Deliver

Chapter 34

Liv closed the final few feet with her chin held high, and her strides wide and easy. Her insides, however, shook with a violence that strangled her breaths.

The shorter of the two men wore a Guy Fawkes mask, painted with a mustache, goatee, and a cynical smirk. The bodyguard didn’t share his employer’s creativity, his face distorted in a transparent sleeve of nylon.

“Good evening.” Guy Fawkes cocked his head.

“We’ll see.” Her cool voice tangled in the autumn air.

The bodyguard approached her, and she remembered the drill from the intro meeting. She stretched out her arms, her phone in one hand. Beside her, Kate stared at her bare feet.

He prodded around her mask and hair and patted down her bra, corset, and skin-tight shorts. When he reached her boots, he lifted the gun as she’d expected. Pocketing it, he moved to Kate and repeated the search. That done, he stepped back.

The Guy Fawkes mask turned toward Kate. “Come to your Master.”

Liv clasped her wrist and walked a step ahead of her, holding her to the side. Was Camila there yet? Could Liv cut the fucker before his bodyguard shot her? Stall, stall, stall.

She released Kate’s arm. “Kneel.” As the girl descended to the ground, Liv arched into Guy Fawkes’ suit-clad body, inhaling the stench of musk and greed. She cupped his groin.

He swelled in her grip and held a palm out, halting his guard’s advance. “How much for both of you?”

Same question he’d asked last time. If he saw her scarred face, he’d probably choke on his persistence to buy her.

“Pay me for one slave.” She tightened her fist around him. “Then we’ll discuss the prospect for two.”

He pulled out his phone, his fingers tapping on the screen over her shoulder. She stroked his erection, bile burning through her chest, challenging her steady breaths.

“Sent.” He pocketed the device and slammed a hand down on her ass. A heavy fucking hand.

The sting rippled down her leg and burned through her muscles. He reared back and hit her again. Her fingers fell away from his dick to clutch his hip. She was sure he broke blood vessels, the sadistic prick.

Her phone vibrated in her hand. She held it between their chests, unlocked it, and glanced at the text.

Van: Funds received

Her heart soared. It took a great amount of discipline to hold in the relief blubbering to escape. She breathed to the beat of “Glory and Gore” and lowered the phone to her bodice. As she worked it beneath the binding, she slipped the pen knife free, her body pressed to his in a wretched embrace.

The bodyguard stood a few paces away, his nylon-smashed expression skimming the surrounding woodland.

She flicked the blade open, her hand hidden beneath the rise of her chest, her pulse thrumming wildly. Trusting that the Guy Fawkes mask limited his field of vision, she swung the scalpel upward, and sliced his carotid artery. He shuffled back, cupping the spray of blood beneath his mask.

The bodyguard straightened, drew a pistol from his hip. She stopped breathing.

One shot fired from the trees. Two. Three.

He jerked back, stumbled. Oh, thank God. The beam of headlights illuminated a crimson stain at the center of his white shirt. He snapped his gun up, aimed at her, and fired.

The bullet whistled past her. She leapt on him. Took him to the ground. Landed on his chest, the knife slick in her grip, her heart beating at a dangerous velocity.

The buyer hit the ground beside them, one hand squeezing the flow of red at his throat, the other clawing through the dirt to grab her leg. His fingers caught her calf in a blood-slicked grip.

She jerked her leg free and stabbed downward, hitting the bodyguard’s chest. The blade sank an inch and stopped. The sternum? A rib? Shit, shit, she couldn’t push it in. He shoved her away, raised his gun.

A gunshot cracked from the brush.

The beige of his nylon hood turned red, seeping blood. The gun dropped, and his body slumped.

A ragged breath tore from her throat. She unlocked her limbs, shaking violently, and checked the pulse in his throat. Nothing. She scrambled toward the buyer.

He lay on his back, arms lolled to the side. She tore off his mask and stared into the lifeless eyes of a weathered face.

She sat back on her heels, removed her own mask, and choked on the copper-tainted fumes of death and defeat. Nausea gripped her insides. Her first seven captives had fattened Mr. E’s off-shore account, but they were free and their buyers dead. And her eighth captive— A sharp pain ripped in her chest. She inhaled deeply. Josh was safe.

Kate knelt a few feet away, curled over her thighs, shoulders trembling. Liv needed to go to her, but her legs wouldn’t move, the gravity of what came next weighing her down.

One more kill. In Van’s bed. Where he would find her dead and rotting and clutching her letter.

The stampede of foot falls crashed through the trees. A moment later, arms wrapped around her, Camila’s familiar spicy scent a temporary comfort.

“I’m sorry, Liv. We tried to get here in time.”

Shoes scuffed the rocky terrain around her, sounding the movements of young men gathering the dead and cleaning up the evidence. Young men she’d abducted, humiliated, whipped, and jacked off.

Killing herself would free them for good. It would also free Mom and Mattie. Mr. E would have no reason to harm them if she weren’t around to experience the horror of it.

She should’ve ended her life years ago, but Josh had been the push she needed. Releasing him back to his parents was the right thing to do. Perhaps it was his integrity that had given her the strength to be honorable.

She hugged Camila’s slim shoulders and dropped her face in the black silk of hair. “Don’t be sorry. You still managed to fire a kill shot. Thank you.”

Camila pulled back, shaking her beautiful round face, her eyebrows drawn in confusion. “We didn’t shoot anyone. We just got here.”

Her blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

“Liv?” The deep accented voice behind her belonged to her second captive.

She pulled to her feet and came face to face with Ricky, who aimed a gun at a pair of pale green eyes. Eyes she never thought she’d see again. In his hand, dangled a Taurus PT-22 with a pink wood-grain grip.