Hell Bent

one.”

Sam whistled. “Sure hope she does, ‘cuz it’s the lesser of your particular evils, my friend.”

Jack shot him a look and then gazed back at the floor. Sam was right. Jack was so screwed. But he didn’t have a whole lot of time to contemplate his level of screwdness, since it was at that time that gunfire erupted and glass imploded all around them.

On instinct, Jack and Sam immediately hit the deck. But then Jack was up and running, hunched over, toward the entertainment room in the next instant. It was with little surprise but a whole hell of a lot of relief that he saw Clara had already hit the floor as well, taking her would-be boy friend with her. She spared him a glance as he ran by, but wisely didn’t move.

Jack didn’t stop either. He ducked beneath more shards of splintering wood and flying glass as the gunfire continued.

Finally, he made it to the room where Annabelle had gone and he slammed through the door and hit the floor, rolling over to look around. Annabelle wasn’t in the room.

“Jack!”

Jack turned his head to the right to find Annabelle beneath the bed, clutching something protectively to her chest. All around them, the explosions continued. The air was filled with dust and particles and floating feathers from the mattresses and pillows.

“Bella, take my hand!”

Annabelle reached her left arm out and took hold of Jack’s hand, allowing him to slide her across the floor toward him. As he did so, something heavy and round shot through the window and landed on the ground beside them, bouncing once and then rolling to a stop.

They both turned to look at it. Annabelle’s eyes locked on the small green form. Recognition registered even as horror immobilized her.

But her hand was still in Jack’s, and he used the connection to yank her to him, pulling her to her feet and against him in the next swift action.

He took Annabelle out the door with him once more, diving for the leather couches that graced the adjoining study. He’d just managed to get himself and Annabelle behind the nearest one when the grenade went off and the room they’d been in a split second before burst outward like an over-inflated vacuum.

Annabelle screamed as her ears popped painfully and the world around her bellowed in agony. The noise of the blast was tremendous. It wasn’t like anything you hear in the movies. It was deeper, more like a thumping, in- your-bones feeling than a sound. It shook the very earth.

A few seconds after the blast, Jack shoved himself away from her and took a second to look her over. When he saw no major injuries on her, and no embedded shards of shrapnel, he pulled both of his weapons from the shoulder holster he wore and got his booted feet under him once more.

“How the fucking, bloody hell do they keep finding us?” He hissed under his breath, to no one in particular.

From his vantage point, he could just see into the walkway leading into the kitchen. Sam was on his haunches as well, and had also drawn his gun.

“That was a warning, Thane!” Came a voice from outside. Through the ringing numbness in their ears, it sounded as if the man were yelling through a cone of cotton, but his words were still clear. Omigod, is that actually Sean Bean out there? Annabelle thought, ludicrously. It sounded even more like the actor than Jack did. And that was a warning? She didn’t recognize the source of the voice, not knowing any men with that particular accent other than Jack.

But Jack swung around to face the direction the voice came from, and his eyes had gone wide.

Annabelle watched him. His expression had changed from pissed and frustrated to surprised and apprehensive. He recognized the voice?

“Give us Brandt and the vial and we’ll let everyone else live, Jack,” the voice continued, taking on a more personal tone, “including Clara and Annabelle!”

Whoever the guy was, he knew his stuff. He had enough information under his belt to be able to hit Jack where it really hurt. He’d called the girls by their first names and also somehow knew that Jack, Clara, and Annabelle were still alive, inside the house.

“Oh, fuck me,” Jack muttered, under his breath, and shot a glance at Sam. Sam shook his head, once. He wore the same pale, uneasy expression.

Jack closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing the grit out of them. Then he opened them again and re-focused on Sam. They exchanged a meaningful look and Sam nodded.

Jack turned back to Annabelle. He knelt and put his lips beside her ear to be sure she would hear him. “Bella, we’re heading underground again. Get on your hands and knees and slide them across the floor to keep from getting cut. Don’t lift them, understand?”

Annabelle nodded.

“Move in front of me and follow Sam.”

Again, she nodded and got on her hands and knees. She was still clutching something in her right hand, but Jack couldn’t tell what it was.

“We’re counting to ten, Jack!” There was a pause from outside and then the voice added, in cruel jest, “Maybe!”

Ahead of them, Sam had made it to the doorway of the entertainment room, where he signaled to Clara. Clara nodded and tugged on Dylan’s sleeve, who followed behind her, keeping his body pressed as close to the ground as possible. At one point, however, he lifted his left hand and placed it back down atop a shard of glass.

He inhaled sharply and bit back a curse.

“Slide along the ground, Dylan,” Clara instructed him. “Don’t lift your hands or legs.”

“Got that,” Dylan shot back.

Clara ignored his irritated tone and continued to lead him after Sam.

In a few seconds, the five of them joined up in the hall, protected on both sides from windows and the glass they’d shed. Here, a few shots had made it through the old plaster of the hallway, but it hadn’t sustained as much damage as the rest of the house.

“Where is Cassie?” Annabelle asked, keeping her voice low. Outside, she could hear men shouting to one another and she knew the house was being surrounded. Middlesex was a small town and the mansion was set back into more than thirty acres of un-cultivated land. No one in New York was going to help them right now.

“I’m here,” came the reply. Annabelle looked up toward a door at the end of the hall as Cassie came around the corner, followed by Virginia and Craig, all of them sliding on their hands and knees across the hard wood floor.

At the same time, the door to the hall bathroom popped open and Beatrice came crawling out quickly, moving like a spider across the floor. “Bloody ‘ell, when do you think the next time’ll be that I can use the loo withou’ being nearly blown to bits!”

Annabelle couldn’t believe their fortune that no one had been severely injured in either the gunfire or the grenade blast. What were the chances of that? Was it even possible?

And that’s when it hit her that the men who had shot up the mansion and thrown the grenade had known very well what they were doing. They’d kept from hurting anyone on purpose.

Only the best hit men knew such tactics. These guys were not the amateurs who had botched Max’s suicide. So, who were they?

Just then, there was another blasting sound and Annabelle knew that the door to the back porch had been blown off of its hinges.

“Everyone move back!” Jack waved everyone out of the way, fanning them out in a circle around a space in the floor.

Annabelle muttered under her breath. “Another trap door?” According to Clara and Beatrice, there’d been one in the mansion in Forest Hills as well, and that had been how they’d escaped when Reese blew the house up. Jack had a thing for trap doors. Which was brave, considering he hated dark, damp and enclosed spaces.

Jack didn’t waste time answering her, but he did shoot her an exasperated glance just before Sam handed