“And you’re my fucking brother.” There was something familiar in Joshua’s eyes. The same thing he’d seen in his own eyes every goddamned morning for years. Anger. “But I guess you’d prefer killing that asshole and saving her than talking to me.”
What? What the hell was he talking about?
Frost tried to struggle, but Jacob ignored him, his attention squarely on his brother. “Do you know how long I spent looking for you? Do you have any fucking idea?”
But at that moment, without warning, Faith abruptly leaned forward and shoved back the chair she’d been sitting in, sending it cannoning back into Joshua’s legs.
Taken by surprise, he cursed, stumbling, the gun going wide. Faith had gone down into a crouch but, quicker than she had any right to considering she’d just had her finger nearly cut off, she twisted and sprang, one foot catching Joshua in the chest, kicking him hard. He went down and she went with him.
A surge of adrenaline pulsed inside Jacob. Fuck, he could watch her beat people up all day, even if it was his own brother.
Sadly, he had other business.
Frost was cursing and trying to get away, so Jacob turned, drew back his fist, and punched him in the face. Once, twice, and a third time because he was just so fucking angry and the asshole had hurt Faith.
Frost went out like a light, so Jacob dropped him in a heap onto the tiles. Then he turned back to where Faith was to find her standing over Joshua, the gun now in her hand. Her other hand was held at her side, dripping blood onto the ground.
The sight of that blood made the pressure in his chest get worse, that feral rage squeezing him tight. He wanted to get his Glock, shoot Frost in the face for what he’d done to her. For the pain he’d caused.
Fuck, he’d do it right now.
He gripped his weapon and turned back to where Frost lay on the tiles.
“Jacob,” Faith said, her voice quiet yet strong. “Leave him. He’s handled. I think it’s time you talked to your brother.”
She’s right. Don’t let the anger win. You know how this ends when you do . . .
Yeah, he did. With everyone dead.
He took a breath, for some reason focusing on that cool note in her voice, the one that she used when she was organizing the team or giving him an update on whatever job was happening. Sometimes even when she was arguing with him about something. Businesslike, calm and competent. An antidote to the heat inside him.
The red mist faded and when he’d managed to get himself under control, he said, “One minute, Ms. Beasley.” Then he bent down to Frost and without hesitation, ripped a strip off the T-shirt the guy was wearing. Once he had a decent-sized piece, he moved over to where Faith stood.
Her hand was steady where it held the gun, but her face had gone deathly pale. Gently, he took her injured hand in his, shoving aside the howling rage as he saw the white flash of bone, then bound it up tightly to stem the flow of blood.
The only sound she made was a soft exhale as he pulled the fabric tight, but she shook her head sharply as he reached for the gun. “No,” she bit out. “I survived a gunshot wound. A cut finger is nothing.”
He ignored her. “Sit down. This is my fight. I need someone to cover the rest of those assholes anyway.”
She glanced at him and after a moment, nodded, relinquishing her grip on the gun.
Joshua hadn’t moved, simply lying there, the look on his face unreadable. Except the gleam in his eyes. Jacob could read that perfectly.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded. “I’ve spent five years looking for you only to find you with a fucking arms dealer and holding a gun to the head of one of my employees.” He stared hard into Joshua’s eyes. “That’s not the brother I thought I was looking for.”
“What the fuck did you expect?” Joshua shoved himself up, then stood. Jacob kept the gun trained on him, not trusting him for a second. “That I’d be married and settled down? With a white picket fence and a day job, and a whole bunch of kids? After what happened to me?”
Jacob felt his muscles go tight, the words hitting like blows. Truth was, he hadn’t thought about the kind of life his brother had had, or about what kind of person he’d turned into. He’d assumed Joshua had coped, like he’d had to cope, and focused only on the search.
But he shouldn’t have.
“Joshua,” he began.
“Five years,” his brother went on before Jacob could finish, his voice dripping with bitterness. “Five years you’ve spent looking for me. But what the fuck happened to the last twenty? Did you suddenly just remember that you had a brother or what?”
What could he say? That when he’d finally aged out of the system, he hadn’t felt fit to be a proper brother to anyone, let alone him? That he was ashamed for how his mistake had cost them a home? Ashamed for not having protected him?
“No,” he said at last. “It wasn’t until five years ago that I felt ready to find you.”
Joshua gave a hollow-sounding laugh. “Oh yes, I know all about that. Frost told me. About the Wolf Pack. About how you sabotaged your unit and how they all died. And then you were handed a nice fat payout and got to live the rest of your life in peace.”
He went cold. Absolutely fucking cold. And he had no answer.
Because it was all true.
He’d taken the order. He’d caused the death of his whole team and there was nothing he could do to change that. And as to peace . . . Was there any peace to be had when you were a traitor?
“And what about me,” Faith said suddenly, anger bleeding into her voice. “What’s your excuse for selling me out?”
Joshua glanced at her. “Do I really need to explain? You were sent to kill me.”
“I wanted an explanation, Josh. I told you that. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Yet you shot me anyway.”
“Because you betrayed me! Just like you betrayed our entire team, right?”
Joshua sneered. “Hey, just following along in the footsteps of my brother here.”
