by Jenna Ryan
Abel’s mouth crooked into a wry smile. “I can see the wheels turning there, Amber Kelly. Except you’re not Amber, are you? You’re Alexa Chase, would-be toppler of illegal empires. I knew your mama, remember? Secrets are just so damn hard to keep in today’s world. C’est la vie, as they say in these parts. You, uh, might wanna drop those rifles, old friend, before my trigger finger gets twitchy.
With his gaze fixed on Abel’s, Gage let the weapons he’d unshouldered drop onto a bed of wet moss. “So now what?” he asked. “You turn us over to Fixx, and presto, three million plus bucks magically appears in your bank account?”
Abel snorted. “Do I look like a moron? I take the girl.” He jerked his head. “Got a truck half a mile away, out of the swamp but deep in the hollow. When the money’s in my hands, free and clear, I’ll tell him where I’ve got her hidden.”
A faint smile tugged on Gage’s lips as Abel’s rifle barrel fell an inch. “You really think that’ll work for Mockerie?”
“No.” Abel shrugged. “But it’ll work fine for Fixx. I’m guessing he’s pretty desperate at this point. Amber keeps eluding him. Word of advice, Gage, you might think about getting gone yourself.”
“What, you’re not going to kill me?”
“I’m hoping not. However”—he shrugged again—“three point five million is three point five million. Still, I’ll try to keep it down to a debilitating wound for you.”
“You’re all heart, old friend.”
As Abel smiled, the rifle dropped even lower. “Hell, you’d do the same for me if the situation was reversed.”
Gage didn’t bat an eyelash, didn’t alter his expression in any way. He simply murmured a calm, “Don’t count on it.” When Amber moved and Abel glanced at her, he grabbed the gun from the back of his waistband and planted a bullet in the middle of his old friend’s chest.
“What the—”
Amber stared. Abel looked down, then up, then over at her. “Bastard shot…me.”
The rifle in his hand jerked. Amber felt herself falling sideways. Before she landed, she heard a second shot.
Abel gurgled out a final astonished protest and pitched forward into the weeds.
For a moment, probably no more than a split second, Amber regarded the dead man.
Unable to think of a single thing to say, she climbed stiffly to her feet and stood mutely while Gage tugged the assault rifle out from underneath his mentor.
“Come on,” he said without inflection. “We need to leave. Abel had a truck. We have to find it.”
“I—yes.” Words continued to elude her. “Yes.”
Taking a final look at Gage’s trainer lying facedown in the weeds, she dragged her numb gaze away and prayed to God she’d never see Gage—or her sister—in that same state.
…
She didn’t ask a single question, likely wouldn’t, Gage thought as once again they ran through the slime and mud and water not quite deep enough to hold any full-size alligators.
Rachel was no longer screaming, but he imagined that was due to the gunshots everyone in the vicinity must have heard. Small but deadly, he’d had the gun he’d used on Abel up his sleeve since they’d abandoned their last vehicle. He’d hoped like hell his hunch about Abel’s wants and needs had been an erroneous one. But life, mistakes, and greed had taken their toll, and now the man who trained him lay face down, waiting for the scavengers to move in and cover him.
He didn’t expect to locate Abel’s truck easily, or without encountering at least one obstacle. Bullets flew from inside a small, wooden structure on the edge of the waterway.
Amber stumbled slightly and went to her knees as Gage hid behind a curtain of Spanish moss. “What is that?” She panted the question out. “Not a house.”
“Still.” Gage searched the darkness, regarded the misty moon. “Come on, clear up, give me a view.”
Amber pointed. “There’s someone crouched down on the side of the building.”
He held his fire as more shots came at them from the direction they’d been running.
“How many do you count?” Amber asked.
“Three, maybe more. They know we’re here. We’ll keep to the shadows and run. That way.” He motioned behind them. “Up the incline. If we can, we’ll circle back to the road.”
A muffled scream reached them. Gage ignored it. Near or far, Rachel would have to wait.
