by Cara Dee
“Three o’clock, three o’clock!” Ryan repeated.
Darius gritted his teeth and turned his head, only to curse at the sight of a second boat. A bigger one. It was about three hundred feet away and coming in fast.
“They came outta fuckin’ nowhere.” Ry was pissed and sounding like he was repositioning himself to another corner up on the top deck.
Darius winced and held his arm as he squinted at the target they’d already taken out. Or, he hoped they had. He didn’t have the time to scope out the boat’s first deck, so it would really fucking suck if more men appeared, but he did take the time to snatch up one of the dead guys’ rifles.
“Get ready, Darius.”
I’m working on it, god-fucking-damn it. He hurried back to the seating area where he could find protection behind a wall. It was the only good thing about the new arrival; the boat was coming at an angle that gave Darius more options to hide.
“How many are there?” he asked.
“Five above deck,” Ryan responded. “I can’t guarantee they haven’t spotted me already. I’m gonna start—”
“Wait,” Darius gritted, trying to shake the pain in his shoulder. “We can’t let them leave. Let them come close and—”
“Enough chitchat, they’re here.” Ryan fired, catapulting Darius into action.
He peered around the wall, instantly meeting fire, and shot one of—what the fuck. He became rigid at the distinct sound of a pistol shot. The men on the other boat had a wide range of rifles, with two more guys running up from below carrying even heavier shit.
“Está canijo desde este ángulo!”
“Take ’em out, Ry!” Darius barked. He aimed at a guy, one who was way too fucking young to be here, and ended his life with a single pull of a trigger.
He couldn’t have been more than twenty. It caused Darius’s hatred for the human race to burn hotly, and he aimed at another—no, seriously, what the fuck! The guy fell overboard before Darius could shoot, killed by someone who sure as hell wasn’t him or Ryan.
“Someone’s gotta be on board, Ry!” Darius shouted.
Ryan cursed. “I thought I imagined it.” He took out the last man who ran up on the sundeck, before it was all over.
Darius removed the mag from the rifle and picked up his own gun again, then made sure the coast was clear in the hallway.
“I’ll check the bodies,” Ryan hollered.
“Copy. Recover my blade, will ya?” Darius started running through the deck after shrugging out of the suit jacket. Sweat trickled down his back, and the pain in his shoulder kept shooting bolts of pure fire through him. As he darted up a set of stairs, a shot was fired outside, causing him to come to a screeching halt.
“All good!” Ryan yelled.
Okay, good. Darius picked up the pace again, though this time he didn’t get far. And what he spotted—or whom he spotted—made him fucking livid. Gray was limping down the next set of stairs, his drawn-up sweats and hair wet from an impromptu and unapproved swim.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Darius growled.
Gray blinked, out of breath and flushed. “Um, you’re welcome? I wanted to help—and it looks like it was a good thing!” Now he was angry. “You got shot again?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Darius snapped. He pointed in the general direction of the bridge and pressed his other hand against the wound to stop the bleeding. “Do you realize we’re ready to set this whole place on fire and sink it?”
“Yeah, it’s kinda hard to miss the smell of gasoline.” Gray’s jaw tensed as he trailed down the last steps and met Darius on the landing. “I already knew you were torching the yacht. What you didn’t know was that there was a second boat. I wanted to warn you guys.”
Well, shit. Darius heaved a breath and ran a hand through this hair. This changed things. If the guys had seen the second boat as they headed toward the island, it was highly possible the drug dealers had seen the tender as well. And even the slightest risk of them contacting someone to send more people was enough to send Darius’s thoughts spiraling.
“Okay, we gotta get outta here—stat.” He jerked his chin to the stairs he’d just ascended, and he started thinking maybe they should postpone sinking this goddamn boat. Because if more people were coming, not only would Darius need to get the boys to safety—a whole lot faster than swimming would guarantee—but they would also need to collect all the guns on board to build their defense. Said guns that’d been left behind on purpose for when the authorities arrived to investigate, but being able to defend themselves came first.
