Page 10 of X's and O's

I was glad I hadn’t bothered ripping off my gag. It was the only thing keeping me from screaming as a man was murdered right in front of me.

“X!”

The driver froze with his knife in the air, mid-strike, and glanced over his shoulder at his friend. His mouth dropped open. “I’m so sorry! Did you change your mind?”

Paul, full of stab wounds, was very much dead on the floor. The driver, or X, I guessed his name was, cringed but held the knife out to his friend with a sheepish grin anyway. “Want to have a turn?”

Oh my God. They were insane. They were an insanemurder duo, who had probably escaped from some sort of asylum or Saint View Prison.

And of course, I had to have the dumb luck to be tied up, ready to be served to them on a freaking silver platter.

Oh, this was bad. So, so bad. Why had I even gotten out of bed this morning? I could have just stayed there, rereading my letters, and none of this would have ever happened.

I gave the knot at my ankles one final hard yank and practically cheered when it loosened enough for me to get my foot out.

I was free? How the hell had I pulled that off? I was changing my name to MacGyver as soon as I got out of here. I’d never complain about Toby forcing me to watch reruns of that old TV show again. Maybe the situations he got himself into weren’t as unrealistic as I’d always complained they were.

I stumbled to my feet, ripping the tape off my mouth and spitting out the gag.

“So…we have a problem…” X’s friend said.

I jerked my head up, realizing I’d tripped my way right into the doorway and directly into their line of sight.

Both of them stared at me. Paul’s dead body between us.

For one second, all I saw were X’s brown eyes, chiseled jaw, bad-boy smirk, and a scar crossing through his eyebrow.

In the next, I remembered watching him murder a man in cold blood.

I backed up until I was in the kitchen, my ass bumping into the countertop and forcing me to stop. There was no place to run. The two psychopaths blockedthe only exit I knew of. I couldn’t see the back door anywhere. It must have been farther down the hallway, but it was no good to me from here.

My gaze darted to the knife block on my left.

So did X’s.

But he already had a knife.

Those were mine.

I lunged for the block, grabbing a blade, and hurled it in their direction.

X and his friend stared as the sharp cooking implement sailed between them.

Panic, fear, and adrenaline all mixed inside me until it was a bubbling inferno of lava, ready to explode, nowhere else to go but out. I screamed, something between a scared damsel in distress and a fierce warrior going into battle. I plucked another knife and sent it their way with as much force as I could muster.

I didn’t know what I was doing. Just that I didn’t want either of those men anywhere near me. And while I was throwing knives, neither had come a step closer. So I just kept going, throwing knife after knife, keeping them at a distance.

In a cloud of chaos, shouting, and knives piercing into walls, the two men scattered. X ducked behind the bookshelf, his friend taking shelter behind a couch.

“Oooh, I fucked up, didn’t I?” X shouted. “What the hell am I going to do now?”

Sharpened steel sailed past his friend. “Duck?”

“No, seriously, Scythe!” X peeked out from behind the shelves, then quickly darted back to safety. “What am I supposed to do? Grayson’s rules say we aren’t allowed tokill innocents. But we can’t leave witnesses either! So which does this situation fall into?”

His friend, Scythe, apparently shrugged. “I’ll call Gray and ask.”

I had no idea who they were talking about, but I wasn’t planning to find out. I’d run out of knives, so I yanked open a kitchen drawer and picked up the first thing I found. The rolling pin hit the bookcase X was hiding behind. He’d pulled his head back in just in time to save his pretty face.