“You drop your weapon!” the dude still drawing down on Maddy thundered. Bran knew two angry, red laser dots glowed on his chest. He imagined he could feel them there, boring, burning, inciting the darker side of him until his blood was a conflagration coursing through his veins, his heart a fiery fist that pounded flames through his chest.
“I’ll give you one more chance!” he yelled, feeling the warm waves crashing against the backs of his calves. A blade of seaweed slipped by his ankle, slick as an eel. “Drop your weapons and you might live!”
His finger twitched on the trigger. It would be so easy. Just a couple of pounds of pressure. Just a gentle contraction of familiar muscles against familiar resistance and bang! Done. One less evil piece of shit on the Earth.
“Ha!” The guy who seemed to be the leader cracked a laugh that echoed over the dark water. “In case you haven’t noticed, asswipe, you’re outnumbered!” He made a weird sucking noise against his teeth, like he was trying to remove a piece of stuck spinach.
Asswipe, eh? Careful, gavone, or I might make you eat that insult along with that spinach.
“I count four against one.” Bran hitched one shoulder casually. “Which means you’ll overwhelm and kill me in the end. But not before I take one of you with me.” He jerked his chin toward Lead A-Hole. “I’m thinking I’ll make you that one.”
The man must have heard the truth in Bran’s tone. Bran could see his throat work over a hard swallow behind the fabric of the balaclava.
That’s right. Go ahead and make my day.
Before Lead A-Hole had a chance to respond, a red dot appeared on the chest of the man with the bum knee.
Mason. Impeccable timing, my friend.
“Uh-oh.” Bran tsked. “I hate to hafta tell you… No, wait. I love having to tell you that the odds just swung in my favor.”
“What the—?” The guy glanced down at the gleaming dot centered directly over his heart. Bran watched with satisfaction as his eyes widened. “What’s going on here? Who are you motherfuckers?” He lifted his chin to Bran. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same questions,” Maddy piped up. And there she was. The loudmouthed dynamo Bran had come to know and…lust after. Only, right now she needed to shove a sock in it. “Who are you? And what do you want with us?”
“None of that matters,” Bran insisted. When Maddy turned to him, he sent her a look. Her lips flattened, the upper one protruding just past the lower. But she kept her mouth shut. That big, beautiful, Julia Roberts upside-down mouth of hers with the top lip plumper than the bottom. The mouth he’d kissed on that hot night three months ago. The mouth that…
You stupid pazzo, he scolded himself. Now’s not the time!
“What matters,” he continued, “is that you find yourselves in the middle of a crossfire situation. And judging by the way you jackholes carry those SCAR-Ls, you know a little bit about military tactics. Which means you also know that being caught in the middle of a crossfire situation means you could be dead as shit in about ten seconds if you don’t drop your weapons!”
Maddy blinked rapidly, and then she did the damndest thing. She grinned. At him. And it was all blinding and brilliant and you’re my hero.
Well, shit.
He watched as the leader glanced over at the guy sporting a shiny red dot on his chest. Bran decided to throw in a little more incentive. “Look. We don’t wanna hurt you. We just want you to let these good people go. And then we’ll let you go. No questions asked. So what’d’ya say you toss those rifles on the sand, hightail it back to your boat, and we’ll forget this ever happened, capisce?”
Lead A-Hole darted a glance around, seeming to search for another way out. Part of Bran hoped he’d try something—the dark, angry, bloodthirsty part of him. But Maddy was downwind of a Category 5 shitstorm—a.k.a. having a full auto aimed at her cute nose—so the other part of him just wanted to get rid of these mysterious hooded men as bloodlessly and expediently as possible so he could run and gather her in his arms.
Which, when he took a tick to think about it, scared him spitless. That need to protect her. That need to touch her. That need to…
If I get my hands on her—when I get my hands on her—I won’t ever wanna let her go.
A hot sense of possessiveness gripped him, which immediately sent a cold, spidery feeling crawling into his chest. He might have fallen victim to old memories if Lead A-Hole hadn’t picked that moment to make a move. It was subtle. Just a slight sliding of his left foot behind his right. But Bran recognized the stance. His internal warning system flashed from yellow to red.
