Gone Black (23 page)

Instead, he rounded the foot of the bed and stopped about two yards out from her, but just in front of her, squarely facing her. Trapping her back against the bed. Keeping the jagged shard of glass down behind her right thigh and tight inside her curled fingers, she edged sideways laterally, away from the wall out toward the center of the room. He countered her movement. For the first time, he smiled. Ice cold, cruel, totally without humor. “Uh-uh, Ms. Morgan, can't get away this time. Time to pay the piper and take what's coming to you. That smart mouth of yours won't save you from the horrific beating I'm about to give you.”

Now in big-time trouble, Claire decided to bait him. What else could she do? Maybe he wasn't as invulnerable to insults as he thought he was. Maybe she didn't have any other choice, either, other than to throw the first blow. But he was ready for that, too, she could tell by his stance, one leg behind the other, knees slightly bent, poised to react to whichever way she went, ready for her. He was heavy with muscle, tall as Black was, broad shouldered, and strong as an ox. No way could she put him down in a frontal attack. No way could she ever let him get a good hold on her or get on top of her. But maybe, if she played dirty, she might have a chance. But she knew that the instant she put herself into the reach of his long, muscled-up arms, her chances of winning went straight down the tube. So taunt him she must.

“So, what now, Max? You decide to come up here and act all big and strong and scary and make me shake in my boots? That it? That how you get it up? Unarming women and then showing them who's boss? Bet you wouldn't be so confident if I had a weapon in my hand. How about making this a fair fight? You know, for once in your life? Scared to?”

Max stared at her as he slowly tugged a glove onto his left hand. He said nothing until he had both gloves in place. He was probably afraid he'd mess up his new manicure when he slammed his fists into her face.

“Actually, Ms. Morgan, I didn't give any of that much thought. You need to be taught a lesson for annoying my sister and making her act even crazier than she usually does. So I'm going to have to put you in your place. Break a few bones, maybe. Mess up that pretty face of yours. Make sure you leave her alone for the rest of your stay with us. Truth? The fact that you are such an attractive woman only makes it that much more enjoyable for me.”

Max stopped there and smiled as he continued. “I am going to humiliate you now, Ms. Morgan, in ways I don't think you've ever been humiliated before. Until you beg for mercy. After you plead for your life a while, beg me to stop hurting you, then I'm going to go over there and activate that grenade vest and buckle it onto your broken body. Then I'm going to drag you upstairs and blow you up in front of your man. I might let him say good-bye to you, but I might not. I haven't decided. He won't die then, though. My father plans to keep him here a long time, but he'll wish he was dead. He probably already does. Trust me on that.”

Very glad to hear the vest wasn't armed yet, Claire knew it was imperative to get away before he strapped the explosives on her. Once he did that, she was dead all right. That was the last act. She forced out as contemptuous a laugh as she could muster when so frightened that she could barely breathe. It came out sounding a lot more confident than she really felt. “Oh, I don't know, Max, I've been pretty damn humiliated, now and again. I suspect you're very good at this kind of thing, though. You know, like I said, you're hell on wheels when beating up unarmed people smaller than you are. Just like your jackass, whacko bitch sister. You know, stripping somebody of all defenses and then being such a big tough guy. Not so tough with even odds, though, I'll bet. Say, with Nicholas Black up there. He would eat you for lunch if you didn't tie him down and drug him first. Tell me, have you ever given even odds? But, oh, yeah, that's right. You usually just pick on women because they're so much smaller than you are. Know what that makes you, Max? A big coward who probably runs like hell from fights with real men.”

Max's dead eyes now burned a hole in her face. He wasn't smiling anymore. He wasn't frowning anymore, either. He had his workaday expression in place, as if he just had a chore to do and he needed to get started so he could go back downstairs and watch football.

When he did finally say something, Claire wished he hadn't. “Do you want to take off your clothes yourself, Ms. Morgan, or do you want me to do it? Your call. I will give you that option before we get started.”

