by Angel Payne
This bastard was starting to piss Zoe off. “Nice try, cabrón.” She closed the towel around her waist with a harsh jab. “You’re too late. We’ve all called our families already. They know we’re safe, happy, and protected.”
“Do they, Miss Chestain?” His voice, a combination of Agent Smith from The Matrix and Hannibal Lecter, sent a hundred more ice cubes down her spine—with spikes in them. “I am speaking with Miss Chestain, yes? How pleasant it is to hear your voice. It’s as lovely as your face. Your friend at the police department, Captain Donner, was generous in sharing so many…interesting…images of you in his urgent concern for your safe recovery.”
The ice blended into her stomach. The spikes too. “C-Captain D-Donner,” she stammered. “Bryce Donner?”
Adler hummed again, a creepy confirmation. Shay’s posture curled into a tension she’d never seen before.
“As I said, the man’s been very helpful in our efforts. He’s still very fond of you.”
“But he’s not a captain.”
“He is now.”
Forget the ice. Zoe’s skin crawled with cockroaches of disgust. “You’re vile.”
Ghid, who’d managed to stumble back to the cabana with Ry’s and El’s help, shoved back up with his stampeding rhino face on. “No more happy tea party, asshole, until you put Mel on.”
Adler’s huff distorted the line for a moment. “Now, Gabriel,” he chided. “That’s not the way it works and you know it.”
Shay rotated the phone so the speaker was closest to him. “His name’s Ghid. Call him Gabriel again, and you won’t have an anus to speak of. Secondly, that’s exactly the way it’s going to work, Adler.”
The man’s chuckle made her think of fava beans, Chianti, and having the stomach flu. “Oh my, little Shay, how magnificently you have grown up. Having to watch you from afar was never as interesting as this.”
Zoe’s heart clenched to watch Shay take in that confession. She’d had a weirdo fan of the show try to stalk her for a few months who was eventually thwarted when she started dating Bryce. It was a nightmare that ended after a few weeks—nothing compared to what Shay now had to comprehend. The clench of his fist and the tension in his back confirmed that harrowing fact.
“Glad to know it was so fucking fascinating for you,” he finally snarled at the phone. “Can we move on now?”
“Oh, fascinating doesn’t even scratch the surface, boy. I have to know… Which part did you feel the most, do you think? Was it Hercules or Scout? Or maybe it changed as you got older…” He interrupted himself with a soft grunt. “Good Lord, I’m digressing.”
“No shit.” Shay didn’t relax an inch of his rigidity, though he visibly battled to stay focused on the conversation now. “My mother, you dickwad. Put her on the phone, or you don’t get one more tight hair of cooperation from me.”
The bastard released a heavy sigh. Zoe tucked her arms to her sides to avoid throwing the phone—or anything else—out of furious frustration.
During the same interim, Tait stared over at his brother. “Hercules and Scout? The horse and the family dog. That’s poetic, in a fucked-up kind of way.”
“Shut up,” Shay growled.
“Shay?”
Ghid joined Shay and Tait in lunging over the phone. “Mel?” His voice wavered. “God… Mellie, are you okay? If he’s touched a hair on your head, I swear I’ll—”
“I’m fine. We’re all fine. Shay…are you there?”
“Right here, Mom. And Tait too.”
A determined growl vibrated over the line. It was so impressive, Zoe forgot her trepidation for a moment. One musing, crossed off the list. Shay got the talent straight from Mama Bommer, not the family dog.
“Listen to me, Shay. I’m still your mother. If you give in to this douche, I’ll rain hell on you like you’ve never— Ahhhh! Noooo!”
“Adler!” Ghid bellowed it as Melody’s shrieks exploded through the line. The sound ripped horrified tears out of Zoe, while her empty stomach churned on its own bile. Brynn and El hugged her from either side, their faces bearing the same grief.
As Melody’s screams diminished into sobs, an incoming image flashed on the phone’s screen.
A newly severed human finger. Slender. Female.
Ghid’s back heaved and dropped in time with his tormented breathing. His arms curled up and back, his hands like paws of quaking fury. Zoe didn’t doubt he’d choke the life from the first creature that crossed his path. No sound spilled from him except those lurching breaths. Shay’s and Tait’s faces were grim, conveying the stark understanding of soldiers who’d experienced this kind of brutality before—though it had never been their mother.
