we reached a door, and one of the men swung around me to twist the handle and shove the wood open. We stepped into what looked like an abandoned warehouse, the ceilings at least fifteen feet high and the walls stretching out fifty feet on either side of us.
Just as I thought, Moritze stood in the middle of the room, gun in hand, a grin stretching his lips to think that he was smarter than me and I’d fallen for his trap.
“About time you found me,” he called out.
My grin stretched wider. “I could say the same thing. For what you must be paying these guys, it took them long enough when I was practically drawing them a map to where I was.”
We stopped within ten feet of him, his two men on my left and right, their guns held to my head like they might actually pull the trigger.
“Where’s Lisbeth?”
Moritze flashed me a broad smile, the glimmer of his white teeth competing against the amount of gold and diamonds he wore. “In bed where I left her. She was a bit tired after I took what I wanted.”
My eyes moved to see that his hair was slicked in place like usual, dragged down to see his clothes were unwrinkled.
“Must have been a boring fuck. Lisbeth tends to be a fighter when ridden hard. Yet you look so well put together.”
I noticed the slightest shake of his hand that held the gun, but I didn’t drop my eyes to it. Instead I held his stare, daring him to lift the weapon and point it in my direction.
“You killed my men, Moritze.” Tsking my tongue against my mouth, I stood still. “It pissed me off.”
“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing you’ll be joining them soon. A happy family reunion.”
In the distance, a sound caught my attention, my eyes shooting to the shadows behind Moritze, at the opposite end of the room only lit by a few single bulbs above our heads.
Something moved, but rather than focusing on it, I dropped my stare back to Moritze.
Echoing his words back to him, I prodded the asshole along, tired of the game he was playing. “So, were we going to stand here eye-fucking all day? Or are you planning to do something with that gun?”
Moritze’s smile slithered across his features, his beady eyes narrowing as he lifted his arm to point the gun my direction. His men slammed their hands over my shoulders to shove me to my knees. And while I could have fought them, I dropped instead, letting every one of them believe I was as weak as I seemed.
Moritze pinned his stare on me, pure hatred a black haze behind his eyes as he slid his finger to the trigger.
“I’ll tell Lisbeth you said goodbye.”
The muscles in my shoulders and arms tensed, my body stilling even more as I prepared to show this asshole what I had planned for him.
But before I could move, a feminine voice called out from the shadows, surprising all of us.
“Callan!”
Memories of the past collided with the present, the sound of my name so familiar that I wondered for a split second if I’d missed the moment of my death and had already stepped foot into the afterlife.
Lisbeth
Coming into this room had been stupid on our parts. The woman leading me was desperate though, the gunfire too close, the screams of men being shot so awful that she knew we had to hide, or we’d get caught.
As she practically dragged me through the halls, the blood dripping from my head leaving a trail, she checked every door to find them locked, only one left open for us to go through.
When we entered the room, it was empty, every sound echoing in the large expanse. Guiding me to the far back, she’d barely hidden us in the deep shadow when the door opened again and Moritze walked through.
The door had shut behind him quietly, his eyes scanning the distance before he looked down at the floor and grinned. Sliding the toe of his shoe through my blood, he gripped a gun in his hand and spoke.
“I didn’t think you’d make it out of the basement on your own. I whacked you pretty hard.”
His eyes lifted, slowly searching the distance to seek out movement. His gaze never locked on where we were sitting, the light in the room too dim.
“Guess you’ll have a front row seat for Callan’s death. They’re flushing him out now, guiding him