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I swung an exaggerated look around the mostly empty dining room. “From what?”
Mattie’s molasses brown eyes held mine, and then whatever fear and nerves had taken hold of her shrank back down under a mask of cold indifference. “I want to watch.”
“Ruthless little thing,” I murmured, reaching out to stroke her chin. Her cheeks and eyes were already starting to swell from whoever had hit her, and her chin was the only safe place I could touch. And that alone fanned the flames of fury back to a roaring fire in my blood. “Stay with Tab, then.”
Tabitha drew Mattie aside, and despite the clear lack of threat in the room, she positioned them behind the long walnut table that had been moved against the wall. I rotated my attention back to the sniveling worm who had left a three-foot trail of blood on the floor as he squirmed his way toward the handgun across the room. My boots echoed through the space, bouncing off the inlaid dark wood and up to the beams that crisscrossed the cathedral-style ceiling. Only the tortured sounds of Jonathon’s fear tore through the heavy silence, and I caught up to him just as his nose was four inches from the gun.
I scooped it up.
“Please,” Jonathon shrieked.
I rolled him over with my boot, causing him to scream in pain as his body weight pressed against his shoulder. I bent over, and with my gloved left hand, I grabbed the front of his shirt. I hauled him upright, forcing him to his knees. “Please, what?” I asked casually. “Let you have this?” I held the gun at his eye level.
Two, dark eyes swiveled in their sockets, first to Mattie across the room, and then back to the gun. “I wasn’t going to kill her.”
“I know that.” I pressed the muzzle against his forehead. “And I’m not going to kill you either. Initially. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have the time to take care of you the way you deserve, Cohen.” I pulled back my hand and whipped the gun across the right side of his face. He whimpered, crying out in a high voice and nearly toppling over. I kept him upright and surveyed the angle of the mark I’d left on his face. I glanced at Mattie’s face. Close enough.
As soon as he had righted himself, I pistol-whipped the other cheek with the gun still fisted in my hand. Now his face matched Mattie’s. His head recoiled and blood spattered from a cut on his pale skin. He gasped and cried out pathetically, bringing his head forward again and ducking his chin down. “Please! I’m sorry, dammit. You can have her, for fuck’s sake."
Have her. Like he had any right to give her. I glanced Mattie’s way again, and I found her hand on her mouth and eyes shining bright with fear. I shouldn’t have let her stay. No matter what she had said, this wasn’t going to make her nightmares any better. Blood trickled down her arm, and I realized it was because she’d had an IV in her arm. I rounded a furious scowl on the sobbing piece of trash on his knees in front of me. “Why are there doctors here?”
“Oh God,” he sobbed. “P-please.”
I pointed the gun at his arm, right where a hole had been put in Mattie’s, and I pulled the trigger. It clicked. Jonathon devolved into pleading gibberish, and I peered at the nine-millimeter. “You didn’t even have one in the chamber? You fucking moron.”
“Please,” Jonathon begged.
I grabbed him by the curly tuft of hair on his head and wrenched his swelling face to look at mine. “What were the doctors for?”
“L-lobotomy,” he sniveled, and then his stomach heaved as he threatened to wretch.
Lobotomy. Brain surgery lobotomy? I tightened my hold on his hair and yanked his head so far back, he’d choke on his own bile if he tried to spew on me. “Say that again. I think I might have misheard you.”
“She-she would have run,” Jonathon blubbered. “It was the only way to keep her happy. Please, I beg of you. I would have been kind to her. I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
“Did you say you were about to give her a fucking lobotomy?”
Jonathon didn’t answer in any kind of coherent way, but he didn’t need to. He sobbed, releasing loud, irritating spurts of panicked noise from his taut throat. I slowly turned again to Mattie. I soldered my burning, rage-filled eyes to her petrified gaze to confirm what Cohen had said. She closed her eyes briefly, like she couldn’t bear to look at my expression of horror.
I took in the kneeling vermin at my feet, and my fist tightened in his hair so hard, he screamed for mercy. My desire to make Jonathon Cohen suffer a slow, agonizing death faded, giving way to the need to end this monster before he could unleash his madness on another victim. He might not chase Mattie after this. He might decide she wasn’t worth the trouble, but men like him didn’t cease being monsters. They only fed their twisted desires with new victims and fresh torture. I knew Mattie wouldn’t be able to live with that thought any more than I could. “Close your eyes, Mattie.”
“Please, no! I swear! I’ll never touch her again!” Cohen begged frantically.
I pressed the long side of the top of the barrel against his swelling cheek, gritting my teeth. “You forgot to cock this.” I pushed the gun hard, sliding the catch against the side of his face so hard, it tore through flesh and wrenched his head back with the force of the motion. The gun racked, sliding into place and shoving a round into the chamber.
I pointed the muzzle at his forehead and pulled the trigger.
The whir of the jet swirled around my head, mingling with the pounding ache that slammed against the back of my closed eyes. Beneath my cheek, Kael’s arm shifted, and the movement tore me from sleep with a sudden jerk. I sat up, sucking in a startled breath and nearly knocking his chin with the top of my head. He caught my head between his hands and managed to stop me from giving him a bloody lip. “Easy, Bunny.”
I looked around the quiet, darkened cabin of the private plane in bewilderment. Dimmed overhead lights cast an earthy glow around the camel-colored leather seats, and the cabin beyond twinkled with mechanical lights from the open door to the cockpit. I sat curled up in Kael’s lap, which he’d somehow managed in a single seat with his foot propped up on the seat next to us and his elbows on the armrests.
I angled a look down to him, and he watched me quietly, his arctic eyes less sharp than usual in the shadows. A swath of beard growth graced the cut of his jawline. I lifted my hand, and shifting in his lap, I managed to scrape my fingers across the bristles. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He leaned into my touch, his eyes closing briefly. “You slept for a few hours. That’s good.”
I glanced around the cabin again, taking in the plush carpet along the middle aisle and the relatively spacious bathroom at the back. “How long do we have left?”
“Three hours,” he rasped. He looked exhausted. Thinking back to being taken, and then his rescue right after, he’d probably been awake for nearly two days at this point.
