by Angel Payne
“Awww, sheez.” Shay let his head fall again.
“Pocohontas?” Dan nailed his stare to Tait. “You mean the cartoon I was always embarrassed about pitching a tent over?”
“Hair in the wind, big doe eyes,” Tait concurred. “Those legs you couldn’t help imagining around your waist and—”
“The subject?” Shay cut in. “We had one, dorks. Can we stick to it?”
Tait shrugged. “Yeah, though my part of the story wraps up there. Two days after Pocohontas came to visit was the last time Homez dared show his face at the house again. That was also the night he and Mom threw down like Rocky and Apollo. We all know the fallout from there, though I’m surprised Homez didn’t come back and curse the house just for good measure.”
Shay left his head where it was. Low. Really low. If a curse on the house was all he came back to accomplish, brother…
“I take it this is where Stock entered the picture for good,” he finally said.
“Excellent word selection,” Ghid replied. He let several moments weigh in for emphasis. “And though you all may throw tizzies at me for it, I’ll say it again… At first, the man really did do some good.”
Tait opened another beer and then dragged hard on the brew. “He can take that up with the good-karma angels after I drive a Bowie into his throat.”
Wisely, Ghid didn’t push that issue harder. “The thing was, Stock had already approached your mom about accepting a research deal with Verge Pharmaceuticals. She’d flat-out turned him down, but he kept in touch just in case.”
Tait narrowed his eyes. “Because he was such a great guy and wanted to do it for humanity, right?”
“Never said the guy was bucking for sainthood,” Ghid qualified. “Cameron was always business first. Brokering the deal would’ve earned him a pile of flow like he’d never known. But by then, he also had a general idea of the shit that was going down at home with your dad. He started feeling more protective toward your mom…and probably a few other things too.”
“Shit,” Tait spat.
“You may want to go for the fast recap on this part, G,” Shay muttered.
“Acknowledged.”
Dan tipped the neck of his beer forward. “I think I can help braid this rope a little tighter. Verge Pharma, right? They invested in a lot of space in Austin in the late nineties. I remember their complex being built. Lots of big glass buildings with spacey-looking security shields. We called it the star fleet.” He tossed a quizzical glance to Ghid. “Was that because Melanie inked the deal through Stock?”
Though the answer was obvious, the observation did nothing for Tait’s tension level. Shay glanced at him and murmured, “She did what she had to, T.”
“Fuck off.”
“Shay’s right.” Ghid braced both legs wide again. “She didn’t know where to turn.” His gaze sharpened to laser green. “Unlike that chicken fart Adler, she felt responsible for what had happened to us, which was why she left home so abruptly.”
Tait’s glower darkened. “With the intention of never coming back?”
“That what your turdtastic father tell you?” Ghid waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind. I already know the answer.” As he lowered that hand, he curled it into a fist. “Let me be real clear about something. There wasn’t a day that passed without your mom having deep conflict about the decisions she made and the consequences you all paid for them. You really think she just walked away, never thinking she’d come back? What kind of a snow globe did your dad dunk you two in? He had a front-row seat for the knock-downs she had with Homer. He knew everything that was at stake when she left for DC and that she had every intention of returning after she handled the crisis. And yeah, kids, it was a crisis.”
A soft sob shredded into the middle of his explanation. The source didn’t surprise Shay. Zoe had seen others like Ghid, the men Bash had originally described as mutants. Her face reflected that horror—and encompassed his deepest fears—but he couldn’t hang on to that fear when gazing at her. The woman’s heart was so huge, every drop of its compassion showed across her incredible face. She took his breath away.
“How many of you were there?” she softly asked Ghid.
“Fifty, maybe sixty,” Ghid estimated. “And we all would have been left to die in that warehouse, if not for Dr. Melody Bommer.” As he took a breath, a shocking change overcame his whole body. The man’s posture actually softened. “When she walked in, with her cheeks rosy from the cold and her hair in all those gorgeous curls…” His shoulders dropped in unspoken surrender. “I had no idea who she was, so I assumed I’d just died and was getting a lucky break from a living angel.”
