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Chapter Fifteen
Jaxson
Mason grabbed a pair of bolt cutters, and we breached the side entrance of the resort. Sitting around and waiting for SWAT to negotiate wasn’t going to work.
I’d gotten a call from Nikolai Agron, the last person I wanted to deal with today. If everything I’d heard was true, then I’d taken on a client who I wasn’t comfortable handling. I had dealt with men who were scumbags in the past, but this was different.
I usually had the upper hand.
I didn’t like that Ariella and Hazel were being held hostage, and Franco was nowhere to be found. The actions at the resort didn’t reflect the mafia’s strategies. Had Franco known Hazel had booked a room, he would have undoubtedly snatched her or killed her. Depending on his desires.
I wasn’t sure which he had planned. While he’d wanted her as his wife, the fact he’d gunned the marshals down and hadn’t thought twice about her safety made me suspect that he was prepared to kill her. Was it because she betrayed him?
I gestured at Mason to follow me down the hall. He gave a curt nod and covered me from behind. Guns were drawn; we hugged the wall as we came around the corner. In the distance, voices grew louder, more prominent. That meant we were close.
Her mousy brown hair had been chopped recently into a bob cut. Emma Foster, the birth mother of my daughter, stood just around the corner to another hallway with a vending machine. Dressed in her black slacks and blue-collared resort shirt, she tapped her foot against the linoleum floor. “I don’t see why I couldn’t have worn a mask and dressed up with you guys,” Emma said.
Just on the other side of the vending machine was a masked man. His gun poked out from behind the appliance as he stepped forward. Dressed all in black, he was the same height and build as me. I could easily take him, but not with Emma watching.
Emma was definitely involved. Had she known what was going down? How big a part did she play? Did she orchestrate the entire situation? I had a plethora of questions, but they wouldn’t get answered if I approached her. That wasn’t how she worked, not with me. There was a history between us, a complicated one.
We weren’t friends. We weren’t even lovers. We’d spent one night together, technically one very long day, and that had been it.
The masked man leaned into Emma, whispered something into her ear before she stammered off down the hall.
I waited until Emma was out of sight and rounded the corner before the masked man could anticipate that anyone had been watching them. I rammed into his body, throwing him off balance.
He stumbled backward, tripping over his feet, his gun falling to the floor out of his grasp. I held my breath. Had Emma heard the ruckus? Would she come back and find the two of us fighting?
Mason stood guard, watching my back.
I snatched the weapon from the ground and pointed it at the masked man. “Take it off,” I seethed between clenched teeth. There was only one way in, and that was dressed like them.
“Bite me,” the masked man said and smacked his forehead against mine.
Fuck, that hurt. I swallowed the pain as he struggled for the gun in my hands. No. I wouldn’t give it to him. I stomped on his foot, elbowed his stomach, and kneed his groin. Playing dirty was the only way to survive. We weren’t in a boxing ring playing by a set of predetermined rules. This was life or death.
“Bastard,” he grunted and lunged at me, slamming my back against the brick wall.
I gasped from the impact, and Mason hurried closer, gun drawn and poised on the masked man’s forehead.
I thrust his mask off, shocked. Jayden Scott. He’d been running with the off-gridders for too long. “What the hell?” I couldn’t believe what he’d gotten himself involved in. We’d served in the special forces together and were brothers. It felt like a lifetime ago when I stared back at his cold gaze.
Was his involvement because of Emma? They’d seemed pretty chummy together near the vending machines earlier. Had that been why he’d shown up? I handed Mason the semi-automatic as he stood behind me. I didn’t need Jayden getting his dirty claws on it again.
With one hand gripping Jayden’s black shirt, I shoved my pistol against his head. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t unload the magazine,” I said between gritted teeth.
“You don’t know anything,” Jayden said.
“Why are you here? What do they want?” Men don’t show up and take hostages for sport, certainly not these men: off-gridders. What were they after? I shoved my face in his, the safety off—my index finger on the trigger. I was ready to shoot him, a man whose life I’d saved a decade ago.
He snorted and shrugged. Jayden didn’t so much as sweat with the barrel against his skin. “You don’t have it in you to shoot me, Monroe.”
I hated how well he knew me. The truth was I wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man unless my life was in mortal danger. It wasn’t, at least not right now, but everyone else’s lives were in danger. I had no other choice. I took the handle of the gun and slammed it against his head, knocking him unconscious. He fell to the ground in a heap.
“Help me get his clothes off him,” I said.
Mason stood there, shouldering one gun while keeping the other pointed around the corner, prepared at a moment’s notice to protect us. “Looks like you got it handled.”