by Angel Payne
Franz conceded the compliment with a cocky head dip. “Fine, but half of a thousand cockroaches is still a lot of cockroaches. You’re the one they’re here for, I-Man. They’ll reform and reswarm.”
Shay unhooked a grenade from the guy’s belt. “That’s what this is for.”
“You’re going to need more than one.” Zeke pulled a pineapple off his own belt and handed it over. “Just don’t blow up your nuts with it, okay? Apparently they’re hot commodities these days.”
There were so many choices of how to tell the guy to go fuck himself. Shay had trouble picking one out.
The hesitation cost him the pleasure. The words, along with his breath, were strangled in his throat by a fist of pure panic, sporting fingers of disbelieving dread.
So this was what it felt like to hear his own mother scream. Then to watch her tear back down the street, arms outstretched and face contorted with horror. Pretty much sucked as bad as he’d expected.
“Stop!” Mom shrieked. “For the love of God, stop it! There are still innocent people in there! My innocent people!”
Next to him, a tight groan burst from Tait’s chest. Shay’s spirit cracked for his brother. The guy finally laid eyes on the woman for the first time in twenty years but was locked down from doing a damn thing about it. Especially now.
Ghid’s appearance lent no more clarity to things. Though his delay was explained by the painful contortion on his face and the hand gripping his crotch, it didn’t clean up the confusion now on board with Shay’s amazement. What was Mom talking about? Even if she’d been watching this shit go down, why was she coming back in the middle of a gun battle for three experienced men like Ethan, Garrett, and Dan? But she was so frazzed-out, she’d broken away from Ghid by going for his balls.
Innocent people. My innocent people.
“Holy crap.”
He spat it as the horror hit home. As if it needed any more fuel, Mom stomped in front of the soldiers, shoving their gun barrels toward the ground as she went. “And you call my patients the monsters? Three of my nurses are still in there, you cocksuckers. Did anyone ask about that before setting off bombs? Did anyone care?”
Her announcement clearly knocked the hired hoodlums on their figurative asses. They pelted each other with panicked stares, clueless as noobs tossed into a hypothetical crisis on the first day of training. Their hesitation was both a blessing and a curse. While this was the ideal distraction Shay needed to implement his plan, Mom’s nurses couldn’t afford another moment of delay. Hell. There was a good chance it was too late already.
“Thumbs out of asses, kids.” While the words were pure Dan Colton, it still stunned Shay that the agent was the first to spring to action—not just figuratively. As the agent popped to his haunches, he nodded fast at Shay. “You handle the field trip across the street, I-Man. I’ve got the nurses covered. The extra commotion will help Hawk and Runway get out too. Zsycho and Dragon, you both ready with the lead enemas?”
“Fuck, yeah.” Zeke propped his rifle against the trough and growled with gusto.
“Shit.” Franz emulated the move. “I hate it when our best option still sucks bones.”
With that send-off, Shay jumped into action at the same second as Dan.
His sprint was a blur of adrenaline, exhilaration, and fear. Past the blood pounding in his ears, he heard a soldier yell toward him in Spanish. A bunch more joined in, soon growing into a mob. As he cleared the last three steps before the boulders, bullets sent up dirt clouds around his feet.
Bingo.
“Come to papa, sweet little sheep.” He muttered it while shucking the ninja jacket, reveling in the new freedom from his thinner, darker raglan shirt and the Kevlar vest beneath. The words lent him the focus to ease his breathing and reassess the logistics of all this chaos.
A laugh tempted his lips, and he gave in for a second. Shit. In what other job on earth did “chaos” and “logistics” exist in the same action plan? The realization was either cause for celebration or compunction—or ambivalence between both, depending on the moment.
Like this one.
He crouched on the balls of his feet, grenade in hand, opening his senses for the right moment to lob the thing. Maybe a fast glance over the top of the rock would help. The boulders were stacked on a small rise of earth, which would give him the chance to study the area for about two seconds. Didn’t seem like much, but as he’d learned so many times over the last week, moments could be turned into eternities.
