“If anyone can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined in matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace,” the priest says.
“The Bulldog will slaughter your ass if you stand up now,” Cobra warns beside me.
My knuckles turn white as I squeeze the shit out of the chair and look over my shoulder as the door opens and the sunlight streams inside temporarily blinding me.
The sound of the shuffling feet echoes loudly in my ears as I blink my eyes back into focus. A man I’ve never seen before drags his feet inside the clubhouse, his arms are extended outward mimicking Jesus as he appeared nailed to the cross. His mouth is gagged with duct tape and there are enough explosives strapped to his chest to blow up a fucking village. Tears fall from his eyes as he pauses in his tracks and stares across the room at Jack.
For a moment I think it’s happening again, that I’m reliving war and my mind is toying with my present but when that happens the faces I’m surrounded by are the faces of all those who died in combat. I’m amongst the living now, the faces around me are of those with a pulse. The fear in their eyes isn’t part of a nightmare.
There is one common thread though.
Death.
BOOM!
-Twelve-
Stryker
Pain rips through my body, temporarily immobilizing me as the cries for help ring in my ears. They are the familiar voices of my men, men who took the same oath as I did to serve and protect our country. We didn’t just vow to defend the country we love, but we made a pact to one another to always have each other’s back. Rogers has a new bride back home that just found out she’s expecting their first child. Johnson has three little girls he’ll one day walk down the aisle and Diaz has a little boy waiting for his dad to come home and teach him how to pitch a baseball. Me? I’m the one who’s going to make sure they get back home to the people they love.
I mentally push through the pain, demanding that my body move and use my upper body strength to free me from the debris that has me pinned down. My legs drag behind me as my arms carry my weight and I crawl toward the anguished cries of my men.
“Johnson! Rogers! Diaz!”
“Kincaid” Diaz calls out. Lifting my head, I blink as sand flies into my eyes and the flames continue to blind me.
“I’m here, brother,” I shout, bringing my sleeve over my eyes to try to wipe the shit out them.
“Need you,” he sobs.
I glance down at my leg and the crimson that stains my fatigues. There’s a piece of metal lodged into my calf and I know if I pull it out I’ll likely bleed out or worse risk losing my leg. I don’t have time to dwell on my injuries; I need for my body to aid in my mission to rescue my brothers.
“Kincaid!” This time it’s Rogers’ voice I hear pleading with me.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I say as I struggle.
“Listen to me,” Rogers grinds out, his voice echoing. “I ain’t gonna make it.”
“Fuck that,” I scream. “I’m going to get you out of here but you need to keep talking so I can find you.”
“Kincaid, you…tell…”
“Keep talking, Rogers,” I shout, grinding my teeth as the pain shoots up my leg.
“Tell Stacey…I love her…”
“You’re gonna tell her yourself,” I rasp, hanging my head as I take a deep breath and silently pray my words are true.
“Tell her I hope the baby has her smile,” he sobs.
I close my eyes as tears slide from the corners of them.
You want to know what a real hero is. A real hero is a man who sacrifices his life for the greater good of his country. A real hero is a selfless person who pictures a child he’ll never meet as he draws his last breath. A breath that has been stolen from him by a cocksucking terrorist. A real hero is the woman who buries her soldier and raises their child by herself. A real hero doesn’t wear any fucking cape on his back.
I scream.
A sound so shrill and so desperate I don’t believe it’s my voice making the noise. Another blast sounds affirming what I know in my gut—I’m not going to save them. I’m nobody’s hero.
I feel someone touch me, a hand closes on my shoulder and I see red. They took the innocent lives of my brothers, they left Stacey a widow, her unborn child fatherless and that was just the destruction done to the Rogers family. What about Diaz and Johnson? What about their families? Fuck these motherfuckers. I will die making them fucking pay. The pain evaporates from my body and I act on vengeance and adrenaline, reaching up I close my hand over the terrorist’s wrist and snap it back with all my strength.
