Deal with the Devil (17 page)

He drops Willy’s head so it lands hard on the cement floor.

“Stop it.” I feel numb, and cold. Tears still track down my cheeks but I don’t bother to wipe them away.

“You want to take his place, darling?”

“You promised not to hurt her,” Cecile tries to move forward but Mack grabs her arm, holding her back.

Ares barely spares her a glance before turning the full weight of his terrible gaze on me. “That’s up to her. Isn’t it, sweetheart.”

“What do you want?” I ask as if it matters. As if anything matters anymore. Leo is dead.

“Give me the contract.” One of his underlings hands him a thin stack of papers. “Good old Willy drew this up for us, nice and legal. You sign all that money over to me and I don’t start cutting you up.”

“Hold on,” Mack cries. “That wasn’t our deal!”

“Our deal was for a simple snatch and grab,” Ares snarls, turning on him. “Now I got four dead guys and a couple of hundred miles of riding tracking this bitch down. You can be happy with what I give you or I can take you out right now.”

Mack wisely doesn’t argue. But it’s obvious from the murderous look in his eyes that he’d kill Ares over this if he could. If only Mack wasn’t as terrified of the Apocalypse leader as the rest of us are — and a complete chickenshit.

A momentary spurt of satisfaction runs through me at the look of impotent rage on Mack’s face. 
Serves you right, asshole
.

The satisfaction lasts until Ares turns back to me. “What’s it gonna be, girl? We doing this the easy way or the hard way?”

Indecision freezes me. I don’t want to give any of them the satisfaction. But I know that I won’t be able to withstand whatever it is that Ares plans to do to me.

“Just sign the papers, Mara honey,” Cecile pleads. I realize in her own twisted way she’s trying to protect me, even if it’s too little too late. What will she do if I say no? Will she rush in to protect me?

Probably not. But part of still wants to believe that some small part of her still remembers how to be a mother.

Leo would tell me to just give them what they want. He wouldn’t want me to get hurt over money.

Except Leo is gone, so it doesn’t really matter what he’d want.

“What’s the hard way?” I ask, voice full of false bravado.

Ares’s eyes gleam. “Oh, I’m so glad you asked.”

The group parts to reveal a metal table, rusted and dark red with blood. Fear courses through me, but I fight to keep my expression impassive. I won’t give him the fucking satisfaction, even as my heart pounds like a gavel in my chest.

“This used to be a meat-packing plant. Convenient, right?” Ares’s tone is conversational, like he’s the cheerful tour guide through a house of horrors. “We started in on Willy to get that phone number, but he didn’t last long enough for it to get fun. You look like you might hold out a little bit longer.”

His tone is almost flirting as he describes torturing me. It’s sick.

Ares holds up a long length of chain with a dull clank. “Normally we use this for dragging, but it’ll work pretty well to hold you down. Then I like to start slowly, maybe with the fingernails — pull those off one by one. It won’t do any permanent damage, but it hurts like a son of a bitch.” He laughs, long and low. “Or so I’ve been told.”

My lip curls in disgust. But I school my features to fight any other visible reaction to his words. I refuse to let him see just how scared I am. Let him have fun with his little mind games while I frantically try to think of a way out of this. One that doesn’t involve letting him have Papa’s entire estate.

Because what’s gonna stop them killing me afterward, anyway?

“Not many people last through that, but I’ve got faith in you.” He pulls a long knife out of its leather loop at his hip. It gleams dully in the low light. “Next we’ll get to work on that pretty face. That’ll probably get your attention. What do you think, boys? Maybe I’ll take this to the corners of that sexy little mouth of yours. Make it so you’re always smiling. Girls are so pretty when they smile.”

I could run. I used to run track in high school. There’s a minuscule chance that I could make it to the door before they catch me. But then what? Where the hell am I going to go? I don’t have a place left in the world.

Ares raises an eyebrow at my prolonged silence. He obviously expects me to be crying and begging for my life in the face of his threats. Breaking down just isn’t my style, even if the fear is very real.

“This isn’t going to work,” I say, fighting to keep my voice calm. “Even if I sign those papers, none of this will hold up in court.”

Ares doesn’t appear worried. “That’s why you’re going to give us all the account numbers, too. We’ll keep you here for a bit until everything’s transferred. Nice and easy.”

They’re going to kill me, I realize with distant awareness. Even if I give Ares everything that he’s asking for, I’m still a loose end that needs to be tied. If I called the police, the FBI would get involved. Murder, extortion, racketeering, blackmail…the list of crimes they’ve committed in the last twenty-four hours is a mile long. What’s the life of one girl when you’re facing several lifetimes worth of years in prison?

A brief look of frustration passes over his face. “What’s it gonna be, bitch? You gonna play this smart or do I start taking body parts?”

“Fuck you!”

“Then hop up on the table, darling. Let’s have a little fun.”

He starts to advance on me. Until a familiar voice cuts through the air.

“You first, asshole.”

* * *

L
eo looks awful but alive
. My heart soars for one glorious moment and my knees go so weak that they can barely support me. I’ve never believed that swooning is real, until this very moment.

That’s before I realize just how much danger he’s in right now.

And he’s hurt!

Dark blood stains soak the front of his shirt. The hand holding his Glock racks with tremor. His other hand disappears into his suit jacket, obviously holding onto the source of his injury.

He’s been shot, I realize with another surge of sick fear. And he’s one man against a dozen. There’s no way that he can take them all on at once, especially injured.

It’s bad, too. I can tell from the white of his skin and the eyes that he squints in pain.

I try to run to him. But ruthless arms grab me from behind and pull me back against a hard chest.

“So, lover boy returns from the dead. It’s like a fairytale.” Ares’ voice is mocking and sure of itself. He knows he still has the upper hand. “Or maybe Romeo and Juliet. Don’t they both die at the end?”