There was nothing but bitterness in Joshua’s voice and it was there in his eyes, too. Bitterness and anger and pain.
There were going to be no easy answers here.
“We need to talk,” Jacob said. “Alone.”
Joshua gave a laugh that held no amusement. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
Jacob did not lower his gun. If Josh thought that he was going to simply let him walk away, his brother needed to think again.
“I can’t let you go, Josh, if that’s what you were hoping. You’ve done some bad shit, which means you have to take responsibility for it.”
Joshua looked at the gun, then back at him. “Like you took responsibility for the ‘bad shit’ you did? With your payout and your anonymity?”
So his brother was angry. He got it. Joshua wasn’t wrong. He had gotten a payout and in a way, losing his identity had been a good thing.
It had meant he could start over, with a new life and a new code. A better code. But that didn’t erase the past. And if Joshua didn’t see fit to take responsibility for his own actions, then Jacob would take responsibility for him. It was the only thing he could do.
“I’m making up for what happened in the Ukraine,” he said flatly. “And I’ll continue to do so, believe me. But that’s got nothing to do with you. What has, is the information I’ve collected on Frost and your goddamn arms ring. Information that I’ll be passing along to the authorities.”
Josh’s expression hardened, his whole body tensing.
“Don’t,” Jacob warned very softly, just in case his brother was planning on doing something really, really stupid. “I won’t kill you, Josh, but I have no problem with putting a bullet in your thigh if you’re planning on running out. Be a fair swap given what you put Faith through.”
“Faith?” Josh was derisive. “Her name is Joanna, asshole.”
But there was no more opportunity for talking because Jacob caught movement out of the corner of his eye, the distin
ctive sound of a bullet humming past his ear and embedding itself in the balustrade.
Shit. Looked like Frost’s reinforcements had arrived.
Faith was already moving, upending the table to give them some cover. But as she leapt over it, he heard her gasp and jerk, blood blooming up high on the sleeve of her shirt.
His whole world slowed to a stop.
“Jake,” Joshua said, low and harsh.
Jacob was already moving in the direction of the table, desperate to get to Faith, but he risked one glance at his brother because there was something in his voice that caught him.
Joshua’s dark eyes held his and for a second the anger in them shifted and flickered.
Then abruptly Joshua turned as one of the security guards stepped out onto the terrace, the muzzle of an AR aimed directly at Jacob, and before the guy could get a shot off, Joshua grabbed it, twisted it out of his hands, and elbowed the guy in the face.
There was no time to wonder what the hell his brother was doing, not when Faith was injured, so Jacob dove behind the upturned table. The sounds of guns firing came from beyond it, but no bullets hit, which was weird.
Then he stopped wondering as he gathered a pale-looking Faith up in his arms. She was breathing fast, lines of pain around her mouth.
“You know what?” she said tightly, her head falling back against his shoulder. “I’m getting really sick of being shot.”
He said nothing, the pressure in his chest too much for speech. Instead he pulled at the fabric of her T-shirt to get a look at the wound. It was clean, the bullet having passed right through her shoulder.
“Josh?” she asked faintly.
“I don’t know,” he forced out. “He turned on them, took a gun . . . I think . . .” He stopped for a second, then went on. “I think he was trying to protect us.”
She frowned, her mouth opening to say something. But before she could a familiar voice said, “Night? Where the fuck are you?”
Kellan. The goddamn cavalry at last.
Jacob rose, holding Faith in his arms.
Kellan, Jack, and Isiah were standing at the entrance to the terrace, all of them fully armed and all of them looking puzzled.
And no wonder. Every single one of Frost’s security seemed to be lying on the ground.
“Jesus,” Kellan said, his eyes widening as he took in Faith. “Do we need an ambulance?”
“No.” Jacob tightened his grip on the woman in his arms. “The coast clear?”
Kellan blinked. “Uh, yeah. We got in here and basically everyone’s dead. Nothing left for us to do. What happened?”
Joshua must have happened. Christ.
Ignoring the question, Jacob stepped over the table. “Did you see anyone? Anyone at all?”
“No,” Jack said curtly. “Not a damn thing. You take them all out yourself?”
He hadn’t told them about his brother and he wasn’t about to now. They didn’t need to know.
Joshua had gotten away somehow and he was . . . well, he wasn’t going to go running after him right now, that was for sure.
“I had help,” he said gruffly, and looked down at Faith. “We need to keep this on the down-low, sweet girl. You okay with that? I have a doctor on my payroll who’ll stitch you up, no questions asked.”
She gave him a faint smile. “Of course. Stupid bullet wound didn’t kill me before. It’s not going to kill me now.”
Realizing that his team was staring, no small amount of shock on their faces, Jacob gave them a glare. “Well?” he demanded. “Presumably someone brought a car?”
CHAPTER 18
Two days later, Faith sat on the couch in the 11th Hour HQ, her shoulder all strapped up, her finger stitched, feeling exhausted from the past couple of hours of answering the team’s questions about her memory loss and her identity as Joanna Lynn.
