by Elle Kennedy
A second later, gunfire erupted.
“Isabel, get down!”
She heeded Ethan’s urgent command and dropped like a stone. As she positioned herself on her side with the barrel of her gun trained on the kitchen doorway, she had a perfect line of sight to what had stopped Abby.
Lloyd.
Dead.
With a sharp intake of breath, Isabel stared at the lifeless body of the giant housekeeper. He was on his back, half leaning against the bottom of the stainless-steel refrigerator, one meaty hand clutching his chest. His undershirt might have been white at one point. Now it was red, soaked with blood, with several bullet holes visible in the fabric. His dark eyes were wide open, a mask of pain and fury frozen on his face.
“Son of a bitch,” she heard Ethan mumble, the grief in his voice evident.
Two more gunshots ripped through the air.
Where the hell was Abby?
Isabel couldn’t get her bearings. She could hardly see through the smoke rolling out of the kitchen. The temperature was hotter too, as if something was on fire very close by.
She belly-crawled away from the open doorway and slid into a sitting position, flattening herself against the wall, which provided cover from the unknown shooters in the kitchen. Abby’s loyal puppies were whining in the hallway, but they didn’t make a single move, heeding their mistress’s order to stay.
More gunshots blasted from the direction of the parlor. Fists of fear pummeled Isabel’s chest. Trevor and Kane.
God, please let them be okay.
A blur of motion whizzed past her peripheral vision and then a loud thud echoed in the hall as a stocky man in faded fatigues landed on the floor, spraying a round of machine-gun shells into the wall as he went down.
Isabel raised her gun, but Ethan was already disarming the intruder before she could pull the trigger. The rookie, with his classic good looks and sweet demeanor, turned into a ruthless warrior right before her eyes. His features stretched taut across his face, hazel eyes glittering with rage, thick biceps rippling with power as he got the other soldier in a chest lock. Grunting, Ethan wrapped his hands around the man’s neck and twisted.
A sickening crack sliced through the air.
Ethan let go of the dead man and the body slumped to the floor. “Abby!” he shouted into the kitchen.
No response.
“Goddamn it, Abby, answer me!”
The redhead appeared in the doorway, her honey-colored eyes lined with weariness. She clicked her earpiece and said, “Three dead tangos in the kitchen.” Her gaze drifted to the dead body on the floor. “And we lost Lloyd.”
Isabel didn’t need to be plugged in to know how Trevor and the other men would react. Rage. Devastation.
The three puppies swarmed Abby. She scooped two into her arms while still keeping a solid grip on the twin Ruger pistols in her hands. “Let’s keep moving,” she ordered. “Iz, will you grab Brownie?”
Lord. Maybe this was a parallel universe. A mere twenty-four hours ago she’d been in Nigeria, slipping out of Ekala’s tent and disappearing into the night.
Now she was racing down a smoke-filled corridor with a wriggling puppy in her hands, making her way to a secret underground tunnel.
The next explosion was louder and more powerful than any of the previous blasts. Again, it sounded like it had come from the front of the house.
Fear coursed through her veins. Not for herself, but for Trevor.
Ignoring the paralyzing rush of worry, she kept her head down, matched Abby’s brisk pace, tried not to inhale too much smoke.
And prayed that Trevor would come out of this alive.
• • •
Ethan and the women hadn’t been gone a minute when the helicopter fell out of the sky.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the front door, Trevor saw the chopper plummet to the dirt in a grinding shriek of metal, blades spinning erratically like the wings of an injured bird. It landed fifty yards from the porch, and when it burst into flames, a blast of heat seared his bare chest. Shit, he needed a goddamn shirt. His skin was covered with soot, glass, and blood, and the razor-sharp glass fragments digging into his bare feet were annoying as fuck.
He and Kane stood on opposite sides of the entrance, weapons drawn, expressions hardened with fortitude. He stole another glance at the window and cursed.
“I count eleven.”
“My count’s a baker’s dozen,” Kane reported.
Thirteen men.
Shit.