Tait peeked at Shay. “I should be disturbed by that, right? Why aren’t I?”
Shay gave his brother a meaningful smile. “Because he sees her how we do.”
“She promised we’d be moving out of the warehouse within a few months,” Ghid went on. “Kept her word, too. Five months later, we moved into preliminary buildings at the complex outside Austin. Melody was with us the whole time…and always talked about how she was excited things would be settling down so she could finally get back home to her three men.”
He made the last assertion with a defined stare over his shoulder. Shay could see that he meant it, but Tait insisted on the snide asshat angle. “So did you still think she was an angel?” he alleged.
Ghid’s riposte was immediate yet composed. “Of course I did. But it stayed capped there until well after your mother took her wedding ring off, after she received word about your dad’s death.”
Tait snorted before voicing the obvious retort to that. “At which point, she still didn’t come home.”
“At which point, she wasn’t able to.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Ghid picked up his water glass and took a huge drink. “You remember I said that Stock started as the nice guy.” Another gulp went in. “Well, stories are often filled with twists.”
Tait took another long, angry pull on his beer. “Here’s where we get to the part justifying my blade through the bastard’s neck.”
“Pretty much,” Ghid muttered.
Shay didn’t feel like drinking anything. Could’ve had something to do with the ball of apprehension in his gut, snowballing by the minute. “I take it Stock finally rolled in his gold pile and liked the dirt.”
“And the corruption,” Ghid added. “He had things and people, especially your mom, right where he wanted them. The Austin location was nice and remote, just where he wanted to keep your mom for good…now that he’d developed full feelings for her.” He finished the water—and slammed down the glass. Several fissures ran up the length of the thing before it collapsed into several fragments atop the table. “That was when he made up the blackmail sandwich for Mel.”
Forget the snowball. Shay’s stomach turned into a full-on warhead of dismay. “Blackmail?” he fired. “In what way?”
“Easiest way there is.” Ghid’s gaze turned the color of a tormented tornado sky. “He used the two of you.”
“What?” He and Tait sputtered it together.
Ghid picked up a bigger piece of the broken water glass, examining the distortions of light through its curved surface. “You both remember your sweet little neighbor, right? What was her name? Something with a V?”
Shay rammed his bottle to the table. “Mrs. Verona.” In every syllable, he inserted his unspoken threat. A word against Mrs. V, and the guy would have to stress about keeping his balls whole.
“Watch where you’re treading, man,” Tait snarled. “Mrs. Verona was the closest thing we had to a saint in our neighborhood.”
“Didn’t change the fact that she worked for the devil.”
“Fuck,” Shay rasped.
“You’re lying,” Tait accused.
Ghid lifted his gaze to Colton. “Double-check my facts, spook-boy. Pull up the woman’s financial records and her status as a location consultant for his production company.”
Shay traded
a significant look with his brother. “She never went anywhere,” he confessed.
“Because she had to be near the phone. If your mom ever dared to scoot out from under Stock’s thumb, Mrs. Verona would be called.” The depths of the guy’s eyes turned from tornado clouds into furious smoke. “Melody would’ve come home to find her two little boys with bullets through their brains.”
Along with Tait, Shay tumbled into a fog of shock and betrayal. They sat together in silence for a long minute, identically posed with elbows on their knees.
“Why mess with bullets?” Tait finally grated. “She’d probably have just poisoned the cookies.”
For once, Shay didn’t whack his brother for being a drama queen. “Why bother to bake at all? Tossing us in the garage and turning on the car… There’s quick and painless.”
Colton, thank fuck, was still able to form a clear head around the subject. “That’s a fine excuse through the eighteenth birthdays for these bozos,” he queried, “but what about after that?”
