by Angel Payne
Maybe this was a little crazy.
But fortune didn’t favor the sane. And sometimes, not even the brave. That was a good thing, because she didn’t feel a lot of either as she twirled the combo lock for the barn then opened the big red door. Clutching the flashlight for an extra dose of nerve, she made her way to the big iron storage locker that took up a good chunk of the opposite wall. The cabinet was secured with another combination lock. After she clicked in those digits and popped the shackle, the door swung back with a creak she was certain they could hear in Lihue.
She let her nervous grimace give way to a smile when the boxes she was seeking were right where she’d hoped. She flashed on the afternoon, so long ago now, when she’d found the wooden crates while cleaning out the pantry with Dad. How old had she been? Thirteen? Fourteen? No. She’d still been rocking the orthodontics so it’d been earlier, eleven or twelve. She and Dad had snickered at seeing the red block letters, TNT, straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, though shared a thrill when they looked inside, discovering the containers really did contain the distinctive red blocks. It had been like searching a castle and finding a hidey-hole with a princess’s diary inside. Where had the stuff come from? Who left it there? And why?
Their moment of glory hadn’t lasted long. Mom had not shared their delight. She ordered the explosives out of the house and into the barn, where they’d remained ever since.
In the years since, Lani had always been curious about that anomaly. Three boxes of explosives stored so close to the mansion’s kitchen, of all places. After what Kellan and Tait had shared with her today, the dots started to connect. The new kitchen had been built over what was known as the ranch’s “first pantry,” now a term she knew as code for the entry point into the house from the cave. The TNT was brought here as a drastic “Plan B” by the outlaws who’d used the tunnel, as a means of burying their tracks—literally—in case of pursuit by enemies.
Tonight, she was going to honor the scalawags’ brilliant thinking.
She had no illusions about the damage she was about to wield. Judging from what Tait and Kell relayed about where they found the mouth of the cave, as well as the “hollow” parts of the kitchen floor that had always made her so curious, she guessed that the tunnel ran right under the observation cliff. Once the cave was imploded, the hill would crumble. Most of the orchard and rose gardens would be taken out by the slide, as well a good length of the beach access path. The explosion would also destroy half, if not all, of the main house. The barn and paddock were far enough away to be spared. Everything else would take years to rebuild. But somehow, they would rebuild.
And Tait and Kellan would still be alive.
As she returned to the house and offloaded the explosives to the back lanai, she paused once a minute to eavesdrop on every molecule of the night’s air. All was still, the atmosphere broken only by the occasional breeze off the lazy ocean, for which she sent silent thanks to the gods. If a car came up the drive or a “visitor” approached from the beach, she’d definitely know it.
By the time she slid her key into the lock on the back door, her heartbeat eased into a tango beat instead of a salsa. She didn’t use the reprieve as an excuse to let down her guard. After toeing off her shoes, she took pliant steps through the kitchen, across the dining room, and into the living room then held her breath to listen once more. All seemed normal. The shadows in the rooms were the same as always. The windows sighed softly from the wind, also completely normal.
She exhaled in relief.
And just as quickly girded herself with another long breath in. She’d caught a lot of lucky breaks so far, nothing to take for granted. “Surreptitious” continued to be her middle name while heaving the first box of explosives out of the car and into the house.
As she set the container down, she was richly rewarded for her mouse act.
If she had some bells, she could’ve punched through the floor—and thrown them around the necks of the cats below.
She dropped to all fours, wondering if she’d been mistaken, but sure enough, Gunter’s lord-of-the-manor baritone filtered up through the floorboards, stirring fresh bile in her stomach. He barked an order of some sort, causing a lot of frantic boot scuffles in response. She curled a tight hand to her middle and let out a conflicted rasp.
Damn it.
Why hadn’t she included the possibility of people being in the tunnel when she unleashed the fire and brimstone on it? Worse, why hadn’t she anticipated hitting this dilemma about turning them all into human cake batter?