In the courtyard, the soldiers went on the offensive, getting into formation and fanning out. Two groups of three broke off and moved with military precision toward the sides of the house. Seven made a fearless dash for the porch, using a zigzag pattern that made it difficult to lock in on a target.
Trevor shot out the windowpane and emptied the entire magazine of his MP5 on the approaching intruders. Two bodies hit the ground, then a third as Kane fired from his position.
Damn, he wished he’d made it to the armory. In a gunfight he always preferred the HK416 to the nine-mil submachine gun. Or an RPG. Fuck, if he had a rocket launcher right now, he’d blow these bastards to kingdom come.
As the four remaining soldiers ducked out of sight while maintaining their single-minded advance, Trevor glanced at Kane. “Take the three heading west?”
Kane nodded. “You got this?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” He overturned the credenza leaning against the wall and dragged it several feet away, then took cover behind it and clicked his earpiece. “D, you copy? What’s your position?”
D’s gravelly voice rasped in his ear. “Roof. East side. Did a little bird hunting, rejoining the party now.”
“Negative,” Kane said. “Three tangos heading your way. We want at least one alive.”
“Gotcha.” However, D hadn’t been radio silent for more than two minutes before he spoke up again. “Three tangos KIA. Fuckers opened fire on me. No choice but to engage.”
Kane swore, then went absolutely postal when Abby reported there were four men down in the kitchen.
Trevor maintained his position, but the enemy soldiers seemed to be taking their sweet-ass time. After Abby checked in, he shot Kane a pained look. “Only one needs to stay alive, damn it.”
“Clearly that’s impossible seeing as we’re surrounded by trigger-happy assholes,” Kane muttered.
“You know one of those assholes is your wife, right?”
“Oh, I know.” Green eyes flickering with irritation, Kane checked his ammo and edged toward the hallway to their left. “I’ll neutralize the exterior team and track down Holden.”
“Tunnel secure.”
Ethan’s brusque report brought a flicker of relief to Trevor’s chest. Good. That meant Isabel was safe.
“Proceed with exit protocol,” Kane ordered as he darted off.
The former SEAL had just turned the corner when a round of gunfire sprayed the front door and the intruders finally made their move. Chunks of wood, paint, and drywall ricocheted off the walls and slapped the front of the overturned table. A second later, heavy boots kicked in the skeleton of the door and bodies burst into the parlor.
Trevor opened fire, aiming for legs and abdomens rather than chests and heads. Two men hit the floor, two agonized shouts slicing the air. Shit, had he killed them? One of those fuckers had to live. One was all they needed to find out who the hell had sent these soldiers to ambush them.
When he popped his head out from behind the table, he glimpsed dusty fatigues, black boots, and a lot of firepower. Were they military? Mercenaries?
Trevor ducked out and fired another round, then took cover to shove a fresh clip into his machine gun. The intruders blasted him with return fire, spraying the credenza with bullets until the piece of furniture was riddled with more holes than a brick of Swiss cheese. Rendering his position ineffective.
Two soldiers remained, firing rapidly and practically trampling their injured as they c
ame closer.
Taking a breath, Trevor dove away from the table, pulling the trigger as he abandoned his post. He connected with his targets—head shots. Both men hit the ground, but not before heat streaked through his bare shoulder. The glass littering the floor cut into the soles of his feet, but he hardly felt it. Adrenaline had dimmed his pain receptors while heightening his other senses.
As his heartbeat steadied, he approached the two wounded men and swiftly kicked away any weapons lying in their vicinity. His gaze focused on the first man, a bulky Hispanic with a shaved head. Eyes wide open. Dead.
Fuck.
“Ohhh.” The pain-laced moan had come from the second soldier.
Still alive.
The man’s breathing was ragged, wheezy, but his chest was rising and falling. Blood seeped out of both his kneecaps. The cries of agony that left his lips echoed in the suddenly silent house.
No more explosions. No more gunshots. No more grunts, shouts, gasps of pain. From the corner of his eye, Trevor glimpsed flashes of red and orange. The chopper. Engulfed in flames, a hunk of burning metal in the courtyard.