Sonofabastard’s in a hurry to be a dangerous man.
Combat training and years of dodging bullets kicked in. Bran dropped to his knees in the surf at the same time Lead A-Hole swung his rifle in Bran’s direction, pulling the trigger. A bullet whizzed by Bran’s ear with a dull-sounding zzziiippp followed immediately by the booming report of the SCAR-L.
The trigger on Bran’s M4A1 rifle was worn smooth. It felt like coming home when he squeezed it and the weapon bucked against his shoulder. The familiar smell of spent cordite perfumed the air as his bullet left his barrel.
He wasn’t labeled one of the best sharpshooters ever to go through BUD/S training for nothing. His aim proved true, and his round buried itself in Lead A-Hole’s wicked heart. The man’s eyes flew wide, the whites shining eerily when he realized he was dead.
He had the wherewithal to wheeze “Can’t breathe,” and yank off his balaclava before he fell to his knees, gripping the hole in his chest. Dark blood spurted between his fingers with every ineffectual beat of his heart. And a face that was all-American GI Joe stared at Bran, mouth going slack, eyes going glassy. Then he tumbled onto his back, staring sightless into the star-studded sky.
I warned you, Bran thought.
The guy with the bum knee gaped at his fallen comrade. “You sorry sonofabitch!” he screeched at Bran, his lips moving behind the fabric of the balaclava, his eyes narrowed and filled with fury.
Bran wished he could say he was sorry. But he wasn’t. The death of men who tried to kill him had ceased to make a dent in his psyche years ago. Not to mention he was completely convinced that any rat bastard who took women and children hostage at gunpoint deserved nothing better than a dirt nap.
He readied himself to dive beneath the surf to escape the bullet sure to leave Bum Knee’s SCAR-L in the next second. But Mason came to his rescue, lighting up the sand at Bum Knee’s feet. Mason didn’t dare try for a body shot for fear of hitting one of the teenagers. And Bran was left with no clear line of sight either.
Damn!
“Get down! Get down!” Maddy screamed at the girls as she dropped to her knees.
Unfortunately, her call came too late. The remaining men each grabbed a girl, using her as a human shield against Bran while they turned and opened fire on Mason’s position behind the seawall. Their rounds chewed up the aging masonry like it was made of Play-Doh. And Mason was left with no recourse but to do the ol’ D and C—duck and cover.
Bran, on the other hand, surged through the surf toward Maddy in an attempt to gain a better firing position and, you know, save the girl…
* * *
7:19 p.m.…
Chaos…
That was Maddy’s world. Even so, time seemed to slow to a lame man’s crawl and she felt like she was seeing everything through one of those children’s 3D View-Master toys. She wasn’t pressing the little handle on the side to spin the disk of pictures, but the frames were still flicking in front of her unblinking eyes.
The body of the unmasked man lay on the sand beside her. Blood slowly seeped from his lifeless corpse and headed in a gruesome red river toward the waiting arms of the ocean.
Next picture…
The three gunmen rained lead death on the seawall as they pulled the girls wit
h them up the beach and toward the narrow bridge that led across the moat into the fort.
Next picture…
Bran raced through the surf. His broad shoulders, exposed by his black tank top, flexed and bunched. His big thighs churned as he halved the distance between them.
Even in the chaos, she was struck by the sheer impact of him. Long, lean muscles made for endurance. Big, thick bones designed to keep him standing tall for decades. Deeply tanned skin that glowed with health and vigor and highlighted his Italian-American heritage. Her mind touched on a line she’d read from an Italian poet in college, Francesco Petrarca. He’d written, Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together. But he couldn’t have been more wrong. At least when it came to Brando Pallidino. Because Bran was all things beautiful and virtuous, a real-life, honest-to-God hero.
Glory be and hallelujah! She needed a hero to help her get the girls away from those awful men.
He skidded to a stop beside her. And then her world stopped doing that weird stop-action thing. Everything sprang into high definition. Including Bran’s face.
