by Kishan Paul
Ally returned the panel back into the wall until it was flush with the others. The safe held a lifetime of secrets. Secrets she would kill to protect. She tucked one of the magazines in her jean pocket before shoving the other into the base of her gun. After one final glance at the monitor, she pushed the Remington in the back of her jeans and adjusted her shirt to hide its bulge.
“Come, Apollo. We’ve got company.” The dog rose and followed her out of the room. She texted Lee and veered through the house, making her way to the front door.
The cool evening breeze chilled her overheated skin as soon as she opened the door. She pulled up the surveillance footage of the grounds on her phone, entered her porch, and shut the door behind her just as Lee’s text popped up on the screen.
Stick to the ROE.
The rules of engagement were simple. She stayed hidden, within the grounds of the home, and did not move beyond the second fence and let Lee handle the disturbance. If things went wrong, she’d make her way inside to the basement and the safe room with Jayden and take the underground tunnel that led them to the other side of the property. She whispered a prayer that none of the above would occur.
Too many securities had been put in place to prevent threats. Provisions Lee, a former CIA operative, had personally overseen. Ally trusted her. Lee loved them and would lay down her life to protect them. But she’d evolved in to much more than a protector. She’d become a part of them, her rock.
The metal of the gun scraped against her spine during her sprint across the lawn to the thick grouping of large arborvitaes, which lined the edge of the yard. Not only did the giant evergreens add an additional screen of privacy around the home, they also provided the perfect cover. She positioned herself between the two that gave her the best view of the windy road below and her home behind her.
Apollo planted himself beside her leg. His ears pointed in the direction of the road. “It’s probably a false alarm.” She whispered the assurance just as much for herself as for the dog.
His raised tail shifted slightly from right to left, acknowledging her words but letting her know he wasn’t convinced either.
Ally wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and alternated her attention between the road and the action on her phone’s screen. The SUV stopped in the middle of the drive. She scrolled through the camera footage and cursed at the realization that none could provide a visual of the occupants. When it started moving again, Ally took in a breath and tried to ease her racing heart.
The closer the black Suburban advanced toward the gray barn, the tenser she became. The sirens of Justin’s cruiser echoing in the distance did nothing to ease her concerns. The vehicle slowed to a stop a few feet from the barn. Her back to the road, Lee stacked wooden logs onto a pile beside the building, appearing oblivious to the intrusion.
Ally’s gut screamed danger. That her world was about to change. She grabbed her gun from her waistband and prepared for the worst.
CHAPTER TWO
HOMECOMING
Eddie maneuvered his rental through the open metal gates. He eased to a stop as soon as he made it inside the property and alternated between scrutinizing the slow closure of the gates from his rearview mirror to glancing at the stopwatch on his phone. Impatience stiffened his already-tightened muscles a notch more with every digit the ticker added to the number on his screen. A series of colorful words in various languages escaped through his clenched teeth, and the scowl he’d donned the past few days deepened by the time the metal doors finally sealed shut.
A Mac truck—or two—could have made their way inside the property between the time he’d entered to the time it took for it to close. Added to that, he’d managed to block the camera and, with a little help, breached the security gates. He shook his head. With its thick black bars standing well over eight feet, the fence reminded him of a few of the guys he used to work out with. They were all muscle and hype; intimidating as hell until you saw them in the showers and realized they had no dong to their ding. In this case, the barriers were fabulous—as long as they weren’t intended for security purposes.
Other factors contributed to his agitation as well: the twenty-plus hour flight to Seattle, the ferry ride from the city to get to this point, and seeing the woman he’d avoided for over two years. He leaned his head to the side until it popped and then repeated the stretch on the other side.
He’d intended on showing up. Just not now. Not like this. Not until he’d found Wassim and given her the life she deserved. A task he’d failed to accomplish.
“The gates weren’t that slow in closing.” Raz’s pitiful defense only added to Eddie’s irritation.
Eddie flashed his passenger a look before focusing on the road ahead. “That’s the only issue you see in this situation?” He eased his foot off the brake, allowing the SUV to move along the path. “I thought I’d taught you better. We shouldn’t have been able to breach them in the first place,” he growled.
“Sai’s one of the best hackers out there. There’s not a system he can’t get in.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “That’s the problem. He’s only one of the best, and it didn’t take him too long to breech it. It shouldn’t have been that easy. With all the cameras they have on the property, why haven’t they been able to ID us yet?” He assessed his passenger. “For the record, your defending everyone is only going to help her get killed.”
“You’re right.” Raz stared out the window. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Satisfied by his response, Eddie dropped the topic for another time. They were both on edge and spent most of the trip in silence, lost in their own thoughts. When Raz announced his intentions of going home, Eddie tried to persuade him otherwise, but the kid refused to listen. Although this was not where Eddie wanted to be, he also didn’t trust him to go alone.
