Edge of Brotherhood (Love on the Edge Book 6)

by Molly E. Lee

  “We’ll find her,” Wade said after I punched the earth beneath me too many times. He knelt in front of me, Dash and Connell doing the same. “I can follow her tracks. She can’t have gotten that far.”

  I rubbed my palms over my face, knowing he was right. “We need a plan. Corrine will have men with her. Last time I saw her she had three. I don’t know if she’s upped her numbers.”

  “We can take three,” Connell said, shrugging.

  “She wouldn’t have brought more than that,” Dash said. “Not here. It would be too easy to notice. It’s not like this place gives you room to breathe.”

  I nodded, grateful for their support when all I could see was Corrine’s head on a spike.

  “She wants proof I don’t have.”

  “She thinks you’ll be looking for it for two days. Instead we track her and take her by surprise.” Wade arched an eyebrow at me.

  “She’ll have guns.”

  “We have machetes,” Connell said.

  Pushing off my knees, I shook my head as they stood with me. “I can’t ask you guys to go into what could be a suicide mission.”

  “Dude, what the hell did you think this was?” Wade held his arms out, indicating the lost city and jungle around us.

  I wanted to smile but couldn’t. Every second we spent not looking for Rain was a second too long.

  Dash dared to step closer to me, reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t fuck with one of our women.” He squeezed. “We’re with you, brother.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Connell said.

  “To bring her back,” Wade finished.

  Something like hope filled my chest, but it could’ve been undiluted rage. I wasn’t one to differentiate the two right now.

  “Thank you.” I nodded, and Dash took a couple steps back and flinched.

  “Fucking hell,” he said, flinging his arms in the air.

  “What?” Wade and Connell snapped at the same time.

  Dash pointed to the sky. The storm. Fuck, I’d forgotten he’d mentioned it a couple hours ago. Felt like a lifetime with all that had happened.

  “Shit!” I screamed as a crack of thunder rumbled above us. “Her tracks!” I took off toward the jungle, like if I could get back to the spot of her abduction there would be bright flashing arrows showing me which way to go to bring her back to me.

  Wade bolted in front of me before I dove through the greenery that hugged the bank where we set up camp. “The rain won’t wash them all away.”

  “What?” I shoved against him, but his tall frame matched me in muscle. “Of course it will. There will be nothing left!”

  “There will!” He snapped back. “I promise you, man. You’ve got to listen to me. I fuck around a lot, but I know what I’m doing.” He flinched as fat drops of rain hit his face.

  Dash came to his side. “You can’t save her in what is about to hit us.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Fuck!” I screamed, feeling as if the entire world was against me getting back my heart that had been torn from my chest the second Rain had gone missing. She was my light. My life. My Raindrop. Without her . . .

  “It should last a little over an hour,” Dash continued. “We’ll hit it the second it lets up enough to see more than a foot in front of us.”

  Connell and Wade nodded their agreement. The sky opened up even more then, as if it wanted to prove everything that Dash had said as truth. Like he was Zeus’s ancestor, God of the skies or some shit.

  I dropped my head and followed them into what had been Rain’s and my tent. The mountain that it hugged blocked the winds that grew in power the longer we sat in silence, zipped inside.

  Nothing but the sounds of the tropical storm filled our ears, as there was nothing left to say. This new crew of mine had been upgraded to brothers willing to risk death to get my wife back in my arms. I didn’t understand that kind of loyalty, but I could fucking feel it. And as I counted the breaths until the storm would end, I prayed we would be enough because if something happened to Rain . . . I wouldn’t come back from that. She was the air in my lungs, the light in my world, the fucking fire in my blood. If Corrine did something . . .

  I couldn’t be held responsible for what I’d do to her.

  To everyone involved.

  I prayed to God it wouldn’t come to that.

  THE RAIN STOPPED after an hour. Just like Dash had said it would. In that time, we sat in Easton’s tent, our mouths shut, fists clenched, teeth gnashing. It didn’t take a genius to see we were all somewhere else, anywhere else but stuck in that damn tent.

