A second thought went through my head-my sister might be all right.

This strange man may very well have saved my sister from being murdered, but I also didn't believe he was in my house for any good reason. He'd entered through a door which had been opened illegally, and he'd brought a gun into my house. No, the dead men must have wished us harm, but I suspected so did this man.

I didn't plan on standing around and waiting to see if he killed one of us. I needed to act.

Securing my grip around the knife, I edged forward. If he swung the gun on me, I'd be dead. If Nickie woke up and came out of her room, she'd die, too.

I needed to take this guy out before anything else happened, though I had no idea what I'd do with the two dead men on the floor afterward.

My breath was caught in my chest, too terrified to exhale in case the man heard me. Even my heartbeat sounded too loud, and I was amazed he couldn't hear it pounding, sending blood rushing through my veins like a waterfall.

I wanted him dead, but something made me pause. These men had been sent after us, that much was clear, but by who? I could hazard what I believed would be a fairly accurate guess, but why had this guy killed the other two? He had either betrayed them for some reason, or else they hadn't been together at all and I had two separate groups of people after me.

Or after Nickie.

Each situation was as plausible as the other. I needed to know the truth if I was going to protect myself and my sister.

The only person who could possibly go some way to answering my questions was the a.s.shole I was currently stalking with my knife.

Chapter Six.

X.

From my position in the bushes, I had watched the two men steal into the house. I found a strange amus.e.m.e.nt in them opening the back door in exactly the way I had planned. But I couldn't let them continue. I didn't know what they were doing, but from the fact I hadn't been warned about the possibility of their presence, I had to a.s.sume they hadn't been placed here by the man I was currently working for.

This caused me a problem. Yes, they might do my job for me, but they might also kill the sister, or do something even worse to her, which would be difficult for me to explain. It wouldn't go down well if I said I'd stood by and done nothing. There were some people you didn't want to p.i.s.s off in the world, and the man I was working for was one of them.

Plus, something about the idea of these strangers going into the tattooed woman's home and killing her while I stood out here twisted something deep inside me. I needed her to be dead, but I didn't like the thought of another man doing the job. I wanted that intimacy for myself, wanted to look into her eyes, touch her skin, inhale her scent. Yes, I'd promised myself it would be quick, and I'd have done it in her sleep so she wouldn't have had time to fight back, but now I discovered I wanted more. I wanted to experience just a little part of her, and these two guys looked like they intended to take that away from me.

I waited until the men had entered the house, and then slipped in behind them, moving as silently as possible. I held my weapon at my side, my finger on the trigger, ready to fire at a moment's notice. The silencer had been attached, though it never made a gunshot completely silent. When I killed the two men, it was bound to wake at least one of the inhabitants of the house, and then I would have to deal with the fallout. It wasn't ideal, but what other choice did I have? I couldn't bring myself to walk away, not now.

From my research, I knew the bedrooms were positioned down the other end of the house, and no one had emerged from them yet. Had the dark haired woman with the tattoos heard anything, or was she still sleeping soundly?

I couldn't let the two men find out.

The other men were focused on the rooms up ahead, their weapons drawn and pointed in front of them. Like me, they were completely dressed in black. They were so focused on what was ahead, that they hadn't noticed me approaching from behind.

Moving quickly and almost silently, I got as close as I could, only a matter of ten feet away-the optimal distance to make the shots the first time, while not getting close enough for them to hear me. I lifted my gun and shot the guy on the right first, directly into the back of his skull, and then turned my weapon on the next guy and pulled the trigger. He had enough time to start to turn toward me before the bullet lodged in his brain. The first man had already fallen forward, hitting the floor with a thump. Because of the way he'd been turning, the second man fell at an angle, so he landed on top of his comrade, both sprawled, the shape of their two bodies creating an X.

I smiled to myself at that.

I was contemplating the pattern when the faintest of sounds came from behind me. It could have been the movement of the breeze from the back door, or a bubble of air in the house's pipes. But I knew someone was there.

Spinning around, I prepared myself to shoot, expecting to find a colleague of one of the men I had just killed. I blinked in surprise at the empty hallway, but then I realized I'd been wrong.

Like a coiled snake, she darted up at me, the glint of metal in her hand, and then, before I'd even managed to fire a shot, I found a large knife protruding from my forearm, which she then pulled down in a vicious yank. My fingers involuntarily pulled inward, like a dying crab, and then sprang open again. The gun fell to the floor. I lifted my other hand to sideswipe her, but she was fast. She ducked again, wrenching the knife from the flesh in my forearm, and then sinking the blade into my thigh. Instinctively, I bent to clutch at the knife and prevent her doing any more damage, but she wiggled it in just the right place and my leg gave out from beneath me.

