“Mac…” I gritted out, not knowing what the hell else to say.
She whimpered, a tear dripping down her cheek to the corner of her mouth.
“Enough!” barked her captor. “Step forward!”
Without waiting for any more rebuttal, I eased to within touching distance of Mac, feeling the terror rolling off her, curling around me. God. Why did things have to end this way? I wanted to tell her how I felt. I wanted her in my life. I wanted her. Being so close and unable to touch her destroyed the remainder of my shattered heart.
“Untie her and let her go.” I gave my order, needing this to end. Needing to see her safely with Viper.
The nut job before me grinned as if he’d just won the lottery. His devil eyes sparkled. He enjoyed this way too much.
Fixing me with his hateful stare with the gun still trained on Mac’s skull, he dug into a back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a knife. Praying to God he’d honor the deal I made, I stood fixed to the spot.
My heart stuttered, not knowing if he intended to kill Mac anyway. Every muscle in me reacted by coiling tight.
He brought the knife to the rope at the back of the chair and proceeded to cut through it, the sharpness allowing the action to be done in a few seconds. Unraveling it, he watched both Viper and me.
Mac’s shoulders were the only things to sag slightly.
“Dec, I’m warning you. You’re making a huge mistake.”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, I held the rights to the decision. Viper couldn’t sway me.
Mac suddenly spoke for the first time, startling me. I watched on helplessly as she cried out, “No! I won’t let you do this, Harley. I can’t. This is who I am. I save people. I saved you once and I will do it again.” Turning to leer at the militant, she spoke loud and clear. “Do what you want to me, but let Harley go. Use me as revenge for your brother.”
What the actual fuck? Hell no! Not happening. Had she lost her Goddamn mind?
Never going to happen, sweetheart. Nice try, but one I will not consider.
Grinding my teeth, I yelled at her, “Do not say another word, Mac. I applaud your attempt at playing the martyr, but there is no fucking way it’s happening. Get that gorgeous butt off that chair and walk slowly to Viper. Now!”
Shocked at my tone, she could do nothing but stare at me. Damn stubborn woman. If I had to grab her and walk her to safety with a gun to my own head, I would. I didn’t need to though, because the gun at her head lowered before the prick hoisted her up by the arm and threw her across the floor toward Viper. Still, my hatred for him didn’t falter. He hadn’t done it in kindness. He wanted me. Nothing more.
I breathed out in relief, turning to watch her scramble up. Viper tucked her into his side protectively, and I knew in my heart that he would be the only one who would safeguard her like I could.
With the gun now trained on me, I waited for instructions.
“Move!” ordered the new thorn in my side.
Leveling Mac with my final stare, I attempted to keep it together as she fell apart.
Her heart bled by way of the emotion in her eyes, indicating her true feelings toward me. She felt what I felt. The pull which ran deeper than affection. I’d felt it the moment I’d looked into her stunning eyes. I knew if we weren’t in this situation we could have something incredible. But I had no idea how to fix it. Guns were still trained on Viper, and now Mac, and our team had failed to get us out. I’d seen with my own eyes the call for help using the device strapped to my buddy. Had it not gone through? Something didn’t add up.
Her cries cemented themselves in my head. Anguish held me in its grip. I wanted more of her. More of us. We’d only just begun. We had so much potential as a couple. These scumbags were taking everything from me.
My anchor who had kept me grounded was being released, and I felt myself floating again. Right where she’d found me. Floating in a mass of nothing.
Slanting my eyes across at the guy who’d always had my back and who still did by protecting Mac, I sympathized with him. Every muscle in his body twisted tightly and his eyes screamed out to me one last time to rethink my absurd decision. It gutted him to be losing his best friend. As if Reno’s death hadn’t been a burden almost too heavy to bear, mine would sink him completely. I hated what I needed to do. Hated that I needed to cause them so much pain. I needed to get out of here before I did rethink my decision. But that would get us all killed. Better one of us than three.