At that, Claire's blood pretty much formed into ice crystals, but she wasn't going to let him assault her sexually. No way. She'd rather be dead than let that happen. She'd rather kill herself. So now she had a very good incentive to fight him, tooth and nail, and she still had a very sharp mirror shard that he didn't know about. “Oh now, let me think, Max. That was just, oh, so titillating, my word, it really was. But guess what? I'd rather kiss a corpse than undress for you.”

Max took another step toward her, his eyes very cold now, as he looked her up and down. Then he noticed that her hands were both hidden behind her back. She gripped the sharp piece of glass even tighter. It was gonna cut her hand big-time when she plunged it into his neck, but so be it. “You do understand that I'm gonna fight you like hell, right, Max? That I won't go down easy.”

“I would expect nothing less. I've heard all about you from my father. But that famous survival instinct that you're purported to have? It's only going to get you hurt worse, make the hour-long beating I'm going to give you harder and bloodier and more brutal than usual. Think twice before you do something that stupid. There are times in battle when surrender is the wisest move. The path of least resistance.”

“Oh, I get it. Better to just lay docile and pretend you're Black, huh? Don't think so. You just don't measure up to him, you know, as a man. Or anything else.”

For the first time, Max looked annoyed. Annoyed, cold, determined, and deadly. But, aha. He did have a problem with his own virility. Maybe that was his trigger. Maybe he got stupid when people used it. “Not much of a man, are you, Max? I bet you can't get it up with a woman if you're not beating the life out of her. That it? You got a problem that you don't wanna talk about?”

Man, he looked livid now. She had gotten to him. She didn't move. Just waited. Alert and ready.

“Shut your mouth and get on that bed.”

That's when Claire went for it, darting to her left. Unfortunately, he was quicker than he looked, but now he was close enough to stab. He grabbed her by the back of her T-shirt and jerked her around to face him. She let her body go with the rotation, using the centrifugal force, her fist with the sharp glass out now, the pointed tip plunging straight at the side of his neck. He saw the attack coming, feinted right, but she still managed to thrust the glass hard and deep into his left side. It hit a rib and stopped abruptly, slicing a deep, painful cut into her palm. She didn't even feel the pain. She jerked it back out and thrust it in again at his waist, twice more, quick and hard and deep, getting him deep in the soft tissue under his ribs.

Roaring with pain and anger, Max shoved her back off him, and then backhanded her so quick and hard that she couldn't dodge the blow. He hit her on the side of her head, on her ear and upper jaw. Claire went flying backward onto the floor, as he grabbed at his wounded side, groaning in agony, blood running out between his fingers. He started screaming down at her.

“You bitch, I'm gonna kill you, you fuckin' little bitch!”

Claire lay on her back on the floor, dizzy as hell, ears ringing, jaw on fire from the brutal blow, but she rolled away from him as he lunged down hard on top of her and grabbed her by the throat with both his hands. Completely enraged, he got his thumbs on her gullet, squeezing, squeezing, fingernails cutting into her flesh, clamping off her air, and she was choking, but she still had a good grip on that blessed piece of glass. Her right hand was bleeding down her arm from the deep laceration across her palm, but she didn't care, barely felt anything but the desire to kill him, kill him, stab him over and over and over again, until he was dead. Max was right above her, leaning down into her, his face purple with rage, all the self-containment and control that he'd bragged about now gone, his veins popping out on his forehead and temples, blood pouring down his side.

After that, Claire didn't hesitate, didn't think, and just acted out of raw, animal bloodlust. She jerked her hand with the makeshift weapon out from between them and started plunging the jagged, bloody, sharp shard into the side of his neck, as hard as she could, over and over, trying to hit his jugular vein. Then she finally cut it and hot blood gushed out of his slashed throat in a long pulsating stream of red, covering both her and him and the carpet. She jerked the glass back out again, did it again, still clutching the glass in a tight death grip, the palm of her hand a bloody mess of torn flesh, ripped deep in a gaping wound that she still didn't feel.

