Hard As You Can

by Laura Kaye

  “Good. That’s good.” Nick tugged his hands through his hair. “Wish I could be in there with you and Becca. Hate sitting on the sidelines.”

  Shane would’ve felt the same way. “I get it, man. Best thing you can do is just chill out. Becca’s gonna need you—bad—when we’re done. No matter how this shakes out, the woman’s staring down a major release of stress and emotion when it’s over.”

  Not that Shane really had to explain this to Nick. They’d both been in enough snafus to be well acquainted with the adrenaline letdown that almost always followed. Experience it enough, you learned how to manage the flow. But hell if it didn’t mow your ass down those first few times, no matter how much you thought you’d prepared for it.

  “Yeah,” Nick said.

  Worried as the guy was—for Charlie, for Becca, for the whole team given their situation—Shane knew there was something he could do to take a little of the load off Nick’s mind. The apology Shane hadn’t quite been able to pull together the previous night. “Look, man, I wanted to—”

  A rattle sounded at the front door, and Marz walked in with Murphy—and another man. Both in full EMT uniform. What the hell? Had Nick and Becca changed their mind about her friend’s partner taking part in this?

  “Goddamnit,” Nick bit out, his scowl answering Shane’s question. Nick leaned in Charlie’s room. “Becca? Murphy’s here. Brought company, too.”

  “Oh,” she said, rising. She led them up the hallway, and Nick flipped on lights as they went.

  Murphy raised his hands in a gesture of mea culpa. “I know what you said. But we’re a package deal. No way to make this happen without Eric,” he said.

  Becca turned to Nick and laid a hand on his chest. “It’s okay. I can vouch for him, for both of them. You know I wouldn’t do anything to put Charlie at risk, or any of us.”

  Nick’s intense gaze cut from Becca to Eric to Murphy.

  Murphy shrugged. “Some lies I’m willing to tell, some I’m not.”

  Tense as Shane was over the unexpected newcomer, he totally got the sentiment. No doubt, falling off the grid midshift was going to require some creative storytelling on their part. But lies were the last thing you wanted standing between you and a partner you had to count on day in and day out. Which brought Shane back to the words he owed Nick Rixey. Soon.

  For a long moment, Shane looked over the new player in their little drama. Last name Rodriguez, according to the name tag on his shirt. Dark hair and eyes, stocky build, loose stance, made easy eye contact. Despite Murphy’s immediate defensiveness, the guy appeared relatively relaxed, like he had nothing to hide, and like he understood enough about the situation to accept the tension saturating the air around them. Shane’s gut came down on the side of trustworthy.

  “Fair enough,” Nick finally said, apparently coming to the same conclusion. Besides, guy was here now. No choice other than to accept it and move forward.

  “Jones filled me in,” Eric said. “I have his back in this, and I’m happy to help.” The guy looked from Nick to Becca. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother and what you’re going through.”

  “Thank you, Eric. Thanks for being here. No doubt we’ll need you,” she said.

  Nick squeezed Becca’s shoulders, and she leaned back against him. “How do you want to start?” he asked.

  For the next forty-five minutes, Murphy walked them through the procedure, using a PowerPoint presentation he’d prepared on his laptop, and the four with medical training talked through approaches and responsibilities. They weren’t going to have a lot of time or a lot of space, so going in as prepared as possible was critical to the outcome they all wanted.

  Charlie. Back among the living.

  But even though their discussion left him feeling like they had a better than average chance of this working, talking could only take them so far.

  After changing into scrubs, they loaded Charlie onto a stretcher. Guy was so out of it he didn’t stir a bit as they transferred him, nor as they carried him through the apartment and down the steps to the ambulance parked just outside the back door of Hard Ink.

  Together, they got Charlie hooked up to a variety of monitors inside the rig, started him on another course of IV antibiotics, and strapped him down at the chest and thighs to keep him from thrashing about should he unexpectedly wake up mid-procedure. At each step in the process, Shane kept an eye on Becca. But she had her head squarely in the game, and her determination served to reinforce his own.

  They all gowned up, scrubbed in, and gloved up, then Murph administered a nerve block intended to preempt pain from the elbow down to the fingertips.