“I’ve got one alive,” he reported. “Status?”
“Four tangos KIA,” Kane reported back. His voice went dry. “Guess I’m a little trigger-happy myself. No sign of Holden. Making my way back to you.”
“Sinclair?” Trevor asked.
“We’re long gone. See you at the rendezvous.”
“D?”
“Heading to you.”
“Holden?”
No response.
“Hank?”
Silence.
Unease washed over him. Shit. Holden hadn’t checked in once since the ambush began, and Trevor couldn’t remember when Hank’s last radio contact had been. Where the hell was the guy?
Trevor got his answer when D’s grim voice filled his ear.
“Hank’s dead.”
A few minutes later, Kane and D entered the parlor from opposite directions—D from the back hallway, Kane through the front door. Both men took a look around and shook their heads in amazement.
Trevor didn’t blame them. The enormous space looked like a goddamn war zone. Bullet holes in the walls, smoke thickening the air, glass, debris, and blood staining the floor.
The soldier lying in the middle of the room moaned as Kane gave him a sharp kick in the side.
“Kneecaps,” D remarked, his coal black eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “Nice.”
“Let’s get some answers from this motherfucker and get out of here,” Kane said in a no-nonsense tone. “You got this, D?”
“You know it, bro.”
The former Delta operative removed a hunting knife from the sheath on his belt and gripped the ox-bone handle. Lithe as a cat, he crouched next to the injured man.
“Now it’s D’s time to shine,” Kane murmured.
“Who hired you?” D’s voice was harsh, but the movements of his hand were ever so soft and smooth as he dragged the tip of his knife along the curve of his prey’s clean-shaven jaw.
The soldier didn’t respond.
The blade danced its way down to the man’s left knee.
“You don’t remember, huh?” D said sardonically. “Maybe this will refresh your memory.”
He dug the tip of his knife into the soldier’s shattered kneecap.
Though the resounding cry of anguish made Trevor cringe, he didn’t have anything against D’s method of persuasion. Sometimes extreme measures were necessary to get the job done.
And no matter how professional a man wanted to be, sometimes that need for revenge clouded every last bit of common sense. All Trevor had to do was remember Abby’s dull “We lost Lloyd” and D’s curt “Hank’s gone” and any sympathy he might have felt for the wounded man in front of them left his body like dirty bathwater spiraling down the drain.
“Who. Hired. You.” D’s tone was deceptively calm, but the look in his eyes could have terrified even a bloodthirsty animal.
The next silence earned their prisoner a stab in the right knee.
Another scream sliced through the parlor.
Shrugging, D glanced up at Kane. “Time to start cutting off some limbs?”
“Lassiter!”
The hysterical shout echoed in the air, making Trevor’s lips twitch. Why was it always the threat of losing a limb that spurred a man to capitulate? Any soldier worth his salt, any soldier who’d been trained right, would offer his hands and feet on a silver platter before giving the enemy a vital piece of intel.
“Lassiter,” D echoed in a pleasant voice. “Lassiter who?”
When their prisoner didn’t answer, D jammed his knife deeper into the man’s knee, eliciting a moan of misery.
“Ed Lassiter. Eddie.”
Trevor narrowed his eyes. Why did that name sound so damn familiar?
Beside him, Kane’s lips curled in a sneer. “Shit, I know Lassiter. He’s a scumbag lowlife who specializes in putting together hit squads.”
“Right.” Trevor nodded in recollection. Lassiter’s name came up often on the merc grapevine. He was a middleman who paired mercenaries up with potential clients. Known to be shady as hell too.
“Who hired Lassiter?” Trevor demanded.
“I d-don’t know,” the soldier stammered.
D removed his knife from the man’s knee and brought it up to his throat. A thin red line appeared as the blade pressed into flesh.
“You don’t know, or is this another lapse in memory?” D said mockingly.
“I don’t know! I swear! Lassiter assembled the team, told us the objective—”
“Which was?” Kane interrupted. “What was the objective?”
“Kill every man on this compound.” The man moaned again, his breathing going shallow.
