by S. Massery
Blood Sky
Broken Mercenaries, #1
S. Massery
Also by S. Massery
Fallen Royals Series (Dark High School Bully Romance)
Wicked Dreams
Wicked Games
Broken Mercenaries Series (Romantic Suspense)
Blood Sky
Angel of Death
Morning Star
Something Special Series (Contemporary Romance)
Something Special
Something Sacred
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by S. Massery
All rights reserved.
Editing by JD Book Services and Paige Sayer Proofreading
Cover Design by S. Massery
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To those who fight for love. Never stop.
Contents
Part I
1. DELIA
2. JACKSON
3. DELIA
4. JACKSON
5. DELIA
6. JACKSON
7. DELIA
8. JACKSON
9. DELIA
10. JACKSON
11. DELIA
12. JACKSON
13. DELIA
14. JACKSON
15. DELIA
16. JACKSON
17. DELIA
18. JACKSON
Part II
19. DELIA
20. JACKSON
21. DELIA
22. JACKSON
23. DELIA
24. JACKSON
25. DELIA
26. JACKSON
27. DELIA
28. JACKSON
29. DELIA
30. JACKSON
31. DELIA
Eight Months Later
Also by S. Massery
Also by S. Massery
Also by S. Massery
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Part I
1
DELIA
I clutch the knife and tiptoe back down the hall and into the bedroom that was once mine.
Stupid.
I came here on a whim, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. This house had been used for seven years: from the two months before I was born up until I was six-and-three-quarters. My father stole me away after my mother died, but now everything remains the same as in my memories. The walls of this room are still light pink. The bed still has a ruffled white and pink comforter, although it had a white sheet and an inch of dust settled on it when I arrived here two mornings ago.
The man had burst through the entryway of my childhood home, walking through the living room and toward the back of the house. His gait was hurried, and he didn’t notice me in the shadows on the main stairs. I assume it will only be a matter of time before he finishes his sweep of the first floor and climbs upward. This childhood bedroom of mine just has one escape route: the door into the hall. I suppose I could go out the window if I have to, but it’s a long drop.
He’s on the stairs. I can guess why he’s here: my enemies have finally caught up with me. His footsteps bang along the hardwood floors. Memories of my mother, stooped over and scrubbing those same floors, flash in my mind. We didn’t have a nanny or a maid, not like in Vegas. Back when I was young, Father’s empire was new, like a fledgling learning how to fly.
My hand flexes on the hunting knife again. My palms are slick, and I wait behind the door for the man to enter the room. The seconds slow into minutes. My heartbeat rings in my ears, almost blocking out my shallow breathing as he steps into my bedroom.
He goes for the small bathroom attached to my room. I lunge forward, wrapping my arm across his broad chest and pressing the blade of my knife to his throat. My heart is pounding so hard, I can barely hear his slight intake of breath.
He stops moving. His hands float up in surrender, hovering at shoulder level. “Easy,” he mutters.
“Are you here to kill me?”
My front is pressed into his back, and I wonder if he can feel my breasts through his jacket. A flush creeps up my cheeks. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. I’m alone with a man who may kill me. I may have to kill him first. I’m tempted to dig the knife deeper into his flesh, just to feel him flinch.
“Kill you?” he asks. His voice is hoarse and rasping, like he’s spent immeasurable time speaking. That’s the thing about men: they take their voices for granted. They take being heard for granted.
“Don’t play dumb,” I hiss in his ear. “If you aren’t one of them, how much are they paying you?”
He starts to shake his head, and I feel a warm drop of blood hit my forearm. He stops. A pulse of guilt rides through me. I cut him. Sympathy follows, because I know how it feels. I know exactly how this situation feels, reversed. The knife was at my throat only two weeks ago. I wouldn’t have wished that on anyone. And here I am, recreating it.
What came next for me won’t come next for this man.
“Listen, lady—”
“Lady?” I screech. The word is abrasive.
“I’m just doing my job—”
“Your job to kill me.” I swallow. I don’t know what to expect, but it isn’t this. Confusion snakes through me at the lack of violence.
“No, holy hell, my job is to make sure everyone has evacuated from the fire.”
Shock dulls my senses as he grabs my wrist, twisting it until pain spikes up my arm and loosens my hold on the knife. He slips out of my grasp and I watch the knife, my last defense, fall to the carpet. It bounces once before it settles between us, and he kicks it away. Before I can move, he grabs my other arm and tugs me closer to him. The roar of fear is distant; it doesn’t hit me right away. I squint at him, wondering why he hasn’t pulled a gun. Why he’s holding my arms and standing there, gaping at me.