  Dash was likely trying to re-do the last four hours and change the outcome of Rain’s abduction. He didn’t have to say a word for us to understand he was hurting over this. It wasn’t his fault, but hell, I couldn’t blame Easton for lashing out at him like he had. If Dash would’ve followed her . . . well, he may have been taken, too. Or maybe he could’ve fought them off. Either way, it was written all over his face that he was trying to change it with the force of his mind.

  Connell was broody and calm as usual, sharpening his diving knife—or what I liked to refer to as his Arachnid Slayer. With each calculative stroke of the blade, it was easy to see he was down for whatever step we took next.

  So was I.

  I may not have a wife waiting for me back home like these guys did, but I knew what it felt like to give your soul away to someone. Difference between me and them was I wasn’t fortunate enough to ever get mine back. Mackenzie . . . fuck, she’d consumed it and burned me to ash. What was left of me anyway.

  Despite that, I knew what it was like to love someone as deeply as Easton loved Rain, and seeing the anguish etched out on each of the lines of his face as we waited for that fucking storm to pass was a new brand of torture.

  The drops of rain hitting the tent turned to soft pelts, then nothing at all, and Easton unzipped the tent and stepped out. Each of us followed, and my adrenaline was on a high alert. There was no coming down from the shakes that rocked my muscles and begged me to avenge on behalf of my friend.

  No . . . brother. Easton, Dash, Connell. They were what I’d silently hoped for when we started out this expedition. Brothers, not by blood but by actions. And we wouldn’t rest until we’d found Rain. Like Dash had said, they fucked with the wrong guys.

  “Dash, come with me.” Easton jerked his head—not toward the jungle but the massive structure in the water.

  “Where we going?” Dash asked, and I didn’t blame him for the timid tone of his question. Easton had been like a wild animal prepared to rip Dash limb from limb, even if it wasn’t his fault. He’d been in the red zone and Dash was an easy target of blame.

  “She wants proof. I’ll fucking give her some.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I thought we were going after her?” I resisted the urge to voice my what the fuck attitude. This was so not the time to whine about him not thinking I was capable of tracking the people who took Rain. I knew I was and that was all that mattered. That was what was going to bring her back. Not wasting time searching for evidence that could take weeks to find, if ever.

  “We are,” Easton said, and I calmed down. “I just want to hold more cards than she does.” He shook his head. “The bitch is cunning. If strength doesn’t get Rain back, then we’ll have to rely on other ways, and I’m hoping with each of us together, we can be more conniving than she is.”

  Dash nodded, stepping to Easton’s right. “Lead the way. Just tell me what to do.”

  Good man. My eyes flashed to Connell. “We’ll scout ahead, start looking for the trail while you two are in there.”

  Easton nodded. “Thank you. We won’t be more than an hour. Keep your radio on, though. Just in case.”

  “Noted.” I clicked the radio that hung off one of my pockets as I watched Easton and Dash cross the sopping wet marsh then effortlessly climb the massive stone structure. It would’ve been something to marvel at, even be jealous of—how the two of them so easily hopped t
hree feet of stone, one after the next, until they reached an entry point in something so ancient and glorious it should be on one of my movie sets, not out here in the jungle. As it was, I couldn’t even muster up enough energy to be jealous or admire them. There was too much work to do, too much riding on whether or not the rain had washed out all useful tracks.

  I’d assured Easton that it wouldn’t happen. That I’d find something, and damn I was determined to, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’d said whatever I could to get him to stay put. He would’ve darted off half-cocked in a rage in the middle of a fierce tropical storm and gotten himself lost or killed. Neither of those options would be good for Rain or us. While I could track, Easton would be the one to keep us alive, because I didn’t know dick about this jungle. That much had been proven in the two ways in which it’d already almost fucked me.

  Spiders and eels.

  Bleh.