  Shane nodded to Nick, standing outside the rig’s back door. Behind him stood Jeremy, Marz, and Beckett, all of their expressions as grim and serious as Shane felt. “All right. Close us in and let’s do this,” Shane said.

  The doors clunked shut, enclosing them in the makeshift OR with a patient whose life they’d just saved from the clutches of the Church Gang. No way they were losing Charlie now that they had him back.

  It would kill Becca. And it would go a long way toward destroying the team, too. Because something special had happened these past few days. They were becoming a family born of choice rather than blood.

  Murphy slid his mask over his mouth and nose. “Okay, lady and gents, we’ve got a guaranteed window of two hours where no one will miss us or the vehicle.”

  Shane met the guy’s gaze and nodded. “Lead the way, Doc.”

  As Shane and Eric assisted and Becca monitored Charlie’s vitals, Murphy made quick work of prepping the wound. Removing the exposed bone was a slow process accomplished in small millimeter chips using a pair of plierlike bone cutters. Then Shane and Murphy worked together on the delicate skin-grafting procedure. Since they had so little elbow room and wanted to keep the need for anesthetic localized, they’d transplanted the skin they needed for the flap from Charlie’s forearm.

  When the whole procedure was done, Shane stared at the repair with more than a little wonder. What they’d done had been clearly illegal, likely unethical, and absolutely necessary—and it had worked.

  Now they just had to hope Charlie was strong enough to bounce back from the infection.

  They opened up the back of the rig and shared the good news with Nick and Beckett, who didn’t appear to have moved since they’d closed themselves in a good ninety minutes before.

  Nick reached up and pulled Becca into his arms. “You did it,” he said against her hair, and she clutched her arms around his neck.

  “We all did,” she rasped.

  Shane patted her back and smiled, and she turned and hugged him next. “Thank you,” she said.

  The gratitude washing off her made Shane feel ten feet tall. “No thanks necessary, Becca.”

  While Nick, Beckett, and Becca carefully got Charlie to his room upstairs, Shane hung back and helped Murphy and Eric do a thorough cleanup job on the ambulance. Then they all headed up to the apartment to make sure Charlie was still okay.

  As they shared a quiet round of congratulations—Becca’s eyes never leaving her sleeping brother’s face—a call came through on both of the EMTs’ radios. “Perfect timing,” Murphy said with a smile.

  Stepping out of Charlie’s room, Nick held out a hand. “We won’t forget what you did for us. Thank you,” he said, shaking both men’s hands. Thanks and good-byes went around, then Murph and Eric left. Not only had the pair proven themselves good friends, but they could be damn important allies as this situation unfolded. And with the authorities and the hospitals off the table, they needed all the help they could get.

  “Where are Marz and Jeremy?” Shane asked.

  “Next door doing research,” Nick said. “We should share the news.”

  “You guys go, I’ll stay with Charlie,” Becca said.

  Nick grasped her hand. “You should be at the celebration,” he said. “We’ll only stay a few minutes and come right back.”

  She smiled and
nodded. “Okay, just a few minutes.”

  As a group, they poured into the gym, and Shane for one couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

  From his chair at the computer, Marz nearly jumped to his feet. “It’s over? How’d it go?”

  “Went good,” Shane said as he put an arm around Becca’s shoulder and hugged her in against his side. “We did good.”

  As they gathered around Marz’s desk, she gave a fast nod and batted at the corner of her eye. “Now we wait for Charlie to wake up and beat this fever.”

  Jeremy set a box of files on the floor. “He’ll do it, Becca. Don’t you worry.”

  Marz’s smile was a mile wide. “That’s right. Man, this is damn good news.”

  Shane nodded. “Chalk one up to stupid luck.”

  Marz shook his head. “Wasn’t luck out on the dirt road that day, and wasn’t luck tonight. You two are rock stars, man. For real.”

  “Besides,” Beckett said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans, “if it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid.” They all chuckled.

  “So,” Shane said, eager to change the topic. “Any luck here?”