I found myself lying on the floor, only a matter of feet from the two men I'd killed myself. I managed to get a swipe in, aiming a punch for her face in order to knock her unconscious, but she jerked back and grabbed the knife again, wrenching it out of my thigh. I bit down against a cry of pain as she grabbed my gun from the floor.

"You should be thankful that blade didn't slice you a couple of inches to the left," she hissed.

I glanced down at the wound not far from my crotch, and my still intact c.o.c.k. Yes, thank G.o.d. Even if I was going to die, I would like to die with my d.i.c.k still attached.

"What are you going-" I started to say, but she shushed me and put her finger to her lips.

"I don't want my sister to wake up. If she does, the s.h.i.t is going to hit the fan, so keep your G.o.dd.a.m.ned voice down."

"How's she still sleeping?" I whispered back, not wanting to push this woman. She looked crazed, in her little tank top and shorts, with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. Her long, almost black hair was loose and fell in a silken curtain around her shoulders, and her tattoos looked like patterned shadows in the dim light. I didn't want to push her. I needed to play things right if I was going to get out of this. She wasn't a professional, and she'd take her guard off me at some point. When she did, she'd regret the two knife wounds currently seeping blood into the cheap carpet beneath me.

"I'm going to bleed out here if you don't do something," I said, keeping my voice low.

Her eyes narrowed at me. "So? I already have two dead bodies to deal with. Adding a third isn't going to make a difference. I'm going to guess you being in my house at three in the morning, holding a gun, wasn't you coming to make me breakfast in bed."

I couldn't exactly argue with her.

"I was protecting you," I said instead. "From those guys."

She snorted. "Sure, you were. Now wait here one minute. If you try to drag yourself out of the house, I'll remove that little dangly thing between your legs I'm sure you're so fond of."

"Hey, less of the little," I managed to croak, and received a closed-lipped, sarcastic smile in response.

She was right, I was fond of my c.o.c.k, and I preferred it to remain attached to my body. I could drag myself along the floor, with my one good arm and good leg, but she'd stop me before I could make any distance. I also didn't doubt her honesty about being prepared to cut off my d.i.c.k. I'd been told about the things she'd done in the past, and I knew she had it in her.

She approached the two dead men and picked up the guns they had dropped when I'd shot them. Stepping back over me, her arms filled with weapons, she vanished from the hallway. I took a moment to look around for anything I could use as a weapon. But the s.p.a.ce was completely bare-no furniture, or even framed pictures hung on the walls. Pain lanced through me as I twisted toward the bodies of the two men I had killed. There was a chance they would have additional weapons on them-perhaps guns in ankle holsters. Working quickly, I dragged myself toward the nearest one, reached out to the foot clad in a shiny black boot, and trying to get a hold of the bottom of his pants leg.

"What do you think you're doing?"

I turned back to her voice, and found the weapon-which used to belong to me-pointed at my head.

I thought quickly. "Just wondered if they had any I.D. on them."

"Why would they have I.D.?"

I shrugged. "They might, and then it would give you an idea who sent them."

"And who sent you?" she asked.

I locked eyes with her, and she stared right back, unflinching.

"I think you probably know that already. And if I don't call this in and tell him the job has been done, he's only going to send someone else after you."

I could see I'd gotten her thinking by the way her gaze slipped away from mine. But she stormed up to me, and before I could tell what was happening, she'd grabbed my useless arm and dragged it together with the other, then wrapped my wrists in thick black duct tape.

"At least it goes with my outfit," I quipped.

"Shut up," she snapped back, and slapped a piece of the tape across my mouth.

She moved to my feet. I considered lifting my uninjured leg and attempting to kick her hard enough in the head to knock her unconscious, but she still held the gun, albeit not as firmly as before, wedged under her arm as she worked the tape, pulling a length of it free long enough to wrap around my legs. I clenched my teeth against the pain every time she moved me, agony shooting down both my leg and arm. I'd meant what I'd said to her about bleeding out, but she didn't seem to care too much about that at the moment. I couldn't say I blamed her.

With me secure, she went to a door in the wall-the cellar, I guessed.

She opened it and reached in to flick on the light. This was where I was going to end up. I took some solace in the fact she'd bound my arms and legs. It meant she didn't intend to kill me right away, so this bought me some time.

I wasn't a ma.s.sive guy, but I had fifty pounds on her, easily. But she grabbed hold of my feet and put her back into it, dragging me toward the open doorway. A set of wooden steps leading downward lay beyond. She'd never be able to carry me down there.