Cry bitch.
I’m just getting started.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I sneer. “Johnson! Rogers! Diaz!”
Dark, almond shaped eyes, wide with fear stare back at me. Unlike the other women, she isn’t dressed in garb and her eyes aren’t the only part of her pretty face that’s exposed. Her eyes drift down to my patch sewn to my uniform but when she opens her mouth, she doesn’t call me Kincaid like everyone else.
“Stryker, she says, drawing my attention back to her eyes. “Stryker, it’s okay we’ll find them,” she assures.
“They were fifty yards out where the Afghan post is,” I tell her numbly.
“Adrianna!”
“Over here,” the brunette calls, dragging me away from my past and forcing me into the present. My gaze travels down my body and the first thing I notice is the fatigues are replaced by black jeans. My leg isn’t bleeding but blood drips from my forehead. There is no gear strapped to my back and the only thing fucking with my vision is the smoke. It’s thick and fills my lungs making it a chore to breathe. There isn’t any sand. I’m not over there.
I shake my head as my hands glide over the leather covering my chest and look back at the woman standing in front of me, holding her wrist, the wrist I likely broke.
“Shit,” I hiss through my teeth. The wedding, the sunlight streaming into the clubhouse when the door opened, the man with the bomb strapped to his chest, it all comes rushing back.
“Are you okay?” I ask, searching the eyes that belong to the daughter of the mob boss, Victor Pastore. I don’t know what I’m searching for. Forgiveness?
“Stryker, you’re okay, man?” Pipe interrupts as he limps alongside Adrianna’s husband, Anthony Bianci. I don’t pay them any mind as my eyes zero in on Adrianna’s wrist. “I’ve got to find Oksana,” Pipe adds.
“What happened to your arm?” Bianci asks his wife.
She doesn’t get a chance to answer as a scream rings out and jolts her attention to the flames.
“Nikki!”
“Where are you?” Bianci shouts into the smoke, coughing as his lungs fill with dust.
“I don’t know,” the girl cries. “Please help! Mikey is trapped.”
“What do you see around you?” Pipe calls.
I should help them locate the girl but all I can do is stare at Adrianna. I’m losing my mind. First, I nearly kill a bunch of kids and now this. When does it end? How do I make it stop before someone gets hurt?
“He’s trapped underneath the bar,” she calls back to us.
“This way,” Pipe instructs.
“Linc,” I mutter, tearing my gaze away from Adrianna to look at Pipe. “He was sitting on top of the bar before the blast.”
It’s the driving force, knowing the guy who’s been in my corner since we sewed the Brooklyn patch to our cuts is in trouble. It’s the kick in the ass I need to get on my feet and find a way, any fucking way, to save him because I can’t let another brother die.
“Do you see anyone else trapped?” I ask, brushing Pipe out of my way but he extends his arm blocking me.
“We’ve got a problem,” he announces, and I follow his gaze to the violent flames swirling in the path of rescuing those trapped.
“There are two people trapped but I can’t tell who they are. One is wearing cowboy boots, and the other is…oh my God,” Nikki shrieks.
/>
“What? What is it?” Adrianna screams from behind me.
“It’s a woman, but she’s all the way at the other end. I only see her shoes.”
“What color are they?” Pipe questions.
“They look red but I can’t be sure,” Nikki chokes. “The smoke is so thick over here. Are you guys close?”
“Oksana was wearing red shoes,” Pipe says quietly, raking his fingers through his graying hair as he stumbles slightly.
Words.
They wound you without even trying.
Especially when they’re laced with dread.
War may have stayed with me but so did my training and I latch onto everything I’ve learned as my eyes scan the area and my instincts devise a plan.