She hadn’t known how they’d react to the truth, but apparently, fascination was the order of the day, especially about how her amnesia had worked and the moment she’d remembered who she was. She hadn’t wanted to talk too much about what had prompted her dissociative state and they were sensitive enough to let that alone, though they did want all the details about how she’d managed to knock Jacob out not once but twice. Kellan in particular seemed to find that very satisfying.
Naturally, their questions soon circled around to what was going to happen now she remembered who she was, but luckily, at that point, Jacob arrived and told everyone in no uncertain terms to get the hell out.
As soon as they were gone and he’d shut the door after them, he came over to where she sat and stood in front of her, arms folded across his massive chest, his black brows drawn down.
She hadn’t seen much of him in the past couple of days. He’d been debriefing the team on what had gone down with Frost—leaving Joshua out of it from what she’d managed to discern—and dealing with the fallout from what had happened at Frost’s.
The information on the arms ring he’d collected—plus the names of the various high-ranking men involved—had been handed in to the authorities, along with Frost himself. To keep Jacob, not to mention the team, out of the public eye, much of it had been handled anonymously, with Sabrina’s hacker skills hiding any digital tracks, and Jacob’s network of informants handling anything that needed a physical presence.
The 11th Hour would stay in the shadows.
As for herself, she’d been seen by Jacob’s doctor, and had been instructed to take a couple of weeks’ bedrest.
Which was fine. Except she didn’t feel in the least bit tired.
Her brain kept going over and over the issue of her future and what she was going to do now she’d remembered who she was. Whether she was going to return to her unit—though whether she could or not was another story—or go and do something else.
Or stay with the 11th Hour.
Stay with Jacob.
The thought terrified her for reasons she couldn’t articulate so she hadn’t thought about that aspect too much. Instead she’d decided to talk to him solely about her position with the 11th Hour and not so much about their relationship.
If they even had a relationship, which they probably didn’t. He’d said she was his, but only while they’d been in bed. It was likely to be a heat of the moment thing, nothing he’d meant to continue.
“I never say anything I don’t mean . . .”
She shoved his voice from two days ago out of her head and stared at the man standing in front of her now, his gaze impenetrable, giving nothing away.
“Hey,” she said. “Hope the rest of them didn’t mind being ordered out of their own HQ.”
“Since I own the building, I can do whatever the hell I goddamn well please.” His voice was rough, which wasn’t a good sign.
“Okay.” She shifted on the couch. “You want to sit down? Looks like you have something to talk about.”
He made no move to sit. “The deal with Frost is handled,” he said shortly. “Joshua has disappeared. I can’t find him anywhere.”
“Oh.” She took a silent breath, not wanting to think about Joshua or what had happened out on the terrace. The fierce pain of Frost’s knife hadn’t been nearly as sharp as the realization that Joshua was not going to stop it from happening. That he was going to stand there and let her be tortured.
That, more than anything else—including the bullet wound—had hurt. But a source of pride to her over the past day or so was that she hadn’t told Frost anything about Jacob, not one single damn thing.
Of course, Jacob had arrived before things had gotten too bad and she wasn’t too proud that she could admit to loving how he’d simply picked Frost up and nearly thrown him over the edge of the terrace. One-handed. God, she wished she’d caught it on video so she could replay it over and over again.
“Yes,” Jacob said. “‘Oh’ is a good word for it.”
She studied him for a second. “You don’t want to find him, do you?”
His expression was guarded, which hurt bec
ause she was hoping for a bit more trust from him by now. Then again, considering how many times she’d knocked him out, maybe not.
He was silent, though when at last he did speak, it wasn’t to answer her question. “I haven’t talked to the team yet, but you should know that I’m handing over control of the 11th Hour to Isiah.”
Cold shock washed over her. “What?”
“My run is at an end.” His voice was flat. “And I’ve . . . lost my taste for it. I’ll still bankroll it but I won’t be otherwise involved in it in any way.”
His face was set, his jaw hard. A cold light glittered in his eyes.
He was serious about this.
She struggled to think of what to say, because this was the very last thing she’d thought he’d do. “Jacob . . . I don’t understand. Why?”
He straightened minutely, as if steeling himself. “You heard what Joshua said, didn’t you? About my team? About how I led them to their deaths?”
She’d heard, but she’d simply discounted it because the thought of Jacob somehow betraying his men was ludicrous. “Yes, but that’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie.” His gaze was steady, direct. “I did lead my team to their deaths. And Frost was one of them. I thought he’d died along with everyone else, but he hadn’t.” His voice could have chipped granite it was so hard.
“What happened?” she asked, straight out. “Tell me.”
“We were given orders to attack a building sheltering some militia. We knew from our sources that the place was crawling with the enemy and that we didn’t have enough men. I wanted to get in and get out, because we were pressed for time and orders were orders. But Frost disagreed. He thought the orders were wrong. Going in there would be like heading into a meat grinder.” Something burned in his expression, a kind of ferocity. “I ignored him. We weren’t paid to think. We were paid to get the job done. And so that’s what I did. I ordered them in there and they all fucking died.” Suddenly his gaze was focusing on her, sharper than razors. “I told you Jacob Night is the cage that protects people from who I used to be. And there’s a reason for that.”
Hard Night (11th Hour #3) Page 26