All right, yes, they all worked for Gunter Benson. And if the floorboards were figuratively flipped, Gunter wouldn’t waste a second on lighting the fuses for her doom. In many senses, he already had. Promising her as a use-and-dispose “toy” for his North Korean friend required an infusion of evil she honestly hadn’t imagined in him. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she’d bought the designer suit sham in a few ways, too, and now couldn’t see that taking out the man and a few of his goons would be seen by some as a favor for the world.
She moaned softly and dropped her head. Her conscience had the worst timing in the world.
“Well, hello there.”
The greeting, quiet even against the stillness of the house, knocked her on her butt. “Shit,” she gasped, scuffling to slam her back against the wall. “Shit.” She raised her gape at a man who looked like the cover of Asian GQ. “Wh-who are—”
He interrupted her with a laugh the texture of creamed cocoa. “Gunter was right.” Make that creamed tea. His voice lilted with an accent right out of Buckingham Palace. “You’re quite lovely when you’re—how did he phrase it?—full of sass and spit.” He unbuttoned the coat of his perfectly-fitted ivory suit in order to crouch in front of her. “And they say midnight snacks aren’t worth the trouble.”
His voice was London proper but his gaze was raw jungle predator. “Get out of my house,” Lani spat. In the position he was in, it wouldn’t be easy to get her heel into his balls, but she’d find a way.
The man released a string of cultured tsks. “Now, now, darling. Perhaps we’ve charged through the china shop prematurely.” He held out a hand with elegant ease. “My name is Ayaan Tan. Now your turn.”
“I know who you are, asshole. And I know why you’re here.” She kicked his hand away. “Don’t come near me.”
Tan gave a soft snort before pulling out a linen handkerchief and wiping his hands. He rose, stuffed the square into his breast pocket then clapped those hands once. Within seconds, the kitchen was blasted with light and filled with six Koreans the size of rhinos. After a flick of Tan’s wrist, the men descended on her. Before Lani could think of letting out her first scream, Tan replied to her charge, in his calmest tea hour tone, “I have no intentions of touching you, my little snack cake. Not yet, at least.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“When I get my hands on that woman’s ass again, it’s going to get stripped, spanked, and flogged into a couple of red, throbbing—”
Kellan cut into Tait’s tirade with a harsh grunt. When his friend stopped trying to turn the sand in front of the cottage into glass with his heated pacing, Kell jerked his head up at the lanai. A groggy-eyed Leo stood on the porch.
“What the hell’s going on?” the teen moaned. “Sounds like you two are doing a damn hula pˋiumauma out here.”
Kellan lifted a scowl at the kid. There was no sense in sugarcoating this. “If that means wanting to throttle your sister, then you just nailed it.”
Leo stopped rubbing his eyes. “Shit. Where is she?”
Tait stomped up the stairs and thrust the note at the kid. “Sorry we poached it out of your room but when we couldn’t find her, we thought she may have gone to check on you.”
Leo studied the letter with a face that widened in surprise then darkened in dread. Kell imagined he and Tait’s faces must’ve carried the same expression five minutes ago, during their own stunned reading.
Mafileokaveka…my
brother Leo…
This isn’t easy for me to write, but you more than everyone else can understand I’ve given this a lot of thought. Dangerous men want to get their hands on Hale Anelas, people who are only going to start on you and me before they try to destroy the whole country, using our island and our home as their command post. Tait, Kellan, and their friends from the 5th SFGA are convinced they’ll be able to stop these monsters, but the thought of more death in the air at the ranch, especially theirs, is a horror I couldn’t bear. If I destroy what Benson and his friends want the most, the access tunnel from the beach, the core of their treasure will be gone, and we’ll be free from their awful plans.
I’m going to use the explosives from the barn to do this. You know what this means for the majority of the ranch as we know it. I’d beg you to forgive me for destroying our home, but in reality, all I’m blowing up is our ranch. Home is the place in our hearts that’s always reserved for each other. Whether we rebuild here or our life’s journey takes us elsewhere, you are always my kaikaina, my beloved brother.