Ghid turned to Dan with a steady regard. “You’re able to braid this one tighter too, Tex. Rewind your mind by about ten years.”
After processing that for a few seconds, Dan’s face ignited. “Cork my goddamn pistol. That was when Verge downsized the star fleet.” His gaze, strangely matching Ghid’s in green intensity, narrowed. “What happened?”
“What do you think?” Ghid flung. “The gang at Big Idea finally figured out we weren’t all dead and tracked us to the hideout.”
“So you had to break camp again?”
“Not until after your mom struck a pure genius deal with them, giving us the green light to move into the facility at A-51.”
Shay couldn’t figure out how to react to that. He processed the genius reference, but the rest was lost beneath his haze of raging memories—four half-conscious, torture-filled days’ worth. The shit churned through him as a physical force, driving him to his feet again. “She…was the one…responsible for transplanting your asses into that hell?”
Ghid stunned them all by turning like a cornered animal. More accurately, a peeved rhino. Fury flashed in his eyes. Shay wondered if a horn really would bust loose in place of his nose. “She didn’t have a lot of options by that point, all right? The feds promised us there’d be no more restraints or dissection-style tests. Mel was still tormented about inking the contract with them, knowing she didn’t trust them enough to leave us alone in a base that wasn’t even publicly acknowledged by the government at the time. But by that point, Stock was out of control on letting the lies and corruption take over his life.” He paused, breathing hard, looking ready to wrestle a fucking bear. “I was the one who finally begged her to sign again with the feds—after I found Stock just a few inches away from raping her.”
“Christ,” Shay repeated.
“Goddamn fuckstick,” Tait seethed.
“Let my kneecap do a mambo on his ball sack while making sure his left eye socket was a lovely blue to match” Ghid rejoined. “But I told Mel that if I ever caught his naked dick near her again, they’d be adding murder to my rap sheet.”
Shay took the two steps needed to lock his stance in front of Ghid. For a long moment, their gazes dueled. It was a hell of a lot harder than he anticipated not to yank the guy into a fierce hug for saving Mom from Stock’s perverted attack, but he managed to restrain the PDA. Ghid gave a little nod, conveying he understood anyway.
“So everyone packed up again,” Dan filled in. “Melody was able to sever shit with Stock, and the feds promised you all protection inside Area 51.”
“We were sure it was for the best,” Ghid confirmed. “A lot of the buildings at the base had been abandoned since the top-secret work they did there in the fifties and sixties.” A cynical gleam appeared in his gaze. “Despite what the world thinks, we were the most exciting thing to arrive there in years. It’s remote and quiet and secure.” His jaw tensed. “Which seemed like our idea of heaven.”
“But it wasn’t.” Shay lifted his head. As Ghid met his stare, he knew he’d issued the truth. The grimness of it was stamped across Ghid’s formidable face. “So,” he followed up, “how long was it until the torture sessions started again?”
Ghid responded with his version of a grimace. “They kept it to what they could get away with when Mel wasn’t looking—which wasn’t very often. She practically lived in the lab, working like a demon to find viable solutions for all of us to get on with our lives.”
“She felt responsible.” Zoe inserted it. Her words, along with her eyes, communicated how she related to every choice Mom had made, no matter how wrenching they’d been.
“You could say that.” Ghid’s reply was a verbal version of the dry air blowing at the windows. “At first she thought surgery might help correct the guys with larger deformities, but all the shit simply regenerated. So she did her best with choices for occupational therapy and specialized career training, with the understanding that integrating most of us back into society wasn’t going to be a choice. With the military’s help, she also kept tabs on Stock, knowing he’d dipped further over to the dark side after the botched job with Lor in Los Angeles and might one day decide to butt heads with the feds over property he perceived as rightfully his.” The guy’s tone gained some somber grit. “Funny, what can happen to a regular asshole once he perceives himself as a real martyr.”
