Tricks (Take It Off #6)(45)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“Do you know the kinds of pain I could inflict and you would only be able to lay there and feel it?”

“You’re lying,” Wallace Sr. said. I could tell he was shaken.

“Oh, I can assure you I’m not,” he replied. “And perhaps after I’m done using you as a live cadaver, I will put you in a car, drive you around at excessive speeds, and then crash it, leaving you to lie inside the crumpled metal while I douse the body in gasoline and then light it on fire. You won’t be able to run. But you’ll be able to feel the heat of the flames. You’ll be able to hear the groaning of the metal as the fire stalks you. And then when you start to burn, it will not only feel like the worst pain of your entire life, but you will smell the melting of your flesh.”

The picture that Tucker painted with those words would live in my nightmares for years to come.

“Who the hell are you?” Wallace Sr. whispered horror in his tone.

“I’m Max’s other half,” he growled.

And then he pounced.

27

Tucker

You know, I’m a laidback kind of guy. I like to drink beer, hang out with my buds, and take random girls home for casual sex (Yes, I use a condom; I’m not nasty). I’m slow to anger and even slower to put myself out there to care about anyone.

But when I get pissed. I get pissed.

And seeing Charlie with a gun to her head pissed me off.

She had to be the first person since high school to slip past my defenses and worm her way into my affection so damn fast. Not even Nathan had managed to become like family to me so quickly.

How the hell a bossy, uptight, schedule-oriented person like her could ever turn my head was completely beyond me.

But then I thought about her heart-shaped lips, her gold-fringed hazel eyes, and the little sounds she made whenever I put my lips upon her skin.

And her laugh… She had a really good laugh.

Being tasered was fuel to the fire, and as I sat tied to a chair, dripping blood all over the filthy concrete floor, and listening to Charlotte beg the men to let us go, I began to grow livid.

But even livid, I remained cool headed. The Marine Corps taught me a lot. Self-control, self-reliance, self-defense. It also taught me how to keep my mouth shut and use the element of surprise. Pretending to be unconscious, pretending to be weak… Well, that gave me an advantage.

It was also an advantage that these asswipes couldn’t tie a knot to save their damn lives.

Being tied up and thrown into the bottom of a pool in training taught me how to get out of a knot fast. Real fast.

And yeah, I was weak from blood loss, twitchy from being tased, and royally fucking pissed off.

Oh, and the bullet hole in my side hurt like a bitch.

But it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough to put me down. It wasn’t enough to make me give up. We weren’t dying here tonight. I wouldn’t allow it.

And so I took my opening.

And now here I stood facing Mr. Wallace Sr.—some old guy on a power trip—and once again he was pissing me off by holding a gun to Charlie’s head.

When I was done telling him exactly what I would do to him if he even tried to hurt her, I think he finally got the message.

The message I was not going to be fucked with.

“Who the hell are you?” he whispered.

Who was I he wanted to know. Who was I?

I was someone I hadn’t wanted to admit to being for a long time. And that lack of admission would haunt me for the rest of my life.

I was done pushing that part of me away. Doing so had gotten me nothing but regret.

“I’m Max’s other half.”

I launched myself forward. Even shot, I was light on my feet. He pulled the gun away from Charlotte and aimed it at me, firing off a shot that went wild. I bulldozed into him, knocking him into the ground and landing on top of him. The gun was between us and he pointed at my chest.

I spit in his face, right in his eyes. Little bits of saliva mixed with blood shot into his eyes and he cursed, closing them, trying to clear his sight. With a flip of my wrists, I disarmed him, using the butt of the gun to strike him in the side of the head.

His body went slack beneath me.

Not willing to let my guard down, I kept the gun trained on his head as I stood, the wound in my side bleeding profusely and the world around me tilting.

Wallace was out cold.

Behind me Charlotte struggled, so I went to her, released the binds that held her, and she launched out of the chair and into my chest.

I groaned when she made contact, and she pulled back with a gasp. “Oh my God!” She freaked. “Tucker, we need to get you to a hospital!”

“I’ll be fine, darlin’,” I said, even though I felt like shit.

The man whose junk I stomped on groaned and rolled onto his back. His face was blotchy and he had puke on his shirt. He fumbled with the waistband of his pants and in two strides, I was at his side and disarming him of the gun he was so kindly going to try to kill me with.

“Thanks. I was almost out of bullets,” I said.

He groaned and rolled back into the fetal position.

Charlotte ran to the computer and pulled out the flash drive. Her purse was lying in the corner of the room, all the contents spilled everywhere, and she went over to retrieve the bag, her wallet, and the paper that was with the drive. She left everything else there, forgotten.

Knowing that Wallace probably had a cell phone on him, I turned to search his coat.

One of his lackeys was standing over his body with a gun pointed directly at me.

“I’m really tired of this shit.” I sighed wearily. “Drop the gun or I’ll shoot your ass.”

“I c-can’t let you leave with that drive,” he said, the gun shaking tremendously in his hand. He probably saw me drop everyone else in the room, and if my suspicions were correct, he was the one that probably put down the guy I shot with the shotgun. He probably hadn’t planned to come out at all until he realized he was the last hope of Wallace keeping that drive.

He couldn’t be more than nineteen years old. A kid who got caught up in something he didn’t know how to get out of.

I didn’t want to shoot him.

Didn’t mean I wouldn’t.

“Look, kid…” I tried to reason with him. “Put the gun down and get the hell out of here. I won’t tell no one you were here. Let this be a lesson to you. You roll with idiots, you become an idiot.”

He didn’t lower the gun, but I saw the desire in his eyes. The desire to get the hell out of here.

“I’m only offering once.”