meant for her. It was a cracking blow to his forearm, but the arm held, and Con went in under the strike with the knife, burying it deep in Monk’s gut.
Fuck. The blade went in, but the ripping-upward jerk he’d planned on using to eviscerate the bastard was a dismal failure. The guy’s skin was like rhino hide.
So Con pulled the blade out and stuck him again, and again, and, for his efforts, Monk grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lofted him into space, all without losing his grip on Jane.
Fucking airborne. Geezus. He hit the floor again and had his breath knocked out of him—again.
He did a quick calculation: him, the blonde, Jane, and dead Lancaster versus the subpar Souk knockoff who was cleaning his clock.
He needed help. He couldn’t do this alone. It was like going up against an Abrams tank.
“J.T.!” Jane screamed, struggling inside Monk’s heavy-handed hold.
Yeah. J.T. That was him.
He levered himself back to his feet, ready to wade back in and force Monk to release her, but to be smart about it this time, “smart” meaning not to let the bastard get a hold of him.
Unbelievably, to him, the blonde had the same idea, to get back in there and do some damage. She gave him a signal, a subtle movement with her hand—and he understood exactly what she meant. She was going to distract the bastard with a feint, staying out of his grasp and making an opening for Con to go in and make some contact that counted.
Great idea, and it worked. She drew Monk off, and Con came in high and landed a knife strike in the back of the beast’s neck, trying with all his might to sever something, anything—but no go. He got the knife in and got it back out, and then he got walloped again—and that time, something got shook loose.
He tried to get up, but fell back down, the world starting to spin, his skin getting hot. White light streaked across his line of vision, bringing pain, the headache from hell. Shit. This wasn’t just about Monk hitting him like a freight train. This was about his own personal fucked-up situation.
With agonizing effort, he got his hand in his pocket and pulled out some pills. A bunch of them fell onto the floor. Fuck. He could die here, and then what would happen to Jane?
The possibilities didn’t bear thinking.
He grabbed a red pill and put it under his tongue to melt, and he lay there, watching everything unfold around him like a strobe-lit dream, his body rigid with pain … Monk dismissing him with a sneer—yeah, you, too, buddy. Up yours. Jane reaching for him, screaming his name, and Monk pulling her in closer, lifting her off the ground—sorry, baby, so damn sorry. Monk reaching down and claiming Lancaster’s body. The blonde holding her injured arm close to her side and backing away from the beast.
Whatever the pill was going to do for him, it wasn’t going to do it soon enough. Fuck! With another ungodly effort, he got to his hands and knees and willed himself to get back in the fight.
Geezus, Jane. He needed to find his gun. It was the only chance she had. There’d be no outmaneuvering a pistol barrel jammed in the bastard’s ear. He could deliver that payload, by God.
The blonde was pleading with Monk now, begging him to release Jane, making promises, offering deals, but the bastard just kept walking backward, carrying Jane and dragging Lancaster and watching the blonde, heading toward the elevator—which was oddly jammed open with no car stopped on the floor and with a bright yellow M spray-painted on the wall above it.
Everything about the elevator setup screamed danger to him, danger and death, and Jane was headed straight into it.
Geezus. Where was his pistol?
“Tell Red Dog to get her ass up here,” Dylan shouted into his radio, running full out for the thirteenth floor. “Tell her I need everything she’s got.
Skeeter was alive. He could hear her voice, hear her shouting, and she was shouting for Jane. He hoped to hell that meant Jane was alive, too.
His job was to keep them that way.
The door to his and Skeeter’s loft was open. One look inside told him what he needed to know, and he went in with his gun drawn and leveled at the ready.
His wife had been injured, and that pissed him off, but she wasn’t captive.