“Help me with this,” I order, walking over to the metal door lying haphazardly amongst the debris. I bend my knees and grab one end while Pipe reaches for a corner and Bianci grunts through his pain to grab the other end. The three of us shuffle our feet toward the fire and throw the metal door over the flames. It takes a few minutes before some of the fire is contained. It isn’t much and there is no way we’re all going to make it through these flames without getting burned.
“I’m going in,” I call over Adrianna’s pleas to save her sister. I lift my leather jacket over my face and bow my head before charging across the metal door into the line of fire.
I ignore the heat.
I stomp on the flames that try to swallow me.
I run toward the sound of chaos.
For today I am not a Satan’s Knight.
Today, I am a United States Marine.
I see her hunched over the man trapped beneath the debris and I race toward her, shedding my jacket and throwing it over her back.
“What are you doing? I’m not leaving him,” she sobs as I throw her over my shoulder, repositioning the jacket to make sure I’ve covered whatever skin I can. Then I turn to the man she loves and watch as he mouths his gratitude.
“I’ll be back for you,” I tell him, before running back in the direction I came from. My boots crush the rubble beneath their soles as I make my way back to Adrianna and drop her sister down in front of her.
“Put me down! I told you to leave me if you couldn’t get him out,” Nikki hollers at me.
I turn to Pipe, grab his arm and look between him and Bianci.
“I need help to get the bar off them,” I tell them.
Without a second thought the three of us head back into the smoky haze, through the flames and to the area where the bar used to stand tall. Despite the tourniquet wrapped around his arm, Bianci tries to assist in any way possible, helping me remove the debris while Pipe calls out for his wife, Oksana.
“Your brother-in-law is on the other end of this bar. We need to move this shit so we can hoist both ends and free him.”
“Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” Bianci grunts.
“She said she saw a woman,” Pipe mutters alongside me, his hands on his knees as he leans over and coughs. “I can’t see shit.”
“If she’s here we’ll find her,” I assure him.
A loud crash sounds down at the other end of the bar and I lift my head to see the girl I just rescued flinging shit off the other end of the bar.
“Nikki, we’ve got it! Go back to your sister,” Anthony shouts.
“Fuck,” I growl. “We gotta move quicker. She ain’t thinking, she moves something out of place and this whole fucking thing can come crashing down making matters worse.”
“It gets worse than this?” Pipe questions solemnly as we remove the final piece of debris standing in our way and together we lift the bar.
I don’t have a chance to tell him this is nothing compared to the shit I’ve been witness to because Nikki releases a scream loud enough to wake up the dead.
“Nikki!” Anthony drops the bar and rushes toward her voice. Pipe and I follow him but I pause when I spot her husband trapped beneath the other end of the bar. His eyes meet mine and he shakes his head, dismissing me.
“She’s over there. Fucking leave me, get her. Go to her!”
I turn around just as Pipe screams.
“No. No. No! Oksana.” Pipe rushes toward his wife, knocking Bianci out of the way. Anthony grabs Nikki and turns her face into his chest, stepping to the side and clears a path for my eyes. The bile instantly rises in my throat as I stare at Pipe’s nearly decapitated wife.
I’ve seen a human being beheaded in front of my very eyes but I didn’t hold an attachment to the person. I watched an innocent woman get her throat sliced open trying to escape the wrath of her country and that shit was grueling to watch. She wasn’t my wife. She wasn’t even someone I knew, but I felt that shit and it stung like a motherfucker. And still what I felt at that moment wouldn’t scratch the surface of what Pipe was feeling.
I watch as he drops to his knees in front of her and with trembling hands reaches out to touch the woman he loves, but he’s unsure where and how to touch her so he doesn’t lay his hands on her. Instead, he drops his hands to his sides and his head into her lap and cries like the broken man he now is.
This is terror.
This is war.
This is death.
This time it’s not a nightmare.
This time it’s real.
-Thirteen-
Gina
I’m not going to look at my phone again.
I’m not.
