Wet

by Angel Payne

  “But what?” the kid seethed. “We’re standing around with our dicks in our hands while Lani—”

  In one sweep, Kell pinned the teen to the refrigerator. “Take a chill, Simba. We know the goddamn circumstances. But in case you weren’t looking, the man has an army of guard apes. We charge in there with nothing but our battle cries and Bowie knives, you’ll end up watching your sister get tortured and killed on the mound of our carcasses.”

  Tait stepped over, giving Kellan a let-me-give-it-a-try look. “You remember the day we first met?” he challenged Leo. “And the issues you were having with Isis? You remember how we worked together, did it smarter instead of harder?”

  Leo mashed together his lips but finally returned, “Fine. So do you guys have anything ‘smarter, not harder’ in mind?”

  Tait looked to Kell. The guy’s face was stone, but he wasn’t capable of hiding the anguish in his eyes as Lani’s panicked cries filtered up to them. Things were going to get worse, in a very fast way, if they didn’t do something soon.

  As in right now.

  Shit. Karma had a sick sense of humor. He was asking Kell to totally separate head and heart, a task he’d totally screwed the pooch on in Indonesia. But now the stakes were higher. Lani’s life was on the line. He prayed that his friend could reach deeper inside than he’d been capable of during the failure in Indonesia. Become my hero now, Slash—and hers. I swear to you I’m here a hundred percent this time.

  Thank fuck. The universe was listening this time, and so was Kell’s spirit. Between one blink and the next, the guy narrowed his gaze, squared his jaw, and turned into Tait’s mission-centric buddy again. “The Remington’s still in the trunk of the rental car,” he stated in a bullet-hard tone. Tait was a little surprised Kell hadn’t called the rifle by its nickname, “sweet baby.” The guy had worked so extensively with the weapon, he could shoot a flea off a dog from a thousand yards away. “All we need to do is flush the bastard out of the tunnels,” Kellan supplied. “If he hits the beach where we were last night, I’ll have no trouble picking him up on my night scope.”

  “You can stage up on the cliff,” Leo interjected. “Yeah. It’d give you perfect height and invisibility.”

  Tait turned with a fast glance of appraisal. The kid’s aspirations to West Point didn’t sound so cray-cray anymore.

  “But getting him out is still the boner killer.” Kell frowned. “As much as I love Lani for leaving enough fire power to turn this place into a mile-wide kill zone, the goal here is to save her, not seal her in with those asstards.”

  “I can help with that one.” Leo was still a glowing isotope of impatience, but now his energy had direction. “We have a compost bin off the back lanai. After all the rain we’ve had lately, everything in there is going to be really damp. Light that shit on fire, and we’ve got instant smoke.”

  “Instant putrid smoke,” Tait elaborated.

  “Excellent,” Kell concluded. “Make it happen, kid.”

  Leo had bounded three steps across the kitchen before stopping in his tracks and throwing them a scowl. “What if that asshole flees but leaves Lani in the cave?”

  Kellan, fully fortified in the steely shell of ops mind-set, shook his head. “Not going to happen unless Tan’s a complete nimrod. He’ll know Lani’s his insurance policy out of the trap and use her as a human shield. But just in case the guy did eat paint chips for dinner, you’re going to stay here and serve as eyes and ears at this end.” He leveled a stern stare at the kid. “If any of those choads finds their way out through here, you kick the bin over, turn them into flaming compost casserole, then get your ass down to the barn and hide there until one of us comes for you. Got it?”

  “Yeah.” The teen’s face lit up with a mix of excitement and anxiety. “Got it.”

  “You sure? This isn’t normal procedure, but I need T-Bomb on that ridge with me, so we have to rely on you, Leo. If you dick around, your sister will have our gonads diced, pickled, and put in a jar on display next to the kitchen fruit bowl.”

  The kid’s face sobered. The consequence Kellan painted was closer to the truth than all three of them cared to admit. “I’m sure, Slash.” No “gasm” as an addendum this time. “You can count on me.”

  “All right,” Tait ordered. “Let’s roll.”

