Page 80 of Master of Secrets

She bent down, twitched the phone from his hand, put it into her pocket. “No.”

He gave her that thick, stupid look. “No, what? No, they’re not tranqed?”

“No to all of it,” she said softly. “They’re not tranqed. They’re gone, Maynard. In the wind. And I’ll be sure to tell Vincent that outcome was a direct result of your incompetence. And Masters’ team of Unredeemable commandos, of course.”

Maynard looked confused. “It was just him, bitch. You could totally have taken them with the tranq gun. Why didn’t you? I won’t lie to Vincent for you.”

“I know you won’t, Maynard,” she said. “You absolutely won’t. But you won’t deny it, either.”

Maynard’s eyes dilated. He saw death in her smile, and shrank away.

“He’ll kill you,” he said, unsteadily. “For losing them. Losing me. Not smart.”

“Yes, he’ll be mad at first. Then he’ll get excited about my new plan, based on new intel. And he’ll forget all about you, Maynard. Because you are insignificant. It’ll work out fine. For me, anyway. For you, not so much.”

Maynard stared up at her face, his squinted eyes glittering with hatred. He turned his head, and spat blood onto her boots. “You know what? I loved it when that dentist pulled out your tooth. When you screamed, I practically came in my pants. All that blood. The way you trembled. The way your tits jiggled. God, it was good. Peak moment for me.”

Nicole did not allow her smile to waver. “Really, Maynard? I’m touched.”

“You know what else? I took your tooth. Took it right out of that bloody silver pan when they weren’t paying attention. I took it back to my room. I hold it in one hand while I beat off with the other. Mmmm. Sweet, sweet release.”

Nicole looked down at her muddy, blood-spotted boots, and figured they were a lost cause anyhow. “All right,” she said. “You chose this.”

She started to kick. First the knee, making him shriek and writhe. Then his face. Maynard resisted, feebly, but the first savage blow of her foot broke his jaw. After that, it was just a matter of keeping at it until his teeth were all knocked loose.

When she accomplished that, she squatted down, reaching into the slack, bloody mess of shattered meat and bone on the bottom of his face. She flicked around, looking for the tooth she wanted. It had to be a molar. The same one they had taken from her.

Ah, yes. There it was. She plucked it out, and held it up for him to see. “This one’s a beauty, she told him. “I’ll treasure it, Maynard.”

His eyes widened as she pointed the gun at his face.Pop.Right in the eye.

She stood, tucking the sticky red thing into her pocket, along with his phone. She’d lost track of time, with this little bloody detour, and she had to hurry, before Masters and his whore made their way out of the thorn bushes. She peered through the trees, but saw no sign of them. Assholes. Taking their own sweet time. They had already forgotten her. They were in the woods, kissing, flirting, while she lurked out here with death on her mind.

She stuck her hand into her pocket, fondling Maynard’s wet, hot tooth. It was disrespectful of them, not to fear her more. But she could wait.

They would learn.

CHAPTER30

Kat

We slowed down, and stared at the corpse of the big guy lying in the mud, in horrified silence. “Um…this is the guy you said you saw?” I asked timidly.

“Yeah. He’s the one running after Nicole. He was on her team.”

We gazed at his mangled face. The crushed, distorted jaw. Teeth, all over the place. One eye staring up. The other socket, a bloody red hole.

“Jesus,” I whispered. “Did you…” I looked at him, and shook my head hastily. “No. Sorry. Of course not. This isn’t your style.”

“God, no,” he said, his voice sharp with frustration. “I left this fucker alive. I wanted to drag him back home and shake him down for intel. But no. Always, no.”

Of course, no. Because he had to run off heroically after me, at the expense of his mission to find his brother. Yet another mark against me. Yet another price to pay.

“Whoa,” I said softly. “She must have been pissed at him.”

Ethan grabbed my hand and yanked me into a clumsy, stumbling run. “Come on,” he said. “We have got to get out of here. My flesh is crawling.”

Well, yeah. Mine too. But my legs felt floppy and hollow as I staggered along beside him. There was the black BMV we had driven down to the city from the Mountain House, left right in the middle of the roadway, door flung wide. He’d chased after me in such a desperate hurry. Wow. Hell of a responsibility, to have someone care so much that they acted against their own interests for my sake. It freaked me out.