Delta_Ricochet

by Cristin Harber

  “For what?”

  “Rock bottom—when I can look around and know it can’t get any stronger than this. That this is what it’s like to fall in love with a woman.”

  Her lips parted—

  The front door opened, and a man stepped out, motioning them inside as his eyes dropped to Colin’s shirt. “Excuse me?”

  Adelia pressed her lips together, but then said, “Coming.”

  What good was a safe house if they busted their own location? Standing in the driveway and bleeding out for the neighbors to see might do the trick. Colin took Adelia’s hand and ignored his throbbing pain. They walked into the suburban single-family home as what had to be the cleanup crew arrived in the driveway. By the time Colin woke, the rental car would be gone. Hopefully, Adelia would not.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Lenora’s heels clacked as she was scanned for weapons, drugs, or God knew what else. “Prisons smell like piss.”

  “Never get used to it.” The guard waved her in and down the corridor.

  Lenora had thought a decade ago she might’ve been used to the disinfectant smell they tried to use around the front door to mask the scent of humans rotting in a hole, but it all smelled like putrefied body odor with the hint of watered-down bleach.

  “How you doing, Lenora?” The same guard who’d manned this door for the last five years unlocked and buzzed her through.

  “Good, Lenny. How’s your wife this week? Any news?”

  “Baby’s coming soon.”

  “Let me know.” She’d send a basket and a casserole. It paid to have friends on all sides. Flicking a wave, she promised to keep them in her thoughts, but the only thoughts she’d had recently were about Cullen Blackburn.

  The next door opened, and she walked into the holding cell, waiting for Mayhem’s most notorious inmate. He walked in in his prison stripes and a shit-eatin’ grin, his wrist and ankle chains clanging.

  “Can we get these off him?” she asked, even though there was no way the guard would agree. It was the thought that counted.

  “How nice of you.” Cullen took his seat, holding his hands for the guard.

  “Not a chance, Blackburn.” He walked toward the open door. “Holler if you need me.”

  “My, my, my.” She let her head wag. “I’d say color me impressed.”

  He applauded himself. “I’ll take all the credit. They love me around here. But that’s not why you’re here.”

  Lenora eased her chair back. “Someone died.”

  “Not just someone though.” Cullen leaned the metal chair onto its back legs, and the chains on his ankles clanged.

  The Mayhem communication system was still as powerful as ever if Cullen could find out this quickly about Ethan.

  “I want to know how you knew that…” She thought better of using Ethan’s name, even in a holding cell where they were supposed to be afforded attorney-client confidentiality. “He would be killed. And what I’m missing, because I could guess, but I think there’s more to it.”

  “I always see the way plays will work out.” He smirked. “You know that’s why you’re back here, Lenora.”

  “Why?”

  “You did a respectable job with me, with everything you’ve done for Mayhem, and you know nothing is ever what it seems.”

  She pursed her lips, not ready to admit he was right and wishing he’d get back to what she came here for, but not pushing him. That would get her nothing.

  He grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Get me out of here again, and I’ll see what I can do for you on the outside.”

  “Didn’t we try that once before? But you screwed up.”

  “Maybe that was my plan the whole time.” Cullen clacked his teeth together.

  A couple years back, Lenora had worked a huge deal to get Cullen out of federal lock-up, and she had no idea how he’d spent most of his time—other than pestering the hell out of Seven—but she suspected that the information he gave up was profitable, and that he was the one who had been ready to come back here. They were all playing in Cullen Blackburn’s world. “I put my ass on the line for you last time.”

  “I know I’m an asshole,” Cullen continued. “But I’m not lying to you this time, hot stuff.”

  “Cut the flattery. It gets you nowhere with me.”

  “I’m brushing up for the bar scene.” Then he shrugged. “But hell. I’ve got three squares, no headaches, and my entire day to relax. Why do I want to go anywhere?”

  “Shut up, Cullen.” She clasped her hands. “I have no patience any more. Zero time.”

  He snorted. “This is the smooth-talking plan you have to keep Adelia alive?”

  She kept her face emotionless. “I’m here for information. Not your mind fucks.”

  He nodded. “That sounds true to your style.” He squinted. “But Adelia… she’s nearly your kid.”

  Lenora would claim Adelia a thousand times over. “Let’s knock the ‘nearly’ out of your mouth, sweetheart. But since we’re on the topic of kids, how’s Seven?”

  Cullen’s spark dimmed. “Hung up on me last time I called.”

  “Thought so.” She didn’t live to be a bitch, but Cullen lived to be an asshole.

  “What’s your point?”

  “Let’s get you out of here again, my friend. We’ve worked together for too long for you to be Mister Tough Guy and me not to know your end game.”

  “If you think I don’t control what I want to with the MC from in here—”

  “I’m talking about making amends with your daughter. You’re not doing that from in the clink, and we both know that.”

  “Don’t give two steamin’ shits.” He shrugged. “But proceed, counselor.”

  No, he didn’t. He’d give the world so long as he never had to admit how big a screw-up he was. “You help me, and I help you.”

  He grunted. “No other way to play our game.”