  Once they were outside, he told himself to shove Lani, and the first lashes she was likely getting from Tan, from his mind. It was harder than he thought. No, it was fucking impossible. Somewhere between moving the explosives outside, helping Leo haul in the compost bin, and assisting Kell with the rifle load-up, the realization hit. He was in love with Hokulani Kail as much as Kellan was.

  And he may never have the chance to tell her.

  Focus. You can’t afford not to, Bommer.

  “Okay.” Now standing in the kitchen again, he handed over the fire starter to Leo. “Is your phone on voice radio mode?”

  “Yes, sir,” the kid answered.

  “There’s no time to brief you on all the shit you’re being called to keep track of, so your common sense and your brain are going to be your best friends right now.” He tapped the teen’s forehead. “Use this”—and then tapped his chest—“and not this. Got it?”

  “Yeah.” Leo was admirably solemn. “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Cool fries.”

  He reached out to fist bump the kid. Leo didn’t meet the gesture. “Hey. Give one more thing to me straight-up.”

  Tait nodded, also somber. “Sure.”

  “If that scumsucker is using Lani as a shield, then Kellan has to be damn accurate with the kill shot, right?”

  Tait clapped a hand on Leo’s shoulder again. “I’m his spotter. We do this all the time, Leo.” Well, they had been doing it all the time. They hadn’t succeeded at a challenge shot like this in well over a year. But the synchronicity they’d shared lately, burnished to perfection by their partnership in loving Lani, was in its best form ever. Had either of them expected to put it to the test this soon? In a situation like this? The answer was obvious. Of course not. But sometimes in life, especially their lives, there wasn’t a choice about being ready for the big test. You simply had to plow deep and find that readiness.

  “I get that.” Leo clearly excavated his gut for his own courage. “But it’s two in the morning. And that beach is dark. Is…is Slash-gasm that good?”

  Tait might have been unsure about how to answer the kid’s first question, but his reply now was a no-brainer. “Yeah, Leo. He’s that good.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lani’s eyes burned with tears. Her throat burned from screaming. Her ass and back burned with pain. Tan was only three strokes in to his promise of stripping the flesh off her body, one whip lash at a time, and she wondered how many more of his terrible grunts, followed by the whir of the leather and the fire on her flesh, would come before his goal was accomplished.

  Something else burned now too. Her lungs.

  “What the fuck?” The guard standing nearest to her, who’d been enjoying Tan’s show with a prominent hard-on, pushed off the cave wall. Lani blinked at him, only to wonder what was going wrong with her vision. Everything was covered in a weird gray haze that thickened by the second. “Christ almighty, what’s that stench?”

  As if cued to do so, the rest of Tan’s henchmen began coughing and wheezing. Lani ducked her head, trying to take shallow breaths herself. It smelled like the cave had contracted the flu and now hurled on all of them. The camp lanterns looked like glowing chunks of puke as the guards grabbed them in desperate efforts to locate the source of the stench.

  “I think it’s coming from above,” one of the men called. “Someone’s in the mansion, and they know damn well that we’re here!”

  “Let me drill their ass with lead, Tan. This’ll be fun.”

  “Idiot,” Tan snarled. “It will also be suicide. If you break the wrong supports to that kitchen, we’ll be buried down here.”

  “Shit.”

  “In
a word, yes.” The man raised his voice into a shout. “Everyone out! Now!”

  Lani couldn’t contain her reacting sob. She’d take the smoke and stench over Tan’s new proximity, less than a foot away from her. She flinched as he unfastened her ankles from the spreader. He made her worst nightmare come true by unhooking her wrists from the posts and then yanking her back against him.

  “Just a wild guess, darling, but I’d say your boyfriends want to join our little party.” His growl was low and menacing as he latched a possessive hand on to one of her bare breasts. “So let’s make sure their favorite guest makes an appearance.”

  His brutal hold intensified her pain, but she clung to a new hope. This twist had Tait’s and Kellan’s ingenuity written all over it. Had they truly bucked their orders from Franz? Were they really here? She could almost feel their presence on the air. Maybe if she set her mind free a little more and tried to hear an assurance from that cool wind of a voice again… Aue. Who the hell was she kidding? If Luna had returned, Lani couldn’t hear past the hammers of pain in her body, the heavy grunts of her captor, and the cavernous echoes of their steps through the long black tunnel.

