Chapter 22
Noah peered through the trees, teeth gritted. He had an arsenal of guns and he practiced regularly. Even with extensive mods, marksmanship was a perishable skill. Not one he could let slide, considering Obsidian’s looming shadow over their lives.
All his effort and paranoia did him no goddamn good at all right now. He’d been too out of his head when he left his house to think to to bring a weapon.
He wanted to kick his own ass, he was so disgusted.
Ransacking the SUV for anything useful turned up only a tire iron and a coil of climbing rope. Sisko and Zade had raced to equip themselves after his frantic call, but they still hadn’t showed.
One single unarmed man. That was Caro’s whole cavalry. Fuck.
The sig of the guy circling the house showed him to be the human equivalent of an attack dog. An inflamed red-orange glow in the area of the belly and groin pulsed like a lava lamp, and a dull yellow haze hung around his head. His chest area was blank. No energy at all, just a cold dark sinkhole.
He’d seen sigs like that before on some of the Obsidian researchers. Their colors were even worse. Like pus or gangrene. For some reason, that project had attracted brain-eating sociopaths.
Mark’s sig had gotten just as ugly by the time they’d parted company. Midlands had changed Mark. It had killed his humanity.
Men with sigs like that could do unspeakable things to Caro before Sisko and Zade caught up with him. The urgency that assailed him wouldn’t let him wait for back-up.
He slid the tire iron into the sleeve of his leather jacket and edged closer. He’d have to thin them out. Get his hands on a gun. There were two men in the front room. He read their thermals through the wall. Caro’s would be instantly recognizable if he saw it. He itched to identify how many of them there were, what room she was in.
But not yet. Better to get rid of some guys in the front. Improve his chances before he got anywhere near Caro.
He studied the man pacing not thirty feet from him. Tall, massive. His face was thick, his eyes dull. Not a take-charge type. He might hesitate before shooting Noah in the throat, for fear of fucking up.
He’d hold back, if only for an instant. All Noah needed.
Cut plastic cuffs lay on the ground behind one of their vehicles. They had pulled her out of the trunk of the car and cut off her bonds.
Seething rage got the better of him for a moment. He fought it down. He could not let rage run the show. His enhancements gave him an edge, but he was alone, unarmed, outnumbered. No margin for error.
Go. He stumbled drunkenly out into the roadway, flapping a roadmap as he strode toward the guard, slurring his words.
“Ah, exshcuse me! Hey, sir? I, uh, crashed my car a few miles back, and walked here, can you believe it? No offense, but this place is the ass end of nowhere. I can’t get any bars on my cell and I was wondering if you—”
“Fuck off, dickwad,” the guy snarled.
Noah staggered closer. “Dude! Don’t get uptight! I’m not gonna rob you, I’m just—whoa! You don’t need . . . Holy shit, dude, put that fucking thing down!”
The guard pulled his gun. Noah shrank back, angling his body so that the other man wouldn’t see the tire iron slide out.
With a blow too fast to see, he whipped it down and shattered the man’s arm.
The gun dropped. The guy stared at his arm, startled. It dangled, floppy and useless. His eyes rolled to the whites as he sucked in air—
Noah whacked the tire iron across his throat, crushing his windpipe.
The man dropped, gasping. He made a choked, wet sound, lips turning blue.
Not his lucky day. Shouldn’t run with a pack that laid hands on Noah’s woman. Bad call. Die alone and gasping, shitbag.
He grabbed the guy by the ankles, dragged his twitching bulk behind the Jeep. Jerked up the man’s pant leg, took the knife in his boot sheath. Scooped up the guy’s Glock. Two more in that front room to deal with. One stationary, one moving.
He ran back, snatched up the coil of rope, checked the tree limbs over their parked Jeep. He clambered swiftly on top of it, the rope around his shoulder.
His leap from the Jeep’s roof had all the power of Braxton’s enhanced muscle gene cocktail behind it. He caught a branch several feet above the Jeep and nearer to the building. He swung there, fingers scraped by the rough bark, his body dangling over the overgrown path. The smell of pine pitch stung his nose. The branch bent dangerously under his weight as he crawled higher into the sticky boughs, seeking a clear drop onto the path. He uncoiled the rope.
The knot didn’t need any enhancement to remember. Just a hangman’s noose.