Behind them, the closing door echoed briefly around the cavernous space before a silence laced with anticipation descended from the rotting rafters.
Adam didn’t waste any time approaching the bound man. When they reached the illuminated area, he gestured for Chase to hang back as he stepped into the light.
“Please…” Hood struggled to lift his head. “You said it was over.” His words were a slur, speech with a broken nose and missing teeth difficult to master in such a short amount of time.
“Itisover, Tom.” He pulled his Beretta.
“No!” Recognizing the sound of Adam’s voice, Hood’s head snapped up, fear supplying him with a momentary burst of energy. Pulverized, the man’s face was a mushy mass of bruised and swollen tissue. He looked much the same as Tara had when Adam’s men found her.
He struggled against his bindings, the legs of the chair leaving drag marks in the dust and the blood as he tried to back away. “No, no, no.”
As a rule, most of the men Adam killed never saw him coming. This was different. This was retribution. He removed the silencer from his jacket pocket and snapped it onto the end of his gun, the metallic click a death sentence.
“Please…don’t do this…it wasn’t me!” Hood’s words sprayed blood as he spit his lies. “It wasn’t me!”
Adam leveled the gun and with his thumb removed the safety.
“Wait, Sam! The bitch deserved it, please don—”
A single muffled shot to the head silenced the man mid-plea.
Of the three men responsible for Tara’s pain and suffering, two were now dead. With Victor Bodak already occupying a pine box and Hood taken care of, Adam could now focus on the one remaining.
Jonas Johnson had a reckoning coming.
As soon as he gave up the information on who had Tak, the secretary would have a whole lot more in common with the men he’d hired to do his dirty work, including a new address six feet under. Relocation, courtesy of Adam.
CHAPTERSIX
“Son of a bitch,”Grant muttered under his breath as the Bruins gave up a two-goal lead with one minute left in the third period. Disgusted with his team, he changed the channel to one of Davis’s car shows.
Overall, this night had turned into one for the shitter. He should be in Detroit, or anywhere else really. Anywhere but here, in the great room, with the one woman he wanted and couldn’t have.
Fucking Mackenzie.
The bastard hadaskedhim to stay. Asked him to help keep Gray safe, knowing Grant wouldn’t be able to say no. Not the first time, and if Chase had his way, it wouldn’t be the last.
“Smile,” she said, adjusting the manual settings on the fancy new camera her brother had given her. A replacement for the one she’d sacrificed the day they met. The day he went from being a gun for hire to shackled to a special operations unit he wasn’t a part of and never could be.
He turned his head, and she snapped his picture.
“Jesus Christ. You look like a terrorist.” Sprawled the length of the couch, her feet in Grant’s lap, Gray glanced up at him and arched a brow. “Oh, fuck off with that look,” she said in response to what should have been an intimidating glare.
Stretched out on the area rug in front of the fire, the dog lying beside him, Davis choked on his popcorn. Dropping hisTop Gearmagazine and knocking over the snack bowl, he sat up and thumped his chest. Unconcerned, Jeff hoovered the abandoned Orville Redenbacher’s without lifting his massive brown head off the floor.
“Put your arms in the air,” Gray instructed and promptly took a picture of a red-faced and ridiculous-looking Davis—hands over his head like he was about to be arrested.
“Does that even work?” Grant asked, thinking back to all the times his grandmother had made him do the same thing as a kid.
“Well, he’s not dead, is he?”
“I don’t think he was about to kick it, Gray.”
“How do you know?”
“He never stopped breathing.”
She shrugged and poked him in the ribs with a pointy big toe. “Maybe that’s because he put his hands in the air.”