“Wait,” Gray said in a rush. “When I jumped off the tender, I brought the little lifeboat. The one your brother hid for us?”
Darius glanced back at him and glared, which wasn’t fair. The new rush of anger was more of an “Oh for fuck’s sake, now I can’t be pissed at the kid.” The best he could do was a curt nod, and then they were running up the stairs together to get the damn boat.
This fuckin’ knucklehead…was gonna be the death of him. Was there even a slightly malicious bone in Gray? Of course, that was the whole reason Darius got attached. Not to mention he risked having a stroke whenever the kid worried him, and he hadn’t decided if it was worth it yet.
“How did you get to the top deck with the raft?” he asked.
“There’s a ladder. I thought the upper deck would be safest. See? I was careful.”
Darius barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “What you did was out-of-this-world stupid.”
“But it worked, right? So it wasn’t stupid at all.”
Oh, for the love of—shit. Ryan was gonna get a laugh out of this. Darius, not a chance in hell.
Ryan did get his laugh. Even when shit had hit the fan ten times over, Ryan was the man who broke the ice and spread humor around like a damn STD. Thankfully, he saw Darius’s side too, and he was quick to refocus, but that didn’t mean Darius wasn’t irritated. Something could’ve happened to Gray, and Darius pointed that out more than once while they waited for the raft to inflate in the water.
“But nothing happened,” Gray grated. “Let it go, Dare.”
“Hey.” Darius frowned. Dare wasn’t his nickname. Dare was not gonna stick.
Ryan let out a booming laugh and jumped into the lifeboat. It would be a tight fit for the three, plus the extra weapons they’d decided to take. Three rifles and two handguns being missing shouldn’t raise too much suspicion, given how much heat the smugglers packed. There would be plenty of guns for the authorities to confiscate.
“Furthermore,” Gray stated, “I’d like to point out that swimming in shark-infested waters with a gunshot wound probably isn’t a good idea.”
Darius suppressed a sigh and lit up a smoke. He was in fucking pain, he was thirsty, he was exhausted. They could bitch about this later.
“Anyway,” he muttered and turned to Ryan. “Want me to make a few fuses?” He could spare some cigarettes and matches to give them a head start before the yacht went up in flames.
Ryan grinned faintly. “I don’t think that’s necessary. Let me paint you a picture.” He pulled something out of his pocket, and Darius cocked a brow. It was a hand grenade. More than that, it was an old-school offensive device from the Soviets, judging by the design. Which wasn’t too uncommon for cartels to run around with. Darius assumed Ryan had lifted it off one of the smugglers, ’cause there was no way he’d brought Russian explosives.
“Think about it,” Ryan went on. “The drug dealers show up, there’s a confrontation, things get heated—like you said, a breeze can start a war. There’s gunfire, the kids manage to escape on the tender, and it all ends with someone throwing the grenade at the yacht. It sinks. The whole thing will be labeled as a drug deal gone wrong, and the cartel and traffickers will have each other as new enemies.”
Darius stared at his brother as he processed, and he caught the hopeful expression on Gray’s face out of the corner of his eye. This was what they’d hoped to accomplish,
and despite detours, the plan was working.
“Does that mean we won’t need protection?” Gray asked.
“No, you will.” Darius took a drag and exhaled the smoke.
“A fraction of it,” Ryan corrected and shot Darius a quick look. It told Darius not to freak the kid out. “It’s gonna be a big case, but your identities will be kept out of the media frenzy, considering the risks. You don’t have to worry, though. To these people, it’s all about the money. They’ll be moving on fast.”
“Unless the organization risks exposure,” Darius said. “They’d come after you if you had important information.”
“I don’t.” Gray shook his head vehemently.
“They know that, knucklehead.” Darius gave Gray’s shoulder a squeeze. “They make sure of it during transportation.”
That seemed to ease Gray’s worry a little.
“So.” Ryan jerked his chin at the floor of the lifeboat. “We have cleanup to do, and you gotta get that bullet out of your arm.” He looked at Darius. “You good to wait until we get to the island?”