I won’t ask you to keep this a secret from Tait and Kell. There’s a good chance they’ve taken it from your room and read it by now, anyways. They have taught me a great deal about trusting the wisdom in people, no matter how insane that might feel. Maybe it’s time for the teachers to revisit their own lesson.
I’ll see all three of you again soon. I promise.
~Lani
When Leo looked up from the note, his gaze carried a thousand questions and a shit-ton of shock. “Is she fucking serious?”
Neither he nor Tait chastened the kid for the language. Five minutes ago, they’d been spouting much more colorful expressions.
“Our rental car is gone,” Kellan admitted. “And we can only assume she hasn’t gone for a soda run to the market.”
Leo fell against the wall. The note shook in his hands. “I can’t lose her, too, you guys.”
Tait hauled the boy into a hug. “We’re not going to let that happen, dude.” He followed it up by swinging a damning stare at Kell. “This wouldn’t be happening if I’d gone after Stock three hours ago.”
Kellan didn’t know whether to pick incredulous or enraged as a reaction. What the fuck; why choose? “Let me get this straight. As your best friend, I wasn’t supposed to talk you out of one of the most dumb-ass decisions of your life?”
Tait stomped to the edge of the lanai and stabbed a finger downward. “If I was out there right now, instead of her—”
“It’d still be an idiot’s move made by your pride and ego instead of your reason and good sense.” He planted his feet and curled his fists. Last time he checked, his call-sign wasn’t Scapegoat. “You want to swing the flogger at her, man? Be sure to smack your own ass first, you fucking hypocrite.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Kell narrowed his eyes. “It’s a pod called stupid—and the two peas mashed in it are my best friend and the love of my life.” He tossed an uncomfortable glance at the kid still propped against the wall. “Sorry, Leo. I pictured telling you under really different conditions.”
The kid flung back his normal wise-ass grimace. “Why? ‘Cause you think I didn’t figure it out already?” He jerked his chin at Tait. “I got your number too, T-Boner. You moon at Lani worse than he does.”
Tait kicked at the wall and growled, “Fuck.”
“Shut it,” Leo retorted. “You both make her happy and that makes me happy. But you’re both wasting time acting my age instead of yours. What the hell are we going to do? Should we call Franzen again?”
“No.” Kellan’s bellow coordinated note-for-note with Tait’s. Franz would go ballistic from the news. Literally. Within minutes, he’d have every active-duty police cruiser on the island barreling at Hale Anelas, destroying the requirement for subterfuge still needed here.
By instinct, they followed up the command by locking stares. Kellan instantly read Tait’s mind—and now his heart, as well—and also recognized how deeply T understood his.
They had to get to the ranch as fast as possible.
Best case scenario: they found the woman before she attempted a technical-as-shit explosives operation, preventing her from an unintended suicide mission.
Worst case scenario number one: they came upon the ranch already in flames, without a sighting of Lani.
Worst case scenario number two: they didn’t find flames or Lani, meaning Stock and Tan had gotten to her first.
No matter what “prize” fate held in store, their shared stare confirmed a single, unalterable reality. If they didn’t work together, they would fail at the single most important mission of their lives.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Why the fuck couldn’t he remember how to breathe?
Tait slammed his eyes shut for a moment, consciously calling up the relaxation techniques that were normally as natural as breathing to him, especially during a high-intensity op. Slow your heart rate. Calmness flows in; tension pours out. Center your gravity and your thoughts.
Fuck relaxation.
He drove a fist into the ranch’s kitchen wall, just in case the universe needed to be clear on his viewpoint. Three feet away, Kellan and Leo crouched near the box of TNT, still unopened, in the middle of the floor. A foot away from that, in the middle of the scuff marks on the floor that could have only been made by battle-grade boots, was Lani’s cell phone, purposefully crushed by one of those boots.