  Connell was silent at my back as we entered the dense jungle, heading in the same direction where we’d found Rain’s radio. I forced the creeps from my brain and focused on the area surrounding the site of her abduction. The rain made the plants around us smell sweet, almost bitter, and I could taste the tang in the air with each breath I took. The rain had also left the jungle floor even more slick than it was normally, and the boot prints I’d seen before were now covered with stray leaves the size of household doors.

  Fuck you, weather. I had no clue how in the hell Dash could live for that shit. Couldn’t control it, barely could predict it, and I didn’t care what he said, you sure as hell couldn’t catch it. Not like you could catch a flaming arrow in the chest on the set of the latest medieval and get a taste of what life was like in the times of Game of Thrones. You couldn’t master weather like you could a motorcycle jump, or a timed sky dive. And, yeah, he may have called the time and place of the storm, even the duration, but he’d said himself Mother Nature had proven him wrong before.

  And now, she’d taken away my best lead on getting Easton his woman back.

  Crouching low, I refused to accept defeat. This was just another challenge that needed to be met, and damn was I great at meeting challenges. The stakes were never this high, though. On set, at least it was my own life at risk, not someone else’s.

  The idea flitted through my mind . . . a little role reversal—Mackenzie in Rain’s place, despite the fact that she never would be—and it seared my chest. I hadn’t spoken to the woman in years, and yet the thought of her being taken from me by force was enough to steal what little breath I had in my lungs. If it was this bad for me, it was exceptionally worse for Easton. He at least was married to the love of his life, living with her day in and day out as they traveled the world, living the fucking dream. Not everyone was so lucky, but from the looks of my crew, you’d think love was a lottery just waiting to be won.

  You have to play to win, asshole.

  Fuck you.

  “Is this something?” Connell asked from five feet to my left. He was crouched low to the ground as well, his hazel eyes sharp like a hawks on the jungle floor.

  I carefully stepped over to him, following his line of sight.

  “Did the storm do it?” he asked. “Or was it this way before, from . . . someone?”

  Leaning closer to the plant—its thick, pale green base snapped clean in half—I allowed myself a small grin. “Fucking good eyes, Aquaman.” I quickly scanned the area, surmising the distance between this broken plant and the boot print and Rain’s radio. Small, bright white dots connected in my mind, forming a pattern of one, two, three . . .

  I searched, standing up and stepping over the split plant, having to shove hunter green leaves out of the way that were dripping wet. “Four,” I said when I’d spotted it.

  “What?” Connell asked, forcing his way to my position, smacking at the leaves like they were hands trying to hold him in place.

  I snapped my fingers, pointing down to a piece of yellow fabric no bigger than a nickel.

  “How in the hell?” Connell looked at me as if I were the superhero and I gave him one of his own signature shrugs.

  “My brother. Like I said, he was a better tracker than me, but he taught me well. It’s all about patterns and knowing where to look. This”—I held up the tiny fabric—“is point number four. A piece of Rain’s pack.”

  “How do you remember what her pack looks like?”

  I tapped the side of my temple. “Same way I remember the exact location of her fallen radio and the boot print. Same way I know when to throttle and where to set a pipe bomb so it only does minimal damage. Steel. Trap.” I emphasized the last two words with another two taps before looking up the nonexistent “path” I assumed the kidnappers had taken.

  Points five and six were clearly marked in my head, but I didn’t want to venture deeper until our whole crew was together. We had a good pattern so far, more than I thought we would with the storm, and I wanted to jump on it as quickly as possible. But we needed Easton and Dash. It would take each and every one of us for this to work.

  “Call Easton,” I said, tossing Connell my radio since it was handier. “Tell him to hurry the fuck up.”

  “That sounds better coming from you,” he said, his thumb hovering over the button.

  I turned from where I’d taken a step to set eyes on point five. “Are you afraid of our fearless leader?” I teased.

  He flipped me off and clicked the button down. “Easton. ETA?”

  I stifled a fake cough. “Pussy.”

  Connell cocked an eyebrow at me before pointing over my shoulder. “Spider.”

