about to try one more time to convince her to at least flee for help and save herself if not him, when the sound of rusty hinges announced a door opening and the return of their captors.
“Awake, I see.”
Jack considered closing his eyes and pretending he’d passed out again, but doubted it would work. So, instead, he raised his chin and glared defiantly at the speaker. Grizzly Adams, as he’d come to call him because he was huge with a lot of facial hair, was leading four men toward him while four more were spreading out around the room to keep an eye out the windows.
Just to be sure they weren’t caught by surprise by someone hearing his screams of pain and approaching the building, Jack supposed.
“Your boss still not here?” he asked with more bravado than curiosity. Although, the attempt at bravado made a poor showing with his words coming out slurred and somewhat garbled by his swollen mouth and possibly broken jaw.
“Nope. He’s been delayed,” Grizzly Adams said with a grin. “Good news, right? Means we get to play a little longer.”
Since getting to play meant Grizzly Adams could continue to pummel his face and chest with his big meaty fists while Jack sat there helplessly taking the blows and trying not to scream as he waited to pass out from the pain, he didn’t really see that as a good thing. He’d almost prefer for “the boss,” whoever that was, to show up and kill him or whatever the endgame was. It seemed obvious he wasn’t going to escape. Might as well get it over with. Although, it would be nice to know what this was all about. Grizzly Adams wasn’t talking, however. All he’d say is the boss wanted to tell him himself. Obviously it had something to do with his work. The boss was probably someone he’d put away at some point in his career, or a relative of someone he’d put away and it would be nice to know why he was going to die.
Jack’s thoughts were scattered by an explosion of pain in his chest as Grizzly Adams delivered his first blow and, he was sure, broke another one of his ribs. Christ, the man had fists like bowling balls. The impact and pain brought a broken woof of sound from him, but made Lacy shriek like they were connected and she felt the pain. He’d barely noted that when a second blow landed, this one to the already broken jaw. It sent his face turning sharply to the right.
Stars exploding in front of his eyes, Jack had to blink to clear his vision enough to see when a door burst open at the end of the room. It flew inward, crashing against the wall with the impact of an explosion, raising dust and dirt in a cloud that partially obscured the figure now standing in the doorway. At first, Jack assumed “the boss” had arrived, but as the dust storm settled and he took in the silhouette framed against the streetlight pouring into the room, he realized it was a woman and a very shapely one at that. Which didn’t mean it couldn’t be the boss, he supposed, but the reactions of his captors made it clear it wasn’t.
For one second they were all tense and silent with shock like himself, but then they each relaxed and even began to smile.
“Well, look what we have here, boys,” Grizzly Adams said, a mean grin pulling at his lips. “Someone else to play with . . . The boss said no messing with the schoolteacher, but he didn’t say anything about wild women who wander into our playing field.”
Jack blinked at the wild woman comment. He couldn’t see her well, but with the light surrounding her like a nimbus, she looked more like an angel to him than a wild woman. Until the men started toward her. The moment one got close his angel turned into a demon.
God in heaven, she moved fast, Jack thought with awe as she went from completely motionless to a Tasmanian-devil-speed spin from which her leg shot out and caught the nearest man in the head. It was a hard hit, lifting him off his feet before he flew backward and crashed to the floor. He didn’t get up, Jack noted before shifting his attention back to the woman. The other men were converging on her much more swiftly now. No doubt they were angry at what she’d done