“Fuck.” Leo visibly trembled once more. “Wh-what the hell happened?”
Tait let Kellan attempt an answer to that. “You remember the asshat we told you about? Gunter Benson’s silent business partner?”
“Cameron Stock?”
“Yeah.” Kell used the excuse of getting in a nod in order to scramble his composure. “It looks like he might have been waiting here for her, and—”
“Now he’s got her.”
The teen uttered it with finality, having clearly expected this possibility. Tait’s gut turned over. He personally knew what it was like to have half a world of pain shoved down your throat before hitting sixteen but fate was force-feeding Leo the other half. He twisted his fist against the wall to keep from going to the kid and pulling him into a hug. He had no doubt Leo would be fine at holding together the waterworks; he just didn’t trust his own shit right now.
“Yeah.” Kell attended the dirty work of making the confession. “He’s probably got her.”
“And we have no idea where they’ve gone.”
“No. We don’t.”
Kell practically retched the words. Tait could empathize. Despite the chaos in his gut, he reached to clap his friend on the shoulder. Might as well fuck every mission protocol they could, right? But he wasn’t going to stand on “suggested procedure” when those three words, more than any whisper the man had given Lani in the bedroom, told him exactly how deeply Kellan had fallen for the woman—and how thoroughly his heart was breaking now.
Leo snapped his head up. “Hey,” he grated. “Do you guys hear—”
Kell cut him off by slashing across his throat with one finger. He motioned Tait to kill the lights with the other. Not needed. Tait was already at the switch, plunging them into darkness as the sounds got closer. Boot stomps, at least six pairs. Male grunts. And a woman’s terrified whimpers.
Lani.
Leo jolted to his feet, a battle grimace already plastered on his face. Thankfully, not all Tait’s training had deserted him. With barely a sound, he subdued the kid and flattened him to the wall. If Stock, Benson, Tan and their men were headed back here, the only advantage they’d have on the crowd was the element of surprise.
The party seemed to be coming closer. Tait regulated his breaths and noticed Kell doing the same. They exchanged a grim look. If the shit went down in here, they’d end up having to Bruce Lee their way through these assholes. It’d be bloody, messy, and dirty.
It sounded like the posse was nearly on top of them now. But where were they? Kell narrowed
his gaze in perplexity. Tait threw back the look, until Leo caught their attention with a wave. The kid stabbed a finger at the floorboards. Tait dropped his jaw as comprehension hit.
The bad guys weren’t on top of them. They were below.
In wordless tandem with Kell, he dropped to the floor. With his ear locked to the boards, he could tell Lani had been gagged or duct-taped. The anger beneath her whines filled him with both pride and terror. The heat of the first and the chill of the second made his jaw clench and his nerves race, but he forced his body to comply with the focus of his mind. On the Indonesian op, he’d made a huge mistake because of misplaced emotions and an innocent had bled. The penance for his sin this time would be Lani’s life.
He concentrated on the men’s voices. Their exact words were fuzzy because of the boards but he discerned Stock’s gruff baritone as well as Tan’s tearoom lilt. There was a third voice in the conversation, too. It wasn’t Benson’s arrogant tone, though something about it rang familiar in his gut.
He glanced at Kell, wondering if his friend recognized the speaker. The guy’s hunched brows told him he wrestled with the same bafflement.
Without a sound, he rolled to Leo. Into the kid’s ear, he whispered, “Tell me there’s at least one loose board in this floor.”
Paydirt. Leo was able to indicate a board nearby. Two of its rusty nails were gone. If they could loosen the other two, they’d be able to lift the board out and have a visual into the cavern below. The goal gained more urgency during the minutes it took for Kellan to slither into the kitchen, grab a butter knife as a makeshift screwdriver, and return. During that gap, Lani’s whimpers fell into silence; not a great development. On top of that, the strange nag in Tait’s senses worsened. Why did his senses react so strongly to the third voice in the cave? Who did that familiar timbre belong to?