“Let her go.” Leo’s face is pale and drawn, but determined.

“Or, what?” Ares laughs over my head and squeezes me hard until I make a pained sound. “You brought a pea shooter up against an army, boy. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right where you’re standing?”

Leo looks like he’s about to collapse. A streak of despair runs through me.

“I’m giving you one chance,” Leo says, his voice weak. “Let her go and walk away.”

“Just kill him,” Mack pipes in angrily. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

Asshole. Obviously, his hatred of me has transferred completely onto Leo. I should have let Leo kill him when he had a chance. I resolve at that very moment to never let sentimentality get in the way of what needs to be done. If Leo says someone has to die, then I’m going to believe him.

But I can feel the hesitation in Ares body. He’s smart, even if he is a fucking sociopath. He knows that Leo wouldn’t come in here without some sort of plan.

“You got backup out there somewhere?” Ares snarls, voice heavy with suspicion. “You run to the fucking pigs like a chickenshit?”

“I don’t need the cops.” Leo’s voice holds a determination that I wish I shared. “Last chance, Ares.”

“I heard you were crazy,” Ares says with a complete lack of self-awareness. He holds up the knife. It looks like it’s still flaked with dried blood from the last person he sliced up. He presses it against the side of my face. The blade just barely touches the tips of my eyelashes. If I breathe too hard, it’ll slice me. “But I didn’t know you’d be this stupid.”

“Five,” Leo says calmly.

“The fuck are you counting for?”

I’m wondering the same thing.

“Four.”

“Four? What the hell is four?”

“Three.”

Agitated murmurs start up among the bikers. They’re going to shoot Leo before he ever gets to one. I pray he has a plan that’s not Ares just letting me go out of the goodness of his heart.

“Two.”

Ares presses the knife against my throat. I feel a sharp burn as it cuts into the skin. “Stop counting, motherfucker.”

“One.”

Leo pulls the hand out of his jacket that I thought held the wound on his stomach. Instead, he’s holding a cellphone. He raises it up and presses a button.

“Get down, Mara!” he yells and dives for the floor.

I lift up my legs, forcing Ares to hold my entire weight with one arm or drop me. He lets me go but the knife slices a deep cut across my cheek.

My knees hit the floor just as an explosion rocks through the far side of the factory. I hear screams. Fiery heat rushes over me, hot as an inferno. I throw myself to the floor as the sound of gunfire barrels over my head.

Leo is on his knees. His face is full of cold determination as he aims and fires the Glock through the smoke.

The place is in chaos. Ares has disappeared from my side and I don’t see him in the haze of smoke and fire. I crawl toward Leo, trying to make myself as small as possible while still moving forward. I’m practically blind. Acrid smoke fills my nostrils as I try to breathe, so harsh that it burns a trail from my throat all the way down to my lungs.

“Mara!”

Leo grabs my arm. He’s pulling me behind a metal barrel and reloading his gun. His hand on my back forces me down. I can tell from the sounds that a few of the bikers are returning fire, but I think most of them are running.

The sound of sirens is barely audible over the gunfire, but I still recognize it. Firefighters and police will be here soon.

A woman is screaming. It must be my mother. I try to look, but Leo pushes me down again.

“Don’t move,” he yells.

The sound of gunfire gradually recedes and the smoke slowly begins to clear. A small fire surrounds the hole that’s been blown in the side of the building. Leo must have set up explosives before coming into the warehouse.

I remind myself to ask him where the hell he got explosives.

Eventually, my mother’s shrieks and the sound of sirens is all I can hear. The bikers that are still alive have fled. I carefully look away from the few dead bodies scattered around the warehouse.

Where is Ares? He’s the one we really have to worry about.

Leo slowly rises but stops me when I try to follow him.

“Stay here,” he commands.

Fuck him, I think to myself. He’s never going anywhere without me again.

Leo picks his way carefully through the wreckage toward the sounds of my mother’s screams. I follow right behind him. She’s finally starting to lose steam because her screams have become more like the whistle of a teakettle and less like the bellow of a steam engine.

When we finally find her, Cecile is huddled over Mack’s dead body. Or at least, I assume he’s dead. Since a big piece of his chest and neck is missing.

I wait for some emotion to rise up me. At the very least, I expect the slight discomfort of witnessing someone else’s suffering or seeing that another person has lost their life. But I don’t feel anything except relief.

See you in hell, fucker.

“Where’s Ares?” Leo asks. He shakes Cecile hard a couple of times until she stops screaming. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” she chokes the word. “He and the rest of them took off — all the ones that are still alive.”

“We should go,” I say. The sound of approaching sirens gets louder.

Leo scowls at me when he realizes I’m not hiding in the corner like a good little girl. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

“What about Mack?” she wails.

“Mack is dead.” Leo has as hard a time sounding sympathetic as I do. He grabs her arm and tries to pull Cecile up, but she resists. “We have to go.”

“Just leave her,” I say, not caring one way or another. I’m glad she’s not dead, but the rest of what I feel is going to take a while to sort out.

“You want her staying here to talk to the cops?”

He makes a good point. Together we’re able to force my mother up and get her outside. We practically have to lift her into the cab.

We’ve just barely got her in when Leo collapses against the side of the truck.

“Leo!” I rush to his side. A fresh burst of red slowly grows larger on the front of his shirt. He’s bleeding. “You’ve been shot!”

He tries to laugh and then gasps in pain. “A couple of times, I think.”

“We have to get you to a hospital!”

When I try to lever him up, Leo grabs me around the back of my neck. He pulls me down until I’m kneeling on the ground beside him.

“I thought they killed me, but I had to get back to you. I couldn’t leave you alone. I had to come back. I promised.”