Page 17

CHAPTER 17

Rusty

“Fuck.” Rusty dragged Sienna into a crouch, and they inched across the balcony to the railing. The metal was cold against his palms as he peered down at the stage. “Son of a bitch.”

Wang had the Vietnamese woman in a chokehold with the barrel of a handgun pressed to her temple.

Sienna gasped. “Oh my g?—”

Rusty clamped his hand over her mouth, and her pulse hammered through her skin. “Shh.”

She trembled against him, and with a white-knuckled grip on the railing, she eyeballed the gut-wrenching scene below. He gradually released her, and she didn’t make a sound. Soda settled beside them, a dark shadow with alert ears.

On the stage below, the other five women huddled around Wang like frightened birds as he used them for his shield. Gutless bastard.

“Nine.” Wang’s voice carried through the atrium.

Sienna’s shoulders jerked against his, and her lip quivered.

Wang’s grip was rock-steady, and his stance was as balanced as a boxer’s. No tremors, no tells, just the cold precision of a predator.

A memory slammed into Rusty like a gut punch . . . a tiny village in Kandahar, where the shooter had pressed his weapon against a young woman’s temple. But that guy had been all nerves and sweat, and his gun hand twitched like he was coming off a three-day bender. Rusty had known how to take down that asshole.

But Wang?

Wang was Special Forces cold. The kind of cold that put bullets between eyes without blinking.

“Eight.”

“Jesus,” Sienna said. “What do we?—”

“Quiet.” Rusty hissed, squeezing his hand around her arm. “He won’t kill her.”

Sienna’s eyes locked onto his, fierce and demanding in the dark.

“She’s merchandise.” He snapped the disgusting words off his tongue. “So he needs her alive.”

“You sure?” Her whisper ghosted against his ear.

He gave a sharp nod, praying that he was right.

“Seven.” Wang shifted his chokehold, fluid and practiced. The gun stayed dead level against the woman’s temple, unwavering as a sniper’s scope. Her fingers clawed at his arm, and her mouth was open in a silent scream.

Four of Wang’s men shifted through the shadows behind him. He caught the weapon on the biggest guy, an MP5 held low and ready. The area went cemetery-quiet, nothing but the soft whimpers from the stage cutting through the dark.

Rusty’s trigger finger twitched, demanding action, but the women’s faces below gutted his opportunity. They were all young and terrified. And innocent. Carbon copies of the women he’d saved from that village in Kandahar, where his first shot had started an avalanche of death.

Wang had Sienna and him pinned to the balcony like insects. Each second of this countdown was calculated, and Rusty’s neck prickled.

Why’s he dragging this out? The answer hit him like a rifle butt to the throat—Wang was stalling. Buying time while more boots moved into position.

“Six.”

Weapons littered the balcony around him. M4s, Glocks, enough firepower to start a small war. Rusty lurched back from the railing and snatched the nearest Glock. But it was useless without a clean shot. He could position himself on the stair and try for a better angle, but Wang had thought of that. Between the women around him and the armed killers in the shadows, one wrong move and Rusty was fucked.

His options were bleeding out fast. Surrendering was not an option. He would eat a bullet. That was guaranteed.

Fuck! If I’m taken out, Wang will add Sienna to that stage.

Wang didn’t waste assets. He harvested them.

His jaw clenched until his teeth creaked. Not fucking happening.

“Five.”

“Jesus. Rusty, we have to do something.”

A sharp bark sliced through the dark like a blade.

Sienna’s breath hitched. “That’s Pick?—”

Rusty’s hand sealed her mouth as another bark ricocheted off the walls, playful as a puppy at a park.

His heart skipped. That crazy little mutt.

As Wang’s men spun, their flashlight beams pierced the darkness like predatory eyes hunting Pickle. But the dog was a phantom, appearing and vanishing as he darted across the polished marble in his lethal game.

A current of tension rippled through the hostages. The Colombian woman lifted her chin and took a single, defiant step away from Wang’s human barricade, her eyes blazing with newfound courage.

“Don’t move.” Wang’s gun snapped to her chest.

The fracture in Wang’s control was microscopic, but to Rusty’s trained eye, it blazed like a signal flare. These women were his payday, his golden ticket. They were worth hundreds of thousands. The Colombian woman had done the math, too—Rusty saw it in her posture, in the razor-sharp calculation behind her expression. She wasn’t just a victim, she was a wild card waiting to be played.

“Four.” Wang barked the number as he jerked the gun back to his hostage’s temple, but the damage was done. His perfect facade had splintered, showing desperation underneath.

Pickle’s bark exploded from below, so close Rusty could track the terrier’s path beneath their balcony.

Boots hammered on the polished timber as the guards stormed across the stage. Two women screamed, adding to the chaos.

“Get that fucking mutt!” Wang’s roar bounced off marble and mahogany, revealing a splinter in his iron control.

Rusty’s pulse slammed against his throat as he tracked the chaos below. Two hostiles broke left, grabbing at empty air where Pickle had been half a second before. A third pivoted right, MP5 raised. Why doesn’t he shoot Pickel?

The answer hit him like a Taser—Wang wanted the dog alive to use as a hostage first, then he’d kill him.

The pursuit was almost comical—four trained killers chasing shadows and echoes while Pickle ran circles around them. The terrier scattered Wang’s carefully positioned men like leaves in the wind and each bark pulled them farther from their boss, stretching their defensive formation paper-thin.

The terrier yipped again, treating the life-or-death situation like a game of backyard tag.

“Three.” Wang’s voice climbed an octave, cracking like ice.

Pickle darted across the stage like a furry bullet, and the women shifted apart. For one crystallized moment, Wang’s profile was exposed, a sniper’s dream hit.

There you are, you fucker.

By the time he raised the Glock, the moment evaporated. Wang slipped behind the human shield again, Pickle vanished into the shadows, and the guards were staggering in circles, stomping like wounded bulls. That crazy little dog was running them ragged.

Time to end this nightmare.

“Move with me.” Rusty’s Glock stayed steady as he reached for Sienna.

“What? Where?”

He seized her hand and pulled her away from the railing. “Need a better angle. Stay low.”

Sienna’s fingers clenched his as they crept toward the stairs. Her breaths came in sharp, terrified bursts. Below them, Pickle darted between a guard’s legs like liquid lightning. The man stumbled and released a shot that shattered a monitor into a glittering cascade of sparks and plastic.

Sienna jerked against him. He squeezed her hand harder, anchoring her.

Soda shadowed them silently, her massive form moving like a ghost despite her size. Unlike Pickle’s chaos below, Soda was a calm predator, every muscle ready for the kill. At the stairhead, Rusty’s mind flashed to his last hostage situation where he’d had backup, proper gear, a goddamn plan?—

“Shoot that fucking dog!” Wang’s command cracked like artillery fire.

“No!” Sienna ripped free of Rusty’s grip, lurching upright as her cry split the air like a blade.

Two weapon-mounted beams snapped to her position, painting luminous crosshairs on her chest.