by AJ Wyatt
"They don't want you to chase them anymore?" I asked. "I don't believe that for a second."
He smiled. “It doesn’t happen as often as it used to.”
Something large and rough caught my foot, and I squealed without meaning to. I clapped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late. Yuri and Vice practically tackled each other out the door, both of them looking panicked. Yuri was swaying, one of his ivory-handled pistols in hand.
“It’s fine!” I said. “You can go back inside.”
Vice huffed and stumbled against the doorframe.
“Oh, can we?” He said. “Come on, Yuri. We’re not wanted here. Let’s…drink a few for dear old dad. It’s what the old goblin would have wanted.”
“Yes, my friend…to your father! Nostrovia!”
“Careful trying to keep up with him, Vice,” I said. He wasn’t listening. I turned back to Magnus, who hadn’t let go of my foot. “Yuri drinks like a mule. Vice will need a new liver tomorrow.”
“It is good they like each other,” Magnus said.
Again, it felt like he was reading my mind. I wished I could read his.
“Where’s Sadie at?” I asked. “I haven’t seen her today.”
“Daisy wanted to borrow her,” Magnus said. “Apparently dogs are very useful around the ranch. I didn’t know. I’ve never been to a ranch before this.”
His fingers rubbed at my foot, easing out the tension. His rough hands traced their way up my calf next. That was new, and I felt the sensations shooting all the way up between my legs.
“I enjoy your legs,” he said.
“Just my legs?”
14
He laughed.
“More than your legs. But you know that. You’re not a woman who is confused by men and what they want.”
Somewhere down by the pool, I heard a snort of laughter and what sounded like Trib whispering Bullshit a little too loudly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I said, ignoring her.
“I would,” Magnus said. “There is a difference between conflict and understanding. You know perfectly well, but you fight against it. I would ask why, but it’s not my place.”
"Minding your own business…another admirable trait of the Swedish. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."
His smile faded. His hand, which was massaging its way past my knee, retreated back.
“Or maybe it’s not my place,” I said. I pulled my leg back to my side of the hot tub.
“It’s getting late,” he said.
“It’s been a big day. You probably need some rest.”
He nodded.
Magnus looked sad as he got out and dried off. The same thunderclouds seemed to form whenever he sat alone and looked out a window, thinking no one was watching. I wanted to say more, to call out to him, but there was a wall there I couldn't get past. I kept thinking that something awful had happened to him.
I kept thinking it because he reminded me of me.
“Trib…”
“You want me to dig?”
“Everything you can find on Magnus Nilsson. Dig as deep as it goes. I don’t have time to get it out of him slowly. Not when all our lives are at stake.”
I got out and threw my towel over my shoulder. The water in the pool and hot tub was saltwater, not chlorinated, so it felt good on my skin. I let the night air dry me off as I walked downstairs to the pool. Trib was getting out too. She found her top and was about to put it on when she stopped and pointed.
"Rayne, look!" She said.
Longhorns were standing so close we could almost reach out and touch them.
“They come right up near the house, don’t they?” I said.
“They’re so cute.”
She put her top on, and I wrapped up in my towel. I was bone-tired, but that didn't matter. I had work to do on the funeral, and it couldn't wait. I wasn't about to go into an event like that blind.
Oakland Cemetery, where the burial was to be held, was old and gone to seed. The kind of cemetery that displayed much wealth, in the form of Greek columns and marble mausoleums, each like a small house holding entire generations of famous Dallas notables. Home to senators, mayors, baseball players, and the like. It was supposed to be impossible to be buried there these days. The place had basically shut down.
Harold Osborne was still the owner of the Osborne family mausoleum, though. And his name opened doors. His funeral would likely be the last that Oakland ever had. Newspapers were already taking note, so there would be press, members of the historical society, and many other people who could be carrying rocket launchers and not be noticed by anyone in the crowd until it was too late.
"You want to talk about sniper positions?" I asked Trib. "This place is a labyrinth. There are so many mausoleums with a line of the site to the graveside. I've counted two dozen already, and… I mean, you could put explosives here and here. And here. Crap. It would be easier to think about what kind of weapons you couldn’t use to assassinate a pair of gorgeous billionaires.”
“No oneshh, gonna killlll me,” Vice slurred. The effort sent him tumbling from his chair to the floor. “Ish spinning?” He asked.
"Yup," I said. "The whole thing is spinning." I went back to pouring over the layout maps and photographs online. "Look at this, Trib. The path we'll be following for the funeral leads right through this kill zone. You're going to need to have eyes everywhere. Maybe get Yuri and Magnus on the monitors too. Can we get camera drones to hover in some of these dead zones? What were those called? The Phantoms? Those drones were nuts. But can we get some by morning?”
My questions were met with a heavy silence. Trib was leaning over her laptop, he eyes glazed, her headphones on. From three feet away, I could hear the pulsing tones of techno coming from her headphones. I tapped her.
“Hmm?”
“Phantom drones? Here and here?”
She clucked her tongue. “I’ll check with the billionaires,” she said. She looked at Vice. “I’ll check with the one who’s conscious.”
Trib vanished upstairs.
