Free Come To Me (Owned Book 3) by Mary Catherine Gebhard Page A

headache I couldn’t shake.
    I hadn’t fought much since the war. It was the reason I’d gone into recon instead of becoming a mercenary. I didn’t like to kill. The sounds of the dying weren’t my lullabies.
    If I had to kill, though, I would. If I had to use the skills that were forced upon me, I would.
    And that night, I did.
    The first wave was easy to take out. They didn’t stop to ask if I was in the wrong location. I didn’t stop to question if they wanted to leave first. Unfortunately I lived in a world where we communicated with fists and bullets.
    Just like in war, they used the green boys as cannon fodder. It was almost unfair the way it was done. Two boys rushed to where I stood, guns shaking in their hands as they shot bullets at me. I put one in each of their hearts and another in their heads. They fell to the ground without complaint.
    I stepped over their bodies and followed the sounds of Lennox’s screams. I climbed the staircase, following the wails like a Siren’s call. The staircase curved and I plastered myself against the wall when I heard footsteps coming.
    I threw an elbow, hitting the first guy in the nose. Blood spurted and he yelped. The next guy tripped over the one with the broken nose. They tumbled down the staircase and landed in a heap on the floor, unmoving. A third man came. I shot him in the knee and he screamed in pain, following his forebears as he tumbled to the ground.
    Still Lenny screamed, the sound like a screwdriver to my skull. I knew then, as the sound burrowed farther inside me, that I would do anything to get to her. It didn’t matter how many men or women I had to bloody. It didn’t matter the body count. It didn’t matter the blood bath.
    The dangerous and perhaps unsound understanding reckoning at my core was that it didn’t matter how many innocents got in my way. My goal was Lennox safe and at home, and nothing else mattered.
    When I reached the top, my legs nearly froze. Alice was at the end of the hallway holding Lenny as a shield against her body. Lenny’s eyes were glassed over. She was listless. Blood crusted beneath her eye and stained the clothes she wore. She’d been beaten. She’d been bloodied. My nightmare had come to pass and the brunt of it had fallen on her.
    I thought I’d stymied the part of me that had broken upon seeing the sheets. I thought I’d gotten my shit together. Seeing her like that, though, I nearly collapsed. I summoned every ounce of training I had as if it were my own Hail Mary. I had to keep it together. Despite the fact that I felt as if I were coming unglued, a jigsaw puzzle quickly tumbling away, I had to stay pieced.
    “Vic…” Lenny looked up, but then her head fell as if too heavy for her body.
     

     
    “A re you happy here?”
    I didn’t look up from my ministrations. Keeping your shit shiny, even in the goddamn desert, was just something you did. We kept our shoes clean, we kept our things folded, and when we went out and got bloody, we came back and washed it like it was dirt on our clothes, not the life blood of another.
    “Are you happy here, soldier?”
    I looked up, stopped my rubbing, and paused at her question. It was just me under the tent—the other guys were playing soccer with their down time—so she was definitely talking to me. She had long blonde hair, but it was pulled tight behind her head. With her in her suit, I felt underdressed in my tank and fatigues. Her face was done perfectly, somehow not sweating even in the heat.
    I should have recognized her for what she was all those years ago. When Alice asked me if I was happy in the war, I didn’t realize my answer would shape my life forever.
    I aimed my SIG at her head.
    “Vic,” Alice said, her smile blood red. A brief thought flashed through my head: I wondered if she was wearing lipstick or the blood of her victims.
    “Sorry to break up the party,” I replied, keeping my aim.
    She shrugged at the dead bodies around us. “Nothing that