The Raz who came to him a year ago had been on a self-destructive path. Reeling from his little brother’s diagnosis, the kid hated the world and himself for things he couldn’t change. It took some serious ass kicking, but in time, he learned to channel those emotions in a more productive way: finding criminals. Now that he was finally doing better, he’d decided it was time to return to the source of so many of his issues.
Raz was living proof that a shitty upbringing could fuck a person up for life. He and over a dozen other orphaned twelve-year-old boys were adopted by Sayeed Irfani and groomed to fulfill his nefarious intentions. The end result of his training was a mall bombing which left several dead, including the bomber, who happened to be one of Raz’s adopted brothers.
Since creating his own little army of killers wasn’t good enough, the bastard kidnapped Alisha Dimarchi and forced her to be his second wife, imprisoning her in his compound. If one action alone could be attributed to his downfall, it was his choice in wives. She killed the asshole and helped the rest of the brothers and other prisoners, including Eddie’s sister, escape.
Unfortunately, Raz repaid her heroism by helping one of Sayeed’s former guards, Wassim, abduct her and contributed to her husband’s untimely death. The guilt the kid now carried was further exacerbated by the fact that when she escaped, she turned around and adopted not only his guilty ass but also Wassim’s young son. She gave up everything she had to protect her two boys and started a new life with new names. But the past never seemed to stay dead when Alisha Dimarchi was involved.
His thoughts were interrupted by the view ahead. Trees lined both sides of the narrow stretch of road. Instead of leaves, cherry blossoms in deep pink filled their thick branches. Like a military saber arch, the brown stalks wrapped in blooms reached over the path, connecting with the limbs of the trees across from them, forming an archway of pink overhead.
Eddie leaned forward and peered down the road of endless color. The fallen blooms even coated the drive. The flowers peppered the lush green lawn on either side of them. He’d been transported into someone’s cotton-candy-filled fantasy and half expected Dorothy and Toto to skip down the pink-pet
aled path any second.
“So.” He cleared his throat and glanced over at his younger travel partner. “You going to tell her about your life plans?”
Other than the crackling of leather when the over-stressed and highly uncomfortable companion shifted his weight, no response.
“It’s not hard, you know. Just say something like…” Eddie cleared his throat and raised his voice a few octaves. “Mom, I’ve decided I don’t want to go to college. I’d rather work with Eddie and the team and save people’s lives—”
“I can’t,” he snapped.
“Yeah, actually, you can.” Eddie dismissed his response. “Trust me, you’ve done more dangerous things in the past year than having to say no to your mother.”
“She’ll say I shouldn’t make that decision yet. That my brain isn’t fully developed, and the synapses are still—”
Eddie laughed over his explanation. “At which point, you explain, your brain is developed enough for you to grasp what you want to do with your life. If you can drive, fly a plane, and use a gun—”
“Not yet.” The words were curt like they usually were when he pulled half-shit excuses out of his asshole. “It’s not the right time.”
Eddie nodded, pretending to understand why it was the right time to give people false hopes about things they both understood would probably get his mother killed, but not the right time to tell them about his change in career plans. “Which brings up another question. When exactly is the right time?”
“I don’t know.”
He scowled at the irritation in Raz’s tone and shot him a look.
“Sorry.” The kid let out a breath. “I don’t want to disappoint her.”
Eddie’s brows rose. “A little disappointment won’t break her heart. You realize she’s not made of glass. Right?”
A heavy dose of silence and tension filled the cabin.
“That heart you’re so worried about breaking? It’s been ripped out of her body, run over, and cut in tiny bite-sized pieces on more than one occasion.” His chest tightened as he considered her past. “She’s gone through things that would have probably killed the rest of us.” He tipped his chin toward the path they drove. “And she’s still breathing. It’s why I call her Ice. She’s tough, and believe me when I say, you don’t need to worry about your mother. Who you need to be concerned about are you and the rest of the guys. If you say no to the team, not only will you let yourself and them down, they’ll kick your ass.”
“They’ll get over it.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. Maybe Raz’s brain wasn’t fully developed because he’d not heard anything Eddie had said. “But she won’t?”
“I can’t do it to her… Not again.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. About damn time he admitted the truth. Eddie slowed the car to a stop and took stock of Raz while he stared at his hands. “How long are you going to punish yourself over a mistake?”
“Doesn’t change what I did. I ruined her life.”
“Look at me,” Eddie ordered. When the kid didn’t comply, he leaned over. “I said. Look. At. Me.”
When he complied, shame glistened in his dark brown eyes before he managed to blink it away. “Did you trust the wrong people?” Eddie paused for effect before answering his own question. “Yes. Did someone die?” Again, he paused. “Yes. Did you kill him?”
When their eyes locked again, he proceeded. “No, you didn’t. Does anyone blame you?”
When Raz opened his mouth to respond, Eddie flashed a finger. “Anyone besides yourself?”
The kid’s lips pressed together in a tight line.
“No. And if you think giving up your dreams and dedicating your life to doing things you think will make her happy, will actually make her happy”—he pointed out the window—“then you don’t really understand your mother at all.”
