gut—too late. The bullet was already in there and leisurely doing its job: While painful and debilitating, intestinal wounds took their own sweet time accomplishing their goal.
Although Assail didn’t plan on keeping the bastard waiting long for his death.
Striding into the dwelling, he kept his weapon up and his eyes sharp.
What he found inside gave him pause.
Directly by the open door, a severed human hand lay discarded, as if its purpose had been served and it was no longer of value. The body it had been attached to was right there as well—no, that corpse had two hands … although no face to speak of.
So there was at least one other dead inside.
His Marisol had clearly fought for her freedom like a banshee.
Walking around the open floor space, he saw nothing of value or interest—or anything that could detain an individual. But over in the far corner, there were a set of stairs descending to a lower level.
He double-checked on his captive. Benloise remained writhing in the snow just outside the main door, his dark eyes open and blinking unevenly, his upper lip peeled back, his porcelain caps glowing in the ambient light.
Best to take him with.
Assail went over and yanked the man up to his feet. When Benloise failed to stand on his own, it was the work of a moment to drag his hundred-and-forty-pound weight into the interior. Then together, they promenaded over to the staircase.
Down into the underground, Benloise’s useless feet bouncing behind them like balls.
And there was the evil.
The lower floor was made up of a large open space with three cells and a wall of horror. One of the cells was not empty. There was a man with a brutalized face and neck lying on his back, staring at what you could only hope was Hell. His right arm had been pulled through the iron bars, and the bloody stump announced that his was the hand that had been taken.
For a moment, Assail felt his heart sting with desolate pride. Marisol had gotten herself out. No matter what they had done to her, or how few her resources had been, she had triumphed over her captors, bringing them not just to heel, but to their graves …
It was at that moment that he knew he was lost to her.
He was in love with this woman—and indeed, it was sick to feel those depths in the midst of this carnage and violence, but the heart was where it was.
And as Assail pictured his Marisol chained to that stained stretch of concrete wall, he became rageful to the point of insanity, a stampede of bulls racing through his body, their thousand hooves driving him into madness.
Wheeling around on Benloise, he bared his fangs and hissed like the vampire he was—
In spite of being shot, the drug wholesaler recoiled. “Madre de Dios!”
Assail scrummed down, getting in the man’s face. “That is right! I am nightmare come upon you!”
There was only one chain hanging from the wall. The other was coiled on the floor inside the locked cell, the blood that painted the links proving it had been the murder weapon Marisol had used.
It would be put into service yet again.