Honor Avenged (HORNET)

by Tonya Burrows

  Personality-wise, Colton was like his father—precise, serious, intense. Cooper, her troublemaker, was just like her—all energy and emotion. He jumped around in front of the TV as they played, while Colt sat in a beanbag chair, gnawing on his lower lip in concentration.

  They were remarkably resilient. They’d healed better than their sister. Better, even, than her.

  She dragged the door shut, careful not to make any noise. As much as she loved those two monsters, she wasn’t ready to face their endless barrage of questions yet.

  Next, she peeked in on her daughter. Maya sat on her bed, drawing on the tablet she’d gotten last summer for her birthday. Danny had bought it for her before he left for the training mission with HORNET, and now she never went anywhere without it.

  Where the twins were a mix of their parents, Maya was a carbon copy of her father. So much so that sometimes, when Leah looked at her, it hurt.

  Maya glanced up and pulled her headphones out of her ears. Worry drew her brows together and dragged at the corners of her lips. “Mom?”

  God, she looked so much older than her almost ten years. “Yes, honey?”

  “Why did you send Nana Gina to get us from school? Did someone die?”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart. Why would you—” She cut herself off as the realization struck.

  Shit.

  Of course Maya thought someone had died. The kids went to a private school with year-round instruction, and at her request, Gina had pulled them out of school in the middle of the day. The last time she’d yanked them out only days before their month-long summer break was after Marcus called with the news that shattered all of their lives.

  She walked in and sat down next to her daughter but wasn’t sure if she should touch the girl. Maya had been weird about physical contact since Danny’s death, and had come up with all kinds of rules regarding when and how she should be touched. The psychologist said she was trying to exert control over her life, and Leah tried her best to respect that even though her arms ached to hold her girl.

  “No, no, baby. Everybody’s okay. Just…something happened at work and I wanted you home.”

  Maya’s lip trembled. “I thought you died. I thought we were orphans now.”

  Leah’s heart cracked right in half. No, forget the psychologist. Her girl needed her. Maya came willingly into her embrace, wrapping her thin arms tightly around Leah’s neck.

  And she cried.

  For the first time since they lost Danny, Maya cried.

  Leah had always hated to see any of her children cry, but the wave of profound relief that washed over her now left her shaking. She’d been so worried about the wall Maya had built up around herself, how she’d shut down, but the dam had finally, finally broken.

  She held her girl through big, hiccupping sobs. Held her until she cried herself out and fell asleep.

  Leah didn’t know how long she sat there, leaning against the headboard, stroking her daughter’s hair. Long enough that the light filtering through the purple curtains softened, and Regina came upstairs looking for her.

  “I have dinner on the stove,” Regina said. “You should take that shower now.”

  Leah gazed down at her slumbering daughter, so quiet and peaceful. She hated to leave. This was the first time she’d felt connected to Maya in months. But Regina was right. She did desperately need that shower.

  She slid off the bed and Maya stirred, lifted her head with a question in her gaze. Her eyes were still puffy from crying, and she bet the girl had a headache after all that.

  She leaned down to kiss Maya’s forehead. “Dinner’s almost ready and I have to clean up. Go help Nana with the table, and she’ll give you something for your headache.”

  Maya sniffled and nodded. Regina held out a hand for the girl, then gave Leah a look that clearly said, We’re talking about this after dinner.

  Yes, she agreed silently. After dinner. She needed a few hours of normal first.

  And it was normal. Beautifully, mundanely normal. They ate Regina’s fabulous spaghetti. She laughed with her boys, and even Maya cracked a smile. After dinner, they played several rounds of Uno, a family favorite that could get very competitive. She let the kids stay up past their bedtimes because she needed them close and she had no intention of sending them to school tomorrow. For a short while, their whole world consisted of that dinner table, and she was so happy for the reprieve.

  And then reality intruded with a bang.

  Chapter Six

  Glass shattered in the front room. It was a soft sound, one that they would’ve missed had there not been a lull in the conversation just then.

  Regina twisted around in her seat. “What on earth? Was that my front window?” She started to get up, but Leah stilled her with a hand on her arm.

  “Wait.” Maybe she was being paranoid, but all she could think about was this afternoon and the men with the guns. Vandalism wasn’t common in this neighborhood. She slowly pushed back from the table and moved toward the front of the house on silent feet.

  “Mom?” Maya said, a tremble in her voice.

  Leah shushed her and peeked around the half wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. The big bay windows were still intact. Instead, a panel of the door lay in glittering shards on the tiled floor of the foyer. Two shadows loomed on the other side of the door. A gloved hand was reaching through the broken window for the lock.

  Shit.

  Leah scrambled backward, still trying to be as silent as possible, despite the thundering pulse of her heart in her ears. Back in the kitchen, the boys were anxious and restless. Maya sat frozen to her chair, her eyes wide, face pale. Regina stood next to the table, her gaze mama-bear fierce behind the lens of her glasses. She opened her mouth, but Leah didn’t give her a chance to ask the questions she undoubtedly wanted to ask.

