I’m lying here in wait, ready to pounce, get up, and kill someone.
My heart should be racing from adrenaline, but that’s not the case.
Wait. Can I even move? The whole medical coma bit. Damn. I can move, right? And I won’t be all sluggish, right?
General Janius Jackson had been a little too tight-lipped about the poison. I get that it’s not something for the general public, that it’s a need to know kind of thing, but now, I’m starting to worry a little. What if she’s in on this? No way. That’s impossible. I’m paranoid.
My nose itches, and I instinctively wiggle it. Damn. I can, which is great, but I also shouldn’t be moving.
There’s the sound of heavy footsteps on rocks and the grass. Tox. He’s pacing. He’s been on and off since he got off the phone with John Doe. I really hate this. I think I’m going to go out of my mind with—
There’s another sound, that of tires on rocks and grass.
John Doe.
Or maybe he had a goon come instead. I wouldn’t put that past him. The bastard—
“You do good work, Tox,” a deep voice says. An impossibly deep voice. A voice I recognize.
Silver Hair.
John Doe.
He’s here.
“You might want to check out my good work,” Tox rumbles.
I do my very best to hold still. The packet I placed inside my clothes to release blood onto me was a nice touch, if I do say so myself. I shut my own eyes as soon as I went down, but before I did, I saw the look of shock on Tox’s face. Maybe I should’ve warned him about it, but he’ll survive. Oh, maybe that was why he was pacing. He was worried he actually killed me. I hadn’t thought of that. I assumed his pacing had been from wanting John Doe to hurry up and arrive. That’s why I would’ve been pacing if I could’ve gotten up and paced.
Footsteps approach, and fingers touch the side of my neck. I don’t know how the blood is circulating throughout my body with my heart beating. That’s the entire point of a heartbeat, after all, but it is.
He's pressing his fingers down harder than Tox had, and that's when I make my move. My left arm has been underneath me this entire time, gripping a dagger, and I sit up, forcing John Doe back slightly. Even though my arm has a bit of pins and needles sensation, I go to stab him.
He blocks the blow, squeezing my wrist tight, bending it unnaturally. I jerk, trying to move my body in such a way that I can tolerate the pain and not drop the knife, but he doesn’t let me, still on top of me from when he bent over to check my heartbeat.
Tox mutters a curse, and he rushes over. He must’ve been too afraid to shoot John Doe in the back, but I’m not in the way. I’m not blocking the shot.
“What is this?” John Doe snaps as he jerks me to my feet, still holding onto my wrist, bending it yet, making me his human shield. “You two are in cahoots together, aren’t you? Why, Kurian? You know I would’ve paid for that house for you. I had a whole list of jobs for you, people I wanted you to take out, but no. You had to go and screw things up by falling for this whore.”
“Who are you calling a whore?” I ask angrily.
“Oh, don’t act as if you’re innocent.”
I can just twist my neck enough to see him sneer.
“Who else did you want killed?” Tox asks.
“Who else do I want killed,” John Doe corrects. “Don’t you worry about that. I’m going to kill you both, and—”
“No, you aren’t,” I say.
He gives up on holding my wrist and snakes an arm around my throat to choke me, but I manage to get my fingers in on his arm so I can yank his arm enough so that I can breathe.
Yes, I’m breathing again. Whether or not it’s because I need to, for oxygen, or because I’m doing so because of force of habit, I don’t know, but I welcome in the fresh air, and then I go down onto one knee.
He doesn’t want to come down with me, but I shift him up and over my shoulder. He doesn’t release me, and we end up rolling, my back to his front, but his arm is no longer around my neck, and I scramble to flip over and back away. I’m not sure about grappling him. I think I felt the pressure of a sheathed knife on his leg when we rolled, and I don’t trust him to not have more weapons on him. Close quarter combat like the grappling would require would mean that I could be a dead duck in seconds if he gets out the knife and stabs me.
Of course, I have a few other weapons on me too, but no gun. I might be able to get the upper hand with grappling, but there’s not just me here. Tox can help. He—
“We’ve got company,” Tox says bitterly. He’s moving his gun, sweeping it, and I notice two other thugs. They’re climbing out of the trunk from John Doe’s car.
Guess Tox’s more lookout than backup. Damn.
“You were going to take Tox out,” I accuse John Doe.
He tilts back his head and laughs. “Is that what you think? No, actually, Sophia Clyde, that’s not why I brought them along. I have my own bodyguards now. Things are too close to coming together for me to risk it. After that stunt you pulled with Ali Khan, I have no choice but to have bodyguards with me at all times.”
“What’s coming together?” I ask.
“You don’t need to know,” he snaps as his bodyguards come on over toward us. They’re hulking brutes, built like tanks. I think they might be twins. But as they approach Tox, they look like