  When they burst out onto the beach, a thousand feelings blasted at once. She wanted to weep at the sky, having given up on ever seeing its splendor again. But she wobbled, suddenly cold, as the wind slammed her nakedness and bit into her wounds. She also peered around in confusion. Not a single one of Tan’s goons had waited for him. But there was no sign of Tait, Kellan, or any police or military support, either.

  Only two people stood there: Cameron Stock and the man who’d replaced Gunter in their scheme. Just as young and well-tailored as Gunter, Shane—who was so trendy, he apparently had no last name—wore his chestnut hair a little longer and his suits a little looser but shared Gunter’s vigilant gaze and Gatsby-like indifference to everything that didn’t pertain to their plan. In short, he was a perfectly pretty successor to Gunter—and Lani hoped he met the same fate too. The sharks could always use some extra dinner.

  “What the hell are you still doing with her?” Shane barked. “We need to cut liabilities, all of them, right now.”

  “He’s right,” Stock added. “The car’s waiting next to the sand around the next bend. My contacts at the base have arranged for a private transport to get us to LA, where I’ve got a thousand corners for us to hide in. Let her go and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Lani prayed Tan would see their logic, despite its roots in five hundred versions of evil, and toss her aside. “I-I won’t say anything,” she croaked. “I-I promise.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing for you to say, honey.” Stock’s tone was smooth and snide. “They’d only need you for picking us out in a lineup, which is never going to happen.”

  Dread crashed through her as Tan let out a roar and twisted his hold tighter. “No! She has one more purpose to us, and I’m going to take full advantage of it!”

  Stock huffed. “What the hell are you—”

  “Those two Special Forces wankers are going to pay for what they’ve cost me—in the most devastating manner their poor little hearts can imagine.”

  Lani shivered harder. This time, her quivers had nothing to do with the wind and everything to do with raw terror. Tan made sure that point stuck when slamming his pistol to her temple.

  No, no, no!

  “Wait.” Shane’s voice punched through her mental and physical ice. “Her two ‘soldier’ friends are Spec Ops?” The man stomped over and yanked at Tan. The Korean almost fell backward, decimating Lani’s own balance. She only stayed upright through the desperate force of Tan’s grip, clawing furiously into her flesh. “Tan, you have to ditch this bitch and move on right now,” Shane commanded. “I guarantee there are rifle coordinates being dialed in on your skull as we speak.”

  Tan laughed with urbane glee. “Is that so, sweet Shane? My, my, you get a little hot under the collar when talking about those boys in uniform. Did you know one, perhaps? Did you put on your dress blues for him? Did he tell you about his secret missions and show you his special guns?”

  Lani prayed Shane’s patience had a breaking point and Tan had just breached it. A skirmish between the two men would be perfect in so many ways. If Shane’s allegation was true, Kellan and Tait were here, waiting on the cliffs for their perfect chance to take Tan down for good. The sooner she could get out of their way, the better.

  But damn it, Shane had to be as emotionally untouchable as she’d originally assumed.

  “Drop her, Tan.” The man’s stance was as rigid as his voice. “You’ve poked worse than a hornet’s nest, and you’re not going to win.”

  “He’s right,” Stock growled. “If you want a voice of firsthand experience as validation, let me be it. Lor and I were ten minutes out from success on our plan in LA, and those Spec Ops motherfuckers dropped in on us like a machine.”

  “Shut up,” Tan snapped. “Just shut the bloody hell up, Cameron!”

  Stock shook his head and blew out a hard breath. “I’ll do you one better, you insane asswipe. I’m out of here.”

  “He’s right.” Shane rushed up again. “You’re being insane, Tan. You can’t do this. Let Cameron get you off the island and into LA, and we’ll regroup on a new plan. Killing this woman in cold blood isn’t going to help a fucking thing.”

  Tan’s grip slipped a little. With a rush of relief, Lani collapsed to her knees, only to be held captive again by the monster’s hand twisting a fistful of her hair. Tan jerked her head back until her vision was filled with nothing but the stars—and the barrel of his gun between her eyes.

  “Poor, stupid Shane,” he muttered. “You’re mistaken. This does help. So many things.”

