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“I don’t even want to know how many of your nine livesyou’ve got left, but I can’t imagine they’re many.” I managed a wry smile. “Are you in pain?”
“Some throbbing.” He looked at his bandaged hand. “My arm feels like it weighs a ton.”
“You need to give yourself time to heal.”
“If you’re with me, I’m healed.”
I planted a kiss on his forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Lucky me.” He managed a smile. “How about another kiss, please? Surely, we can do better than that.”
“No way,” I said. “We don’t need your blood rushing anywhere right now. Slow and easy wins the day.”
He was about to argue the point, but the NPWT device showed up then. A tall technician, dressed in scrubs and wearing a surgical cap and a mask entered the room, pushing the cart. He closed the door, rolled the cart to the bed, and parked it beside me.
Focused as I was on Javier, I didn’t pay him much heed, but Javier narrowed his eyes on the newcomer. The groove between his eyebrows grew deeper. Defying his weakness and the meds, he started to get up.
“Ah, ah, ah.” The familiar voice iced my veins and froze Javier in place.
I turned to find a gun pointed straight at my face.
The man lowered his surgical mask and flashed his disfigured nose and fanged smile.
My heart galloped and my knees turned to goo.
“Hello, Missy.” The coral snakes tattooed on the man’s face wiggled when he grimaced his terrible smile. “You made me wait a while, but at last, I have you.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Javier
“Bekker,” I growled like a trapped animal. “I’m gonna kill you.”
“I made sure you can’t manage that at the moment,” the fucked-up merc taunted me, taking in my sorry state. “You’re gonna stay in your bed very quietly, while Missy and I go on a little journey of our own.”
“Don’t—”
“Shut the fuck up.” He pressed his sound-suppressed gun to Missy’s head, pinning me in place. “Change of plans. My boss figures that if we have the Astor baby in hand, Dagger and his stupid band of losers will do whatever he says. So, she gets to live for a little while longer. Shame I can’t say the same for you.”
“You won’t get out of this hospital alive.” Adrenaline pumped through my veins, dispelling the meds and some of the pervasive weakness, focusing my senses, and tensing every muscle in my body. “My team is all over this place.”
“Don’t I know it.” He ripped the surgical cap off his head to reveal his canary yellow hair and the snake on his forehead. “That’s why I won’t shoot you just yet. My boss doesn’t want to leave a trail of murder and cause an international investigation. And yet, some people are cursed with odd occurrences. Shit happens, doesn’t it?”
His smirk forecasted disaster. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“There’s a nice little zoo down the street,” Bekker offered all too casually. “Word is, a worker got bit. Your next-door neighbor brought the animal that bit him for ID purposes. This setup makes the next scenario somewhat plausible.”
Bekker moved. In one swoop, he uncovered the cart, pulled the string of the cloth bag that sat on the top tray, andmoving away from the bed, dragging Missy with him, tossed the bag at me.
Reacting on training and instincts, I lifted my injured hand and batted the bag away with my forearm. At the same time, I jumped off the side of the bed, and took cover behind the headboard. I registered the tug of the IV tube and the rip of the tape dragging the canula out of my flesh. I gave zero fucks about that.
Missy was in danger.
Bekker swore. Keeping his hold on Missy and limping from the round I’d put in him during our last encounter, he dragged her to my eleven o’clock, to the furthest corner away from the bed. The motherfucker had assumed I’d be too sick to move. Not that I was feeling great, but he’d miscalculated. I hurt like hell, but the antivenom already in my veins helped and I was trained to operate under duress. Allowing the venom in me to determine my actions was not an option when Missy’s life was on the line.
The cloth bag fell, not on my chest where it had been intended to land, but on the mattress toward the foot of the bed. A low, growling hiss echoed in the room. A massive king cobra slithered out of the bag. It reared up to at least three feet tall, spread its hood, and made direct eye contact… with me.
Fuck. I turned into a statue.Not again.
