“You can’t have him.” Her voice came out a little stronger. “I’m not stupid and I’m not lowering this gun. I won’t miss you.” She adjusted the aim to make sure he knew she pointed it at the center of his skull. “Tell your men to get the fuck out or I’ll be cleaning your brains off the walls for weeks. I called 9-1-1. The police should be here any second.”

“Fuck,” a male voice hissed from the other side of the wall, telling her that another man was inches from the door and within reach of the asshole who filled the bathroom door.

“Tell your guy to back off.” Her finger tightened on the trigger. “I’m scared, freaked the hell out, and I might shoot you if I see the slightest movement.”

“Back off,” the guy who seemed in charge ordered. “She’s got a Berretta pointed straight at my head.”

“And I know how to use it,” she said for good measure. She glanced at the space between the guy’s head and the doorway and spotted Brawn still motionless. Her attention focused on the threat. “Move real slow and drop your weapon.”

His hand opened and the weird weapon landed on the dead guy on the floor. “Are you a cop?”

“No, but I won’t miss you.”

He cleared his throat. “Are you his security detail?”

“No but I’ll kill you to protect him. You aren’t taking him. Order your men to leave my house but you don’t move. You’re my insurance that they don’t try anything stupid. They do and you’re dead.”

“Your house? He lives with you?”

“Shut up and do what I said. Order your men out.”

He hesitated. “Fine.” The fingers of his open hand jerked at his side in a wave motion.

She relaxed slightly, a mistake on her part, thinking he’d silently ordered his men to leave with the hand signal. Instead bullets blasted through the walls. She pulled the trigger and threw her body to the floor.

Weight slammed down on her back. She couldn’t even scream from the pain of being crushed and the gun was torn from her fingers. Whoever had slammed into her shifted his weight and a hand fisted painfully in her hair, forcing her head back. She gasped in air and screamed then.

An elbow nailed her in the back, cutting the sound off from the fresh pain and the body lifted. She spotted her gun near the toilet, too far to grab before she was hauled up by the vicious grip fisting her hair at the base of her neck. She swayed on her feet, clutched at the gloved hand and realized she’d missed killing the son of a bitch when he spoke.

“A couple inches off your mark but you clocked my cheek.” He sounded pissed. “You’ll pay for that, bitch.”

He shoved her hard. She slammed into the wall and groaned. She turned, knew she would die and prayed her father had gotten lucky with his date. He’d have heard the explosions and gunfire from the main house. The bastards had either killed her dad before they’d attacked her house or he was spending the night elsewhere. Otherwise he’d have come after her by now.

She glared at the son of a bitch who had her trapped. It was satisfying to see the tear in the black material near his ear, red showed from the bloody wound the bullet had inflicted and she hoped it left a hell of a scar. Her chin rose as she glared at him and her fingers fisted at her sides.

“Fuck you.”

Two more black-clad figures entered the bathroom, weird weapons drawn and they pointed them at her. One of them spoke. “You okay, Randy?”

“Fine,” their leader sighed. “She nicked my cheek but I dodged for the most part.”

She looked up and realized they’d shot through the wall separating the bedroom and bathroom too high to have hit where she’d been standing. It was confusing since she’d been sure they were trying to kill her.

“Who are you?”

Randy reached out suddenly and grabbed her by her throat, yanked her away from the wall and fisted her hair again. He pulled hard enough to jerk her head back as he pulled her tight against him. She could detect cigarettes on his breath, which fanned through the material over his mouth.

“Is she one of them?” One of his men stepped to the side of her.

“Nope. Human. I’m sure. She’s not a New Species. Her eyes are normal.”

Someone else entered the bathroom. “We’re picking up chatter. Our second team just intercepted the cops. They are coming. We’ve got four minutes.”

“Fuck,” Randy hissed. He let go and shoved her against the wall. He grabbed his uninjured ear and tapped it.

“This is alpha dog. We have a female inside the male’s bathroom. She’s obviously screwing him since she admitted it’s her house and they are both locked in his room.” He paused for seconds. “She’s alive. I checked and she’s not one of them—she’s human.” He paused again. “Understood. I’ll bring her in with him.” He tapped his ear to cut the transmission.

He grabbed her hair, jerked her away from the wall and fisted the back of her shirt too as he spun her around. “It’s your lucky damn day. You get to live. Move. You try anything and I’ll hurt you bad. My orders are to bring you in breathing but nobody said I couldn’t make you suffer.”

He stopped her at the bathroom door. The dead guy was inches from her bare feet. She felt wet heat on the floor like warm syrup. She didn’t look down to verify she stood in blood. She didn’t need to see it to know. Nausea roiled up and she made a gagging sound.

The hand tightened on her shirt and the man jerked her. “You puke and I’ll break your damn jaw.”

Becca frantically fought to thwart the urge. She watched helplessly as two men lifted Brawn off the bed. They gripped him under his armpits and dragged him toward the door.

Who are these assholes? She was terrified. Any law-enforcement agency would have identified themselves before attacking. That left the opposite of law enforcement. Maybe mercenaries? Becca quaked at the thought. Her father said the difference between one of them and a soldier was that his men would only kill when issued orders.

Three more black-clad men, their faces and hair concealed, walked into the room. One of them pulled another of the unusual weapons, aimed at Brawn’s leg and fired. The dart embedded in Brawn’s upper thigh but he didn’t flinch, still unconscious.

“That’s two,” the man who had shot him sighed. “Let’s keep track. We don’t want to kill him. In fifteen minutes we’ll dose him again.”

“Fuck,” another man softly swore. “That won’t kill him? That’s a hell of lot.”

“They have high drug tolerances from all those years of testing and they have a fast metabolism. You don’t want this bastard to wake up until we get him in a cage. It would be the last mistake you ever made.”

“It wasn’t so hard getting him.” Randy chuckled. “It was easier than I thought.”

The man who’d shot Brawn with the dart shook his head. “It was the female. He couldn’t flee so he had to fight. If it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t have caught him. He would have been out the window and miles from here before we reached the room. He locked the door and was waiting for us when we attacked, to protect her. He heard us coming.”

Becca felt bad. Brawn wouldn’t have been captured if she had spent the night at her dad’s house. Shit.

“Let’s move out. The police will be here soon.” Randy shoved her from behind. “Walk.”

The shooter holstered his bulky gun against his thigh, moved forward and grabbed Brawn’s legs. The three of them carried him out and Becca was forced to walk behind the trio. Randy kept a tight hold on her and she didn’t bother to fight. There were too many of them for her to win. They were obviously well trained and while her father had made her take martial arts, she was a realist. They exited out of the back of her house where the entire slider doorframe had been totally removed in one piece from the wall.

They carried Brawn to the back wall at Tina and Mel’s yard. One man released Brawn’s legs and climbed the wall, while the other two lifted Brawn’s limp body up. The sound of a distant siren made Becca fight back the urge to attack Randy. She could take him by surprise, maybe and flee into the darkness. They wouldn’t have much time to find her before the cops arrived but they also might just shoot her in the back. Kill her.