man hitting Jack was joined by another, who also began to beat on him. Neither of them pulled their punches and neither slowed in their torture, no matter how much Annabelle pleaded with them.
For several eternal minutes, this continued, until Annabelle’s vision was completely blurred by the hot tears she was crying as she begged them to leave Jack alone.
And then there was a loud bang and a crunching sound behind them as the door they’d come through buckled inward, nearly coming off of its hinges. Everyone stopped and turned to look as the roaring sound of machinery grew louder outside, drawing nearer to the building.
“Kill Thane and bring the girl!” The Colonel cried as the crashing sound came a second time and the door flew into the room, nearly landing on a few of the men who had been standing in front of it. The large man moved to a rug on the floor and kicked it aside, revealing a trap door beneath. He quickly pulled up the trap door and disappeared into its recesses, followed by several of his men.
Reese, who managed to get out of the way the first time, ran toward Annabelle, grabbing her away from the two men still holding her. “I’ll take her! See to the Colonel’s safety!” He told them over the noise of a loud engine and rending metal.
“Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” Annabelle shrieked at Reese as they released her and he grabbed tight. Fury fueled her strength as she thrashed in his grip, bringing her legs up to kick as well. She managed to get him good in the knee with her right boot, and he instinctively let her go to double over in pain.
She needed to get to Jack. They were going to kill him. She peered around Reese’s figure, even as he recovered and dove for her once more. She lunged right, taking Reese off guard, and then dodged to the left, moving around his body with an agility she didn’t know she possessed.
Two men stood in front of Jack now, and one had pulled out an automatic hand gun. Annabelle rushed at the man, diving in low and using her shoulder to absorb the impact as she slammed into the side of his midsection, knocking him away from Jack. The gun went off, the bullet driving into the plaster above Jack’s head.
The bullet sliced through the wall and struck the metal siding beneath it, bouncing back in a ricochet that shattered the tea pot on the coffee table several yards away.
Annabelle and the Colonel’s goon hit the ground hard, but he rolled and had her beneath him in an instant. He acted fast, taking the opportunity to backhand her just as he had Jack. The impact cracked Annabelle’s jaw and forced all sensation to spin away from her as if she were falling through Alice’s rabbit hole.
Her eyes were shut, so she didn’t see it, but she felt the weight of the man on top of her being lifted away. She wanted to look, but she also didn’t. All desire seemed to fall away just as sensation had. She was certainly no longer in any pain and sound began to fade. Before it went out entirely, she thought she heard a familiar Texan accent.
She couldn’t make out the words, though. And then everything went black.
It was Reese who had pulled the thug off of Annabelle. He spun the man around and shot him a seething look. “You idiot,” he hissed, “you could have killed her!” He shoved the man aside. But as he bent to retrieve Annabelle’s unconscious body, he, too, was grabbed from behind and spun around.
The man who had grabbed him, however, wasted no words on him, instead choosing to slam his knuckles into Reese’s face, knocking off Reese’s glasses and sending him reeling back several steps to stumble into the thug he had just shoved away.
The first man turned and ran in the direction he’d seen the Colonel go. Reese slid to the ground, temporarily stunned.
“God dammit, Jack, what the hell kind of mess did you get yourself into?” Sam turned toward Jack, whose eyes were on Annabelle’s prone form. Sam unfastened the manacles around Jack’s wrists and Jack bent to undo the ones around his ankles. Then he was at Annabelle’s side.
“You look like shit, buddy,” Sam said softly. And it was true. Jack was covered in his own blood. His hair was matted with it and parts of his black t-shirt were stained blacker with the dark liquid.
But Jack barely noticed. He placed his fingers to Annabelle’s neck and then closed his eyes, releasing a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “She’s alive.”
“Not that she’ll be happy about it when she wakes up,” Sam said. Jack bent to lift Annabelle into his arms and Sam helped the man stand back up. Once he was on his feet again, Jack swooned ever so slightly and Sam shook his head.
“They had a field day with you.” He looked Jack over from head to toe. “Looks like it got personal. Which means you pissed ‘em off, didn’t you?”
“Not now, Sam.” Jack brushed by him to lay Annabelle on the couch nearby. And then he turned toward Reese, who was only now gaining enough of his senses back to attempt to get onto his feet.
Jack didn’t give him the opportunity. He strode to the man, gripping Reese’s shirt and vest front in his right hand, and hauled him up off of his feet altogether. Then, without warning, he shifted his weight and slammed Reese’s body against the wall behind them. The impact stunned Reese once more and the man’s eyes closed momentarily.
Jack let him drop to the ground and then he turned and strode back to Sam.
“Give me your piece.”
Sam didn’t question him and he didn’t hesitate. He pulled his weapon out of its place in his shoulder holster and handed it to his friend.
Jack moved back to Reese and stood looking down at him. Then he raised the gun, a revolver, and cocked it.
“No, da’! Don’t shoot him!”
Jack froze. He looked over his shoulder.
A massive fissure had been carved into the opposite wall of the converted garage by what appeared to be nothing short of an armored bulldozer, which was now sitting, motionless and clanking amidst the wreckage and air-borne dust. Jack recognized it as one of the large pieces of machinery that had been sitting, untended, in the nearby construction site.
Through the chasm it had ripped, several figures made their way carefully over the bits of scrap and debris hanging from the surrounding walls or jutting up from the ground. One of those figures was a tall, slim woman with long black hair and bright green eyes.
“Clara…” Jack blinked. He watched the girl and her mother make their way over the last of the rubble and then break into a run toward Jack.
“Da’, don’t kill him. He tried to save our lives.” Clara reached her father and stood a few feet away, the expression on her face a mixture of pleading, gratefulness, and a sudden onset of heightened concern over the physical state Jack was in.
“Oh, da’. They gave you a right pasting. You’re bleeding something awf-”
Jack cut off her words by moving forward and pulling her into a fierce embrace. She hugged him back, despite the blood he was sharing, and closed her eyes. “Sorry to scare you, da’.”
He hesitantly pulled away and looked down at her. “You knew to get out.”
“Yeah, I had a feeling. But, remember how ‘e kept tellin’ us to close the door?”
Jack spared a glance to the man now sitting against the wall, watching the exchange with nervous eyes. Then he turned back to his daughter and nodded.
“On the back of the door was a note. He warned us to get out.” She glanced down at Reese. “Told us where the back door was, and what route to take.” She looked back up at her father. “Had a few seconds to spare.”
Jack looked down at her, a thousand thoughts racing through his head. His gaze cut to Reese again, who stared back. Then he looked over at Sam, whose expression was unreadable.
“We have to get out of here.” It was Cassie who at last spoke. A voice of reason slicing through the stunned silence that had come over the room. She stood beside Annabelle’s unconscious figure, her fingers on her friend’s throat, searching for a pulse, as Jack had. When she found one, she straightened, her hand remaining on Annabelle’s arm. “The cops will be on their way. We’ve broken a thousand laws.”
Dylan stood beside them. He took off his jacket and laid it over Annabelle, not saying anything.
“An’ the bad guys might come back, eh’?” Beatrice added, nodding toward the now shut trap door across the room. In-between them and the trap door were several strewn bodies, all with pools of blood spreading beneath them. Jack assumed these had been dispatched by Sam.
The only living employee of the Colonel’s left remaining in the building was Reese. Who wasn’t moving and