  “We have to go. Quickly.” She lifted Colton out of his seat, grabbed Maya’s hand and pulled them both toward the garage door. Cooper followed right on her heels, for once not asking any questions. Regina said nothing. She merely snagged both of their purses from the counter. She paused long enough in the mudroom to pull three already packed backpacks and two duffel bags from the closet.

  Go bags. She had packed go bags for them all.

  At Leah’s questioning look, she shrugged and tossed the bags into her SUV. “Old habits.”

  God. This one day had been stressful enough. She couldn’t imagine living her life on the run for as many years as Regina and Marcus had. Poor Regina, always looking over her shoulder, fearing her own family would find her, kill her, and take her child to be raised in the Mafia. What hell that must have been.

  Leah didn’t want that life for her children, but right now, she saw no other option than to run. She hustled the kids into the backseat of Regina’s SUV, but didn’t bother with the boys’ booster seats. She didn’t want them strapped in with no place to go in case bullets started flying again. “Get in the back and lie down flat.”

  “But Mom,” Colton protested.

  “Do it!” The command came out like a whip snap, and both of her boys stared at her as if they didn’t recognize her. If she wasn’t already terrified for their safety, she’d have been scared of those looks.

  Honestly, she wasn’t sure she’d recognize herself right now.

  She tried to get behind the wheel, but Regina shooed her into the back with the kids.

  “Leave it to me.”

  Leah wasn’t comfortable giving up so much control, but at the same time, she wanted to hold her kids and keep them safe from whatever was waiting on the other side of the garage door. “This is my mess. I should—”

  “Protect your babies. I have experience with escape and evasion. Do you?”

  No, she did not. She didn’t have the first clue what to do and was running on pure adrenaline-fueled instinct. That settled it. She
climbed into the back of the SUV with her kids and gathered all three of them into her arms.

  She held her breath as the garage door rattled open. Would they hear it and come running, guns drawn?

  “Mom,” Maya said, her tiny voice shaking right along with her body. “What’s happening?”

  “There are some bad men that came after me today at work. I think they’re here now, but Nana Gina will get us out of here.”

  “Nana Gina is a superhero,” Colton declared.

  “Damn right I am, kiddo.” Regina flashed them a reassuring grin over her shoulder—Marcus’s grin—then threw the SUV into reverse. “Hang on!”

  The vehicle shot out of the garage with a squeal of tires, the top of the car scraping horribly against the bottom of the slowly rising garage door. Regina spun the wheel, handling the hulking vehicle like it was a sleek car made for taking tight corners. The SUV rocked, the kids cried out, and Leah held them tighter. Just when she thought they might flip over, the vehicle landed back on its four wheels and the treads gripped the pavement. As they sped away, she glanced back through the window. The two shadows she’d seen at the front door did indeed have guns, but they held them at their sides as they ran out onto the front lawn. They stared after the SUV. She couldn’t see their expressions in the darkness, but she imagined there was a whole lot of “WTF?” on their faces right now.

  This was a nice neighborhood, a peaceful neighborhood, and all the noise already had lights popping on all up and down the street. 911 was probably flooded with all kinds of calls about the disturbance.

  The two men raced away by foot. They’d probably parked far from the intended scene of the crime, and they’d be long gone before the police arrived. They wouldn’t be caught, but at least they weren’t giving chase.

  Leah eased her grip on her babies and did a quick check. “Is everyone okay? Colton?”

  He nodded. He had silent tears running down his face, but he was bravely trying to keep it together. “I’m okay.”

  “My brave boy. Coop?”

  Flushed with excitement, Cooper grinned. “That was awesome. Like a video game! Nana Gina is a superhero!”

  And that response terrified her more than a little bit. This kid was fearless, already an adrenaline junkie. He was going to be the cause of every gray hair on her head. “Boys, get in your seats. Maya, honey, are you—?”

  She flinched away from her mother’s touch, and Leah’s heart sank. The girl’s face was expressionless, completely unreadable in the yellow light of the passing streetlamps. Shutting down again, retreating behind her impenetrable wall. After all the progress they’d made this afternoon, those two assholes had ruined it.

  “I’m okay,” Maya said, although she sounded anything but.

  God. She wanted to wrap her arms around her girl, but it would only make her withdraw more. Leah knew it from those horrible weeks last summer. So instead she focused on the boys, helping them get buckled into their booster seats.

  Maya sat in the far back, already buckled. She stared out the window, the side of her head pressed to the glass.

  Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

  Choking back tears, Leah climbed into the front passenger seat in time to see Regina zip up the interstate on-ramp and squeeze into merging traffic between a double-cab pickup and a Fiat, somehow managing to avoid grazing either of their bumpers. She then deftly switched lanes again and hit the gas.

  Leah grabbed for the oh shit handle. “Can you—?”

  “Slow down? So you want those men back there to catch us?”

  “They aren’t following us.”

  “Oh, amore. You have a lot to learn. Always assume they’re following. Now care to tell me what that was all about?”