Walking past the two people I cared most about, catching Mac’s devastated face, I watched helplessly as she broke before me, sobbing openly and crying out.
“No! You can’t do this for me! I don’t want you to.” Her hands reached for me and I let my fingers touch hers, embedding their warmth and softness into my psyche. I’d cling on to the sensation until I took my last breath. The very hands that had treasured my body and tended to my wound. A lifetime ago.
Viper’s face pinched with despair, and if I wasn’t mistaken his eyes misted over. His neck muscles were ready to pop, his grip on the gun a white-knuckled one.
I mouthed, “thank you,” to him and let myself be led out of the room.
Chapter Fourteen
Mac
Watching Harley walk to his death killed me. He would die to keep me alive and it totally ruined me. I couldn’t possibly live with that. Why would he sacrifice himself? It should have been me. I tried, but it had been pointless when the enemy had wanted Harley all along. I played no part in the game other than luring the prey to his death.
I looked at Viper, and he appeared as crestfallen as me. We shared a look and he nodded slightly, motioning to me with his fingers in a circular fashion.
Confusion must have marred my features. I wasn’t privy to secret military code, so I stood rooted to the spot, devastated. The man who had tried to protect me and had come to mean so much would martyr himself on my account. It left my heart open and bleeding. No one had ever done such a thing.
He cared about me. Way more than I knew. God. I wanted to do something. Anything.
Momentarily forgetting the two gunmen, I spun to face them, but the room only held Viper and I.
The men had already gone, probably to assist in the killing of Harley. Letting out a loud wail, I fell to my knees, ignoring the jarring sensation. The tear in my heart hurt far worse.
“Are you okay?” Viper squatted next to me, laying his weapon down.
“No. They’ll kill him. You need to go after them. I’m fine. I’ll catch a cab back to Ann Arbor if I have to. Just go!” My voice had taken on a hysterical tone. A few bruises were nothing compared to watching someone I cared about walk away to their death. I couldn’t cope with it.
Pulling up his sleeve, he stared at a device on his wrist with confusion. Pressing a green button a couple of times like some sort of code, he looked back up at me.
“What is that?” I asked, suddenly dog-tired.
“Backup. Except it’s either faulty or something is seriously wrong.” His mouth pinched tightly. “Can you stand up properly?” he asked, giving me his full attention.
Nodding, I rose before Viper stood and held my arm making sure I didn’t teeter.
“I promised Dec I’d watch over you. I can’t leave until backup arrives,” he affirmed, although I could hear the edge to his voice, as if he warred between leaving or staying.
Needing him to go, I pleaded, “I am perfectly okay, I promise. You need to go save him. The clock is ticking, and if you don’t leave now, you’ll lose him for good. I’m sure you don’t want to have to live with that.”
I purposely played with his conscience, but I hoped it would spur him into action. His eyes squeezed tightly as he reached down for his weapon. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a wad of cash and what appeared to be a hotel keycard. “Call a cab and go to the hotel. This is our room card. Address is on the other side. Stay in the suite and lock the door until I get back.” Thinking for a second, he added, “Do you have your ce
ll on you?”
“No. It got thrown on the ground in the parking garage below and shattered after Char called, divulging my only means of communication to you guys.”
Digging into his other pocket, he pulled out his cell and switched it on. “Here. Take this. I have my military one on me. I’ll call you to keep you updated if I can. Call room service and order some food. Take a shower and get cleaned up. We’ll get you some clothes when we can.”
Reaching into the waistband of his military pants, he pulled out a handgun and pushed it toward me.
“Take this. Shoot first and ask questions later. I mean it, Mac. There may be more enemies approaching or waiting outside.”
Glaring at the black metal, knowing it could snuff out a human in the blink of an eye, I hesitated. I’d never used a gun.
“Mac. Look at me.”