Nobody said a word except Ryder, who often had obnoxiously accurate ways of expressing things. “I’ve met gobs of testicle sweat with more class than that.”
Adler added his smug chuckle on top of Melody’s steady weeping. “Oh, aren’t you a clever bunch? That’s such a sweet sentiment, but I’m not in the mood for sweetness today.”
“You don’t say,” Tait snarled.
Shay straightened. His arms coiled at his sides at similar angles to Ghid’s, fierce and tense, only his hands were slack, as if he prepared to render his damage by grabbing a rifle instead of ripping someone to shreds. “He’s in the mood for business,” he intoned. “And about to tell us that if we’re not, Mom has nine more where that came from.” He stared at the phone as if tempted to spit on it. “Am I warm, asshole?”
“You forgot the part about letting my men arm wrestle for who gets to use her cunt first, but sure…that’s warm enough.”
Ghid still didn’t say a word. Instead, as they all watched, he departed the cabana on steps that threatened to crack the deck with their intensity. He didn’t stop his incensed prowl until he got to one of the palms that bordered the pool—and rammed the top of his head into the thing’s trunk. With a roar, he shoved. And shoved. And shoved. The palm gave way, Ghid’s force hauling it out by its roots. It crashed into the pool, soaking the deck, though Zoe was certain the surface of Ghid’s face was wetter.
More sobs erupted up her own throat in empathy for his pain. As little as a week ago, his act would’ve had her urging the hotel to skip the call to security and dial the local mental hospital. Now she understood every drop of his grief. It was exactly how she’d feel if Shay were in captivity under Adler’s filthy thumb.
“You’ve made your point, Adler,” Shay finally stated. “Now let’s talk logistics and terms.”
Colton angled in, making sure his glare was acknowledged. “Damn it, I-Man. No!”
Zoe shoved away the ice cubes. Barely. As for the iceberg that waited behind them? Adler made sure nobody forgot it today, didn’t he?
“Shut up, Dan.” But Shay locked his gaze with Tait’s as he issued it. “This is my decision. And I decide it’s going down.”
“Wh-What’s going down?” Zoe stammered. She reached and grabbed Tait’s elbow. “What the hell is he talking about?” Then shifted her hold back to Shay. “What the hell are you—?”
“It’ll be okay, dancer.” He pressed his fingers over hers. “Everybody gets what they want. Mom will finally have her compound in the hills, and she’ll be safe.”
The iceberg flowed on top of her chest before she could rasp her reply. Before she could bear to know what Shay would render as his answer.
“And what does that bastardo want?”
“Me.”
* * *
There was such a thing as life moving fast. Then there was the speed of light. Then there was the acceleration taking place as she watched, blinking and speechless, from the corner of Roklan Reed’s palace-sized living room in the city’s luxurious Southern Highlands neighborhood.
Rok, arguably the world’s most recognized male model in the world for the last two years, wasn’t just Ryder’s mentor. He’d become a good friend to Ry—probably with benefits from time to time—which was a damn good thing, since they’d all shot out of the Vda
ra as soon as Shay hung up with Adler, and Ryder called Rok beseeching this huge favor.
That was all after the conversation that had Zoe losing her lunch on top of the tree Ghid had uprooted. The little chat in which Shay had agreed to turn himself over to Adler in exchange for his mother—tomorrow at dawn.
During the two and a half hours after that—spent mostly inside Ghid’s van in a convenience store parking lot—Zoe had refused to look at Shay, let alone acknowledge his assurances about how everything was going to be “copacetic.” Apparently, he and Tait had used their bond of brotherly connection to mind-meld back at the hotel and there was already some kind of plan in the works. The moment Rok had pinged back at Ry with a green light on them all invading his home, they were on their way. During the trip, Colton had kept showing both thumbs up, assuring Shay and Tait that all parties involved in their plan were on board for the challenge.