The kid looked in the direction Eddie’s finger waved and shrugged. “It’s my choice, not yours.”
Stubborn, young, and stupid. Instead of sharing any further opinions on Raz’s warped guilt, he considered the woman they discussed and how she’d approach the subject. He let out a breath and continued the drive through the cotton candy universe. “Did you know I had a brother?”
“No.”
“Three years older than me.” The admission made something pull in his chest. He ignored it and pushed forward. “Sayeed killed him along with my parents. Another person I failed to protect.” His throat tightened at the memory of the family he once had.
Eddie’s mind wandered to memories of his brother, memories he rarely let himself entertain. “You have the same name as him.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do.” He shrugged. “You kinda remind me of him. Except he was better looking.” A sad smile tugged at Eddie’s lips. “He wanted to be a teacher. Had dreams of going to a teaching college in Karachi, but my father nixed all that. Razaa was a better son than me. He tried hard to do the right things, and for him the right thing meant going to law school. Instead, he stayed home and went to the legal college our dad wanted him to attend.”
The world of pink ebbed when the road curved to the left. In its place were fields of fruit trees, a barn, and looming in the distance as a backdrop to the orchard were snow-capped mountains. “On occasion, I wonder if he hadn’t listened to our father, if he’d gone off to teaching school in Karachi like he wanted, would Sayeed have killed him like he did the rest of my family? Until I realized that none of my wondering would bring him back.” He slowed the vehicle to a stop and stared at the mountains, getting lost in unproductive thoughts. He shook his head. “My point is… Life’s short. Shit’s going to happen whether we like it or not. Sometimes it’s our fault, and sometimes it’s not. The best thing we can do is clean it up and move on. Otherwise, all we’ll see and smell is the shit.” He tipped his chin in the direction of Mount Rainier. “And in the meantime, miss the good stuff.”
Satisfied with the depth of his life speech, he cleared his throat and returned to driving, allowing silence to fill the vehicle. In the far distance, a second security fence appeared, and he wondered how long it would take to breach it. Before he could delve deeper into the prospect, the name sprawled across the barn came in to view. The structure was painted to look weathered and gray with the words Marquis Orchards written in large script in deep olive green over the doors of the building. A picture of apples and pears in a basket sat directly beneath the words. He’d been informed of the name, but actually seeing the giant letters heightened his agitation.
Movement by the side of the structure caught his attention. A firm press on the brake and the vehicle slowed to a stop. He shifted it into park and assessed the woman who stacked wooden logs onto the already large pile beside the barn. She appeared oblivious to his presence, but he’d wager his life savings that she kept a weapon hidden within her reach. One she’d use to blow his head off if she deemed necessary. Probably the only secure component he’d identified thus far.
Raz cleared his throat. “Speaking of things we are going to tell her. I think we should tell her about the test results.”
He grimaced but didn’t reply. Leanna stood up from her work and faced them. Dark-haired and ebony-skinned, she wore jeans and a gray tee with Marquis Orchards scrolled across her chest. When he lowered Raz’s window to provide her with a glimpse inside the cabin, her polite expression shifted to a Cheshire cat grin, complete with a display of every single one of her perfect white teeth.
“She deserves to know Wassim took the test.”
“Quiet.” He growled and returned the window to closed position. “We tell her nothing. No need to give her false hope for no damn reason.”
“It’s better than having no hope at all. And she’ll find out, eventually.”
“We don’t know that.” The interior of the cabin filled with the sound of teeth grinding. Eddie’s teeth to be exact. “What we do know is that within minutes of someone inputting the test results for Wassim’s
swab in the donor bank, it disappeared. If Sai hadn’t been monitoring for it, we wouldn’t have known Wassim took and submitted the test. Until we figure out who removed it and why, we need to keep it quiet. As far as Wassim taking the test, the only reason he did was because he wants her to come for him.”
Eddie glanced at the home looming in the distance and considered the resident inside. “Unless you want her dead, I suggest you consider the swab test as confidential information.”
“And the fact that my brothers are part of ALPS? Is that confidential as well?”
He’d had the conversation in his head a hundred times over. The one where he explained to her how he took a handful of her lost boys and gave them purpose. Every time he’d imagined the talk, it always ended the same—with her accusing him of things he wasn’t doing. He blew out a breath. “I think you working with me is probably the most she can handle right now.”
Raz laughed and shook his head. “Your whole speech about how she could handle things that would have killed most was all bullshit?”
The tension in the SUV grew as they watched Leanna and her black rain boots approach until, finally, Eddie grinned. “This trip is going to suck. Isn’t it?”
The kid rested his head against the backrest. “Yeah.”
Police sirens sounded in the distance.
Eddie jutted his head toward the approaching woman. “Do I let her in?”
Raz chuckled. “She’ll shoot you if you don’t.”
He nodded in resignation and unlocked the doors. A second later, the passenger door flew open. “Is it really you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she pulled Raz out of the vehicle and into a hug. “Your mom’s going to be so happy to see you.”