He had to be. Darius feared the smugglers had a hideout location somewhere on the islands, meaning the boys could be in danger. “Let’s get out of here.” He pointed at the grenade in Ry’s hand. “You think you can throw it, or do you want me to do a delay on board?” That type of grenade didn’t have a very impressive blast radius, so it was probably just as well they threw it. It would save time if nothing else.
Ryan smirked. “You don’t think my throwing arm is good enough?”
Okay, that was funny. Darius chuckled while Gray looked on warily between the two. But the amusement faded when unbidden thoughts on the future entered Darius’s head. He could see a baseball field, beer, and his family gathered. The sun shining down on them, the forest creating walls of green around them, and Gray laughing. Was he good at baseball? Did he like it? It was a thing in the Quinn family. Summer reunions brought forth the competitiveness of the brothers’ childhoods, along with their mother fretting about everyone injuring themselves.
Darius shook the train of thought and gestured for Gray to join Ryan in the lifeboat.
Gray slid a worried glance at Darius’s shoulder as he passed him. “I can dress it if you want.”
“It’s fine. The bleeding’s slowed down.” Darius was more concerned about Gray’s thigh. It was going to be a while until rescue showed up, and if the wound got infected, he could be shit out of luck. With one bottle of antibiotics, they were going to have to distribute the medicine carefully, and most boys had sustained some fairly serious injuries during their time on the yacht.
Ryan sat down in the back so he could control the engine and steer, leaving the pointed bow for Darius and Gray to share.
“Remember when we were kids and used to race with boats like this?” Ry asked.
Darius huffed softly and dipped his chin. Back then, the boats had seemed big and sturdy. Ry and Ethan would team up against Darius and Jake around the marina in Downtown, raising hell and getting complaints from other boat owners.
“Another lifetime,” he murmured and flicked the cigarette into the water.
Ryan hummed and made the sign of the cross, a rare sight, as he steered away from the yacht. In their tight-knit, dysfunctional, and Catholic family, only Jake and Ma had been religious. When Jake died, Ma stopped going to mass.
The lifeboat jumped across the waves, sending a salty spray over the three men. Darius looked over at Gray and found him staring back at the yacht with a tortured expression. Too much had happened to him these past few months, and it tugged at Darius—painfully so—because he couldn’t erase the kid’s memory.
“This should be outside the shrapnel zone.” Ryan slowed down before they got very far, and he rose to a stand, looking like Bambi on ice. He squinted back at the yacht, then down to the grenade in his hand.
Darius’s mouth twisted up, and he guesstimated the distance to the yacht. It wasn’t that far, maybe thirty yards. “Are you actually worried you’re gonna miss?”
Ryan scowled. “I don’t fuckin’ miss.”
So what was the problem?
He answered before Darius could ask. “I just hope it hasn’t been mislabeled. You never know with the Russians.” He brushed his thumb over the black spray-painted letters of the model. “Can you believe they still use this today?”
“Sure.” It was a cheap goddamn grenade, cheap being the magic word in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. On an assignment in Tbilisi several years ago, Darius had purchased copies for three bucks a pop. “Everything okay, Ry?”
He nodded once and seemed to refocus. “Aye.” He tossed the grenade a few inches skyward and adjusted his grip, then pulled the pin, hauled back his arm, and threw it.
Darius watched Gray instead of the boat. The kid’s Adam’s apple shifted with a hard swallow, eyes wide with worry, and he flinched as the grenade made impact with the boat. Darius did the same. The explosion sent a ball of fire into the sky, and it was quickly followed by another blast. Debris started flying. The fire spread to the areas where they’d poured gasoline. The smell of fuel mingled with the ocean spray, and a pillar of black smoke rose from the destruction.
The speedboat that had gotten close enough to dock by the yacht caught fire too.
When Darius glanced over at Gray again, the younger man’s gaze was glued to the fire. He sat stock-still, aside from his bruised chest rising and falling slowly with each breath. Silent tears were falling down his cheeks.
