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No, not Damien.
The lieutenant.
Someone was about to die.
The sound of things breaking downstairs stopped, and the laughter grew louder. Closer.
“Get down.” Jack motioned at Kate and me.
Kate complied immediately, her white hair disappearing below the table, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the man with the gun.
I’d only ever seen him bleeding, starving, disheveled, and exhausted, and even then I’d thought he was the most captivating creature on earth. But I’d had no idea. Seeing him cleaned up—a crisp white shirt stretched over hard muscle, his clean-shaven jaw clenched in concentration—made me realize what a force of nature he really was. Damien exuded power and confidence, filled the room with his perfectly composed potential to strike. It was like being in the presence of a king cobra—hypnotizingly beautiful and every bit as deadly.
So, when the voices grew louder and the stairs began to creak, I wasn’t afraid.
But I should have been.
Because after Damien fired his first shot and I heard a body tumble down the stairs, his gun only clicked.
Plaster exploded above his head as the second sailor returned fire. Damien ducked in front of the sofa as bullets spewed from the stairwell, disappearing around the far side of it as the Russian charged into the sitting room. The moment his boots hit the landing, Damien tackled him from the side.
My heart leaped into my throat as I watched him pound the man’s face with the butt of his pistol. The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. A sick, dull crunching. I thought the man was already dead. I thought Damien was unleashing all of his training and torment on a corpse. But when I noticed the Russian’s arm move, my entire world narrowed to the size of the object in his hand.
“Damien!” I screamed. “Gun!”
The moment I said his name, Damien’s gaze cut over to mine, and like water on a blacksmith’s blade, every glowing ember of warmth I’d felt from him moments earlier was extinguished, blackened, honed into a weapon of solid steel. The Russian lifted his hand and shoved the barrel of his pistol under Damien’s chin, and in that split second, I thought the bullet was going to pierce my own heart. A scream lodged in my throat as Damien jerked the sailor’s hand away, his cold, calculating stare darting to something over my shoulder in the process.
A rush of air ruffled my hair as a butcher knife sailed past me, spinning end over end before sinking into the side of the sailor’s skull, causing his entire body to jerk and his gun to go off.
Plaster dust rained down on them as Damien stared at his attacker, chest heaving, fist squeezing the man’s wrist so hard that his knuckles turned white.
“Couldn’t let ya have all the fun now, could I?” Jack teased, walking over to him.
But Damien wasn’t looking at her. His gaze slid from the dead body beneath him over to me, and I knew that no matter how relieved and awestruck and grateful I felt, the only reaction he would see on my face was pure horror. I was sick to my stomach over almost losing him, over the focused, unflinching way he’d bashed that man’s skull in. I could still hear the crunching, Damien’s soft grunts of force, the sudden, wet chop of metal through bone.
But mostly, I was horrified because I knew we’d summoned another threat, one that filled me with more dread than our two unexpected visitors combined.
“Shh!” I called out as the hair on the back of my arms stood up. I felt the hum rather than heard it. Felt it in every bruise. Every knife scratch and nearly broken rib vibrated at the same frequency as the death machine coming to investigate. “Hide in the stairs! Now!”
Damien didn’t hesitate. As I grabbed Kate and ran to the stairwell, he and Jack dragged the body in behind us. I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from shrieking as his cleaved head bumped down the stairs next to me, butcher knife still lodged in place.
No sooner had his last boot disappeared into the shadows than a beam of light illuminated the spot where it had just been. The curtains were closed, but they were sheer enough that the drone hovering outside could no doubt see in. And so could the Russian surveillance team operating it.
I didn’t realize I was hyperventilating until Kate squeezed my shaking hands.
“Breathe,” she whispered. “It’s gone, love. It’s gone.”
I couldn’t speak. All I could do was shake my head and pray for someone to read my thoughts. My heart was racing, my breaths were ragged, and I was suddenly freezing. My whole body shivered as Damien appeared at my side.
Gasping for air, I reached for him, pushing two words out between my insufficient, panicked breaths. “Not … gone.”
Nodding, Damien pulled me into his lap and pressed his lips to my forehead. “She’s right,” he announced to the women. “If the drone’s here, that means they heard the shots. They’ll keep searchin’ till they find the source … and the bodies when they realize they’re missing.”
“I hate these fuckers.” Jack gave the body sprawled out on the stairs a kick.
Kate pressed her fingertips to her lips, a vacant look in her unfocused eyes. “What do we do?”
“We give ’em what they’re lookin’ for.” The steady tone of Damien’s voice had already begun to calm my terror. He would fix this.
