Code Red Read Online Free Page B

forced. “No. A real man would keep you
close and never let you go. I guarantee it.”
    “Mr. Brody, it is time.” One of the goons
suddenly pulled Kieran back and left her with a perfect view of the
room. Jess screamed. Max had to be dead, because half of his head
was sprayed all over the floor and one wall of the barn. An hour or
two ago, she’d flirted with him in the bar.
    Bile crawled up her throat, and she turned
away from the image of his dead body to vomit. Her shaking morphed
into intense tremors and her insides chilled. She pulled on her
arms, but the rope binding her wrists wouldn’t budge. She continued
to struggle, even if it was futile. Blood covered everything. Even
when she shut her eyes, the blood remained.
    Wanting a life away from her small town
didn’t mean she wanted to live inside an action movie. Maybe a
house in the suburbs, a trip to the ocean… Anything but this. The
men surrounded Kieran. They untied his hands and pointed a gun at
his head. They couldn’t kill him, though. She couldn’t handle it.
She couldn’t handle Max’s death.
    She cried out, trying to gain control of a
situation she had no control over. Someone slapped her hard across
the jaw. The sharp pain brought tears to her eyes and knocked the
panic back inside of her, where she swallowed it and tried not to
make a sound. Her focus, however, circled back to the blood and the
gun pointed at Kieran.
    “It is regrettable you killed Glazkov in his
attempted escape. We cannot make the switch now,” the older man
said to Kieran.
    “The government will take my word over
yours.”
    “No. The residue will show that you not only
killed Max in his escape attempt, but you also killed an innocent
girl who got in the way.”
    They were going to kill her, too? Tears
blurred the image of Kieran trying to fight his way free. Holding
his arms behind him, two of the Russians punched him in the stomach
over and over.
    “Stop it, please!”
    Her yelling only made them hit him with more
force. He wobbled on his legs, his head bent forward, and he
slipped to the ground.
    The leader placed the gun in Kieran’s grip,
holding it steady with two hands. Was Kieran unconscious? He wasn’t
fighting them anymore, and the leader was aiming the gun he held at
Jess’s head.
    Oh my God. She tried
to escape and let loose the loudest, highest-pitched scream she’d
ever made.
    Kieran opened his eyes. He pulled the gun
back until it faced in the opposite direction, toward him.
    More violence, more death.
Not him. Don’t kill him.
    Someone kicked Kieran in the gut, and his
grip faltered. The men around him moved to point the barrel back
toward Jess’s head. All feeling had stopped in her system. It was
him or her, and for some reason she’d prefer if he pulled the
trigger on her rather than harm himself.
    Kieran obviously had different thoughts. He
struggled to control the aim of the gun, receiving two more kicks
in the process.
    “Stop! Don’t hurt him. Please,” she
yelled.
    The bullet hit her before she heard the shot.
Fire ripped through her thigh, burning and tearing her apart. Blood
covered her skirt and leeched into the dirty hay beneath her. Did
she scream? She didn’t know, but Kieran’s eyes widened and he
shouted something she didn’t understand before her world faded to
black.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    Kieran’s backup team arrived a mere five
minutes after he put a bullet in the most interesting woman he’d
ever met.
    She couldn’t die. Life couldn’t be that
unfair. After over twenty years in the field, he’d never shot
anyone. Why did his first bullet have to hit Red?
    Kieran had received two fractured ribs and
some internal bruising, but otherwise he felt fine. Jess, on the
other hand, had lost a lot of blood and was sent by helicopter to a
hospital in North Bay. He reached the hospital an hour later by
ambulance. No one would inform him of her status. After the
emergency room doctor cleared him to leave with the caveat that he
see