She’d succumbed to the royal eyebrow spike with that one. What the hell did “all the involved parties” mean when they were being hunted by every military, police, and special intelligence officer within a fifty-mile radius? Did they plan on recruiting mercenaries from the strip clubs and bars at the other end of town? The way they’d chattered on about “the team” and “the op” made her seriously ponder the idea, tempting her to vomit all over again. Did Shay actually think his ragtag little crew would stand with him the second anything went sideways with this plan?
And things would go sideways.
They always did when she loved the person at stake.
Mom had returned from Greece with tuberculosis. Ava moved to LA for a dream job and ended up working for a lunatic—and then was nearly killed by another.
And damn it, now it would be Shay.
Whom she loved just as much.
And maybe, in certain parts of her heart and soul, a little more.
She gazed at him crossing the room, joining Tait in the foyer to greet the newest arrival at the house: Sergeant Garrett Hawkins. She recognized Garrett at once from the photos of Ethan’s team that were now part of the décor in Ava’s Hermosa Beach, California, bungalow. He was a muscular hunk with thick, dark-blond hair that spiked naturally at the top and a proud jawline that spoke to his Iowa farm-boy origins.
“Well, alooooha, asshat!” Garrett threw the warm greeting to Tait, who volleyed a mock sneer in return. Zoe figured he was allowed. The men had been on the same Special Forces team for years, until Tait’s transfer to a new assignment in Hawaii back in September.
“That’s my line, you pussy.” Tait took Garrett’s mission pack from him and tossed it along the wall next to a pair of nearly identical dark-green bags. “How have you been, man? How are Sage and Racer?”
“Good…and great.” Garrett pulled out his phone to proudly show off an image. “As you can tell, he really loved his first birthday cake—though I think Sage is already worried. Seven out of the ten kids at the party were girls.”
“Let me guess,” Tait drawled. “Star Wars theme?”
“You think Uncle Zekie would have it any other way?”
A man the size of a small mountain strolled in behind Garrett. He yanked the sunglasses off his formidable face, making Zoe shiver more than the first time she laid eyes on Ghid. Like Garrett, his hair was also thick. Unlike Hawkins, his near-black waves tumbled to kiss the collar of a shirt in a blinding lime-green jungle print and scuffed khaki pants, a look that likely served him well if he needed to masquerade on an op as a slumming-it sheikh. Or a tree. Mierda. Ava was right. Zeke Hayes’s pictures were awful stand-ins for the man’s real-life command of a presence.
“What kind of mayhem are you blaming on me while I’m not around, Hawk-Man?” He barked it while hooking his elbow around Tait’s and Shay’s necks and then yanking them into a pair of gruff holds, apparently his version of “hugging it out.” Or in. Zoe wasn’t certain she wanted to truly find out.
“Nothing requiring bail, Psycho Zsycho.”
“Holy fuck.” Zeke took in Rok’s place, with its gold-plated Greek columns, moss-green walls, French Rococo furniture, and swagged satin drapes, and promptly choked. “This place looks like Liberace had a wet dream.”
“Thank you.” Roklan emerged from the dining room, looking like one of the Hemsworths but preening like June Cleaver. “Some of the pieces actually came from his estate.”
“You don’t say.” Zeke looked as interested in that as the sidewalk he’d just walked on. “So are those Rhett’s and Rebel’s packs? Are they already here?”
“They’re setting up in the dining room.” Zoe offered it before thinking twice. She needed to help the poor guy. He looked as comfortable as a punker at the opera. She just wasn’t sure if she had the heart to tell him the dining room was just as gold, gaudy, and swirly. Maybe she’d let him be surprised.
Though it looked like him staring at her accomplished the job first. “Holy fuck,” Zeke blurted.
“Huh?” Tait questioned. “Z, what’re you—”
“I thought she was Ava.” He blinked and flashed a dopey grin that turned the cliff of his face into pulse-grabbing charisma. “Sheez,” he muttered, stepping toward Zoe. “Sorry for gawking, but it’s like harmonic convergence. You could be twins with somebody I know—who also happens to be a cousin to my fiancée.”
Zoe relished the chance to slide his smartass words back at him. “You don’t say.”
“Seriously. You’ve got me believing in doppelgangers now.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?”
He shrugged, still a goofball in the skin of a hulk. “I think it depends on whose side you’re on.”