  Marz sat heavily. “Lots of things in the works. Surveillance camera feeds are all up from inside Confessions. I managed to isolate the range of frequencies representing voices from the club’s music and other background noise, so we’ve got audio, too. Sound quality isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing. And for shits and giggles, I set up a search query of all the companies doing business out of the marine terminal who have anything to do with Afghanistan, Singapore, or military hardware and materiel using the Port Authority registries.”

  “You’ve been busy,” Beckett said.

  Marz shrugged and rubbed his thigh. “Couldn’t just sit around and wait, you know?”

  A rustling sound caught Shane’s attention, and he glanced around the desk to find Eileen wrestling a big stuffed bear out of a box. The puppy pulled it free but landed on her back, the bear on top. She growled and flipped out from under it. Shane laughed.

  “Oh shit,” Jeremy said, reaching for the bear. “No, no, Eileen.”

  The dog sank her teeth into the bear’s neck and bolted.

  Jeremy took off after her, darting between Beckett and Nick and around the gym equipment. Eileen growled and shook the bear as she dodged and weaved. Jeremy finally cornered her. “Gotcha, bad puppy. That’s Becca’s bear,” he said, scooping the dog and bear up. “Let go, now,” he said. Eileen licked his face as everyone chuckled. They all loved that mutt, but she seemed to have a special sweet spot for Jeremy and Charlie in particular.

  “Don’t worry about it, Jer,” Becca said with a smile.

  “All right, fess up,” Nick said. “Were you and Marz playing dolls all this time?” Nick asked with a straight face.

  “Ha, ha, asshole,” Jeremy said as he flipped his brother off.

  Shane snickered at the glower on Jeremy’s face. “Is that an Army bear?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Becca said. “My dad sent it to me from Afghanistan.”

  “Here,” Jeremy said, drilling it at Shane like a football.

  Shane caught it before it nailed him in the gut. “Fucker,” he said, chuckling. Something metallic clanked to the floor.

  “Oops,” Jeremy said, putting Eileen down and retrieving a thin chain from the concrete. He held it up. Play ID tags. “Look what you went and did, Eileen. Bad girl. Bad, bad girl.”

  The puppy tilted her head and whined before sitting down on her haunches. Her tail wagged lazily. Dang if she wasn’t the cutest three-legged German shepherd Shane had ever seen. Not that he thought he’d ever seen a three-legged German shepherd before. Or any three-legged dog. Still.

  “Sorry, Becca. I’ll get a replacement chain,” Jer said.

  “I might have one somewhere. I’ll look,” Marz said. “What’s it say?”

  Jeremy smiled. “Bear, Maxwell. His social security number. And ‘B Positive.’”

  Shane reached out his hand. “Hey, that’s pretty accurate info. Lemme see. Maybe I can fix it.” He dropped the bear to the desk as he examined the ball chain. “Oh. The connector’s totally gone.” He scanned the floor around their feet, but didn’t see it. Flipping the ID tag around, Shane chuckled. “Maxwell Bear.”

  And then Shane froze.

  The social security number was familiar . . .

  “Holy shit,” Shane said, doing a double take. “This isn’t a SSN. Look how the digits are divided up.” His brain racing, Shane held it out to Marz and everyone stepped closer.

  Marz’s eyes went wide. “Three groups of three instead of groups of three, two, four.” He dug a sheet of paper from a stack on his desk and slammed it down with the tag so everyone could see.

  Nick leaned in. “Holy. Shit.”

  “Oh, my God. That’s . . . isn’t that the number carved inside my mother’s locket?” Becca asked.

  Shane looked again, just to prove his brain hadn’t played a trick on him. But, no. The ID tag still read 754–374–329 and matched one of the numbers they’d been investigating the past few days. The Singapore bank account number. The account holding $12 million in cash Merritt received running the black op that took their SF team down.

  “It’s the same,” Becca whispered. “Why would it be on the bear’s tag?”

  Marz grabbed the bear from where Shane had placed it on the desk. The hat. The coat. The pants. The boots. Shane’s heart pumped harder in his chest as Marz took off each article of clothing and inspected them carefully for writing or false panels. Nothing. When the bear was naked, Marz flipped it around and gave it a full physical. Still nothing.