Max came up on his knees over her, holding his butchered throat, and then he very slowly reeled backward onto his heels, no longer trying to stop the gushing blood that was pouring down over his arms and chest. He fell sideways, onto his left side, gurgling and gasping, his throat sliced down into his windpipe and making sickening sucking sounds. Claire scrambled away from the dying man, shaking uncontrollably all over, sick and sobbing and breathless, scrambling back as far as she could from his thrashing legs, and not stopping her hysterical flight until her back hit the far wall.

Then Claire just watched, groaning herself, sick with revulsion and burgeoning shock, as he rolled and floundered a few more seconds, but his death throes did not last long before he just stopped moving and went still, lying on his back in a giant pool of blood. Claire just sat there for a while, her heart thundering, cradling her butchered hand against her breast, filled with disbelief that she had done such a thing, killed a man in such a way, and then she somehow pushed herself up, shaky, trembling, but made it to her feet, and then she stumbled around, very weak, her shirt and jeans dark and slick and coated with Max's blood.

Heaving in hard breaths, she forced herself to calm down. She bent over at the waist and clasped her hands together and felt like she was going to vomit. She still didn't feel the pain from her sliced hand. She stood there like that, trying to overcome the shock and the horror of what she had done and tried to control the dizzy nausea that assailed her every time she tried to stand up. When she finally managed it and began to think clearly again, she looked at the door, expecting more armed men to crash in and grab her. She waited, her pulse racing, but nothing happened. She couldn't let herself be overcome with the gore and the stink of freshly spilled blood and the horror of what lay there in front of her. She had to stay calm, because now, at a terrible cost, she was free.

When the bomb detonated, Novak had been the lucky one. He had seen the ticking bomb lying on the floor beside the bed, cried a warning, and dove back out into the hall. Although his two companions had leaped back away from the blast, they hadn't been fast enough. So when the smoke cleared a little, Novak found himself lying on his back halfway out in the hall. He sat up slowly and tried to shake the fog of shock out of his head.

John Booker was lying just inside the door, having been blown backward and completely off his feet. He had hit the wall hard and crumpled down but he hadn't been very close to the bomb, either. But it looked like he was either unconscious or dead. Novak wasn't sure yet. From where he sat, he could see lots of shrapnel embedded in Booker's arms and legs and sticking out of the Kevlar vest. After a few seconds, Booker moved, groaned a little, and Novak realized the vest and helmet had saved his life. He could hear Holliday groaning and could hear him rolling around in broken glass and rubble, also very near the door.

Novak rose up on his knees, still shaky, his muscles quivering. After a minute, he forced himself to stand and struggled back to the door. It had been blown off and was lying out in the hallway. Holliday was just inside the demolished room, conscious and holding his leg and groaning. The wound in his thigh was bleeding heavily from a short piece of splintered wood protruding out about four inches above his left knee. He was also covered in shrapnel wounds.

Everything else inside the room was pretty much destroyed, the windows blown out, the fire growing larger and getting closer to them. Novak held his aching head in his palms for a second. His temples were pounding hard from the severe percussion suffered at close range; his eyes ached from dust and grit and the taste of gunpowder and smoke. That's when he realized his head was bleeding, because he had to blink blood away to clear his vision. Still, he was alert and in charge of his faculties, still able to function and cognizant of their immediate danger. He picked up his rifle and raised it to firing position and pressed his back against the wall in the hallway, pretty certain that Soquet's men would storm the corridor any minute.

Soquet had outsmarted them. He had been expecting them to come. It had been a trap, plain and simple. This was the moment that Marcel could attack full bore and wipe them out for good. Especially since Novak was the only one up on his feet and in any condition to fight. He waited there a second longer, not ready to let down his guard yet. The long corridor remained empty; the chateau silent except for the periodic sound of plaster dropping off the walls and ceiling, the crackle of flames, and Holliday's low groans of pain. But no pounding of boots, no ratcheting of guns, no men bearing down on them. That was good, but it was also surprising. Novak went inside then to get the others out before the fire devouring the room reached them.

