by Angel Payne
Due in part to the man now whimpering at Tait’s feet.
“You ready to do this, spook man?”
Dan bristled. The nickname irked. He hadn’t been a real spook for a while. Though he was still on the CIA’s payroll, his indefinite medical leave wouldn’t be lifted until he received clearance from one of their “approved” head shrinks—and he’d be damned if anyone was going to crack open his psyche for a guided tour anytime soon. Nevertheless, he let the label slide. There was more important work to focus on.
“You know it,” he uttered back.
“Music to my ears.” Tait chuckled while watching Stock’s eyes widen, before the man trickled a scream past the edges of a dirty cloth gag. “But that doesn’t suck either, Stock. You sing all you want, because I’ve been waiting a long damn time for this—namely, from the moment I had to bury the woman I loved thanks to your terrorism.” He ran the knife over the sharpening stone again. “Learning that you extorted my mom for years, keeping her from my brother and me, really wasn’t a helpful to your case either, man. And oh yeah…the bit about my sweet little old lady neighbor secretly being your minion, assigned to kill Shay and me if mom ever tried to contact us? So a big winner in the karma department.” He grunted. “Guess it’s a good thing you got some points back when Shay and I found Mom last year.”
Dan pivoted. Planted a boot on Stock’s chest, his face directly in Stock’s line of vision. “Let’s not forget his unique monster-making talent, either. Maybe I’ll just stand here and remind you, asshole.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic idea,” Tait growled. “Nice little preview of hell.”
“Bingo.”
“You’re so damn sweet, Colton.”
“Right? That’s me. Mr. Giver.”
“That frees me up to be Mr. Karma.” The tension rolled thicker off Tait, pretty much as Dan expected—but he still slid a questioning stare at his friend. Something was suddenly off about the guy. Tait had anticipated this day for a long damn time, twice as long as Dan. So why was there a palpable conflict in the man?
“Well?” Dan demanded. “You ready?”
Tait rolled his shoulders then nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” But after he took two steps over, he paused—then returned Dan’s stare with just as much determination. “No, Dan.” He shook his head. “Not okay. Dammit, I’m sorry, but…”
Dan glared. Let his jaw plummet. “You’re—what?”
A corner of his mouth jerked up. “Dude, sometimes…you just have to let love win.”
“You have to do what?”
“I know, I know. Sounds like a sappy song, right?”
“No, goddammit. Sounds like pussy-whipped walking.”
“Maybe.” Tait tossed the knife to the ground then rolled his shoulders again. “Okay, probably.”
Dan glared at the weapon. Again at his friend. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not. This time, love’s the winner for me, man. The lightning bolt that just keeps hitting. I watched my brother declare the same truth for his life today. My mom was on one side of me, Lani on the other…lightning bolts number two and three, the loves I never thought life would give me, let alone in such abundance. And I’ve got a feeling that Lani, Kell, and I will be working on number four in a while, too. Life is good and I’m not going to blow it this time.”
Rage pounded Dan’s chest. Every mottled inch of skin on the right side of his face burned with it, too. Logically, he knew the pain was only memory. Didn’t matter when memories were as true as reality. And sure as hell didn’t matter when the fury seeped so deep, he longed to strangle Tait before driving the knife into Stock.
Life is good?
Love’s the winner?
What. The. Fuck?
“Well, isn’t that the most precious thing?” He couldn’t spit it viciously enough. “So glad to know things worked out for you, dude. That traveling all the way to Mexico, finding this ass-nozzle, flying him out and bringing him right to your feet was so worth my fucking time!”
Tait’s face—still so surfer-god attractive, he’d left at least a dozen women panting in his wake during Shay’s bachelor party at Gilley’s the other night—tautened. “Calm the hell down. Nobody asked you to play Dog the Bounty Hunter and traipse down to Mexico on a vendetta.”
“Shut up,” Dan snarled. He grabbed the knife and stomped over, thrusting the handle back out at the guy. “Shut the fuck up, Tait, and send this bastard to hell now—or I will!”