In that moment, Darius would have done anything to read Gray’s mind. What thoughts were running through his head while the boat where he’d endured so much burned down? Was he glad never to see the place again? Did he think about the pain and suffering, every cut the spike mat had given him, the abuse the other boys had received, the—
“Milo deserved better than this,” Gray croaked. Fuck. Of course he was thinking about Milo. “He was sixteen. Sixteen years old. He was just a kid.” He sniffled and wiped his cheeks with his arm. “He probably went to school with my little brothers.”
Darius blew out a heavy breath and exchanged a look with Ryan, who’d sat down again. Ryan shook his head and looked down, briefly touching the gold chain around his neck. Or the small dog tag, rather, where he had the names of his two boys engraved.
Milo’s death was going to haunt Gray for a long time. Having been so immersed in Gray’s case, Darius hadn’t heard anything about another kid being abducted after Gray was taken, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out all those articles were still gonna be there when they got home. Gray would see them and know better than anyone else what’d happened to the boy.
“Come here.” Darius lifted his good arm and rested it along the side of the boat, and Gray shifted closer to rest his head on Darius’s chest. A rush of contentment flowed through him as the knucklehead’s arms circled his waist, and Darius pressed his lips to the top of Gray’s head.
Not for the first time, he vowed to himself that Gray would be okay. It was going to take time and a lot of painful work, but Gray was gonna come out stronger.
Darius felt Ryan watching him, and he avoided the familiar gaze.
Three
This could’ve been a lot better… The scenery was stunning—sandy white beach, palm trees, cliffs, turquoise water. But it fucking wasn’t. Darius bit into his folded leather belt and screwed his eyes shut as Ryan dug out the bullet—or tried. There was sand goddamn everywhere, sticking to his sweaty skin, his eyes stung from the salt, exhaustion had long since kicked in, frustration was building up rapidly, and the pain was bordering on intolerable. To add insult to injury, a quick search for hiding spots had made it clear there was no fresh water on the island.
They couldn’t stay here.
Darius was nauseated too, but he kept his mouth shut about that. He just needed to adjust to being back on land.
“Did you reach out to Squeezy?” he gritted out.
Ryan’s brow was furrowed in conce
ntration. “We’ll do that once we’ve cleared the islands. I don’t want her to send anyone without knowing what they might run into.”
Valid point.
“Don’t forget those boxes!” Darius heard Cole holler down the beach. They were packing up the tender again so they could go to the next island. It was bigger and had more vegetation. “I’ll ask about the fire, just gonna find Niko first.” Cole went off to where some other boys were…doing whatever. One of them was gesturing toward the burning yacht.
It wouldn’t be long before it sank— “Oh, mother of—fuck.” Darius’s groan was muffled by the belt. Wouldn’t surprise him if he managed to bite off a chunk of it. The sharp pain caused his eyes to water.
“Got it. Almost done.” Ryan dropped the bullet in the sand and tucked away the tweezers in one of the side pockets of his pants. “Hey—kid!” He looked over at Fil, whose eyes grew large when he saw Ryan had a finger stuck in Darius’s shoulder. “Come here a sec.”
“Oh, man. I hate blood. You don’t want me passing out.” Fil started biting his lip anxiously.
Ryan waved it off, dismissive and no-nonsense. “Nah, you’ll be fine. I just need you to open that first aid bag for me and grab the suture kit.”
Darius winced and averted his gaze. Instead, he found Gray near the tender. He appeared to be testing the strength of his leg in the sand, bending the knee carefully. But mostly, he was lost in his head.
“We found water!”
“Oh, thank fuck.” The relief gusted out of Darius in a whoosh, and he collapsed on the beach with a panted breath.
Darkness had fallen while they’d searched the island closest to where they’d first ended up. When they hadn’t found any water there, Darius and Ryan had debated whether or not they should just set up camp for the night. In the end, they’d given it a last try with the island next to the biggest one.
Nikolaj and Cole came running out of the jungle, looking beat but relieved.
“There’s a waterfall less than five minutes in,” Nikolaj said, breathing heavily. “We tried the water and everything.”