  She glanced back at the kids. Colton was entertaining Cooper with a retelling of their escape with plenty of embellishments—she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen Regina shoot lasers from her eyes at the bad guys. Maya was still staring out the window.

  She shifted in her seat, leaning closer and lowering her voice. “I was attacked at work today by…I don’t know. They had guns. I got away only because a British man saved me.”

  “British, huh? Was he handsome?”

  “Regina, really?”

  “What? It’s important to know all the details.”

  “Now I know where Marcus gets it from.”

  Regina gave an exaggerated sigh. “I take full responsibility for that. He is too much like me in all the worst ways. So, during the rescue, did the British man tell you why you were getting shot at?”

  “He said—” Another quick glance at the kids, just in case. She’d learned the hard way her boys had ears like rabbits. “He said he was Danny’s informant and I shouldn’t trust the FBI. He said I needed to take this…” She dug in her pocket for the drive he’d given her. “To Marcus. To HORNET. He wants them to find him before someone or something called The Wolf kills him.”

  “The Wolf?”

  She tucked the drive back into her pocket. “Your guess is as good as mine. Danny never mentioned The Wolf or a man named Alexander Cabot—that’s the British man’s name. Or at least the one he gave me.”

  “Well, Danny wouldn’t have said anything, would he? If this is something big enough, dangerous enough, to have armed men chasing you, he wouldn’t have wanted you and the kids involved.”

  “But he’s gone, and so by default, now we are.”

  “Yes.” Regina was silent for a moment, then cut across several lanes of traffic.

  Leah caught a brief glimpse of the sign for the airport before the SUV flew down the exit ramp. “Where are we going?”

  “Not we. You. You’ll go get my Marcus and drag him home to protect you and these kids.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “He thinks I don’t, but I always know. Same place he went last time he did this. Indonesia.” She rolled her eyes. “Surfing.”

  Of course. Nihiwatu, Occy’s Left. He and Danny had talked about riding that wave since they were kids and had read an article about it, but it had always been more Danny’s dream than Marcus’s. The realization that he’d gone off to live out her husband’s dream sliced open so many barely healed wounds. “I-I can’t go to Indonesia. I don’t have my passport or—”

  “You have it. It’s in the bag I packed for you when I picked the kids up from school.”

  “But I can’t afford a last-minute ticket.”

  “Take my credit card. You’re an authorized user.”

  “No. You’re talking crazy. I can’t leave the kids!”

  Regina sent her a sideways glance. “Sweetheart, listen to me. Right now, they’re safer away from you. I’ll take them to HORNET’s compound. Nobody will get to them there.”

  Oh, that hurt. The pain stabbed through her heart, a cruel knife, and she rubbed at her chest. Her babies should always be safest with her. Always.

  She shook her head, and tears she tried so hard to keep back spilled over. “I don’t want anything to do with HORNET.”

  “I know.” For an instant, Regina’s voice broke. That tough outer shell cracked and showed a brief glimpse of her own pain and sorrow she kept hidden underneath. “I know how you feel about them, and nobody faults you for it. With what happened to Danny, you have every right. But they are good people, Leah. They will protect your kids with their lives.”

  Regina brought the car to a stop in front of departures.

  Leah didn’t move. She just sat there, shaking her head. “I can’t leave them.”

  “You have to.” Regina turned in her seat and gathered Leah’s hands in hers. “I spent most of my adult life protecting my son from one of the most dangerous crime families in the world. I know better than anyone how to keep those kids safe.”

  “Oh no. It’s not that I don’t trust you.” She was appalled that Regina might ever think t
hat. She trusted this woman more than her own mother. “I just—”

  “No, I know. It’s okay. I understand it’s a lot to ask right now. If I’m honest, I was always going to ask this of you. It just happened sooner than I had planned. Marcus needs you. He needs the reminder of you—of us, of family—or we might never get him back.”

  Did Leah want him back?

  Yes.

  No.

  God, she didn’t know. She was so angry at him for leaving her when she needed him, and angry at herself because she knew deep in her heart she had been the one to drive him away.

  Regina gave her hands a squeeze. “And, now, you need his help. You need each other.”

  She glanced back at her kids. She had no doubt Regina could keep them safe, but she did very much doubt her own ability to convince Marcus to help. And the thought of leaving her children when they had just been attacked sat like lead in her belly. But Regina was right. The kids were probably safer without her, and she didn’t have many options right now.

  “Tomorrow,” Leah decided. “Tonight, we’ll find a hotel. I need time to explain what’s happening to the kids. And I don’t want you taking them to HORNET. Take them anywhere else. Just…not to them.”

  Regina’s lips thinned with disapproval. Obviously, she’d expected Leah to go right along with this plan, hop out of the car, and demand a seat on the first plane to Indonesia tonight. That was what Regina would have done, but Leah wasn’t that bold or spontaneous. She needed time to think. To plan.

  “Please,” she said softly. “Tomorrow.”

  Finally, Regina gave a slow shake of her head and shifted the car to drive. “Fine. Tomorrow, but I’m buying you the first ticket out.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sumba, Indonesia