Mmmhmm. Just ask a dancer trying to look sexy during a major show finale at a dance rave pace.
“Dancer.” The whisper escaped him as the memory flared through him, a solid brick of emotional C-4. He promised her he’d live—and he would, damn it.
Even if everything had taken yet another terrible turn for the worse.
On the bright side, he watched Hawk and Runway break free from the Mercantile, ash flying off their shoulders but nothing else notably damaged or burned. Zeke was still in position behind the trough but waved them beyond his location to a group of old barrels, where they joined a trio of guys who’d originally been Homer’s minions. Shay was certain their defection wasn’t a stunner to anyone.
That was the good stuff.
The horror show didn’t start until he did a double-take on Z’s position—the spot he’d occupied five minutes ago with Franzen and Tait. But where the hell were they now?
“Fuck.”
Shay almost added a crapload of choice names to call the duo, synonyms for everything from first-degree idiots to gigged-up morons, as he caught sight of them behind a dilapidated wagon—engaging easily thirty of the guerillas in a disgustingly uneven firefight.
“What the—”
He cut himself off, finally spotting the treasure they were all shooting to kill for. Mom, bound by her wrists and ankles, was draped over one of the jeep’s hoods. Her eyes were so wide, Shay swore he could see their whites from here. Ghid, who’d clearly fought to keep the scumsuckers from recapturing her, was splayed in a beaten-to-shit heap next to one of the jeep’s tires.
Shay barely kept his stomach from punching its way up his throat. While it was a damn righteous sight to watch his badass brother and that half-Samoan warrior giving as well as they got when outnumbered fifteen to one, it was torture to keep his ass planted where it was. But Stock and Newport’s ploy was more obvious than a stripper spreading her legs. If Shay raced to join Tait and Franz, he’d play right into their fucking plan. Every visceral, vile reaction he endured right now was like dancing on their puppet strings, but the dick wipes weren’t getting the whole puppet show.
All he could do was pray for the right chance at lobbing these grenades—and about a hundred miracles after that.
“Help! Oh God, help me!”
The scream didn’t sound like anything close to a miracle.
Shay lifted his stare back over the rock and frantically scanned for the source of the cry. It was female but hoarse…and raw with desperation…
There. On the old boardwalk in front of the burning buildings. A woman emerged in soot-covered medical scrubs, every inch of her skin just as black from smoke. Her mouth was a stark grimace against the charcoal of her face, opened on imploring sobs as she dragged an unconscious body behind her.
A man.
“Christ.” Shay sagged against the boulder. “Dan!”
At a fast snap from Newport, a medic appeared. The guy started a vitals check on Dan. Shay gripped both sides of his head to keep his sights steady—or maybe his spinning mind roped down—while the fucking exam stretched on. And on. And on.
When the medic finally lifted his head, Shay couldn’t decipher anything from the man’s movement. It wasn’t fast enough to be urgent but not slow enough for complete somberness. He only knew one thing for certain. Dan was still much too still.
“Alive,” the medic pronounced. “But barely. And the burns on his left side…” The guy shook his head. “They need immediate attention.”
“He saved…my life.” The soot-covered woman wept as she stammered it. “Viv and Megan…they were already gone…the smoke and the heat…and I knew I’d be next. Then he appeared, almost like he walked through the flames…” She dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, God! Don’t let him die!”
Shay swallowed hard. It was the same fucking prayer in his heart too.
After the nurse revealed the news about her coworkers, Mom’s throat ripped open on a long, grieving wail. She torched the sound into a furious scream. “We could keep him from dying if we still had a medical building, you monsters. And Homer, you’re the leader of the goddamn pack. You signed this deal with the devil twenty years ago, and what’s it brought you except blood on your hands? How many more will it take? The life of this agent now? Or the man after him? Or after that?”