Before he turned to take aim at the masked men, she caught a glimpse of his dark eyes, and her thundering heart ground to a halt, her blood turning to ice water in her veins. She recognized that look. It was the same one he’d worn the day he stormed her father’s yacht and put a bullet in the brain of the terrorist holding her hostage. The look of a man who had killed and would kill again. A man filled with dark purpose. A man who…frightened her.
Which was silly. Bran was all things good and valiant. And yet…
She shuddered at the difference between this Bran and the one who talked her through her bad times, the one who liked to tease her and taunt her and fill her inbox with videos of Meat, the bulldog, snoring so loudly it vibrated the canine’s jowls. It was almost like there were two Brans: Darling Bran and Deadly Bran.
“Flat on the ground!” he bellowed over his shoulder at her and Rick.
From the corner of her eye, Maddy saw the young park ranger face-plant. Bran in full-on SEAL mode was not the type of guy you ignored. And as much as she despised getting sand stuck between her teeth, she belly-flopped right alongside Rick. The beach was cold and wet and smelled of fish. The tiny, crushed shells interspersed with the sand scratched her cheek when she turned her head to keep her eyes focused on the helter-skelter scene.
“Let ’em go!” Bran thundered, his deep voice echoing over the dark water and bouncing against the brick walls of the fort and the seawall.
“Go fuck yourself, you sonofabitch!” the tyrant who’d been terrorizing Sally Mae, and who now held her in front of him, shouted between the intermittent volleys his cohorts sprayed at the seawall in an effort to pin down the Deep Six Salvage crewman who was obviously hiding there.
“Let the girls go, or end up like your friend here!” Bran yelled.
As if to punctuate his point, or else simply to add insult to injury, he nudged the dead man’s body with his foot. The move caused fresh blood to erupt from the wide hole in the corpse’s chest. More dribbled from his slack mouth to pool in the ear closest to Maddy. It was so dark and thick that it reflected the glow of the moon.
Jesus Christ and all his followers!
Once again her lunch was threatening an encore performance.
“I can knock the beak off a chicken at two hundred yards. Which means I’m gonna give you to the count of three to let that girl go! If you don’t, I’ll send you straight to your Maker with a bullet between your eyes! And then I’ll do the same to your two friends!”
“You’re bluffing!” the tyrant called, still easing Sally Mae backward. The girl’s eyes begged Maddy for help. And it killed her that all she could do was lie there and watch. Her hands, still tied behind her back, curled into claws with the urge to scratch the tyrant’s evil eyes right out of his head.
“I might be bluffing, you miserable, vomitous mass!” Bran yelled. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Really? He’s quotin’ The Princess Bride? “But if you wanna test me,” he added, “I’m your huckleberry!” And now he’s quotin’ Tombstone. “Last chance to let the girl go!”
The tyrant ignored him and continued to backpedal toward the fort.
True to his word, Bran began to count. “One!” The word exploded over the beach like an atom bomb. “Two!”
Maddy bit her tongue to keep from crying out. In the next second, Bran would let his bullets fly and she prayed he was as good as he claimed to be.
“Thr—”
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The sand around Bran’s bare feet erupted with a hail of gunfire as the man holding Louisa suddenly turned his aim away from the seawall and opened up on Bran. Bran spun like a top just as the fabric on the left leg of his cargo shorts shredded.
“No!” Maddy screamed when something hot and sticky sprayed across her face. Then the world went black. All the air was punched from her lungs. And a terrible, suffocating weight fell over her.
For a split second she wondered if she was dead. Did I get shot in the head? Is this what the afterlife feels like? Dark, airless pressure? But then familiar smells tunneled up her nose. Irish Spring soap and Tide laundry detergent. Bran…
He’d thrown himself on top of her, sacrificing himself to shield her from the melee of flying lead.