Yuri was slouched over the table, pouring himself a shot. He was drunk, but otherwise, he seemed fine. I knew from experience that in this state he could sing, dance, or… do other things that required coordination and physical prowess.
“Do you think that it’s sad,” he said, “when your father dies, no matter who he is? Or is it only sad if he is good?”
I took the shot glass from the table and drank it.
“Gah,” I hissed. “Gasoline. And yeah, it’s probably sad even if your dad is a real prick.”
I looked at him, and he smiled at me.
“How did he die?”
“Papa? Shot full of holes. You know the way.”
"Gangland? Rival Bratva, or Triads? Yakuza don't come this far south yet, do they?"
"Not Bratva," Yuri said. "The Pakhan in Moscow is very good at settling territory issues. Besides, there are too many killing us for us to kill ourselves."
“Whatever else Papa might have been, Yuri, he was always kind to me. Nostrovia?”
He nodded and poured me another shot. His grin became wicked.
“Maybe I’ll get you drunk, like when I was young.”
I took the glass back and held it to my lips. Was a little orange juice too much to ask? I drank it down, savoring the burn in my throat. After the long day, it felt good. That's how I knew the first shot had done its work. The second always tasted better.
“There isn’t enough vodka in the world for you to get in these sweatpants, pal,” I lied. “And you’re still young.”
The truth was, he looked good. He used to be thin and reedy, not an ounce of fat on him, but he’d grown thick across the chest and arms, and his abs had become like cobblestones. He had the weight of a man to him now, and I couldn’t help wondering if anything else had changed. If he'd gotten any better in bed, I'd be in real trouble. A couple more shots, and I might just find out.
He sighed wearily. “I don’t fe
el young anymore, Your Highness.”
“Yuri, you can call me Rayne.”
“I used to call you Angel, you remember?”
"Uh-huh. You can call me Rayne."
His old nickname for me sends electricity through me, tingling and warm in my belly. I could hear him growling it in my ear as he twined his fingers through my hair and made me bend over the bed, his other hand exploring my backside, looking for the right place to spank.
Jesus, girl. No more vodka for you.
A loud popping sound came from the back of the house, and the lights died. Everything went dark.
“Yuri!”
“I know!”
“We’ve got company!” I screamed.
I grabbed Vice. He groaned as I dragged him to the pantry and threw him inside. I kicked his legs in and closed the door as quietly as I could. Glass shattered somewhere. Were they on the second floor? Damn it!
My choice of weapons wasn’t ideal. I groped in the knife drawer and found a butcher’s knife that I held underhand, Psycho-style. Boots trod in the hall upstairs. Five men, maybe six. I tore two more drawers out, threw them to the floor. With the moon so close to being full, it wasn’t as dark once my eyes adjusted. I found what I was looking for. A magnum I’d hidden in the back of the silverware drawer.
Five shots. But powerful enough to blow a hole the size of an orange out someone’s back. So there was that.
Yuri was gone, melted into the shadows like he always did. I took a deep breath and did the same. I crept down the hall until I heard the boots pounding above me. Trib was barefoot. Talon would never wear heavy boots. And these people were moving as a team, clearing rooms. They chose the wrong fucking house.
They paused outside a bedroom. My bedroom. Ready to breach and kill whoever was inside. I prayed Talon and Trib had hidden in a different room. The floorboards creaked.
I lifted my magnum and fired two shots. Screams echoed down the halls. I leaped forward and rolled in time to avoid their fire. They were using automatics, so the ceiling burst like confetti as they carved lines down the hall trying to find me. I fired two more shots. No screams. Fuck.
Something made a wet, gurgling sound, and there was a heavy crash on the floor upstairs. Blood dripped from the rows of holes they'd shot in the ceiling. Yuri had gotten to them. How the hell did he get up there so fast? The stairs would be a kill zone. Their point man would be hovering right around the corner, waiting. Which reminded me…
I got right below where they ought to be and fired my last shot.
“Shit!” A man screamed. Someone crashed through a door. I didn’t think I hit him, but I recognized his voice.
"Shane, you piece of shit!" I screamed. "I'm coming for you. I'm going to cut you from neck to nuts, you asshole!"
Silence. Well, it was worth a try.
"Why don't you come down here, and we'll talk this out? I'm out of bullets, you know. I just have a kitchen knife left."
“Like hell!” Shane called. “You knew there was only one way for this to end, Rayne.”
I crept back down the hall and snuck out the back. The house had a wrap-around porch on steroids. The second-floor overhang was enough to park a van under. I climbed the stonework of one of the pillars and pulled myself up to the roof, putting the butcher knife in my teeth like Errol Flynn.
Now to play Russian roulette with the windows…
I passed by Trib's room. I wasn't going to try and get in there. God knows what she had rigged on that window. The assholes were going to breach my room, but had they made it in? No light inside, so if there were five guys in there, crouching in the dark with night-vision goggles looking at me being an idiot, there was nothing to do about it. I used the knife to click the latch aside and slipped in. One dead guy on the floor. Throat cut. I took his goggles and his weapon. It was an automatic rifle. The new ones the Defense Department just bought. Really lovely.
