Brazen (B-Squad 1)

Even though she tried to fight it, her body acted on its own power. She slammed into Taz, using momentum to take him down with her. Using all of her Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training and a few things she’d picked up from the MMA fighters training at the Devil’s Dip Gym against the man she loved, Bianca landed her full weight so it centered on Taz’s shoulders and windpipe, cutting off his air supply.

“Bianca, it’s me,” Taz wheezed out. “Kitten, I don’t want to hurt you.”

He could flip her off without breaking a sweat, send her flying into a wall and knock her out, but he wouldn’t—not after what he’d grown up seeing his dad do to his mother. She knew that. Her alter-personality knew it too and was using it to her advantage.

Behind her, Gidget wept as she lurched toward the melee, a hypodermic needle in her white-knuckled grasp.

“Back away and put the needle down,” Marko yelled, training his gun on Gidget.

Gidget’s green eyes went wide, but she didn’t move back—she dove forward.

The shot cracked.

Gidget sailed back, tumbled by an invisible hand. Blood soaked her shirt at the shoulder. The needle rolled out of her grasp and onto the bamboo wood floor.

Relief flooded Bianca’s system and her hold on Taz eased.

A click boomed in her head. She whipped her head around.

Yasmin rushed from the bathroom. She yanked Gidget up and used her as a human shield as she dashed to the open patio door leading out to the bungalow’s private dock.

“Don’t fucking move, Gidget, unless it’s to take a bullet for me,” she said, holding tight to the clicker and a black doctor’s satchel. “Do whatever it takes to stop them, Bianca!”

Splotches of angry color highlighted Yasmin’s knife-sharp cheekbones and she pressed the clicker again.

“Do it,” she yelled.

Bianca flung herself off Taz and dove forward, her arms outstretched. Even as she screamed internally, her fingers closed around the needle.

“You’ve got to fight it, Bianca,” Taz hollered as he clamped a hand on her ankle and yanked her back. “You can do it.”

Digging deep, she grabbed for the person she was, not this drugged-up zombie under Yasmin’s control. Another click, loud enough to make her shudder. It echoed in her head, bouncing between her brain and skull, making her cry out in pain. She took a deep breath, determined

to hold on but something inside her broke, as if her brain had cracked right down the middle and the part that controlled her limbs was severed from the rest of her.

In one fluid motion, she spun around, jabbed the needle into Taz’s bicep and pressed the plunger, sending two full doses of Genie’s Wish rushing into him.

A millisecond later, the large picture window in the living room shattered and a sniper’s bullet sent her flying backward. Her head cracked against the floor. Then there was nothing but blessed blackness.

Chapter 16

Bianca

The constant soft beeping ate its way into Bianca’s consciousness, lifting the veil enough to bring the throbbing pain in her shoulder to the forefront. Clenching her teeth against the pain, she opened her eyes and spotted two blurry Vivis sitting in a plastic chair across the white room. It came back to her in flashes.

The gunshot.

Her head cracking against the floor.

The needle.

Taz!

Heart hammering against her ribs, she jolted into a sitting position but the room tilted and she flopped back down.

“Look who finally decided to wake up.” Vivi crossed to the bed and held out a small water bottle with a bendy straw sticking out of the top.

“Where?” she asked, the single word scraping against her raw throat, before turning her head and taking a sip.