* * *
7:20 p.m.…
Mason McCarthy had seen his fair share of wicked bad situations. And this one here qualified as a top ten. After watching the men and the way they carried themselves, he and Bran really thought that once the fuckheads found themselves in a crossfire situation, they would accept the offer to leave the island, no questions asked. Obviously, he and Bran had given them more credit for smarts than they deserved.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he cursed when another barrage of gunfire bit into the masonry behind his back. But he couldn’t continue to take cover. Bran was in the open and needed his help.
Turkey-peeking around the corner of the seawall, Mason bellied out flat in the sand and gritted his teeth as he laid on his trigger, aiming for the ground at the feet of the masked men, hoping to draw all their fire in his direction and away from the trio on the beach.
It worked.
The seawall continued to take a beating from the assailants’ lead as the end of his M4 flashed with orange lightning in return. The pressure against his shoulder, not to mention the growing warmth of the metal in his hands, felt wonderfully familiar.
Which just goes to show how far from normal you are.
He shook off the thought as soon as it hit him. Not because there wasn’t truth in it. But because there was, and it had been one of his ex-wife’s biggest beefs with him. Right behind you’re never home and you never talk to me.
Ya-huh! On account of me being a fuckin’ SEAL who goes on fuckin’ missions that are fuckin’ classified!
And she’d known that when she married him.
Of course, it’d all seemed very romantic while they were flush with hormones and having sex on every vertical and horizontal surface. But once the honeymoon was over and the hard part of being hitched to a covert operator set in, she’d quickly come to see how truly unromantic it was. He just wished she’d had the guts to divorce him before she turned to another. Because what her duplicity and faithlessness had left him with was a sore on his heart. An open, festering wound that refused to heal.
And what the fuck are you doing thinking about her at a time like this, chowderhead?
Right. What was he doing thinking about her? She was the past. And his present required all his attention.
He released his trigger for a second, looking for an opening to take out one of the motherfuckers. He wasn’t as good a shot as Bran, but more times than not he could hit what he was aiming at. Unfortunately, the three assailants had made it to the bridge over the moat. And they were smart enough to keep the teenagers in front of
them while they continued to lay down covering fire aimed in his general direction.
“Fuckin’ hell!” he cursed again.
He waited, counting each round that slammed into the masonry above his head, each steady thud of his heart, until the masked men stopped shooting to disappear into the arched entry of the fort. Then he jumped up and zigzagged his way toward the beach in a classic scoot-and-shoot crouched position. But there was no need to shoot. Nothing breached the deafening silence of the island except for the sound of the tide hissing against the sand and the gentle breeze teasing the fronds of the palm trees and making them rattle in delight.
“Bran!” he whispered, edging ever faster through the sand. “Headed your way, bro!”
Of their own accord, his eyes traveled out over the dark water. Out there, anchored far behind the fort, was the catamaran. With the intrepid Alexandra Merriweather on board—that is if she hadn’t already decided to set sail for Wayfarer Island like he’d told her to if she thought there might be any trouble headed her way.
Regardless of whichever outcome she was facing, she was alone in facing it. And the poor woman had to be terrified. She was a pocket-sized historian, for fuck’s sake, not some trained operator.
For one quick second, he was tempted to dive into the surf, swim out to her, and take her in his arms. But the impulse was fleeting. Firstly, because Alex might be a pocket-sized historian, but she was also completely brazen. So even if she was scared, she’d never let him see it, much less welcome his coddling. And secondly, because taking her in his arms, even for that brief moment on the catamaran when she’d jumped in his lap, had reminded him what it was to hold a woman. All soft curves and warm skin and sweet weight and…
He’d sworn off the fairer sex. Which was working out wickedly awesome for him, thank you very much. So he could totally do without being reminded of what he was missing. Especially when that reminder came with an adorable mop of curly red hair and freckles across her nose. Little Orphan Annie all grown up and ready for a man to show her what it was like to—
Aw, hell.
He shook the image of Alex away at the same time he skidded to a stop beside the people proned out on the beach. At first glance, he thought the blood on the sand beside Bran and Maddy’s pancaked bodies was coming from the corpse sprawled alongside them. Then he realized it was draining from a wound on Bran’s thigh.
Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) Page 5