“Wake up,” he snarled.
When Tucker didn’t comply, the man used his free hand to stick two fingers into the still-bleeding bullet wound.
Tucker screamed and surged up in the chair. His eyes flew wide and his teeth slammed together. Hot tears rolled down my cheek. Not because I was sad. Not because I had given up. Because I was so incredibly angry. I was so incensed that I was shaking. I wanted nothing more than to get out of this chair and attack every single asshole in this room. I had never been a violent person. In fact, I was always a firm believer in the law, but this…
This gave me a whole new outlook.
Some people didn’t deserve jail. Some people didn’t deserve a fair trial.
Some people just deserved to be shot and left to die.
If someone handed me a gun in that moment, I would not have hesitated to pull the trigger. I would empty the entire chamber out and look for more bullets.
“Where are the copies?” the man torturing Tucker demanded.
Tucker stared at him in stony silence.
The man shoved his face as close to Tucker’s as he could. “Where. Are. They?” He spit when he talked. I could see the little bubbles spew from his mouth and land on Tucker’s face. Then he shoved his fingers back into the bullet wound.
I whimpered and started wiggling around in my chair once more. I saw the pain cross over Tucker’s face. I saw the little lines that formed on the corners of his eyes.
Yet he made not one sound.
And he didn’t look away from the man hell-bent on getting him to talk.
The man shoved Tucker back, rocking the chair, and paced away, then came back and glared. “You’re a lot tougher than I expected a businessman to be,” he said.
Once more, Tucker said nothing.
Ketchup Man turned back to Mr. Wallace, who nodded.
“Please,” I begged, just wanting them to stop. I couldn’t sit here and watch him get beaten. I couldn’t watch the body that gave mine so much pleasure being abused. I couldn’t watch the eyes that stared into me so intently when he would enter me again and again tighten in pain.
Ketchup Man rolled his head on his shoulders like he was getting ready for some kind of sporting event. And then he drew back his meaty fist and swung it forward.
Just as the fist was about to meet its target, Tucker moved. His arms surged forward, coming around his body, and he caught the incoming fist in his right palm. I watched his hand close around the man’s knuckles. I watched the bones of Tucker’s fingers strain against his skin as he tightened his grip until it had to hurt.
The man who thought he had the upper hand grunted under the pain.
Keeping his grip, Tucker pushed up out of the chair, kicking it backward, sending it skittering across the floor and crashing into a nearby wall.
“I’m not a businessman,” Tucker growled, twisting the man’s arms until he fell onto his knees.
“I’m a Marine.”
Everyone looked around in shock, like they had no idea what was going on.
The man at his mercy groaned and Tucker pulled back is fist and sucker punched him in the side of the head. He fell forward, coming onto his hands and knees, and Tucker took the opportunity to deliver a strong kick to his ribs.
I heard a cracking sound and Ketchup Man sprawled across the floor.
“And you tie shitty knots,” Tucker added, bringing his left wrist up, which still had a length of rope wrapped around it. As he was unwrapping, the men at the table shot up and rushed him.
“Watch out!” I screamed as two men approached, but Tucker didn’t need my warnings. He swiped the first man’s feet out from under him, sending him falling on his ass, and then drove the heel of his shoe right down on the man’s crotch.
The man rolled into the fetal position and began to vomit profusely.
“Some guys just don’t deserve nuts,” Tucker spat.
The other guy paled but still came at him so Tucker put him in a chokehold and then used the rope from around his wrist to create a garrote. The man gasped as his airway was being cut off, and Tucker stepped around his back, practically straddling him to apply even more pressure. The man’s eyes began to bulge as he clawed at the crudely made weapon strangling him.
Had Tucker been faking this whole time? Had he really been awake but just didn’t want anyone to know it?
He still looked like hell, with sweat creating a sheen across his skin, his shirt soaked with blood, and dark circles pronounced beneath this eyes, but even in his exhaustion, he wasn’t about to give up.
Suddenly, I understood how he managed to walk ten miles in the dessert while carrying a wounded man.
Determination.
Drive.
And a hell of a dose of badass.
The man’s struggles to get away began to wane and I knew he was just minutes from losing consciousness.
I was so intent on Tucker and what he was doing that I hadn’t noticed Mr. Wallace Sr. approach me. Until he placed a gun to my head.
God. This was just not my day.
How many times could a girl be held at gunpoint before she went mad (or actually got shot)?
“If you want her to live, you better drop him,” Wallace said calmly.
Tucker released his prey and the man fell to ground, wheezing and desperately sucking in air.
“You got a problem with me,” Tucker said, “you come at me. You don’t threaten a woman.”
Geez, if I wasn’t tied to this chair, I would show him women could be badass too.
“You don’t threaten my woman,” he added, his gaze meeting mine for just seconds.
Okay, this wasn’t the time for romantic gestures, but that totally made my heart skip a beat. Maybe he was just acting. Maybe he was playing the part of Max. But Max had never called me his in the entire year we dated. Max had never taken a bullet for me either.
“If you had just died the night of the crash like you were supposed to, she never would have been involved,” Wallace Sr. said.
Tucker took several steps toward us. The hand holding the gun to my head wavered. “Stay where you are.”
“No.”
I glanced at Tucker, wondering what the hell he was thinking. He was baiting a man who was holding a gun to my head.
Hell-O… that qualified as a don’t piss off the crazy man moment.
“I’ll shoot her!” he said, jamming the gun a little bit harder into my head.
“When I was in Iraq, I learned some interesting things,” Tucker drawled. “Like how to sever a man’s spine, leaving him paralyzed but still able to feel.”
The gun against my head wobbled. Tucker took another step closer, prowling toward the man with a wild look in his focused eyes. If I didn’t know him, I would be frightened. The contrast of his pale skin against his dark, red-rimmed eyes was creepy. Added to the fact that he had blood literally all over him, he looked like a walking corpse.