Someone let out a slow breath behind me.
I spun and dropped to one knee. Yuri. He signaled me to take point. I nodded and made for the hall. It was brilliant for him to meet me in my room. He knew me well.
The damn house was huge, and the upstairs hall made a big L with seven bedrooms and an upstairs laundry room. If we were lucky, Trib and Talon were together when the shit hit the fan. They'd be in Talon's room, two doors down, or the laundry if they'd had a chance to run. I peeked my head around the corner. The hall was empty. Either the bad guys went downstairs, or they'd retreated to the other bedrooms.
Yuri put his hand on my shoulder, and we moved forward.
I kicked in the door of the first room and swept it. Empty. That was Magnus’s room.
Yuri and I dropped back quickly on the balls of our feet, relocating to hide our position. We crept forward again. Like a dance. When we reached Talon’s room, I opted for the quiet route, silently turning the knob and pushing the door open with two fingers. If the wrong people were in there, my arm was about to get blown off.
The room was empty, and the window was open. Trib had scribbled a word in lipstick on the glass of the window: SAFE.
Good girl.
Another door down the hall burst open, and two men came crashing out, one of them screaming a wild, guttural scream. From the size of him, it could only be Magnus. He tore the machine gun from the goon's arms and tossed it, then lifted the man bodily overhead and charged towards the stairs, still yelling in a berserker rage. I took off after him, sprinting, hoping Shane wasn't around the corner, waiting to shoot.
I wasn't going to make it, so I dropped to one knee and opened fire, perforating the drywall in giant arcs, cutting my way through the other bedrooms. With Talon and Trib gone, Vice in the pantry, and Magnus's dog Sadie staying with Daisy for the night, there was no one left to get shot except the bad guys.
Shane yelled, and glass shattered. I ran ahead again.
Magnus lifted the struggling man like he weighed nothing at all and hurled him from the top of the stairs screaming a word in Swedish I didn’t know. I could guess the meaning, though.
The poor bastard he threw screamed all the way down until he hit the stone floor with an ugly crackling sound. The screaming stopped abruptly.
“Magnus,” I whispered.
The giant turned and squinted into the darkness.
“This way, hurry!”
He came lumbering down the hall and nearly bumped into me.
"Get behind us and stay close. We go room to room now and clear the whole place."
It didn’t take long. Two more dead in Trib’s room. Their legs looked like they’d waded through a river of blood. They were ones I got from downstairs. The rest of the rooms were empty. Vice’s room had the window busted out. That’s where Shane dove to keep from being shot up. We cleared the downstairs next.
The ones that weren’t dead were gone. We got lucky. They were killers, but they weren’t the Wolfpack. These guys were just grunts. Probably not even bad men, really. Paramilitary, former soldiers. People like me.
I didn’t let my guard down for a long time. Didn’t trust it.
"We'll have to go out there," I told Yuri. "Get the gear from the one Magnus tossed. Then, we'll circle and track them."
“We won’t catch them now, Rayne. Is too late.”
"I know. But I want to make sure they're gone. Otherwise, I won't be able to sleep."
“Alright. I will get gear.”
15
We found their tracks, and they were long gone. Whatever vehicles they'd driven, big SUVs it looked like, they were gone too. The tire tracks disappeared into the dust at the backside of the ranch and probably went to somewhere they'd cut a hole in the fence. I made a mental note to let Daisy know, so the cows didn't get out.
When Yuri and I got back to the ranch, I whistled loud, two long notes and two short.
Trib would have Talon stowed away somewhere, waiting for the signal for all clear.
Magnus had dragged all the bodies downstairs and lined them up in the living room.
Yuri went out back to get the lights back on.
“Rayne,” Magnus said. “There is a problem.”
“What is it?”
He took me to the couch, where one of the men was lying. Alive, but just barely. I knelt beside him.
“You’re too late,” he whispered. “Murderer.”
I knelt with him while he died. It wasn't long before the light passed out of him.
“He was wrong to say that,” Magnus said.
Was he? The job never bothered me because the people they send you after aren’t the Mother Theresas of the world. They’re very, very bad people. But they do have families, loved ones, people depending on them. I feel that. A prison camp commander begs you to send a message to his children…a man who sells child soldiers to the highest bidder asks you to take care of his dogs.
More vodka would be fantastic. But I still had work to do.
I checked their pockets, inside the folds of their body armor, everywhere that some evidence might be hidden, and found nothing. I wasn’t really expecting to. Most teams are good enough to get rid of everything that could identify them before the mission.
“I got something,” Trib said.
She’d been sullen since the attack, and I knew I’d have to talk to her, but it didn’t seem the right time. Shane and his people had gotten past our defenses. Trib’s cameras and sensors hadn’t tripped, and she was taking it hard. There hadn’t been time for her to set everything up that she'd wanted, but that wouldn't matter when she tried to sleep later.
“Show me.”
It was a broken series of text messages. Just a quick exchange, but it was illuminating.
Is she dead?
She will be soon.
Make it quick. I want to know when it’s done.
Roger that.
Once she’s dead, I’m heading back to DC.
No. After tomorrow we’re in the clear. You stay until it’s done.