Rising to meet his concerned eyes, he said, “Life or death, remember. Leaving you to go to the hotel without me is dishonoring my vow to Dec to keep you safe. I need to know you’ll use it if you need to. Time’s running out. If I have any chance at all of saving him, I need your promise.”
Deciding I was responsible for wasting valuable time, I nodded and grabbed the gun.
While I hated the thought of bailing while he went after Harley, I knew I needed to let him do his job. I’d only slow him down. His kindness spoke volumes about his character.
“Thank you. Truly. For everything.” I took the cell in my other hand and pocketed it. He kept his hand on my arm and walked me out of the room, gun trained forward ready to shoot.
***
Back at the hotel after a short cab ride, I locked and dead-bolted the door before hurrying to the bathroom. Placing the gun on the vanity, I almost collapsed with relief, yet fear and worry dug deeper. Outside the warehouse, I’d clung to the walls like a shadow, waiting on someone in hiding to shoot me, but all had remained quiet. Two dead bodies at the back door had failed to push me over the edge. In some ways I’d been relieved. I wanted vengeance on those who had brought this crap into my life.
I desperately needed some hot water to scald away remnants of the animal’s dirty hands on me. I’d been violated and abused, and it all began to hit me now. I placed Viper’s cell on the vanity next to the gun, which remained ready to shoot. I’d been clutching onto the phone’s silence like a lifeline since he’d given it to me, waiting on word that he’d saved Harley, but it remained quiet.
Peeling off my scrubs, I switched the faucets on and climbed into the shower, sinking to the floor under the cathartic spray. Surges of overwhelming sadness barreled through me as the adrenalin subsided and the magnitude of what I’d endured made sense in my head.
Deep heaves shook my chest as the water cascaded over me. I released loud sobs and let myself curl up and sag onto the slowly warming tiles.
The massive beating drum behind my rib cage stole my breath with its intense pounding, the beats jumping every so often from anxiety-fueled palpitations. Visions of evil shone like beacons behind my closed eyelids. Disturbed eyes chock-full of hate as if I’d been the one to kill his brother.
It’d witnessed no empathy or compassion for human life and I wondered how anyone could become so cold and calculated.
Huddling into myself I cried tears of grief and loss. I’d never be the same again. I’d lost a part of myself in the warehouse and perhaps even before that. Who could I trust now?
My close friends and family. Viper, Char, and Harley.
Switching thought patterns, my heart began to bleed for the man who’d put it all on the line for me without so much as a moment’s hesitation. And now, his life had been turned over to the asshole who had left a permanent imprint on my psyche.
His torment would be far greater than my own, death being the outcome. I couldn’t live with myself if he died. A certain amount of guilt would ride my shoulders for eternity, regardless of whether I had any say in his sacrificial offering.
I don’t know how long I lay on the shower floor mulling over everything. The water began to go cold, so I rose like a zombie and dried off, checking the phone again and finding nothing.
Wrapping myself in a hotel robe, I walked out to the bed and crawled on top, still grasping Viper’s cell. I stared at it, willing it to ring, my nauseated stomach overturning continuously.
What if he never came home? The moments we’d shared but a flicker in time. Just as I began to dream that maybe I’d found what I’d been looking for all along, it had been snatched away like a terrible tease.
God, I needed him to be all right. He’d been through too much already to have it end this way. His handsome face held firm in my mind’s eye as I eventually drifted off.
Chapter Fifteen
Harley
Would I ever see her again? I tried to push images of her distraught face away as footsteps raced up to me from behind. Turning marginally, my hopes of it being the cavalry disappeared when the two men who’d been aiming their weapons at us only a few seconds earlier narrowed the gap. One had his weapon trained on me and the other covered the retreating hallway, walking backward. If I’d been on top of my game I could have taken out the ring-leader before his minions showed up, but I’d been too busy grieving the loss of Mac.
Straightening up, I barely had time to refocus when a blow to the back of the head dropped me to the dusty floor. I never felt the impact because darkness seized me first.
