Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 461

The van did not drive far. It rumbled to a stop outside a building, and they hauled me out and rushed me toward the door. I could tell from the way they kept glancing over their shoulders that they were not supposed to bring me here, that this was a detour they had decided on for themselves, and that meant they were sloppy. Sloppy was good.

Two of them went in first with me. The other two stayed outside to keep watch.

And while they had been busy watching the road, I had been working on the zip tie, twisting my wrists and bending my hands until the plastic bit into my skin. The moment they shoved me inside, I wrenched my arms apart, and the tie snapped.

The first two men never saw it coming. I hit the first one in the groin, and as he doubled over, I drove my elbow down into the back of his skull. He went limp. The second one lunged, and I caught him with a strike that folded him in half, then brought my knee up into his face and put him on the floor beside his friend. I struck each of them once more, hard, and they would not be getting up for a very long time.

I dragged them to the side and stood just inside the door, waiting.

"I should be hearing their voices by now," came a voice from outside. "It's too quiet in there."

"Let's go in and check."

The two of them walked in together, and I moved before they had fully cleared the threshold. I went for the one with the gun, kicking the weapon out of his hand before he could even register I was free, and then I snatched it up and leveled it at both of them.

"On your knees," I said. "Now."

They hesitated, but their eyes found the two bodies sprawled against the wall, and they dropped.

"Turn around. Face the wall."

He raised his hands, shaking. "Okay. Okay, I'm getting out. Don't shoot."

I saw it a second before it happened, his hand drifting down toward his belt, and I fired. The bullet caught him in the shoulder, and he screamed and slumped forward, blood already blooming through his shirt and running down his arm.

I yanked the door open, dragged him out onto the gravel, and struck him once across the head. Then I left him there, climbed into the driver's seat, and turned the van around, heading back the way we had come. Back toward Sparrow.

My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my teeth. If this had been laid out for me, then it had been laid out for him, and there were more men out there than the five I had just left.

I told myself I was afraid because Sparrow was important to me and to Tasha, because he still had to finish Big Bryan, because he had helped us when no one else could. Those were all true things.