“You’re just a girl,” he says. “How old are you?”
I try to pull away, but he holds me fast. His eyes are clear blue, shot through with flecks of brown. As we stand, with my back now to the window, the sunlight reflects off of his irises and illuminates them. He’s handsome, and perhaps younger than I would’ve imagined, too. Shaggy brown hair, scruff on his cheeks, straight white teeth that flash when he talks.
My stepmother always said I had the gift of youth in my face. I keep waiting for the round cheeks to fade into sharp edges like the rest of my family. Even though I’m twenty-five, I can sometimes pass for eighteen.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Just let me go,” I mutter. I could get sucked into his eyes and want to stay there. I look at his hands on my wrists. His thumbs overlap his fingers on my skin. His touch is hot, sparking zaps throughout my body.
“This house was supposed to be abandoned,” he says. He thinks he has me subdued, and his attention drifts. No hired killer would do that. No hired killer would opt to question me instead of kill me. “We need to leave. Right now.”
I yank away from him and fall on my ass when he easily lets go. He blinks at me as I scoot toward the window. I could jump.
He sighs. Damn him, he’s blocking the door. “You don’t have to tell me your story,” he says. “But you need to come with me. Right now.”
A burst of static fills the room, along with the ton
es of a person speaking on a radio. I didn’t notice it before, clipped to his belt, but now my eyes zero in on it. He turns up the volume, and suddenly the voice crystalizes. “Fire traveling west. Town evac complete. Sky update?”
I cock my head. “You weren’t kidding about the fire.”
He groans and yanks the radio from its holster. “Look out the window if you don’t believe me,” he says. “Did you stumble in here blind?”
I wince. No. The house doesn’t have electricity, which meant no television. I ditched my phone two states back… It was dark when I got here two days ago, and I’d spent the majority of it staying hidden and trying to come up with a plan. So far, I’ve got nothing substantial to lean on, and I don’t think I’ve slept in twenty-four hours.
“What’s a sky update?” I ask as I lift myself up and peek out of the window. The sky is dark and hazy. The sunlight that filters through is muted.
He snorts. I glance at him as he puts the radio close to his mouth and says, “Just checked the last house. Evac complete. I’m going offline.”
“Copy,” the radio responds.
“Skye with an e,” he says. “Come with me. We can’t save the neighborhood.” He leaves the room and I gape at him. There’s a certain energy that moves through him. First frantic, then freakishly still, and now… hasty.
I only pause to grab my backpack and the knife, jamming it into the sheath hiding at my hip, inside the waistband of my jeans. I chase after the man, who isn’t in the hallway anymore. He must’ve gone downstairs. A spurt of trepidation races through me at the thought of being left behind, and I run down the stairs.
He waits for me at the doorway, staring out at the neighborhood. One row down, black smoke belches from the rooftop of a house. The wind picks up, carrying embers far above our heads. Heat pushes at us. Is that my imagination? Or can I feel the fire from half a mile away?
He grabs my arm and practically drags me to his truck, shoving me in the passenger seat and racing around to the driver’s side. My eyes trip over the inside of it: clean, yet smoky. There’s also an undertone of cologne, and I take a quick second to inhale deeper, trying to lodge it in my nose. There’s a lone gum wrapper on the dash, balled up, and a hard hat upside down on the middle seat with a pair of work gloves stuffed into it. I peek into the backseat. A duffle bag has been shoved down in the foot space. He opens the driver’s side door and I twist around, facing front. He guns it out of the driveway and down the road. I stare out the window, arms wrapped around my bag, and watch as the world burns around us.
“Skye?” I ask, tentative. “What does that mean?” I don’t want to say what I’m actually thinking: that Skye is the strangest name for a man. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy. And if he was sent here for me, I’d already be dead. Right?
“Jackson Skye,” he says. “You got a name?”
I lean my forehead against the window for a second, expecting the glass to be cool. It isn’t. It’s warm enough to make me uncomfortable, and I bite my lip as the road curves toward the smoke. I sit up straight again and grip the handle near my head. He isn’t driving recklessly, but it makes me feel an ounce safer.
He sighs when I don’t answer. “What’s a girl like you doing alone in an evacuation zone? You could’ve died.” He glances at me again. He keeps doing it every few seconds, like he expects me to vanish. Or pull the knife again. Either would be a possibility if I thought I could get away with it.
My eyes go to his throat, at the small cut there. It’s clotted and barely looks like anything, but the track of dried blood that disappears into his shirt gives it away. Otherwise… well, I didn’t do much damage. I press my fingers to my own throat, remembering the night I was attacked.
He shakes his head. Sighs again. I haven’t answered any of his questions, but after keeping such a tight grip on my secrets, it’s hard to let them loose.