  I jolted, and jumped a good three feet away from the spot I’d been standing.

  It was empty.

  Connell smirked, and it was my turn to flip him off.

  “We’re heading back to camp. Meet us there so we can pack the bags, gather what we need.” Easton’s voice rang clear over the line.

  “Copy.”

  I surveyed the area one last time, taking mental pictures and locking them up in the do not toss box in my brain. I wanted to memorize exactly where we were going, just in case some jungle creature decided to slither through the scene and fuck up what I’d already found. Another bone-deep shudder ran through me, and I reminded myself to grab a spare machete before leading everyone down a path we may not come back from.

  SWEAT NO LONGER trickled from the pores on every inch of my skin, it simply became a constant presence on my body. I’d never been so tired in my entire life, and I’d spent the better part of it fighting the strong currents of the ocean deep. If we survived this, I was going to kill the person responsible for the panicked, rage-filled quest that we were on. Didn’t matter that Rain wasn’t mine, she was his, and sometime between our flight out of LAX and now, I had stopped looking at Easton as the man my wife drooled over and more like a brother in arms.

  Shoving away yet another damned plant that seemed both sticky and slick at the same time, I sucked in the hot air that was all at once too close and not refreshing enough.

  Jungles. Sky. Deserts. All these places were on my list of never want to visit again. Though, I supposed I was faring fine until our mission had changed in a heartbeat. We went from the thrill of discovery and diving in foreign-to-me waters, to four men on a hot trail to a mad woman. Only time would tell who would win the award for most insane by the time we found them.

  My money was on us because we were all united in one unshakable agreement: bring Rain home—or die trying.

  Sadie. The whisper of her name teased the back of my mind. I had seriously contemplated murdering Slade—a now ex-pipeline tycoon—when he’d threatened Sadie on our first gig together in the Bahamas. I’d planned out the details that would end with him waking up on the bottom of the ocean without a tank, but thankfully, I’d never had to carry it out. But if something like this had happened to her? Fuck, the person responsible wouldn’t be so lucky.

  I glanced ahead of me, where Easton stayed close to Wade’s heels, dropping to inspect
something each time Wade did. Since it wasn’t Sadie, I had a small semblance of perspective and I hoped to hell the guys did, too. When it came down to it, we couldn’t let Easton cross that line unless it was absolutely necessary.

  I knew what it was like to feel responsible for someone’s death, and though I hadn’t actually killed my brother, I had felt that way for over a year after he’d overdosed. I’d handed him the weapon—a wad of cash enough to buy the drugs that ended his life. That had made me feel like a murderer and it wasn’t a good place to live. If Sadie hadn’t come along and pulled me out of myself, shown me there was light inside of me . . . hell, I don’t know where I’d be.

  Probably having a heavenly drink with you, brother. If I was lucky enough to not go to hell for the sins of the life I’d led before Sadie.

  Regardless, I didn’t want that for Easton. Though, I also knew if it came down to a choice between Rain’s life and another, he’d be right and be justified. That wasn’t what worried me. I was afraid he’d already made the choice in his head without seeing the actual threat, and while I would’ve done the same thing had it been Sadie, I would hope one of these guys—my new brothers—would pull me back to reality before I did something I’d regret for the rest of my life.

  Even so, that didn’t mean I wanted to have that heart to heart with Easton in his current state of mind. Mainly, I wanted to know Wade and Dash were on the same page as me—in agreement that we’d save Rain and Easton from himself no matter what. I had no doubt Dash would agree with that line of thought, white knight that he was. But Wade? I was fond of the dude, hell, I may be closer to him than the others, but I knew a wild card when I saw it. And Wade was the definition of wild. Confident, reckless, and with nothing to lose. He wasn’t grounded by the love of the perfect woman waiting for him back home. He answered to no one but himself, and that made him more of a gamble in a high-intensity situation like we were in. Then again, we wouldn’t be here without him. Without his skills in tracking, we’d be at the lost city, each man scrambling to find the proof demanded of Rain’s abductor.