Archer was in the middle of the living room shifting a coffee table. Then he rolled up the dusty, old rug and revealed a seriously high-tech trapdoor.
My brows rose as he crouched over it, opened a panel, and revealed a biometric scanner. He pressed his thumb to the scanner at the same time as Kody released my hand and crossed the dusty living room.
I watched the whole thing happen, and still couldn't say for sure that Kody hadn't tripped on the rolled-up carpet. But the next thing I knew, Archer was rolling on the ground with his hands clasped between his legs and all kinds of inventive curses spewing from his mouth.
"Oh shit, sorry bro," Kody apologized, sounding anything but. He pressed his own thumb to the scanner and hoisted the steel trap door open when it unlocked. Using the toe of his boot, he rolled Archer's groaning body out of the way and indicated I come over. "You ready, babe?"
I blinked at him, biting my cheek to keep from laughing at Archer. "This is where you keep your torture victims?"
I was mostly joking, but Kody just gave a shrug. "Gotta keep them somewhere. What better place?"
He nodded to the open trap door where a ladder extended down into a fluorescent-lit space below. It was a wonder the light hadn't shown through the cracks of the floorboards... but then again, given the level of tech in the trap door, they'd probably thought of that.
"Steele's down there," Kody told me when I made no move to descend the ladder, "but I can go first if you want."
I gave the trap door a suspicious look, then—for some fucking reason—my gaze shifted to Archer, who was muttering curses and pushing himself up with a hand on the dust-covered sofa.
"Scared, Princess?" he sneered at me, and I scowled.
"What do you know," I commented to Kody in a voice dripping false sweetness, "kicking him in the balls did reset his personality after all."
Flipping Archer off, I quickly descended the ladder into the artificially lit room below, only to find another locked door right in front of me.
"Can't be too careful when you're torturing and killing people, you know?" Kody said, stepping off the bottom rung of the ladder behind me, then pressing his thumb to another biometric scanner to open the next door.
I raised my brows, nodding as the door slid soundlessly open. "I guess not."
With Kody's hand resting on the small of my back, I drew in a deep breath and stepped into the next room. This one had less lighting, just one spotlight illuminating a chair in the middle of the room.
Or rather, the bloody, beaten man tied to the chair.
"Princess," Archer said behind me, his big dick energy just radiating all over my back, "meet Hank. Hank tried to kill you last night."
The man raised his head just enough to glare at me, then he spat a glob of blood at my feet.
"Finally," Hank grunted, "the bitch herself."
15
Movement from the shadows startled me, but the solid fist that cracked across Hank's face brought a smile to my lips.
"Spit blood at her again and I'll rip your fucking toenails out," Steele promised the guy, then swept his sharp gaze over me like he was checking that none of the blood had touched me.
It was sweet, in a scary-ass killer kind of way, but still, I forced the smile off my face in favor of a hard glare. Just because Kody had softened my ire didn't mean that Steele automatically got a free pass. He had some serious grovelling to do.
If he even wanted my forgiveness, that was.
"Hellc—MK." Steele's brow furrowed as he corrected himself mid-word. Logically I knew he was honoring my wishes by not using his adorable nickname for me... but a girl can have regrets, right? I liked him calling me Hellcat. "Are you okay? Were you hurt last night? Kody turned his fucking phone off and didn't send a full update like he was supposed to."
I flicked a glance at Kody, who just shrugged like he gave zero fucks. I mean... come to think of it, he gave plenty of fucks—that's why he hadn’t answered his phone. But Steele probably didn't need to hear that part.
"I'm fine," I replied, but was almost drowned out by Archer's scoff.
"Yeah, she's just fine," he muttered, snarky as fuck. "Kody gave her a full physical to make sure." The inflection in his tone made it abundantly clear what he meant, and Steele's frown deepened.
Hank started laughing. Apparently he was suicidal as fuck.
"Trouble in paradise, Maxy? Your buddy fucking your girl, eh? Shoulda just let me shoot the bitch and save you the trouble of doing it yourself."
Oh wow. He really did have a death wish.
Steele turned his back on me, leaning over Hank for a moment. There was a disturbing crunch, then Hank howled in agony as Steele straightened back up.
"Interrupt me again when I'm speaking to my girl, and I'll break the rest of them," he told their prisoner with a cold calm that gave me shivers. Looking past him, my eyes widened when I saw three of Hank's fingers on his right hand sticking up from the arm of the chair at an unnatural angle.
Wrinkling my nose, I clenched my teeth to keep from gagging. But seriously, broken fingers were all kinds of vomit-inducing. "Was that necessary?" I asked Steele instead.
"Yes," he replied, giving no further elaboration.
Now that I could take a better look at him, I found he was splattered all over in blood. Hank's blood, was my guess. It should have horrified me, but... it didn't. Not even a little bit. Just like the night of Bree's party when they'd beat the shit out of Zane's Reaper guy, the only identifiable emotion running through me was excitement.
Yeah, I was all kinds of fucked up. But so were these boys, so in some ways we were a match made in heaven. Or, you know, the other place.
"So, where are we at on this prick?" Kody asked, moving farther into the room and flicking a light on over a table on the far wall. It was covered in tools. Tools that were smeared with blood. He picked up a pair of what looked like bolt cutters and slapped them against his palm menacingly. "We ready to make him sing?"
Steele gave a small snort of laughter before wiping the smile from his face with his hand. "No need," he replied. "Hank told us everything hours ago, didn't you?" He leaned over the bleeding, beaten man with a hand on either wrist. "Told us all about the hit out on MK and where to access the notice. Sang like a bird, right Hank?"
"Fuck you," Hank spat back, his face twisted with pain and fury.
"Aw, no fun," Kody complained, pouting as he put the bolt cutters back on the bench.
Steele glared. "Like you haven't had enough fun."
There was a bite of anger to his tone that made my spine stiffen, but Kody—the fucking asshole—just gave a self-satisfied smirk and dragged his thumb over his lower lip. "I could always have more. How 'bout you, babe?" He waggled his eyebrows in my direction, and I groaned.
He would fast make me regret all that fun if he was going to rub Steele's face in it.
Hank guffawed, pulling all our attention as he bubbled blood from his lips. "Sounds like your girl's a bit of a whore, Maxy," he snickered, his beady eyes on Steele. He was poking a hornet's nest, and I frowned with confusion. Was he deliberately trying to make Steele kill him? Because he was going about it the right way.