I swallow. “Delia.”
“Delia,” he repeats.
Delia Moretti, I want to say. Former princess—and new leader—of the Moretti family. You know, one of the oldest mafia families in Las Vegas. I can’t say that, though. He would throw me out of the truck just on name association if he recognized it. I pick at my fingers and contemplate the rest: why I left home, why I feel like I haven’t eaten a decent meal in two weeks, why I ran toward a wildfire. No, those secrets will stay with me for a while.
“Just Delia,” I answer. I slump down in the seat. “Where are we going?”
“Away from the fire,” he says, turning south. The smoke rises in the rearview mirror, and I try not to show my relief.
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Scared, Delia?”
I glare at him. “No, Jackson.”
He smiles for a second, but then it drops. “Is there somewhere I can take you? Family, or—”
“Nope.” I pull up my hood and recline the seat. “Just drop me off wherever. And until then, I’m gonna snooze.”
I close my eyes and keep my muscles tight, wondering if he’s going to pull over and push me out of the car. It wouldn’t be the first time… nor would it be the last. In reality, he’s safer without me. And I’m safer in the middle of a wildfire than back in civilization.
“Who’s trying to kill you, Delia?” he whispers.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
2
JACKSON
I wonder how she got in that house. It was pure luck I found her. Well, luck and a good Samaritan. I’d been working double shifts at the Incident Command Post—headquarters for everyone involved in fighting wildfires—and one of the evacuated citizens said they thought a girl might still be in the house next to theirs. A squatter, they described, but a person nonetheless.
It wasn’t rocket science in my mind. I volunteered to go. I was dragging through my last few hours on call before a mandated forty-eight-hour rest. Now, I have two whole days to figure out what to do with her before I need to be back to work. I don’t blame the citizen for calling her a squatter—her dark red hair is greasy and her face is gaunt. The black t-shirt she wears is two sizes too big, and her tennis shoes are falling apart. This isn’t a girl who has had it easy.
Guilt slices through my gut. She looks so young. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t searched that house? I need to make sure she’s safe. To protect her from whatever haunts her dark brown eyes.
Who’s trying to kill you, Delia?
I hadn’t really expected an answer, but I was hoping she’d give me something. The girl came out of nowhere and put a knife to my throat. I hold back a chuckle, because the last time someone got the jump on me… Well, it didn’t end well for them. I have a solid history of beating people senseless.
My grip tightens on the steering wheel.
I left that life behind. It was a conscious choice, and I don’t regret it. Do I miss it? Maybe a little. Do I feel guilty for missing it? More than I could’ve ever imagined.
She’s asleep in my passenger seat. Her face is relaxed, her lips are parted as she breathes in and out. I marvel that she let her guard down so easily. She looked scared in that house.
The road stretches on ahead of us, and I don’t have a clear plan of where we’re going. I twist and turn what I know in my mind and try to make sense of it all. Someone is trying to kill her—at least, she thinks they are. She could be paranoid. She didn’t give me a last name, and she only has that backpack with her—one she still holds close in her sleep. She doesn’t want to go to family.
I decide to get us the hell out of dodge. I drive until my eyes start to droop, and then I pull into a motel parking lot. Smog still hovers over us, wind carrying the ash in the air for hundreds of miles. We have a way to go before we will see clear skies again.
We. Jesus.
The mystery surrounding her is an itch I can’t help but scratch. I eye her for a minute before I reach over and slowly unzip her bag. I reach inside it and feel around for a wallet, my fingers finally closing on a small canvas one. There’s no identification,
but she has a business card tucked in with some cash. James Elvira. Defense Attorney. His office address, printed on the back, lists him as in Las Vegas. I tuck it back into her bag and slide the zipper closed, holding my breath. Once it’s secure, I get out of the truck—she doesn’t even stir when my door squeals—and close it as quietly as I can behind me.
I pace a few feet away and pull out my cell phone. A long time ago, the number of people I could call for help was a handful and a half. Now, I can only think of one person who will answer.
“Skye?”
I grin at the disbelief in his voice, relief washing over me. “Hey, Mason.”
“What’s up, asshole?”
I roll my eyes and glance back at my new sleeping travel partner. “You know I hate asking for help, but… I need your help.”
“Like, you need a background check on a new girlfriend type of help, or…”
“Sure, except she’s not a girlfriend. And… it might involve some hacking.”
He groans. “What kind of shit did you get mixed up in, now?”
“I’m not sure.” I rub at my eyes. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
“What’s the name?”
“All I have is a defense lawyer named James Elvira. Should be located near you. Vegas.”