* * *
“We’re really going to hell for this.” Tait’s hands were matching loops of white around the steering wheel of his rented Escalade, even in the fading twilight. “You know that, right?”
A groan came from the back seat, laced with rickety agony—sounding a lot like a bastard with a knife in his scrotum. Dan glanced over his shoulder at Stock’s prone form in the back seat. Well, imagine that. The guy did have a Bowie hilt hard-on. The sack they’d tossed over Stock’s head in Mexico now made for an improvised dressing around the wound, and a heap of hotel towels—God knew why Tait had the things in the car—were swaddled around the bastard, warding off a little of the encroaching shock. Even so, Stock’s continued consciousness was surprising. He was either one of the most tenacious scumbags Dan had ever encountered or he’d really made a deal with the devil—a pact Dan would already be delivering on right now, if Bommer the magical Hallmark card hadn’t stopped him.
Dammit.
At least he’d gotten in the satisfaction of going Benihana on the dickwad’s scrotum. And yeah, he hated admitting it, but watching Stock in agony was maybe a bit more fun than gazing at his corpse. Now, he was determined to enjoy every moment of the show.
“Awww, Cameron,” he drawled. “Is that a knife in your balls or are you just happy to see me?”
“Fuh you!”
He snorted Tait’s way. “Funny how that one always translates.”
Tait added his glower to the mix. “You heard what I said, right? We’re dragging that asshole, bleeding crotch and all, back to my little brother’s wedding reception.”
“And that’s my fault…why?”
Tait huffed. “Did you stop to think about the date of your little toodle-loo South of the Border, billionaire boy? You RSVP’ed to the wedding, too.”
“No. Brynn RSVP’ed for both of us.”
“Because the woman’s good that way. Really good. You know she’s probably the best thing that ever happened to you, including your pre-asshole days, right?”
“You mean pre-Quasimodo days?”
“I mean pre-asshole.”
“Sheez. I sent Zo and Shay a present.”
“You sent them a whole game room.”
“They didn’t like it?”
The guy stabbed a hand through hair that resembled a tsunami, due to all the product coating the strands. “For a second, just one, try to wrap your mind around how stressed we all were today. About you. When you didn’t show up at the church, we all thought—” He stopped, clearly editing himself, though the damage was already done. Dan knew damn well what they’d all thought. “Well, we were worried. So when you texted in the middle of dinner with that ‘urgent, you gotta come now’ shit—”
“Sorry to have disappointed,” Dan drawled. “I know hand-delivering Stock wasn’t as exciting as talking me down off the top of the Cosmopolitan. Shit, we could’ve topped off the night with foo-foo drinks in the Chandelier Bar, too. What was I thinking?”
Bommer shook his head. “You know, asshole, I’m five seconds away from taking out your teeth with my fist. You want to devalue your life like that, I’m past fighting the issue. But stop dragging the rest of us into your goddamn hole.”
Silence was the best response to that one. Even rounding the corner on his twenty-sixth sleepless hour, jacked on fury and adrenalin, the wisdom prevailed. Wouldn’t do him any good to point out the “hole” wasn’t his to begin with, dug deeper by the two off-books ops that the band of merry men known to the outside wo
rld as Operational Detachment Alpha, First Special Forces Group, had gotten themselves into. Wouldn’t be a valid point, anyway. He’d been a willing accomplice to both the wild boys on both rides, including his decision to dive into that burning building in the North Nevada wilderness.
In the doing, he’d saved a nurse’s life and lived through the ordeal himself, a miracle that should’ve brought more comfort than it did. But that was the things about monkeys on a guy’s back, especially the species known as bitterness—especially if it lived in the eyes of the mangled man in the mirror.
These days, it was simply easier to match the inside to the outside.
“Fuck,” Tait groused. “I’ve been gone an hour and a half.”
“Boo hoo,” Dan volleyed. “I’m sure Lani and Kell kept your seat warm.” In more interesting ways than he wanted to imagine.