“Feel you there,” Tait murmured. Shay added a commiserating grunt. They’d both seen that insane light in more than one man’s eyes during missions in deserts far from this one, watching the sky ignite with rocket fire instead of neon.
Zoe’s face crunched with confusion. “I don’t understand. If you were all prepared for what Stock did with the plane, why did all the lab’s staff simply cooperate with Stock’s men?”
“Because those were General Newport’s instructions to us,” Ghid revealed. “He assured Mel there was a plan in place for everyone’s safety, that he had an ultra-elite team on their way to make sure all the Big Idea boys made it to safe ground again.” He shrugged, seeming genuinely puzzled himself. “Mel was actually excited. She and I have been making lots of day trips up to the backup camp, preparing it to be a B compound of sorts for the guys. With the feds’ blessing, full security’s been in place for a month. Newport told us that the op would involve the SHRCs secretly boarding the plane and then taking down Stock’s guys in midair in order to pilot the jet to Reno. After that, the guys would be transferred out to the compound.” He arrowed his gaze straight into Tait with that. “Instead, we received a little surprise party, complete with special lighting and entertainment.”
Tait hauled out his inner John McClane, unrepentant and unyielding, for the comeback. “I could say it wasn’t intentional, but I’d be lying. At the time, the mission mantra was a capture-or-kill on Stock and all his men before the plane fired engines again. The choice was a need-to-know thing only, shared outside the team by the general, the upper brass at JSOC, and of course, the Big Nick.” His use of the military’s nickname for President Nichols didn’t go lost on Ghid or Dan, though it took Zoe a second to catch on. That was a good thing, since T didn’t wait to continue. “We had to assume that Shay was possibly dealing off both sides of the intel deck, but we had no idea who else might be involved, including everyone on the facility’s staff.”
“And there was no way you could’ve known that Dr. Melanie Smythe was actually Dr. Melody Bommer,” Shay put in.
“None at all.” T’s reply was rough and low. “Damn it.”
Shay swapped a glance with Ghid. Their silent agreement was clear. It wouldn’t benefit anyone, least of all Tait, to tell him he’d missed seeing Mom in the hallway by a few short minutes.
“She was gone by the time you got there anyway, T.” Shay elbowed his brother in encouragement. “And from what I heard, she got her wish, at least for a while. Most of the Big Idea boys were transported by ground to B camp after the raid, since a lot of the A-51 lab isn’t livable right now.”
“Well.” Tait cleared his throat and flashed a smile. “Glad to know everything gelled out for the best, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Ghid grunted. “Eventually.”
Tait frowned. “Eventually?”
The man’s eyes actually twinkled. “Guess you don’t remember how your mom likes to plan shit down to the molecule. She wasn’t a happy camper when your band of merry men changed things up.” Another sound erupted from him. Not a full grunt—probably the Ghid version of a chuckle. “That woman can be quite a feisty little Fifi when she wants to be.”
Shay’s brows shot up. Tait’s did too. “Fifi, huh? You ever called her that to her face?”
“Just came up with it. But hell, now I can’t wait to try it out.”
“Good luck with that,” Tait drawled.
“Won’t need luck.”
“Right. Just full body armor.”
“That’s sort of the point.”
“It is? Why?”
Ghid’s eyes were a damn fireworks show now. “Because she’ll get all…feisty.”
“Ohhhh, yeah.” T grinned with understanding. “I get it. Feisty. Have one of those back home, only she does it most of the time in bikinis that drive me insane. Hell, the first night we met, she made me strip down to my skivs and march my ass through her garden until I—” He stopped and shuddered. “Wait. Jesus on a Ritz, dude—you’re talking about my mom.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Shut. Up.”
Shay, while pleased about their fun little bonding session, couldn’t sand the edges of anxiety off his blood and bones. The feeling was rendered by the same blade that sharpened him for things like HALO jumps from planes and impending shit storms with hostiles. He was used to dealing with it for a few hours and then buffing it out with some deep breaths and renewed focus on the horizon.