on his lifeless friend. Aim. Fire. Gone. Two to the face had taken him out. He didn’t even know what hit him.
Khane and Walt weren’t saying anything, nor did I hear any background on them, which meant that the rocks were more than likely blocking the signal.
The men below continued to fire, but not as frequently, which hopefully meant that we were decreasing the numbers that had spread through the mountains.
Despite the signal-blocking rocks, my phone buzzed, and I yanked it free and swiped my frantic fingers over the surface to read the message.
“No visuals. Ten minutes out.”
Fuck! I had sent in a team of guys to Mecca’s location before me, but they hadn’t arrived yet. Their negative update on her status scratched up my insides like broken glass. The notion that Mecca was in danger was ripping me apart piece by piece. She could be dead in ten minutes. I had my fingers poised to send a reply text, but the click of a weapon at my ear stopped me.
“Drop the fucking weapon!” a deadly voice ordered.
I opened my fingers, and my phone and weapon dropped, but I followed up the action with a swift spin, sending my foot connecting with the man’s weapon, knocking it from his hand. Just as quickly, I drew my hunting knife and sent it slashing across his abdominal area.
The sloping terrain made it difficult to stand as fast as I was able to spin, so I let him make the hard moves. The result was him bending as he attempted to draw his backup weapon.
The heel of my boot came down on the back of his head, bringing him down to my level before I climbed and positioned myself atop him. I sent my knife into his side twice before I aimed for his head. He blocked the headshot, but the wounds I had inflicted had his movements sluggish and sloppy.
The stabs were what he got for assuming I needed my gun. The slash fest I inflicted was finished off by me planting the knife deep in his chest, the tip of a rib cracking on impact.
I’d had to go in through the side of his left pec, since he was wearing body armor. I didn’t retract the knife while I sat watching him struggle to take it out.
“You’re dying. I’d say you have two minutes left, so you may as well tell me who you’re working for.”
He coughed, blood spurting from his mouth. His bulging eyes rolled frantically left and right, glaring at me like the devil I knew I was. I sat on his chest, staring down on him, smiling as he lived his worst nightmare.
“90 seconds. Tell me who hired you.”
“Black Saints,” the man sputtered before a hacking cough sent more blood gushing from his mouth.
I edged my fingers around the grip of my knife before I jerked it out of his chest.
“I lied. You actually could have lived if I hadn’t taken the knife out.”
At the sight of his wide eyes, I sent the knife through the soft, pallid skin under his chin until it vibrated, chipping across his jawbone before it slid inside to the hilt.
His eyes glazed at the exact moment the sharp metal connected with his brain and short-circuited the network of neurons firing off there. He froze, his eyes wide, pupils dilating and seeing something I couldn’t as life drained from them.
The Black Saints. Why? Was it possible that Mecca’s own people were setting her up to die? The shit made no sense, which was why I wasn’t going to believe it until I got to the bottom of the situation. After a quick glance around, I picked up my phone to finish my text.
“Under fire, backway, Green Mountain Pass, take care of Mecca.”
There was no reply or return calls from Mecca. At thirty, she was sending me into an early mid-life crisis, and there wasn’t shit I could do about it but let the stress and worry consume me.
The ping of a return text had me snatching my phone from my pocket.
“Two minutes out.”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I had killed three men, and they still didn’t have eyes on Mecca. This was a reminder of how fast she could lose her life. I needed to hear her voice. I needed to know if she was okay.
Had my wife fearlessly walked into a trap set by her own crew?
25
Mecca
“Stop this shit, Trench! She’s an innocent girl that has nothing to do with business between you and