  Becca’s eyes were wide as saucers. “What do you think it means?”

  Marz shook his head as he stared at the bear.

  Shane’s thoughts flew around Becca’s question. No way this is a coincidence. What were you trying to tell Becca, Frank? And why did you feel you had to hide codes and account numbers and messages in so many secretive ways? The bracelet. And now the bear.

  “It means we have to start looking at things a whole lot different.” Marz squeezed the toy from ears to paws. “And it means your bear has to die, Becca,” he said as he looked up at her.

  She gaped and stared at the bear for a long moment. Finally, she said, “You think something’s in it?”

  Shane’s scalp prickled as the rightness of her words ran through him.

  Marz smiled. “I think something’s in it.”

  Becca nodded. “Well, all right. But if it has to die, can we do the killing over in the apartment so I can keep an ear out for Charlie?”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, they’d checked on a still-sleeping Charlie and congregated around the island in the kitchen. The beer and whiskey flowed.

  Shane was still riding so high from the success of Charlie’s surgery that he didn’t think sleep was anywhere in his immediate future, despite its being well after one o’clock in the morning. And now the adrenaline rush of their discovery with the bear.

  “To Becca and Shane,” Nick said, raising his glass. Everyone followed suit.

  “To Charlie,” Shane said, diverting the attention from himself with another round of clinking glasses. After all, he’d just been doing his job. Shane tossed back a swallow of whiskey and enjoyed the warm bite of it hitting his tongue.

  “If I drink any more of this, it’ll knock me out until Sunday,” Becca said, pushing her bottle of beer away. “And I should keep an eye on Charlie through the night.”

  “You don’t have to do it alone,” Beckett said in a quiet voice, those ice blue eyes trained on Becca. “I’ll help.” Shane had a pretty strong suspicion that, like himself, the big guy was also trying to make some amends where Becca was concerned. He’d been almost as standoffish when they’d met, and soon thereafter he’d gotten in a fistfight with Nick that she hadn’t appreciated one bit. And she’d let them all know it, too.

  The memory of Becca’s fierce defense of Nick almost made Shane sm
ile. Not many people took on Beckett Murda and lived to tell the tale. But she had.

  “Me too,” Nick said. “We’re in this together.”

  She smiled and tucked in against Nick’s body. “Thanks, guys.”

  Nick wrapped his arm around her and kissed her hair. “Now, back to the bearicide,” he said, pointing at the toy in front of Marz.

  “This is some serious cloak-and-dagger,” Shane said, studying the tag again.

  “Merritt always was a brilliant tactician and strategist. That’s clearly at play here. Question is, why?” Beckett said as he crossed his big arms. And he was right. Merritt had been a soldier who understood war, who knew how to use his assets and mitigate his weaknesses. Shane had always admired that about him. Part of the reason it stung so bad that the man had betrayed him. All of them.

  Marz nodded. “Right. Which is why it has to be significant that he had a special ID tag made with the bank account number in place of the SSN. Then sent it to Becca.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Becca said, rubbing her thumb over the stamped numbers. “First the bracelet and now this.”

  “I know.” Marz met each of their gazes. “That’s why I think there’s something in the bear.”

  A rush of anticipation shot through Shane, and he braced his hands on the counter. “Well, what are you waiting for? Open this bad boy up.”

  Stepping back, Nick retrieved a pair of kitchen shears from a drawer. “You sure it’s okay with you?” he asked Becca.

  “Heck, yeah,” she said, as Marz accepted the scissors into his grip. “My father wouldn’t have done this without a reason.”

  “Agreed,” Marz said. “Here goes nothing.” He burrowed the sharp point of the scissor blade into the seam that ran up the stuffed animal’s back, then slowly opened the body, the legs, the head.

  Shane peered over his shoulder, trying like hell to avoid blocking Marz’s light but dying to know what they were going to find. What it was going to be, Shane wasn’t quite sure. But it had to be something good, something important. Because there was no other reason for Merritt to go to all this trouble except as a signal to pay attention and dig deeper. At least, that’s what Shane’s gut told him. “Who thought we’d be doing another surgery tonight?” he asked.