Bullets whizzed past. Left with no choice, he shouldered the assault rifle and fired back. The man hunkered down next to the still eased up a few inches and took aim. Two well-placed shots and he staggered backward through a collection of old metal parts. Gage heard the crash as the guy fell to the ground among them.
He couldn’t make out the source of the rifle fire to his left, but he fired at it regardless.
The swamp had been transformed into a war zone. Bullets flew in all directions. There were shouts and cries and the sound of splashing water.
“We need to move.” When Amber didn’t answer, he glanced at where she’d been.
And saw nothing except an empty patch of black.
…
Amber fought and kicked and would have screamed like a banshee if the arm around her windpipe hadn’t cut off her air supply to the point where her vision went spotty.
A gun jabbed into her side. “You draw Morgan back here and this whole swamp’s gonna rain blood, sugar. Your damn sister scratched the crap out of Bronson, and the dumbass took it. Yours truly doesn’t intend to have an eye clawed out or his innards exposed by an ex-cop turned renegade sharpshooter.”
Despite the man’s warning, Amber kicked him in the shins. He responded by shaking her as if she were a rag doll.
He dragged her through the swamp, kept her covered with a scratchy, wool blanket. Her head spun from both the pressure of his forearm and a residual chemical smell in the wool. Chloroform maybe. Not enough to knock her out, but enough to make her woozy.
It felt like an eternity passed before he threw her to the ground and snatched the blanket away. She heard Rachel’s wet sob and, at the same time, spied her sister’s tear-streaked face.
“You’re here.” Rachel threw her arms around Amber, smothering her. “Thank God, you’re here. I’m sorry. I tried not to scream so loud, but he kept hurting me. I think I punched him in the nose before he shoved me to the ground. Where are we?”
From what Amber could ascertain with Rachel’s hair in her face and the moon half visible through a layer of filmy cloud, they were in a circle of three SUVs. The lone man walking back and forth in front of them with his rifle resting on his shoulder like an ax was big, with bushy hair and a wad of gum in his mouth.
“Name’s Mort,” he said in a conversational tone. “That guy behind you’s Jake. D’you remember Jake, Alexa, from Las Vegas? Don’t matter, he remembers you. We both do, even if you never paid either of us any mind. I been trying to call the others back, but no one can hear me over the racket down waterside. You got yourself one hell of an annoying bodyguard there. He’s even got the boss man shooting at him.”
Amber pushed Rachel’s hair aside. “Owen’s here?”
“In the flesh.”
The man called Jake nudged her between the shoulder blades with his rifle. “Your man’s friend’s responsible for Luka getting his kneecaps blown out. That friend’s not gonna live too long when Luka’s back walking again. Same goes for your bodyguard hero.”
“Jake’s Luka’s lover,” Rachel hissed in Amber’s ear. “He’s got a real mean streak.”
Amber nodded, fought back a portion of her terror.
“Come on, come on,” Mort muttered into his comm link. “Someone answer. I’m still hearing gunfire. You can’t all be dead.”
“They’re not,” Jake said. He used his gun to indicate the nearby trees.
Amber couldn’t see what or who he was pointing at, not with Rachel still hanging onto her. But she felt a man’s hand on her neck and instantly recognized his voice when he bent close to speak in her e
ar.
“Hey there, Alexa. I see you’ve found another asshole to dupe. Are you planning to dispose of him the same way you did me? Or maybe you’ll be merciful and put a bullet in his head.”
Knocking Rachel aside, he jerked Amber around to confront his quietly murderous face. “I’ve missed you, sweetheart. I really have. But it’s a little too crowded here for us to have the kind of reunion I’d like. What say we take a walk in the moonlight and talk over old times?”
Amber twisted free of his grasp. “What say we skip the walk and wait for Owen?”
“I don’t think so.” His lips peeled back into a savage grin. “If we wait for him, he might stop me from doing what we both know you deserve.”
And yanking her to her feet, Gareth Fixx crushed his mouth to hers in a vicious, vengeful kiss.
…
He’d picked them off, every last one of them, the bastard. Not that Owen was overly surprised. Morgan was fucking good.