  Lani’s limbs went numb. Her blood ran with ice. But suddenly, strangely, she was warm again. The stars reached down to her, bringing the light and fire of two special stars with them. The first, with his gray gaze and fierce devotion, she slipped into her heart. The second, with his golden eyes and open spirit, she dropped into her soul.

  She smiled.

  Right before a single shot pierced the night.

  She took a breath, bracing for the burst of white light to welcome her through the veils of existence. It didn’t come. Instead, her senses resounded a deep, anguished cry—her own. Only blackness and stillness surrounded her.

  But then she noticed the stars again. And the sea. And the trees, flittering softly in the wind. And then the man, Shane, kneeling next to her—only he wasn’t himself. Soft concern lit up his caramel-colored eyes with tiny gold flecks. His mouth lifted at her in a gentle smile.

  Even though Ayaan Tan lay flat in the sand next to her, with a bullet hole in his head.

  “Oh, my God.” She pushed away from him. “Oh, my God.”

  “Ssshhh. Careful.” Shane cupped her shoulders. His hands were shockingly warm. Strong. And caring? He stripped off his suit jacket and folded it around her. “You okay?”

  “Y-Yeah.” Her breath left her in stunned spurts. “What the hell happ—”

  A loud zzzzzzz cut her short. Appearing in the trees just a hundred feet away, riding the Hale Anelas recreational zip line like a pro, was Kellan. The sight of him made her heart surge and her body hum despite all its physical agony. He hit the landing platform and started shimmying down the ladder, preceding Tait by only a fast minute. His sniper Remington rifle was still strapped to his back.

  “Shit.” Shane spewed the word as he shot to his feet.

  “Wh-What?” Lani questioned. “What’s wrong?”

  Kellan arrived, having sprinted across the sand to her. He shucked his gun and hit his knees in the sand, grabbing her with the fervency of a starving man who’d arrived at an oasis. Lani sighed into his mouth as he kissed her with matching hunger, finally letting her go in order to lift his eyes to Shane.

  “You should seriously get out of here,” he told the guy.

  “Yeah,” Shane said. “Probably.”

  “What the hell?” Lan
i queried. “Why?”

  Tait arrived now, also at a top-speed run—that he continued into a full body check against Shane. Lani shrieked, confused and stunned, as the two men rolled into the sand. Shane’s kindness, although brief, stirred her enough to try to pull Tait up. Wasn’t happening. Tait was lost to a haze of rage. He pulled back his arm, curled a fist, and drove it into Shane’s face before she could stop him.

  “Tait,” she screamed. “Lawa! Enough!”

  The man ignored her, preparing to punch Shane again.

  “Tait!” Shane yelled. “Listen!”

  The air left her lungs. Her jaw dropped. She snapped her gape toward Kellan. “How does he know who Tait is?”

  “It was you,” Tait roared, “wasn’t it? In the cave, with Stock and Tan. ‘Handling things’ for them. Working with them!”

  Tait went in for two more blows, but Shane successfully dodged both. It was clear to Lani now; the guy had a lot of experience fighting Tait, able to interpret and evade each of his moves. That expertise would’ve been gleaned by a friend of Tait’s, not a fashionista criminal boy working for a creep like Cameron Stock.

  What was going on?

  Finally, Shane crawled free and popped to his feet. Tait didn’t give up. He snarled and readied to rush Shane again.

  “Don’t think it, T.” He issued the words from gritted teeth. “I will drop you. We both know I can.”

  “What. The. Hell?” Lani blurted again.

  Her words didn’t falter Tait by an inch. With his chest heaving and his eyes blazing, he seethed. “I should just let you do it. Drop me and pummel me, you asshole, because that’ll give me perfect justification for killing you with my bare hands!”

  Shane wiped blood off his lip with the back of his hand. “Neither is going to happen.”

  “No? And why the fuck not?” Tait’s hands turned into white-capped fists at his sides. “You’re working with Cameron Stock—and with the man who had a gun at the head of the woman I love!” He pushed his head forward, staring hard at Shane. “Does that concept even get to you anymore? Do you remember the hell I went through after Luna, how I despaired of ever feeling anything again, let alone knowing love? Well, God’s brought me another miracle—and tonight, she almost died as I watched. As you watched, goddamnit!”