Slinging his rifle strap over his shoulder, he grabbed Holliday by the back of his vest and dragged him out into the hall. Once he got him a safe distance away, he went back for Booker, hoping he wasn't as badly hurt as he feared. Booker wasn't moving now, and Novak knelt down beside him and placed his fingers against his neck. He could feel a beat, very faint, but he was still alive. Hopefully, Booker had just been knocked out. He had been first in, at the forefront of the assault, and thus the first one to get the blast. It looked as if he had thrown himself to one side and turned his back to the bomb, both of which had probably saved his life. The right side of his face was cut up pretty bad and bleeding profusely, and his helmet was singed. Novak pulled Booker outside and hunkered down beside Holliday, still watching the end of the hall for attackers.

Holliday was sitting up now, alert, his back propped against the wall. He had pulled the wood out of his leg and was binding up the wound. “Got hit with something,” he muttered, breathing hard, in obvious pain. “Penetrated my thigh. Went straight through, though. Didn't hit an artery, thank God. Pretty sure I can walk.” He looked down at Booker and said, “He's not dead?”

“No, but he might have some internal bleeding. Blast got him first. Lucky he's still alive. So are you.”

“We need to get the hell outta here. Why aren't they comin' at us?”

“Maybe they're outside, waiting for us. Think you can stand up and walk? We need to figure out what the hell's going on.”

Holliday was able to push himself up. He held onto the wall. He was angry. “We walked into a goddamn trap, like fuckin' amateurs. That's what's goin' on. They planted Black's GPS here and played us for fools. Now they've got him and Claire somewhere, and we're never gonna find them. Not in time to save their lives.”

Novak already knew all that. Had realized all of that, and right off, and that all of this had been a skillful diversion to take them out, kill them all in one fell swoop. The guards downstairs had been duped by their own people. They had been nothing to Soquet but collateral damage in his attempt to stop Novak and the others. Claire had told him that Soquet was clever and well-practiced with complicated tricks and intricate bombings. They had been expecting him to use bombs in defense, but not the way it had come down.

Soquet had won this go-round all right. Claire was in his hands now, too, somewhere unknown, probably far from Marseilles, and that savage animal could do anything he wanted with her. They had been played for fools and were helpless now. Nick and Claire both faced painful deaths, if Soquet hadn't already killed them. Furious at himself for walking into such a ruse, Novak said, “Okay, let's get outta here. But I doubt this is the only surprise he's got in store for us.”

Holliday took a step, using his rifle as a crutch, and groaned. Novak picked up Booker's limp body and heaved him up and over his shoulder. Booker was trying to come around now, moaning and mumbling incoherently. Good sign, that. But that was the only good thing about what had happened. If any of them made it out of the building alive, it would be a miracle.

Novak took the lead, proceeding cautiously, expecting to be fired upon at every turn of the corridor and especially at the base of the staircase. But nothing happened; nobody showed up. Just the lifeless bodies of the men they'd killed to gain entry, still lying where they'd shot them down. They had been sacrifices all right, pawns to get Black's rescuers upstairs to the bomb site, so Soquet could blow them to smithereens. Novak cursed his own gullibility as he carried Booker down the wide main staircase, because he knew they were in a world of hurt now. God only knew where Black and Claire were. He kept going, eyes moving from side to side, searching the shadows, his rifle up and ready, his mind working hard, trying to figure out how this could have happened. How they could have been so stupid.

Hell, Novak should have known when they gained entry with only a handful of men there to stop them that it was a trap. But they'd done what they'd thought was the right thing and had been tricked. Right now they couldn't waste any more time thinking about that. They had to get out and go back to square one and figure out where they went wrong and where Soquet was keeping Black and Claire prisoner. Things had now hit a catastrophic level, and Novak wasn't sure there was anything any of them could do about it.