Page 53 of Race With The Devil

I was showing my hand like Unity, but it was pretty much a done deal by now. I could’ve easily popped him off then. After all, he’d handcuffed my woman and put a knife to her throat. In fact, in a way, Tutti seemed to be begging for it. He could poison a bunch of young strangers, cowardly-like, behind the scenes from afar, but he couldn’t off himself. What a miserable wretch he was with his silver-purple hair, his patch over one eye just for affect.

In fact, now he hissed, “Go ahead, shoot me. See if I fucking care. I’ve accomplished everything I want to in this life. In the next life I’ll start from scratch and build it back up the same way.”

Just then another bodyguard came hauling butt into the room, hustling like a linebacker. I’m still not sure what his goal was because he came rushing in like we were the end zone, but he did have a piece in his hand, so from his prone position, Wolf Glaser shot him, also in the head. I backed off from Tutti in time that he was the only one sprayed with globular brains just as the linebacker went sprawling over Unity.

Unity! It was now of the utmost importance that I free her. I found the knife that had flown from Tutti’s hand and used it to slice through the plastic zipties that bound her wrists.

“Oh Tanner, thank God,” she cried all in a rush, and wrapped her arms around my neck. I had to turn her with her back facing Tutti so I could keep him in my sights. He stayed smashed against the wall like a two-dimensional incubus, his mouth twisted in distorted glee. Unity’s face was buried in my neck as she took in huge, life-giving lungsful of air. I risked looking down to Wolf still splayed on the floor. It was difficult to tell where he’d been hit.

“You okay, man?” I asked him.

Wolf sat up, lifting the edge of his leather cut to peer at his chest. “I think so.”

“See any other guards out there?”

Wolf grinned boyishly. “Just the one I popped off in the foyer.”

“You bury him?” I asked, using the MC term.

“Ten feet under.”

Only this caused Tutti’s expression to change. “You killed Matt?” he wailed. He came unglued from the wall and came toward us with claws outstretched. He seemed undecided whom to scratch to death, finally deciding on Wolf because he was still sitting down.

Releasing Unity, I grabbed Tutti’s arm and spun him around to face me. I cracked him with the gun barrel hard against the cheekbone, right where I knew bone would shatter. “You psycho chemist from hell,” I growled as Tutti’s eyeballs rolled up into his skull. He started to collapse, so I grabbed him with my left hand by the front of his stupid peach button-down shirt. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of lying down. “When we fucking get done with you, your business and rep won’t be worth a bullet.”

And, because I was riled up, I bashed him a backhanded blow with the barrel across the other cheekbone. Only then did I let him fall, and reached a hand down to yank Wolf to his feet.

Unity kicked Tutti in the hip. “Worthless murdering scumbag,” she cried.

Wolf displayed an unused snap-tie before my face. He had his own evil scientist’s gleam in his eye.

I got the picture, and since Tutti seemed unconscious, I jammed my piece into my waistband and kneeled to roll him over. He snorted a little into the carpet but seemed limp as his grandma’s Mother Hubbard nightgown. Wolf held his wrists together behind his back as I zipped the tie.

“Let’s boogey,” suggested Wolf. “I think there might be another—“

Two pairs of boots shuffled down the hall toward us, so I directed Unity toward the broken picture window. I knew she’d get cut as I had on my arms rushing through the jagged hole, but it was better than facing two more goons.

Wolf and I scuffled briefly to be allowed to be the last one out. Both of us wanted to pick off more of Tutti’s team. That would leave him with a void in labor and support while we found Lavinia. “Help Unity,” I finally said, and Wolf was all over that.

I flattened myself to the side of the window, knowing that would be the guards’ first focal point when they entered, and popped them off assembly-line style, one, two. One of the guys went flying comically back against the wall, hands above his head, his piece making a wild arc in the air that clunked down smack on Tutti’s head. Poor evil scientist had been pretty pistol-whipped today. He’d be seeing too many stars for awhile to make any mortal concoctions.

I rode bitch on Unity’s Sporty, directing her to the barbed wire gate. Wolf claimed he’d only been grazed between his chest and arm—though later I’d find out otherwise—and he was going to Pure and Easy to get his drone and his dog.

Unity briefly stopped at the junction of the driveway and the road. “Let’s get a hotel room somewhere between here and Grand Canyon, maybe in Williams.”

I had no idea where Williams was, but it sounded good to me. “So you want to come to the Grand Canyon tomorrow?” A part of me braver than the part that had pistol-whipped Tutti blurted out, “You don’t blame me for taking the fall for my brother’s assault on that girl?”

I felt her stiffen. It was hard to see her face beneath her dome of obedience in the starlit night. At length she said, “I definitely feel weird about it, Tanner. I won’t lie. But it’s my problem, my business to get over it, not your problem.”

I brushed the backs of my fingers against her cheek, her diamond stud. “I beg to differ. It’s my business to make you feel at ease.”

I definitely saw the devilish cast in her eyes then. She blipped her throttle impudently. “Well then. Let’s go practice you making me feel at ease.”

Despite the fact that she’d just witnessed three men die, there was a definite lift to Unity’s heavy spirit as we carved it down the ridgetop. I held her tighter than I’d previously dared, just because I could. I pressed my lips to the sensitive back of her neck and breathed in her scent. It filled me with life.