What if it was a trap? Were they waiting for her to come running? Had they figured out why she was here?
Her eyes darted behind her, expecting one of the doors to open and hands to shoot out.
Paranoia pushed her harder, and dread dug in its claws. She wrestled with it, fighting it down, burying it deep enough to control her breathing. Then she forced herself to holster the weapon in her waistband. She couldn’t burst in with guns blazing. Not without giving herself away.
At the entrance to the loading dock, she pulled in another calming breath and opened the door.
Voices drew her attention to the far side. She flattened her back to the wall, remaining out of view. Then she peered around the corner.
Alec stood beside a massive machine, his attention on the cast-iron bridge that rose overhead, twenty feet in length, with steel pillars supporting each end. She didn’t know anything about the tools required for cutting stone into grave markers, but it didn’t take a genius to understand how this one worked.
Suspended from the center of its bridge was a circular saw, at least six feet in diameter. Rusty, broken teeth fringed the outer edge. It was large enough to cut blocks of granite into narrow slabs.
Or human bodies into little messy slivers.
She worked her throat against a knot of fear.
The machine didn’t function. None of the junk left behind was operational. Unless someone had fixed it? Was there a mechanic on the team?
“What’s it going to be?” Alec folded his arms across his chest. “Your hands? Or your feet? Or you can keep your extremities and tell us the location of the hard drive.”
Her shoulders bunched to her ears, and her heart landed somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach. She silenced her breathing and leaned forward, straining for a better look.
Five men stood around the machine, including Alec. And Mike.
A vein of relief swept through her.
Angled slightly away from her position, Mike rested his hands in his pockets, exuding the appearance of cool indifference. But she knew him.
She knew his shoulders held too much stiffness. His neck elongated with the tensing of muscles, and trenches rutted his hair from his fingers repeatedly pushing through it. He was anything but relaxed.
He was also the only man not armed.
Alec and the others must’ve taken him by surprise, and now he was pretending to go along with this to avoid raising alarms. This being the torture of Cole Hartman.
Cole lay on the platform beneath the giant circular saw, his body restrained to the steel structure. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.
“We’ll start with your hands, then.” Alec flicked a lever on the machine.
An ear-splitting screech cracked the air, springing the rusty saw to life and making her jump.
No, no, no!
She stared in horror as Alec hit another switch and lowered the enormous whirring blade. Cole’s arm lay two feet beneath it, trapped in rope. He didn’t struggle or twitch a muscle. The fucking asshole was just going to lie there and let that saw take his hand.
Mike’s shadowed eyes flicked back and forth, lingering on the men’s holstered guns. He was going to attempt something. Something stupid like swiping one of their weapons. Dammit, he was going to get himself shot.
Perspiration formed on her spine.
At the speed in which the blade lowered, she only had seconds.
A huge breath filled her lungs as she drew her weapon. Then she bolted forward, the sound of her approach swallowed by the chest-rattling squeal of the machine.
Alec spotted her first, his brows leaping to his hairline. Twenty-feet away, she fired.
Missed.
Fucking shit! She sprinted forward. He reached for his gun.
Fifteen-feet. She shot again and hit him in the chest. He dropped instantly.
The need to gasp set her lungs on fire, but she couldn’t draw air. Adrenaline spiked her blood as she set her sights on the remaining three.
Their guns, already drawn, turned toward her as the spinning blade continued its descent, the toothy edge blurring inches from Cole’s arm.
All at once, Mike grabbed one of the men, and a bullet fired, whizzing past her ear as she squeezed the trigger.
Over and over, she shot off rounds, charging forward and blowing through the magazine until the only man left standing was Mike.
Without taking a breath, she fell upon the machine and smacked the lever. Her heart stopped, waiting in agony as the motor ground to a soundless halt, freezing the circular saw.
The blade sat against Cole’s sinewy forearm, drawing a bead of blood around the serrated, rust-colored edge. So goddamn close, and he never struggled. Never moved a muscle.
Her pulse pounded as she dragged her eyes over the rest of him. Boots, dirty jeans, powerful legs, shredded abs, tattooed chest and arms, and a scraggly beard that only enhanced his intimidating, masculine appearance.
No visible injuries.
“Other than the cut,” she said, quickly flipping the switch to lift the blade, “you’re not harmed?”
His silence pulled her gaze to his, and lord have mercy, those molten brown eyes imprisoned her, suffocated her, and refused to let go. He was so beautiful, so utterly unruffled and fearless, just watching her, breathing calmly, alive.
As she met his stare head-on, she swore she saw that look again, the one from before when she thought she felt something forging between them. Something real and not of this cold, ugly world.
Tingling sparked through her arms and fingers, and she gulped a breath.
“In less than a minute, we’re going to be under fire.” Mike scuttered back and forth behind her, collecting weapons. “Time to go.”
The moment she’d shot the first bullet, the report had alerted the rest of the team of trouble. Any second, ten men would explode through that door with more firepower than she and Mike could defend.
“Hurry.” He slapped a knife onto the platform beside Cole and sprinted across the ramp toward the parked vehicles.
Two motorcycles sat out there somewhere among the cars and trucks, with the keys in the ignitions.
“We’ll take the bikes,” she shouted after Mike and cut one of Cole’s arms free.
Then she set the blade in his hand so that he could remove the rest. As he calmly sawed his way through the rope, she replaced the magazine in her gun and stepped back, keeping the weapon trained on him.
Outside, Mike darted from one parked vehicle to the next, slashing all the tires. All but the two bikes they would leave with.
“Have you ever killed a man?” Cole freed his arm and moved to his legs, regarding her from beneath his dark brows.
“N—” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “No.”
“You did good. Most people hesitate the first time.” The corner of his mouth quirked up as he glanced at the gash on his arm. “You didn’t.”
“I made a choice.” She held the gun with both hands, her fingers clammy and ribcage wrapped in rubber bands. “Don’t make me regret it.”
He cut through the final restraint and shoved to his feet, his gaze instantly falling on the dead bodies, scanning their clothes. She knew what he was looking for, but Mike had already taken the weapons.
She might’ve sabotaged the entire fucking mission to save Cole’s life. But that didn’t mean she and Mike trusted him with a gun. If he was the revengeful sort, she wasn’t safe.
She would never be safe again.