  “What do you know about who’s running money in and out of the club?”

  Cullen snorted. “You mean in addition to Adelia?”

  She gritted her teeth. “Yeah.”

  “It’s not the obvious.”

  “So not… Ethan?”

  Cullen’s cracked lips curled in a knowing smile as he lifted his chin. “But I didn’t say he wasn’t up to his neck.”

  How much was going on that the club didn’t know? And Cullen was the club. He had a duty to Mayhem, to protect it, no matter where he was. Lenora narrowed her eyes. “You know they’d skin you alive if you talked about another member?”

  He didn’t so much as blink.

  “Why say that?” she pushed. “Even to me?”

  Carefully, the powerful man angled forward, and the only sound in the cold holding cell was the pounding of her anxious heart and the clank of his chains. “Not if they knew that I know.”

  More than embezzlement. More than… what? Why would Cullen pass Ethan’s name? “Keep talking.”

  “Get me out of here.”

  Now was her turn to play the cards she had, and their BS about no bullshit games had been total BS. “I thought three square meals made you happy.”

  “So does getting my dick sucked by my choice of Mayhem pussy.”

  “Lovely,” she snipped, unaffected. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She stood, unsure how much of this was helpful—

  “One more thing you should know.” He leaned back in his chair. “I know a dead man walking.” Cullen dropped the front metal legs, and its boom echoed off the cinder blocks. “And he’s walking with a fat bank account. When you figure that out, you can fix everything.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Nothing that Adelia saw inside Delta’s safe house came close to what her wildest imagination could’ve come up with before she walked in the door, arm in arm, with Colin. He, however, bleeding far more than she’d realized and choking down grunts of pain, didn’t notice as they stepped into another world.

  An entire medical team awaited Colin, prepped f
or surgery, with a makeshift operating room set up in the middle of the large house’s empty living room. The plastic tent draped tall and wide enough to support medical equipment and the gurney that they quickly moved him to, taking readings and undressing him before she could get a word in to say good-bye.

  “Wait.” He pushed a mask away from his face. “Adelia.”

  She scurried over despite the protest of the medical team around him. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a man shot, but it was the first time it almost killed her too. He’d taken a bullet for her, and now that his chest was bare, wet and dry blood covering his skin, she realized how much he’d almost sacrificed. “My armor is off. I promise.”

  His smile flickered then the mask went over his face again, and she was shooed from the makeshift operating room with strict orders to stay out.

  Each step away from him made her cold as she moved down a hall that had been transformed into biohazard safe zone with labeled trashcans and into a kitchen stocked with special soap, scrubs, and towels.

  The kitchen had a cutaway over the counter and sink, and numbly, she stared through the blurred plastic draping wondering how the entire set-up could have been pulled together by the time they arrived.

  Noises beeped. Doctors chattered. This could be a medical drama movie set with actors in costume, but it wasn’t. The machines were real. Their talk and jargon, their assessments and moves, everything that she’d expect to see if she’d made a list based on a TV-checklist was well under works as IVs dripped and nurses passed tools for the surgeon and team who operated and flowed at the whim of Colin’s vital signs.

  This was what she’d wanted to avoid—Colin hurt. She didn’t want anyone who she cared for to be sucked into this screwed up headache. Adelia wanted to call Seven or Victoria. One of them would know what to say, or maybe not, because even with all the protections and training that Delta team offered, Colin lay in surgery now because of her.

  She pressed her blood-stained fingers to her temples. The beeps and buzz saving his life poked at her guilt, tightening the anxiety in her chest. Every second ticked on, and she felt worse. He could’ve died. Dead. Dying. The morbid words echoed in her head. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Adelia threw her hands down, holding them in front of her face until her stomach turned, and she slapped on the sink faucet and covered them in soap and suds. A river of dark red washed away, but no matter how hard she’d scrubbed, she couldn’t get the darkness from under her nails.

  The more she stared, the more she wasn’t sure it was there. “I’m losing it.”

  Even her tongue felt out of place in her mouth. Her voice seemed fuzzy, and reality was too much. She swayed, needing to sit. Probably to sleep. Yet, she couldn’t pull her gaze away from the fingernails she couldn’t rid of Colin’s blood.

  Was she ready to face the punishment for her crimes against Mayhem? Could Colin really talk them down?

  What did it matter?

  It didn’t. Not anymore, not when she had lived this long for a reason, Colin had bled for her, and now Lenora had given her a taste of that addictive, dark need for revenge. Monster hunting. Removing Gloria Astor was taking out a figurehead. Taking her out meant the possibility of crumpling a regime, and Adelia had never been an addict until she now. Knowledge was power, and the cold hunger hit and multiplied. She clung to the edge of the sink, buzzing from a sleep-deprived, adrenaline-fueled high that made her thirst desperately to see Gloria fall from her untouchable reign.

  The plastic tent parted as a scrub-covered man emerged, pulling off a surgical mask. His sharp eyes assessed her as he tore off gloves and tossed them into the medical waste bin, and he walked to the kitchen.

  “How is he?” she asked, having no idea who this man was or what he did.