Newport stalked forward. “Enough.” He paused next to the jeep, pulling off his aviators to lower a calm smile at Mom. “Dr. Bommer, we’re all sympathetic to your grief and aware of how you feel. But you know as well as Dr. Adler or anyone here that doing the right thing is not always doing the easiest thing.” He stroked her forehead and gave her an encouraging nod. “You know who else knows it? Both of your amazing sons.”
He kicked the last of that into a prominent shout. Shay grinded his knuckles into the boulder, as well as both sides of his jaw, to hold back from telling the ass fuck what he could do with his twisted take on the motivation banner. He just hoped Tait had the melodrama curtains closed today and would know to keep his own mouth shut.
“Take a dick deep in your backside, Newport!”
Damn it. The curtains were wide open.
The slur was all it took for Newport to order more men toward the cause of opening fire on T and Franzen. Though Ethan and Zeke ran and joined them, it was soon clear his four friends were destined to repeat the fucking Alamo. Shay grimaced to see Franzen take a bullet to his thigh, while Ethan was grazed in the shoulder. And still, the four men fought on—until it was clear they were about to run out of bullets and options.
Abruptly, Newport held up a hand.
Immediately, the firing stopped.
“Well, then, gentlemen.” Though the general called it out, his voice held the condescending cool of teatime at the fucking Ritz. “I think we all agree now. Game time is over.”
At Newport’s nod, Cameron waved another throng of soldiers forward. The assholes stormed the little wagon like delirious Banshees. With two injured members and little ammo left, his friends had two choices: surrender or death. Reluctantly, they agreed to the former. Their rifles gone, their bodies bloodied, and their spirits exhausted, they didn’t resist when the guerillas zip-tied their wrists and then ordered them to kneel in front of Stock and Newport.
All of them except Tait.
Shay looked on, his heart snapping, as a soldier rammed the middle of T’s back with the butt of his rifle, forcing him to bow at the feet of the man who’d been responsible for Luna’s death—and damn near Lani’s too. But as Tait scrambled to his knees, he didn’t miss the chance to spit hard on Cameron’s boots. He followed it by jerking his face up at Stock too. From Shay’s position, he could only witness the violence of the movement itself, but if T’s face matched the action, Satan was thanking fuck he’d sent Stock as his proxy.
Unless the two were the same piss-sucking creature.
A supposition supported in disgusting detail by Stock’s next move.
Motioning a soldier forward to keep Tait’s head locked back, the bastard pulled out his pistol and jammed it to the middle of Tait’s forehead.
At the same moment, Newport did the same thing to Mom—with a creative twist. His pistol went straight into her mouth.
“Choices.”
Newport bellowed it, succinctly and purposefully, into air made harsher by the crackles and whooshes of the fire still eating through the lab and Mercantile.
“Easy ones, or right ones.”
Shay laid his arm along the top of the boulder and then caged his face with his hand. He glared through his fingers at the blazes on the other side of the street. The flames consuming the lab were fluid and brilliant, their heat defined by dark-cobalt hues, the smoke twirling up with effortless grace….
A dancer.
As the Mercantile surrendered, it punched out thick black billows that were scented by cedar and pine, forcing its way up…
A fighter.
But higher in the sky, the colors blended.
Merged.
Mated.
For just a few moments, they painted the sky in one of those moments a person simply knew…and he knew.
Stare at this. Remember this. No photo will ever capture it right. Only your heart will remember it perfectly.
He let his hand slip down his face, dragging his tears with it.
He pushed away from the boulder, dropped his rifle, and raised his arms.
“You’ve made your fucking point, Newport. And now you have what you came here for, so do the right thing yourself and let them all go—Dan first. He needs a heli-vac. With paramedics.”
“Fuck,” Tait grated.
“Fuck.” Now that Newport’s pistol was gone from her mouth, Mom echoed it. Hers came with a big difference. The sheen of her tears.
“It’ll be okay.”
Shay repeated it after they untied Mom and let him hug them both one last time.
“You’re a fucking liar, Little B.” Mom’s accusation was broken up between the tears she soaked into his neck.
