Their Bounty (Four Mercenaries 1)

“Keep your head down,” Drake said and raised his arms before opening his door. He moved in a languid yet controlled manner, and just before he stepped outside, his hand made the tiniest movement at his hip.

The gunshot was so loud Clover choked on his panicked scream, struggling against the strap that held him upright and vulnerable to bullets flying at window-level. Tears spilled down his cheeks.

He didn’t want to die.

No matter how shitty his life was sometimes, he didn’t want it to end. Not now, not when he’d decided to change things, move away from Jerry, and start anew.

His breathing got frantic when the back door of the van opened, because he knew Drake was at the front and couldn’t have moved that fast.

A tall woman entered the van, pointing a gun straight at Clover’s face, as if she considered him a threat. Her features were a blur framed by brown hair. A phantom from hell, here to pull him into the abyss.

“I have the boy,” she shouted in a loud, commanding voice that put a stop to the brief screaming outside. But when the cool metal pressed against Clover’s forehead, tears blurred everything into a damp mess. He didn’t want to see any of it. Maybe it was all a hallucination. This couldn’t be happening to him again.

He’d been too confident. Stupid. He should have never called Jerry, yet his own petty need to rub his safety into the fucker’s face would now be his downfall.

Even when his hands and ankles got unfastened from the hooks and a man who’d come out of nowhere lifted Clover, all he could do was writhe like an eel. Was Drake dead? That too would have been Clover’s fault, and just thinking about it made his heart ache. Tank would have never forgiven Clover for causing his friend’s death, if he’d even bother going after Clover’s abductors in the first place.

The sun outside stabbed Clover’s eyes, and he shut them, unable to control the shudders going through his body. He didn’t want to see Drake’s corpse. But as he dared to look up, the only body lying on the asphalt was that of a burly man in a red shirt. Drake was alive, his tall, black-clad form standing in front of the woman, who had a gun pressed to the back of his neck.

“I like that you made the job so easy for us. It’s not like he can run now.” She laughed and poked the muzzle at Drake.

Clover hoped that the people who’d driven behind them earlier would now spot the fight and alarm someone, but his hopes were nipped in the bud when he recognized the extravagant color of the pink vehicle parked behind the van. They’d been tracked all along, and his request to stop at the gas station was what served him on a platter to Jerry’s people.

Clover whined into his gag, already shivering at the prospect of becoming merchandise again. His only hope, Drake, was holding his hands up. There was nothing he could do without his firearm, not when someone else held him at gunpoint.

“I’m sorry, Clover. Wish it could have ended differently,” Drake said, but just as he was finishing his sentence, he kicked his foot back. The woman screamed out and shot into the air when Drake pushed her hands up with a hard shove. A knife was stuck in her throat before she was even done yelling.

The woman’s voice was still dying with a gurgle when the huge guy holding Clover dropped him to the asphalt. Clover swallowed a cry when the hard surface punched his elbow and hip, but fear clutched at him when he saw the giant above reach to his holster. A blade hit his eye before he could have gripped his gun.

Blood exploded down the man’s face, and drizzled down his neck, blurry like watercolor paint on the wrong type of paper.

Drake descended on the screaming mercenary as if he moved faster than the human eye could comprehend, and slit his throat in a single move, silencing him forever.

Clover gasped for air, crawling away from the growing pool of blood with tears streaming down his cheeks. He hadn’t lived a wholesome life, but this level of violence was something else altogether. The bright world around him became distorted further when seen through the moisture, adding to the sense of disorientation.

Drake stood up, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Shit,” he said and wiped the knife on the dead guy’s clothes before sheathing it again. As he got up, Clover saw something sharp reflect light behind Drake’s heel, but it retreated inside the boot once he tapped the sole with the other foot.

Who was this guy?

“I knew you’d be trouble,” Drake said, his voice like a snake about to strike, even as he ripped the tape off Clover’s mouth. This time, perhaps because of the shock, it didn’t even hurt so much.