  The man came beside her at the sink, and they both stared through the kitchen cut into the living room at the ongoing surgery. “He’ll be fine. They need to cauterize an artery, and then he needs to take it easy for a day or two—as much as you folks take it easy.”

  “I don’t work with him.” Guilt stabbed her tired muscles. “I’m just the reason he was shot.”

  “Bet he didn’t appreciate that.”

  She would’ve laughed, but the man was right. Everyone she loved should stay away from her. She had already hurt Tex in a way that he would never admit, and now she had risked Colin’s life, all because of her choices. “I have to leave before he wakes up.”

  “You can’t.” Disgusted confusion twisted his lips. “Who will be here?”

  Panic twisted around her neck, strangling her with a leash tied to the man she wanted to protect. “What about you? Or those people?”

  “That’s not how this contract works. We show up when we get the call and then we disappear. No questions asked.”

  She didn’t get it. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Not my problem.” His intelligent eyes assessed her. “Call the people who contracted us?”

  “I don’t know them.” But that wasn’t true.

  “You know them enough they took a bullet for you, and you’re here. That doesn’t happen often.”

  “But a variation of this does?”

  He ignored her. They weren’t near Colin’s office. Nowhere near where his team might be. “What, you just wait around for their phone calls?”

  Again, he didn’t answer. This was too much. She didn’t understand anything about the world Colin lived in, and she lived in a world that was whacked. Criminal chapters across the country, a network of old ladies who could help free trafficked girls purchased with skimmed money from gun sales—and yet she didn’t understand how there was a group of doctors and nurses waiting for Delta group to call with their wounded.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” he finally asked.

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t. My people are organized but not in a way that we have resources that wait for us to call in random locations.”

  He tipped his head back, rolling his lips into his mouth as though an understanding had dawned, and maybe he could tell she was a criminal and Colin was with Delta. Or maybe he saw past any assumption and simply thought her naïve.

  The man gestured. “I’ve never seen these people before in my life. And if I ever see them again, I likely wouldn’t acknowledge them. I have one job, and it’s to play a specific role on a team. They each have a job and do the same thing. That’s it. The job is done, and we go away, back to our real lives until called upon again. If ever.”

  They stood in silence while Adelia tried to grasp the enormity of Delta team’s organization. Titan Group must be far larger than she knew. It wasn’t just that they could find a safe house in any location. It was that they could find resources and people across the country—hell, maybe even the world. “What do you do in real life? Can you tell me? Or would you?”

  He crossed his arms and leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “Why did you want to leave?”

  “Because I don’t want to hurt anybody else. That bullet was meant for me.”

  His jaw flexed. “That’s a bullshit answer.”

  Surprised, she stepped back. “How do you know?”

  “I’m an ambulance driver. A first responder, and because I’m first on the scene, I am also the first person someone sees when they’re going to die. It’s made me a great barometer of bullshit.”

  Her eyes widened. She’d never thought about that job from that perspective. “Do people ask you if they’re going to die?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you lie?” Adelia asked. Wouldn’t that be the responsible, ethical thing to do, to give them happy thoughts before they went?

  “No. I used to, and then I realized it wasn’t the right thing. If someone’s dying and you lie, they struggle against it. But if you know there’s no chance and they have only a few moments left, and they ask you if they’re going to make it…” The tightness near the corners of his eyes softened and his jaw gentled. “If you tell them the t
ruth, that no, they won’t live, a calm comes over them.”

  She wondered if that was the moment of acceptance she had when waiting for Pops to kill her, and now, she knew death was coming for her, but she had assigned herself a single task to complete first. Would it be easier to slip away then? “What do they say?”

  “I thought maybe I’d hear a list of lifelong regrets.”

  What would hers be? She’d done as much as she could. Opened her arms as much as she knew how. …Even today, tried to take off her armor she didn’t know that she owned.

  “But no. They mostly want a hand to hold, someone to tell their greatest achievements, and almost always, they wanted to share about family or loved ones, even if they haven’t spoken with them in decades.”

  Adelia’s throat ached with emotion. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Don’t make the mistake of leaving.”

  A tear spilled over onto her cheek. “Okay.”

  A woman pushed from the medical tent, stripping off her gloves and face cover, and dumping her scrubs and into the waiting bin. With a quick wave into the kitchen, she walked to the kitchen table, grabbed her coat and purse and left without saying another word.

  “I guess her job was done then,” Adelia said.

  “We’re wrapping up.” He gathered an orange duffel bag from the kitchen island and repacked supplies.

  One by one, the medical team filtered out until only what looked like a nurse stayed by Colin’s side. The surgeon stripped down to his street clothes and motioned for Adelia to step into the hallway. With every step closer, the logical, unfeeling part of her brain wanted to explain to the surgeon that Colin was safer without her.

  But that wouldn’t be their life.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and it was like a scene out of a movie. Then again, this wasn’t her life either. Still, she could stay. They could play house and pretend life was normal, that Mayhem didn’t exist, and life hadn’t given her the rocky start it had. Colin could heal in one of the bedrooms. It wasn’t an experience that had ever been on her bucket list. Then again, nothing like Colin had ever crossed her mind.