Bronson with his bandaged eye had gone down first. A lucky shot had gotten one of his other men. They’d fallen like ducks on a conveyor belt after that.
His brother, Tony, had been the last to get hit. Only in the shoulder, but his helpfulness had come to an end. It was down to four of them, and Owen was plenty worried about what he’d always considered the weak link in his recovery chain.
But no, it would be fine. Gareth would follow the plan as ordered. He’d wanted to be part of things from the start, and so far he’d performed admirably. It would be fine. It was in Gareth’s blood to rise up and shine in the mini kingdom his father had built. There was no reason at all to doubt him.
So why did he feel a sudden urge to run?
…
Gage was pissed. They’d hemmed him in, dammit, made it impossible for him to go after Amber. He’d been forced to hold position and shoot for far too long. God knew where she’d been taken.
The only thing he could do was let one of his opponents get out unscathed. He’d opted for the weakest shooter, Owen Fixx. Strong beams of moonlight had afforded him a clear enough view of the area that he’d been able to distinguish body types, if no actual features. Owen’s polished moves and lean frame had been easy to spot.
He watched his lone remaining opponent from the shelter of a black walnut tree. After turning to someone, likely his fallen brother, Owen ran, bent low toward a natural mud bridge that spanned the waterway.
A thump on his shoulder had Gage swinging sharply around. The tip of his gun lodged in Bear’s whiskered throat. A grin split the man’s face. “I’m fixing to wipe the slate here, Gage.”
With a steady look, Gage lowered his weapon. “You count awfully heavily on me not having a shoot first philosophy. You should have told me you weren’t finished following us.”
“Shoulda, coulda, woulda.”
“Do you know where they took her?”
“Damn right, I know. I spotted the ring of Land Rovers. You gotta figure Fixx here’ll be heading in that direction. Chances are he’ll take the easy route. We go the hard way, we’ll beat him by five minutes. And then…”
“Yeah, and then.” Gage holstered his Glock, gestured with his rifle. “If anything’s happened to Amber, first we shoot him in the nuts, then we kill him.
…
Gareth shoved Amber into the swamp, down toward the water. But not to the same place where she’d been abducted.
He cuffed her wrists with a strong hand, tightening his grip whenever she attempted to wrench free.
She made a point of doing that every few steps. As she did, she dug her boot heels into the soft ground. In the absence of a breadcrumb trail, heel marks were all she had.
“Make a peep, Alexa, and I will blow you away,” he warned in a snarl. “My father might want you alive, but from the start, I promised myself I’d see you dead. Not killed by James Mockerie, but by me.”
Amber’s jaw ached from locking her teeth together, to prevent them from chattering. “You kill me, and Mockerie will kill you.”
“No, he won’t. My father’ll be plenty pissed, but he’ll cover for me. A meaner, smarter man than him would never have allowed me to be part of this hunt. He knows I don’t want anything to do with his bullshit business. What he did want was for his kid to come through in the end. So he believed me when I told him I’d had a change of heart.” Halting suddenly, Gareth spun her around, gripped her by the throat. “You used me to bring down my own flesh and blood. I wanted you, and you wanted incriminating evidence.”
He squeezed her throat so hard she thought his fingers might dig right into her flesh. She tried not to choke. “If I said I was sorry, would you believe me?”
She hissed in a tight breath as he jabbed his gun under her chin. “No.”
His eyes glittered in the hazy moonlight. “I’m going to kill you and enjoy doing it. But first I’m going to pin you down and take you right here in the Louisiana mud. I’m going to make you cry, and when I’ve committed that moment to memory, I’m going to put a bullet in your lying throat. What do you think of that?”
Amber opened her mouth to reply, but she was cut short by Owen, who burst out of the darkness, winded and seemingly as startled to see them as they were to see him. “Gareth, no!” he rasped. “Have you gone mad? You can’t kill her. Rape her yes, but not kill her.”
Gareth responded by swinging Amber back against him, using her as a shield. “Shut up,” he barked. “You wanted a Mini-Me, well you got one. You and her both. You taught me to be self-centered. She taught me to crave revenge. And here I thought I was a nice guy deep down. I guess the Thing was inside me after all, waiting to break out.”