Instead, I stare at the NASDAQ ticket across my screen, pull up my investments on another screen and reach for the candy bar next to my cell phone. Taking a bite of my PayDay bar, ironic isn’t it, I decide I’m worthless. No pun intended. Ha! I’m on a roll today.
It’s all the sex.
It turns my mind to mush.
Throwing in the towel, I close down the open tabs on my computer and open my browser. My fingers hover over the keyboard as my mind wanders back to last night. I think of Stryker. I think of his easy smile and recall the way he lifted his hand and counted five facts on his fingers. In that moment he was just an average guy wooing a woman. It’s amazing how quickly things change, how in a split second a man can go from one extreme to another.
He threw his body over mine and I tumbled face first to the ground, not truly processing what was happening until I rolled over and saw the gun in his hand. It should’ve been enough to scare the living shit out of me, but it wasn’t the gun that frightened me, it was the distant look in his eyes and the way he physically was in front of me but mentally thousands of miles away.
You hear about it all the time.
The tragic stories of the servicemen and woman who survive war and return home only to suffer with the mental repercussions.
It’s just another story on the news and maybe if someone finds the story rewarding enough they write a book about the hero who fought for his country but lost the war with himself. It becomes a movie and the hero’s name becomes a box office phenomenon until the next Fifty Shades movie comes out and everyone forgets about it.
I come from a family tree full of criminals and the most honorable battle any of them have ever fought is with their conscience. I’ve never known anyone who has served in the military and I’m almost ashamed of that. It costs nothing to befriend someone. There are so many veterans who have no one to turn to, no one to offer a shoulder or lend an ear.
You don’t have to be a doctor to know Stryker is suffering from PTSD. All you have to do is look into his eyes, watch as he becomes disconnected from the world and you’ll learn what it is to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
I type PTSD into my browser and wait for the search engine to bring up the results. I don’t know what I’m looking for, if I’m naively looking for a cure or searching for ways I can help him cope, but sitting here and not acknowledging it isn’t an option for me.
The intercom buzzes on my desk just as I’m about to click on a link and my assistant’s voice fills the room.
“Ms. Spinelli, there are two gentl
emen here demanding to see you,” Casey says unsteadily. “Wait. You can’t go in there!”
Rolling my eyes, I lean back in my chair, take another bite of my candy bar and divert my eyes toward the office door.
Three…two…one…
The door swings open and just as I expected my inconsiderate, arrogant brother strolls through the door with his muscle behind him and my poor assistant on their heels. They’re quite the sight and I almost choke on the candy when Rocco slams the door in Casey’s face, nearly clipping her nose.
“Rocco,” I hiss, gripping the edge of my desk and rising to my feet. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“The asshole that’s been calling you for hours,” he replies as he quickly reaches over my desk and snatches my phone.
“Give me my phone back, asshole,” I demand, but cringe as he glances down at the screen and smirks.
“Hickeys, huh?”
“I hate you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You tell me so every time you see me,” he says, waving me off. “Your fucking phone is on silent.”
I’m an idiot because the first thought to pop into my head is that I missed Stryker’s call or text because I had the damn thing set to do not disturb.
“I know you don’t take a goddamn thing I do or say seriously but you need to pay very close attention to me,” he starts, pulling out the chair in front of my desk as he hands my phone over to the big brute standing next to him.
“Give me that,” I order, stepping out from behind my desk.
“My rate just doubled,” the dope playing with my phone says, ignoring my attempts at trying to take it back.
“Gina, meet Johnny,” Rocco says, pointing back and forth between me and the cell phone thief. “Johnny will shadow you until I tell him otherwise.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I seethe. “First, you storm into my office and disrespect my employee then you take my phone and invade my privacy—”
“If you think that’s invading your privacy, you’re in for a rude awakening,” Johnny chimes in, handing me my phone. “My number is in your phone. Mr. Spinelli has briefed me on your routines and such. As long as you behave I’ll make myself as scarce as possible.”
The Nomad Series-Collectors Edition Page 11
