Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Finally, he turns them to me for a brief moment.
I’ll protect you, his eyes seem to roar. I love you.
Or am I just projecting?
“I’m sorry, Tyron,” Jamie says.
Tyron flinches as if that’s the last thing he expected.
“You’re … sorry?”
“I’m sorry you got caught up with those bastards. I’m sorry you felt like you had to cheat to win. I’m sorry your life isn’t going as well as you’d like. But what you’ve done here is very fucking stupid.”
“Stupid?” Tyron cries, a warble in his voice.
Several of the masked men tense up, as though they’re used to his petulant mood swings and are expecting some sort of an outburst.
“We got past your security. How’s that for stupid?”
Jamie clenches his jaws. “You posed as patrons to the restaurant, I’m guessing, arriving at different times, and then made your move?”
Tyron claps his hand against his gun, making a bony metallic noise.
“You always were too clever for bloody work,” Tyron taunts. “Can you guess what I did to your daughter, though? Have you guessed that yet?”
Realization dawns on me.
Tyron was behind the social media trolling.
“I attacked that little bitch online,” he says proudly, confirming my suspicions. “I thought if I could get her out to Maine – she’s so emotionally fragile, that one – she might be easier to nab, and so draw you out, but nope. But then my boys told me that you and this one have been spending some, what shall we call it, quality time together. And I knew I had my angle.”
“What do you want, a fucking medal?” Jamie snarls. “Your plan has one fatal flaw, Tyron.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
Jamie tenses almost imperceptibly, but I know the look in those icy blue eyes. He clenches his fists and for a second it’s like he’s standing in the MMA cage, his black hair cut close, sprinkled with sweat.
And then reality shifts back and I see my iron haired bear, so much more handsome for the experience etching his features.
“Me,” he snarls.
I’m stunned by the speed with which he leaps forward, moving so quickly he’s like a blur.
Tyron raises the gun and all the masked men leap to defend their leader.
Knives glint and hiss in the air.
Jamie smacks the gun from Tyron’s hand, sending it flying across the room, smacking into the wall, and then sliding down behind an upturned table.
All of them rush Jamie, the seven knife wielders, and Tyron, swinging his fists in looping blows that would surely take Jamie’s head clean off if they connected.
But he moves like smoke, dancing back just out of range, the knives kissing the air where he just was.
And as the men reset, he strikes like a viper, lashing out with fists and knees and kicks.
He smashes noses, blood erupting into the air, and when one man makes to stab him in the stomach, Jamie catches his wrist and throws him into two of his friends.
They all go down like bowling pins.
Jamie slides sideways when Tyron and two others bulrush him, kicking one in the ankle so hard the bony snap rises above the masked men’s yelling and the hiss-swish of their knives.
He elbows Tyron in the jaw, dislocating it and sending him flying to the floor.
Then he ducks and tackles the third, lifting him as though he weighs nothing and throwing him with stunning power, sending him sailing across the room and landing in a heap of flesh and tangled limbs.
“The gun,” Tyron yells, his voice distorted from his shattered jaw.
But Jamie is already sprinting across the room, moving with a predator’s swiftness I never would’ve believed from a man as huge as him before I witnessed it.
He reaches down behind the table and springs up, spinning and aiming it just in time to stop three of the masked men from leaping on him with their blades.
He grits his teeth, breathing softly despite all the exertion.
“Drop the knives, now,” he snarls.
The men hesitate, glancing at one another.
Jamie fires a shot into the floor at the closest one’s feet, and suddenly the air is filled with the clatter of knives colliding with the floor, a rain of knives until they’re all standing, unarmed, in a small circle like herded cattle.
“Outside, all of you,” Jamie snarls. “Don’t mess with me, motherfuckers. You threatened my daughter. You threatened my lady. Do you really think I won’t put you in the ground where you fucking belong?”
Jamie keeps the gun on them as the broken and battered men start to slowly walk toward the exit, most of them cradling some sort of injury.
He stalks over to me, but still keeps the barrel of the gun aimed at them until Tyron is the only one left in the room.
Tyron stops at the door, clutching his jaws, and then turns slowly.
“Are you on the juice, too?” he says, voice warbled and difficult to understand.