***
Rousing groggily, awareness seeped in. My body curled awkwardly as if I were inside something. A crate?
Squinting my eyes open, I fought against the surrounding darkness. My head felt like it could explode at any second as agony ripped through my skull. Had I hit my head? A rumble from underneath brought me to life a little quicker. I attempted to sit up, but a metal barrel to my forehead pushed me back down.
“Don’t move!” a male voice yelled. My mind had a hard time playing catch up, but instantaneously a barrage of scenes and images flooded my brain, causing me to inhale sharply. Lightheadedness had me loll my head to the side of whatever caged me in. Random events played out in fast motion in no particular order.
Sitting in a classroom with what appeared to be middle-schoolers, passing notes to a boy I recognized as my friend. Danny Burgess. We’d become friends at the beginning of that year and stuck together until high school when he moved away. His red hair and crooked front tooth somehow worked in the overall scheme of his freckled face.
War torn buildings, bombed and crumbling, the smell of gunfire singeing my already sensitive nostrils. Reno, Viper, and my team on alert as we entered a small Afghan village, vacant and beyond repair, searching for survivors on a peace-keeping mission. A young voice, sniveling and pathetic clung to the air as we stepped over the threshold of the remains of a simple slum. Roof blown off and walls crumbling, the meek cry for help took us by surprise. I glanced at Viper and Reno, and they waved their guns to the sound of the child. Rubble and remnants of cheap furniture littered what once would have been a living area. I scanned the space, waiting for another sound.
Sobs mixed with desperation came at me again, and this time, I pinpointed my target. An overturned table in the corner of the room shielded the frightened victim of war. Dragging the wooden structure away, my eyes focused on a small form, huddled and shaking against the wall. I couldn’t make out the gender from all the dirt covering the youngster. At a guess I’d say boy, perhaps five or six years old. Abandoned and left to die. My steely heart wasn’t immune to the ravages and tragedies of war, especially when children were involved. They didn’t ask to be born. They didn’t ask to have such adversity thrust upon them. And this youngster who’d be mentally scarred forever, with no shoes and matted dirty hair, scared beyond belief, made me take pause. Sorrow filled me. The child should be attending school, laughing with friends, instead of cowering in the remnants of his bombed house, alone and worrying we’d come to finish him off. His small head turned, his eyes round with dread. I held up my hand and dropped my we
apon, crouching to put myself on a more even keel.
Flattening himself further against the wall in the hopes it would swallow him up, guilt and disgust riddled me. Both converged together in a powerful slap to my ego. In a moment of clarity, I became ashamed of the human race. We were doing this to ourselves because of greed, race, religion, and money. How had everything become so screwed up?
Another flash. Jumbled images twisted and turned. Faces and places. My mother and father. My dad before he died. His funeral. My childhood dog, Zep, short for Zeppelin, grinning as we ran through the park on a Sunday morning just around the corner from home. Smells bombarded me. A summer shower of rain settling into a garden filled with roses caught me as we tore past Mrs. Shepherd’s dated Victorian. Mom’s blueberry pancakes seeping into the yard through the open window as I kicked off my sneakers near the porch. Her perfume grabbing me and holding as I charged at her for a hug, with Zep riding my tails.
With the mental movie came an overwhelming influx of emotions. An onslaught almost too much to contend with. I retched weakly, my stomach deciding it couldn’t handle the excess acid formed by the return of my memory in one fell swoop.
A few loud pops outside failed to drag me out of my speeding movie, which entrenched me within its confines. My overloaded senses were dragged from past to present and back again, never lingering long.
The fire in my skull raged, pain shooting from the top of my scalp to the top of my spine. Something told me my sudden memory recall had been brought about by blunt force trauma.
The contents of my stomach rose, and as I heaved again, I brought everything up in the small space I occupied. More vertigo seized me, taking me once again into the nothing.
The Lost and Found Series Page 26