Owen had no visible weapon, but there’d be one somewhere, Amber was sure of it.
She made a strangled sound as Gareth’s hand tightened around her neck. He had his gun pressed to her jugular.
“You need to leave,” Gareth warned his father. “Now. Go back to Mort and Jake and your bitch of an ex-wife. Leave Alexa to me.” He pulled the gun from Amber’s neck and pointed it at his father. “This is how it’s going to be. Either go back, or I’ll shoot you and carry out my plan anyway.”
Amber thought she spied movement. Neither Owen nor Gareth appeared to notice anything except each other.
Reaching slowly into his jacket pocket, Owen produced a gun of his own. He took aim at his son. “Don’t do it, Gareth.”
Gareth laughed. “You’ll never use that on me. Besides, to kill me, you’ll need to go through her. But it was a decent bluff.”
Amber wrapped her fingers around Gareth’s wrist. She struggled to breathe evenly, and not let her muscles tremble. Until…
The movement came again, a quick flash of motion that Gareth did see that time.
“What the hell’s that?” he blustered.
Amber yanked his hand from her throat and, at the same time, pulled away just far enough to kick him in the groin.
To her surprise, Gareth’s eyes went wide and began to blink rapidly. “Dad?” he whispered. Then, clutching his chest, he tipped sideways into a pool of thick water.
Owen stared at the weapon in his hand for a full two seconds before the truth struck him. When it did, he swung in a semicircle and began firing.
Amber heard the thwack of a bullet striking the shoulder of his shooting arm. The gun flew backward. He stumbled around to face her. To face his dead son.
Falling to his knees, he began to laugh.
Everything ran together in a blur of color and sound and motion. It happened in an instant. Amber scrambled to her feet and ran to Gage. For the first time since she’d started helping the FBI, she felt safe. Suddenly, no one and nothing could touch her.
Of course, that feeling wouldn’t last. She knew it even before Owen started muttering James Mockerie’s name. First, he laughed it out, then the laughter became an agonized moan. The tears, she suspected, were primarily for his dead son.
Gage had two grazes, one on his shoulder and a second on his upper left arm. Neither were serious,
or so he insisted.
Bear was waiting with the others back at the circle of Land Rovers. Owen walked ahead of Gage, head down, shoulders slumped, a broken and terrified man by all outward appearances.
“The she-devil and me, we’ve been keeping our distance from each other,” Bear informed them when they arrived. “I got her to tie up these two assholes, didn’t trust her with a gun.”
When Rachel saw Amber, she jumped up and ran over to her. “I’m so sorry. About everything. I told Jess about us. I didn’t mean to. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t mean any harm. I was drunk, and he wanted out of Black Creek, too. I guess he figured he could get money for turning me in. But it never happened.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “They killed him when we stopped for gas. I don’t know what they did with his body.” She choked back a sob. “I think he might have said something to his brother.”
“Whatever happened,” Amber said, “word got back to Fixx. Two men showed up at the bar just as I was being told that you’d been taken.”
“Jess was a bastard. So is anyone he talked to about us. Honest to God, Amber, men can be such assholes. You know what I mean, right?”
Only men could be assholes? Amber controlled the anger that wanted to rise for everything Rachel had done. “Yes, I do know,” she said. “I think we all know at this point.”
“It isn’t over,” Gage told her. “For either of you. Fixx might be a broken man, but Mockerie isn’t.”
“We’ll always have to hide, won’t we?” Rachel appealed to her sister. “That’s what he’s saying, isn’t it?”
Amber nodded. “We just have to do a better job of it this time.”
Rachel subsided next to Bear, who was keeping a watchful eye on Owen and nudging Mort’s hip to irritate him.
Turning to face Gage, Amber fingered the blood on his jacket. “Any chance you know where we can do that better job of hiding, former Lieutenant Morgan?”
“Off the top of my head, no. But something’ll come to me. It always does.”
Smiling, she hooked her arms around his neck. “So. Is this our last farewell?”