MadetoBeBroken by Lyra Byrnes Read Free Book Online

slamming hard
against the van. Coughing, fighting the urge to throw up, she blinked her
vision clear. When the stars receded, she saw him lying in the street. She
managed to fish out the gun and aim it at his head, walking slowly toward the
prone figure.
    He wasn’t dead—the bullet seemed to have gone clean through
his thigh, if the blooming stain of blood on his jeans was any indication—but
he seemed to have passed out from shock. She would have only seconds to get him
cuffed and into the van. Better use the needle first.
    He was indeed two-hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle. It
took all of her strength to drag Alexi’s body, dead weight from the chemicals
she had plunged into his neck, onto the sidewalk and up into the van. She made
more work for herself propping him in the backseat on the passenger side, but
she wanted to be able to keep an eye on him while she drove. Inside, the van
was clean, too clean. There was no sign of useful supplies or even a rag.
Sighing, she tore off her scarf and bound up his still-seeping leg above the
wound.
    A little backup, she thought ruefully, would not have been
fucking unwelcome, Western Ops. Or is that Western Oops?
    She climbed into the driver’s seat and indulged in the
simplest, most necessary act of being alive—deep, cleansing breaths, the
sweetest she had ever taken.

Chapter Six
     
    Her legs were shaking, she was desperately thirsty and she
had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours, but none of that mattered. She
looked at the map, looked up and looked at the map again. This had to be
it—MacHeath Hall, Invergarten, Scotland.
    The safe house was hardly worthy of the grand title “hall”,
but still perfect for her needs—secluded, on a small, wooded rise above a loch,
like a lakeside cabin in the States, if such a thing was outfitted with a nice
kitchen, a fireplace and better yet, shackles attached to the ceiling, walls
and bed. There was also a supply of bindings, blindfolds, cuffs, collars,
lashes and, for some reason, a shelf of condoms in the bedroom armoire. That’s
what set her to humming as she clipped a very groggy Alexi by the wrists and
ankles. The only hard part had been holding him upright long enough to fasten
him to the wall. The distributor cap to the van was in her purse and her
prisoner was stuck to the wall like an insect pinned on a card.
    She stood back and observed her work—not bad. His head hung
down, a mane of dark hair over his face, but he was sentient enough to will
some tension into his muscles so that the restraints would not pull his arms
from their sockets. The dark T-shirt stretched tightly over his wide chest and
flat belly, the denim on his left leg sported a hydrangea-sized blossom of
blood.
    Dismissing a passing impulse to kick him in the balls for
good measure, she made a circuit of the cabin, discovering with gratitude that
a place fully stocked with implements of torture and restraint also boasted a
well-stocked infirmary. She gathered antiseptic, towels, bandages and tape for
him then helped herself to an apple from the kitchen.
    The file had made it clear that she was to keep him alive
until he answered all of her questions, which he unfortunately must have figured
out, because she hadn’t shot him in the head. Alexi knew he would be in for
some pain, but that would be the worst he’d have to endure. She wondered how
much he could take, a man of his strength. She far preferred a clean shot. The
results of examination by slow torture were always spurious.
    At any rate, a man that powerful would not perish from a
blasted thigh and a little blood loss. Plenty of time to bind it up after he
had suffered for a while, just to give him a taste of what he was getting into.
Her throat was still tender and the memory of those hands cutting off her air
supply angered her all over again, and the anger stiffened her spine. It was
nice to have the advantage over this monster. When she came back to check on
her captive, he was awake