Shay appeared at her side. Correction—loomed at her side. “Zoe, this is Zeke Hayes, bull-in-a-china-shop extraordinaire. Zeke, meet Zoe Chestain. She’s my china.”
Zoe dug her teeth into the inside of her lip. Mierda. If the man thought he’d turn her nerves—and her pulse and her pussy—into fifteen kinds of gooey with proclamations like that, he was totally right.
She forced her attention back to Zeke, who’d gone semi-apoplectic when hearing her last name. “It’s awesome to finally meet you. Sorry it couldn’t be under more pleasant circumstances. I’ve been trying to get Rayna to bring you down here to see the show for months.”
Zeke grimaced. “Yeah, I know. Our absence is my fault. The bad guys of the world don’t take a lot of breaks. The team’s been everywhere from Manila to Mumbai lately.”
Shay clapped him on the shoulder. “Yet here you all are, spending your leave doing this one off the books. I can’t thank you guys enough.”
“From what I hear, nobody’s done off the books better than you the last six months, dude. Now we get to be a part of the fun too. Hell, we all might be thanking you when the fireworks are done.” He cracked his neck with cocky swagger. “I’m going to get a world-class boner off this, aren’t I? Might as well order Rayna’s ass on the next flight in from Sea-Tac right now.”
“Great plan. Maybe we can talk her and Ava into the I-dos right now.”
That interjection was issued by the next guy through the door, who received a double set of head-to-toe assessments—and subsequent approvals—from Rok and Ryder. Zoe sprinted to him in three seconds, nearly bowling him over with the enthusiasm of her hug.
“Ethan!”
“Hey there, hermana.” The guy warmed her with his smooth laugh, letting enough of his rogue’s grin linger to fill her eyes with grateful tears. His face darkened with concern. “You okay? I-Man promised me you were safe and would stay that way…”
“I am,” she rushed out. “I…am. It’s just so good to see family.”
Her tears dampened the shoulder of his black T-shirt as he drew her into another embrace and murmured, “I know. And it’s going to be okay.” He tightened his hug. “Ava’s on her way too.”
So much for attempting to keep her composure. Joyful sobs crashed over her like a hurricane surge, making her sag a little more against him. Ethan’s encouraging hum brought even more
of the emotions to the surface, and Dios, did it feel wonderful to let them free.
“Archer.” Shay didn’t hide a note of his accusation. “What the hell did you—?”
“Ay,” she shouted. “Callate, silly! They’re good tears, okay?”
All the guys, including Ethan, were silent for a long moment. When they all burst into chuckles, Shay was the only one to abstain.
“Welcome to the world of being smitten by a Chestain,” Ethan finally drawled.
“Down with your bass on that, brother.” Zeke pumped a solidarity fist. “At this point, I still have one burning question for the I-Man.”
Shay scowled. “Do I even want to encourage you?”
“How the hell did you snag a gem like her—in the middle of working undercover for Cameron fucking Stock?”
Zoe was thankful for the chance to join their laughter, despite how Shay reclaimed her from Ethan’s arms and tried to move in for a little peck on the lips. Not happening, amigo. He might have just cranked up the moisture readings in all the right places in her body, but she was still incensed as hell at him. The thought of him walking into Adler’s lair, even with some well-trained, badass Special Operations backup, still terrified her soul in corners she never knew it possessed.
“That’s an interesting story,” she said to Zeke. “I can tell you, but then you’ll be questioning how many shots of loco I got in first.”
To her surprise, Zeke and Ethan shook in harder laughs. “Ohhh, little Zoe,” Zeke explained, “this team has downed so much loco already, it’s a wonder they don’t call us the wild boys.”
“Maybe they should.”
The comment cracked the air like a whip—wielded by a Dom who knew exactly what he was doing with it. Before she even looked toward the newest arrival in the doorway, Zoe knew who it was. The six-foot-six man—a dark, skull-haircutted cross between a Samoan god and a Special Forces recruitment ad—could be none other than Captain John Franzen. Ava had gushed plenty about Ethan’s CO. The man’s presence could be felt before he entered a room and long after he departed, not only eliciting the obvious respect of the men already standing here but pulling Rhett and Rebel back out of the dining room to greet him.