“What she said.” Tait’s voice was just as ragged.
“Shut up, asshat.” Shay gripped the back of his brother’s head and held on tight. Tighter. He had no idea what the three caballeros of crazy had in store for him or if they’d ever let him see T and Mom again, so he clung to this moment like another precious curl of smoke in the sky—and once more said the words that had become his desperate prayer. “It’ll be okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You all think everything’s going to be okay, sí? Well, I’m afraid I’ve got some tough news.”
Zoe folded her arms and let her words sink into the thirty UNLV dance majors lined up against three sides of the studio classroom. But who the hell was she kidding? If anyone was listening at all, they only reacted with rolled eyes and impatiently tapping feet.
“I’m not trying to be your puta, okay? But if half of you turn in performances for your final that look anything like today…”
Nobody noticed she’d trailed off. Several kids yanked out their phones and started checking texts.
“Mierda.” The mutter was more surrender than anger. How could she blame them? Five minutes before the start of spring break, and she decided to drive the stake in about their lazy jazz hands and sloppy footwork? Damn. She’d be secretly calling herself a puta too.
But did they want to end up showcasing their “skills” at some club on the North Strip with bouncers and a two-drink minimum? They had to think about their futures. God knew, she hadn’t. Not really. She’d been a fool, believing she had all the bases covered, all the plans handled.
Then she’d met Shay Bommer during an ordinary flight delay…that had been anything but ordinary.
Moral of the story? Life was a sadistic pitcher. It liked switching up the throws. And if you weren’t ready, you got hit in the head.
It felt important to pass along the knowledge, even vital. It was why she’d decided to take a leave of absence from the show and accept this guest teaching gig at the university for a year. It was challenging work but much easier than having to feign desire and passion during the show every night. After only a couple of performances, she’d realized the stupidity of that move. Only one face kept blazing in her mind—not the one she needed with four thousand people watching. His eyes seeking hers with dark-gold need. His jaw clenched in those two perfect right angles, leading to the intersection of gorgeous and dominant in his chin. His thick chestnut hair tumbling over his forehead as he pressed i
t to hers, laughing softly as she whispered how crazy they were…how perfect they were.
She took a deep breath and swallowed her eightieth pang of heartache for the day.
Just as someone burped.
The clock saved her from coming up with a reprimanding glower. As the minute hand officially ticked into the end of class, the kids cheered and raced for the door.
“If you’re smart, you’ll practice over the break!” she yelled. “And remember, beer looks like crap in spandex!”
Her parting shot seemed to get her back into a few good graces, not that it would tamp her irritation with most of them. It wasn’t personal. She was frustrated with everyone these days, even Ry and Ava. Ryder, now wearing Rok’s promise ring, couldn’t stop talking about the trials of handling having to “open up the New York place” for their relocation to the Big Apple for the next six months. And Ava, now Mrs. Ethan Archer and a full-time stylist for the CW’s Vancouver-based shows, was just as bad with the décor magazines. After her and Ethan’s Bali honeymoon, he’d brought her home to her wedding present: a five-bedroom, three-bathroom “starter” place on the Columbia River.
That was right. The whole world was in rebirth, redecorating, and now, in the case of her students, rejoicing in a week off from responsibility. There were wildflowers on the hills and more convertibles on the freeway with their tops down. Everyone wanted to hit the Refresh key and wake up.
Except her.
I’m not going to die, dancer.
He’d kept his word, hadn’t he?
He wasn’t dead.
But heaven forgive her…she wished he was. At least then she’d know he didn’t wake up every morning with only hours of pain in front of him. She’d fall asleep knowing he wasn’t strapped to some bed, pleading for sleep as his only deliverance. She wouldn’t wake up screaming from nightmares of him wandering endless halls alone, rows of those black threads holding his body together, wondering which part of him would serve as the next experimental meat for Adler, Stock, and Newport—who somehow, in the eyes of the military, was still untouchable in the whole “honor and character” department.