I looked out over the crowd of assholes, trying to figure out the layout of this fucking shithole. I never came up this way usually, happy enough to leave the drug dealers to their industry so long as they left me alone too. But I was regretting that now. Regretting not knowing more about this place. Regretting the fact that Winter had been up here all this time and I’d never had a clue. I wondered if she’d been here before I’d arrived. Or if they’d brought her here since. Either way, that act had been their deaths in the making. And I was more than happy to take the job from the Grim Reaper.
My gaze skimmed across the drunken assholes then suddenly caught on movement on the far side of the largest fire. A flicker of scarlet hair. As my gaze zeroed in on that spot, my skin prickled and rage licked down my spine.
Winter was there, her lip busted open and her clothes half missing. She only wore the plaid shirt I’d given her, now full of rips and tears that showed bloodied flesh.
Several assholes surrounded her, shoving her between them like she was nothing but a toy and they were determined to play with her.
A man grabbed her, big with thick, dark hair that hung down his back and a laugh so loud that I could hear it over the noise of the crowd separating us.
My upper lip peeled back as he caught her by her hair and yanked her towards him, pawing at her breasts through the shirt. She swung a fist at him but he deflected it, then she drove a knee into his balls.
He bellowed in pain, throwing her away from him so forcefully that she fell to the ground and I pulled the trigger the moment she was clear.
The bullet caught him right between the eyes and my heart leapt and pounded with a raging need to finish every single one of these motherfuckers.
Chaos broke out at the gunfire, the men yelling and screaming, drawing their own weapons as they tried to figure out where the shot had come from and I started firing into the crowd to the left of Winter’s position with abandon.
Some of them tried to fire back, their shots going wide even when they aimed my way. More of them tried to run and I cut them down too. They’d all been there, taking part in that torture or watching it, or ignoring it. I took each crime as equal. She was just a girl who’d done nothing to any of them and not one man here had been interested in helping her. So why should I have mercy on them?
The men closest to Winter managed to get hold of her again and I growled in frustration as they dragged her away. I spotted Duke with her, swinging a rifle around as he ran but I couldn’t risk taking the shot while she was so close to him.
More bullets were fired my way as the men began to narrow down my position above the main mine entrance, but I didn’t flinch. I was practically impossible to hit laying down like this and with the floodlight blinding them, they couldn’t get a good aim on me anyway.
I fired again and again, pausing to reload when I had to, my lip pulling back grimly as the survivors began to flee instead of trying to fight back. It was like a turning tide. First one ran, then two, three. All of a sudden they were all running for their lives and leaving their friends bleeding out in the snow. I let them run, there were more important things for me to do than hunt down cowards. My girl needed me.
I rolled over and slid off of the ridge, skidding back down to solid ground where the snow crunched beneath my boots. The silence was filled by the groans of dying men and the crackle of the bonfires, but there was nothing else to be heard.
I darted between the trees, my ears ringing from the gunfire and my pulse pounding with adrenaline and fear as I headed in the direction I’d seen them take Winter.
A few guys were laying in wait behind a parked car, but they didn’t see me slip by in the trees and by the time I opened fire, they didn’t have time to return it.