Aequitas, Hope Anika [android pdf ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Hope Anika
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“Ruslan!” Butch again. “Fuck!”
“In a moment,” Ruslan told him.
“Son of a bitch!”
Perhaps. Ruslan didn’t know. He’d never met his mother.
The bald man was trying to stand, but something had broken when he hit the wall. He groaned and rolled onto his back as Ruslan halted above him.
“Will you die for your cause today as well?” Ruslan lifted his foot and placed it on the man’s chest.
“Bastard,” the man choked out. “More will come for her. We’re just the beginning.”
Ruslan pressed his foot down and something crunched. “Why?”
A harsh gurgle escaped the man. He moaned. Ruslan leaned down and gripped his jaw hard. Squeezed. Tears welled in the man’s eyes. He whimpered.
“Not today,” Ruslan said.
Not without answers.
He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out the small, all-in-one tool he carried. He flipped it open, and the man whimpered again.
“What the hell are you doing?” Butch demanded.
Ruslan didn’t bother to explain. He merely thrust his tool into the bald man’s mouth and began to remove teeth. The molars would likely be the location of any cyanide capsule, so he started with those. It wasn’t hard; he’d done it before. But he had to be careful not to break the cyanide capsule, which would be embedded within—
“Good God, man. That’s…you’re…” Butch fell abruptly silent.
The bald man wept openly. Blood and spittle streamed down his chin. His fingers dug into Ruslan’s forearm; he clawed and pulled and punched. Desperate sounds escaped him.
“It did not have to come to this,” Ruslan told him.
“Christ,” Butch muttered.
The bald man shrieked, a loud, piercing, agonized cry, like a rabbit caught in a trap. Before Ruslan could stop him, he lifted his head and slammed it back into the concrete, hard. Hard enough to crack his skull like an egg, which Ruslan felt a moment before a flood of blood washed across the concrete. Death followed instantly.
He pushed to his feet and stared down at the man.
“Kamikaze,” Butch said again. “Shit.”
Indeed.
“Ashling,” Ruslan murmured, and the darkness swelled within him.
“Is tougher than she looks,” Butch retorted. “Now get me the hell out of this chair so we can save her.”
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The asshole whose knee she’d shattered was shooting at her.
Ash dropped to a crouch, turned and fired. Blood sprayed like a cloud burst as she shot the gun from his hand.
Boom!
Another bullet plowed past her and shattered the lamp; she dove behind the small bar that separated her kitchen and living room.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Bullets thunked into the plywood; one passed straight through and shattered her oven door. She shimmied to the edge of the bar, pulled open the cabinet door underneath and grabbed the lid to her biggest stew pot—nice, shiny stainless steel—and held it carefully out, using the reflective surface to try and get a lock on her next target.
There you are, you ungrateful dick.
The one she’d kicked, staggering toward the bar—
She sent the lid flying toward him like a giant silver Frisbee and then fired twice—one for each knee. The lid clanged as it smacked him in the forehead; the bullets tore into his knees and he did a brutal face-plant into the oak floor.
“Fucker,” she told him and moved out from behind the bar to kick both his SIG Sauer and the mangled Glock down the hallway.
Her heart beat like a jackhammer; her blood roared in her ears as she surveyed them. She’d never shot anyone before—well, except her father, and he hardly counted—but any regret she might have felt was drowned out by the rage licking through her like the hottest flame.
They’d come into her home. Threatened her. Hurt her.
And they were still breathing. Lucky them.
The man whose hand was now less a thumb and forefinger was bleeding profusely. They all wore black suits—much like Ruslan—but these were flat black, not like his tailored and elegant apparel; narrow ties and shiny shoes. Shaved heads and expensive weapons. Hard faces, familiar with violence and death.
Not your average assholes.
Men who’d threatened torture to get answers. Who’d grabbed Ruslan—something she was mildly astounded was even possible—and Butch, who a blindfolded bunny rabbit could have taken down.
Had they gotten to Wylie? What about Wanda and Eva? Were they still safe in the Vault?
What the hell was going on?
She marched over and climbed on top of the man whose knees she’d blown apart and sat down hard on his chest, wedging his shoulders beneath her thighs. Then she bared her teeth at him.
“Let’s talk,” she told him, and shoved the 9mm into the hollow just beneath his chin. Blood dripped from her nose and slapped his chest. “I want to know who you are, who you work for, and what the hell you want with Eva Pierce.”
Because none of this made any sense. The kid who the Firm had been hired less than four hours ago to protect—Eva Pierce—was only twelve, the daughter of a man on the run from a local loan shark, and said loan shark, while dangerous and persistent, was just a little fish, and these men…these men were sharks. This—whatever it was—went far beyond the collection of a marker.
“You should have given her up,” the man snarled. His gaze was wild. “You should have let us have her.”
Ash shifted her weight, pressing hard against his cracked sternum. “She’s just a kid!”
“She’s a goddamn abomination! You have no idea what she is. You protect her, you’ll kill us all.”
Ash stared at him, both furious and confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”
A harsh, ugly laugh rasped from him. “You’ll see. When it’s too late, then you’ll see.”
“See what?”
“The future.”
He lifted his head and snapped at her like an angry dog; his body arched violently beneath her, and she almost fell off. He began to shake uncontrollably; his eyes rolled back into his skull. White foam spilled from his mouth, bubbled past his lips, and slid down the barrel of the 9mm.
Then he went still. Fatally still.
“Goddamn it,” she whispered, her heart beating with painful force.
Because he couldn’t be dead. He hadn’t lost enough blood; she knew where to shoot to inflict maximum damage without causing a bleed out. And she hadn’t hit him hard enough in the chest to perforate an artery. He couldn’t be dead.
She made herself reach out and check his pulse.
Yep. Dead.
She scrambled off him, turned and found the rest of his team in varying degrees of the same state. Twitching uncontrollably, eyes rolled back, white foam trickling from the corners of their mouths. And then—
Dead. All of them.
What fresh hell—
A fist slammed against her front door like a battering ram. “Las Vegas PD! Put your weapons down, and come out with your hands up!”
When a local bank robbery brings the newly elected Sheriff Beau Greystone to Wynn Owens’ front door, she has only two things to give him: the endless bounty of her caustic wit and a one-finger salute. Wynn has history with the law, none of it good. And the notion that one of her elderly tenants might have something to do with the robbery is just plain crazy.
A former DEA agent, Beau owes his newly minted badge solely to his meddling aunt and his own foolish indifference. Recovering from the murder of his wife—and the debilitating injury caused by the explosion that killed her—Beau has been happily checked out for some time. But the people of Blossom Hills are counting on him to do his job, and bringing a bank robber to justice is a fine place to start…until the killer that's haunted
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