He was beginning to show signs of blood loss. Mottled skin, sweat dotting his forehead, glazed eyes. Before long those eyes closed and the man went unconscious.
“You wanna keep him alive and try again?” D asked Kane.
Kane, who served as second-in-command in Morgan’s absence, shook his head. “He gave us a name. That’s enough.”
“Do we leave him here?”
“Might as well. It’s not like he’s walking out of here.” Kane slung his rifle strap over his shoulder and unholstered his pistol. “Let’s find Holden and get the hell out. The compound’s been compromised.” He turned to D. “Can you deal with the explosives?”
D nodded, drawing Trevor’s attention to the black and red snake tattoo circling the base of his neck. “Find McCall. I’ll handle the rest.”
As D stalked off, Trevor and Kane exchanged a wary look. “Ethan said Holden and Beth were trapped in Morgan’s suite, but there’s a balcony there,” Kane said in a low voice. “Holden could scale that thing in his sleep.”
“Maybe Beth couldn’t?”
“Holden was a fucking Ranger. He would have found a way to get her down.”
Trevor secured his MP5 and palmed his SIG. “Maybe they made it out. Maybe they’re already on their way to the rendezvous.” He paused in afterthought. “No, if Holden had found a way out, he also would’ve found a way to check in with us.”
“Even if they did manage to escape, I’m not taking off without knowing for sure,” Kane said.
They went outside through the front door, which had been reduced to a naked frame and a pile of wood. The chopper across the courtyard continued to burn, but the fire had lost some of its intensity. Plumes of black smoke spiraled up from the wreckage and were carried away by the cool breeze. The smell of fuel, exhaust, and smoke clogged the air.
Judging by the faint sliver of light on the horizon, dawn was approaching, but the sky was mostly black as they rounded the main house. They stopped only to pop into the detached garage, where Kane grabbed a coiled length of rope from one of the worktables, and then they continued on their way.
It was eerily quiet out, save for the soft hiss of the wind and the occasional crash as another wall or ceiling c
ollapsed inside the blown-to-shit estate Trevor had called home for five measly months.
Morgan’s suite of rooms was on the second floor, offering a large rectangular-shaped balcony ringed by a curved steel railing. The balcony was fifteen feet off the ground, give or take. The men gauged the height, then exchanged another look.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” Kane suggested.
“Fuck. Fine.”
Trevor threw paper.
Kane threw rock.
Trevor was given the honor of planting his bloody feet on Kane’s shoulders and being hurled into the air. His hands caught the railing, fingers wrapping around the cold metal. He heaved himself up and over, soundlessly landing on the concrete floor before bouncing to his feet.
The balcony doors had been shattered. Curtains were half open, the burgundy fabric fluttering in the night air. Trevor prayed that Holden had shot the doors himself for some reason, and that the McCalls had made it to safety, but the ominous humming in his body told him they hadn’t been that lucky.
Swallowing his unease, he secured the rope to the railing in a two-turn bowline knot and flung it over the side. The rope stretched taut as Kane shimmied up it. Half a minute later, the ex-SEAL’s legs swung over the rail, his boots met concrete, and he joined Trevor at the doors.
Neither man said a word as they raised their pistols. They approached the threshold with cautious steps.
Trevor’s gaze immediately landed on the slumped shape beyond the doors. His breath caught, then steadied when he noticed certain details about the dead man on the floor. Buzz cut. Caramel-colored skin. Not Holden.
As relief shuddered through him, he slid into the master bedroom ahead of Kane. It was bathed in shadows. Not a single light, no sounds except for the occasional cracking noises as pieces of plaster dislodged from the ceiling. Whatever firepower that helicopter had been packing—RPGs, Trevor suspected—had left a gaping hole in one section of the ceiling, revealing the inky, moonlit sky. Broken clay tiles slid off the exposed roof and crashed to the floor, several pieces colliding with the motionless figure on the carpet.
Apprehension skated up Trevor’s spine, growing stronger when he got a better look at the lifeless body. The merc’s fatigues were soaked red. Looked like someone had unloaded an entire clip into the dude’s chest.