Turned out, she didn't plan to. When she'd hauled me through the doorway and to the top of the stairs, she used her foot and gave me a good shove.

I teetered, my whole body tensed for impact, though that was probably the worst thing I could do. I remembered reading about small children who survived big falls simply because they were so floppy, and so, despite the blinding pain caused by the knife wounds, I forced my body to go loose.

The young woman reached out with her foot and gave me one final shove.

I moved in a roll, my wrists and ankles taped together. I smacked the back of my head and then the front, hit my cut thigh and then my arm. Everything hurt, so I couldn't distinguish one injury from the other. I flipped over and over, thump, thump, thump, down each step.

Finally, I came to a rest at the bottom. I was lucky I hadn't broken my neck. f.u.c.k, this girl might just be crazier than I was.

Then I became aware of movement behind me. I didn't have time to process what had happened before something heavy but soft thudded down the stairs after me. The thing landed on top of me, a weighted ma.s.s pressing down. Then a second thing followed, also landing on top of me. The weight was so great, it threatened to crush the air from my lungs. Only my hands trapped beneath me allowed any breathing s.p.a.ce between myself and the floor.

She'd thrown the bodies of the two men down on top of me, so I now lay beneath the two hit men I had killed.

A trickle of unease spread through me.

Just what had I gotten myself into?

Chapter Seven.

V.

"Vee?"

My sister's voice came from behind her bedroom door, nerves causing it to quiver. The sound of me lugging the men's bodies and throwing them into the cellar must have woken her.

I paused, looking down into the cellar at the bundle of bodies at the bottom of the stairs, and then reached in and flicked off the light, plunging the one who was still alive into darkness. He wouldn't be going anywhere with his feet and hands bound, and the weight of two dead men on top of him. I'd shoved my new cache of guns onto one of the shelves in the nook beside the cellar door, and I hoped she wouldn't see them there. It was too late to hide them somewhere else now.

"It's okay, Nickie. Everything is fine," I called back.

She'd grown up in the same household I had, and knew when something was going on that you shouldn't open the door to. Things were different here, but her seventeen years of training hadn't changed overnight, and so she remained hidden in her room.

Softly, I shut the cellar door, and then walked down the hallway toward her bedroom.

"Do we need to call the Marshals?" she called out.

I approached her door and knocked gently. I pushed it open and found her standing in the middle of the room, looking young and afraid, pulling down the oversized t-shirt she wore with one hand to cover her thighs.

"It's nothing. It's been taken care of."

"Vee, please tell me."

The att.i.tude she'd given me only a few hours ago had vanished, and my heart softened at the sight of her. I didn't like that. I couldn't afford to go soft, not now, not any time. I could keep myself alive, but it was her I worried about.

I didn't want her to end up like me.

"Seriously, Nickie, I've taken care of it. You can go back to bed."

Her gaze drifted down and alighted on my clothes and hands. Her eyes widened. "Where did the blood come from?"

I glanced down to see red streaked across the front of my tank top and on my fingers. In the dim light, with only moonlight coming through the windows, the amount of blood didn't look as bad as it was. I quickly wiped my hands off on the seat of my shorts.

"A bird got into the house," I said. "It was disoriented and flew into a window and broke its neck. I cleaned up the mess, but it was pretty gruesome. You wouldn't want to see it."

Her nose wrinkled. "A bird? In the middle of the night?"

I shrugged. "Like I said, it was disoriented."

"It must have been a big f.u.c.king bird."

"It was a ma.s.sive crow. Just go back to bed. You've got school in a couple of hours."

She didn't believe me about the crow, but she also knew not to ask too many questions. All too often, she didn't like the answer. With a sigh, she turned away from me and got back into bed, but remained sitting up, the bedcovers pulled up over her knees.

I backed out of the room and gently shut the door, but remained standing there, listening to see if she'd get back out of bed.

I figured I'd better do something about the hole in the window beside the back door before she did. If I put a plant pot up against it, she wouldn't notice, but then I remembered that greenery and I didn't exactly get along, and plant pots weren't something I had many of. I knew she wouldn't go down into the cellar. She hated the place-said it reminded her of too many horror movies. I couldn't say I blamed her. It certainly looked like a scene out of a horror movie now that it was full of dead bodies-and one not so dead body.

I needed her to go back to sleep so I could go down into the cellar and uncover the guy I still had alive. As much as I'd be happy if he was dead, I needed him to answer some questions, and I didn't think he'd be too good at doing so if he suffocated under the weight of the other two men.