“You remember I’m the best man at this thing, right? The first toast guy? The keep-everything-moving guy?”
“And you would’ve been back to your duties much sooner than this, if—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. If I’d let you go hari-kari on fuckhead?”
“Technically, hari-kari is an act of suicide, but I’ll let it slide. You’ve been under some stress.”
Tait snorted. “Well, shit. You are Mr. Giver.”
“Not too late for me to take your place as Mr. Karma.” He glanced again at Stock, whose eyes widened in understanding of the intent. “Knife’s still in the perfect position, man. More or less.”
“No.”
“Well, you’re no fucking fun.”
“And you’re no fucking—” Tait gripped the wheel harder. “I really don’t know how to finish that.” The air in the car filled with the smoky edge of twilight before he murmured, “What the hell happened to you, Colton?”
Best to let that one descend into a long silence. Maybe another. “That was rhetorical, right?”
Another question that provided its own answer. As if Bommer were serious about a single damn word. As if Dan didn’t have the right rearview mirror to remind him of it. One glance that way, into the slab of mottled flesh from his temple to chin and cheekbone to ear, was proof enough of exactly what had “happened” to him.
“What’s rhetoric got to do with this?” Tait snapped. “And stop answering me by moping at yourself in the mirror. You think anyone notices that shit but you?”
“Says one of the guys who used to call me ‘CIA Ken’ because of ‘this shit’?”
“Yeah. So? We also called you Woofie the magical G-dog.”
“The fuck?”
“Own it, man. If Uncle Sam threw a Frisbee, you’d kill yourself to catch it.” A knowing smirk twisted Tait’s lips. “Now you just have the badge of honor to prove it. On the books or off, you were always the get-it-right guy.”
Dan’s fingers dug into the dust coating the vehicle’s roof. Beat the hell out of pulling his hand back inside, where it would’ve driven into the bastard’s face. Badge of honor? Was he kidding? “Not amusing, Bommer. Not in anyone’s fucking universe. That,”—he jabbed his chin at the burn scar on the inside of Tait’s right arm—“isn’t your permission slip to spout about this.” Flicking a finger at his face took care of that obviousness.
“Right. Because you don’t let it define every damn move you make, right?”
“Fuck off.”
Who the hell did Bommer think he was? Tait’s burn could be easily hidden by a long-sleeved shirt, but even without the cover, somebody would have to be looking to see his “badge.” Big fucking difference between that and walking around like something out of a circus side show. Bommer had no damn idea what this was like. None of them did.
“Fine,” Tait finally muttered. “I’ll give you the point. But do you really think any of us defined your work—which was damn good shit, by the way—based on your looking like a plastic doll minus the good parts?”
“Were you paying that much attention to my ‘good parts’?”
“Says the guy who just got his rocks off by digging a blade into Stock’s scrotum?”
“Says the guy who now shares a bed with his sniper partner?”
“And the hottest wahine in all the Hawaiian islands?”
Dammit. Fucker had a non-arguable point. Tait and Kellan’s unique relationship with their woman—yes, their woman, as in sharing the wealth in all ways imaginable—wasn’t one Dan easily understood, though it was far from his place to point judgmental fingers. The three of them were obviously past the point of happy about the arrangement—and for fuck’s sake, Tait deserved the joy after everything Stock and his partner, Ephraim Lor, took from the man.
And didn’t that bring everything full circle once again?
Tait Bommer, the one guy on the planet who’d been craving Stock’s head on a platter more than Dan, was now the guy who’d turned peace, love, and Ed Sheeran on him to all the sickest degrees—an anomaly so insane, it was strictly a see-it-to-believe-it thing. Okay, so it had been over a year since Luna died because of Stock and Lor’s terrorist plot. And, by all accounts, Lani Kail was even better for Tait than Luna was, a truth even Luna herself “agreed” with, Bommer had revealed with a cryptic smile.
Fuck.
He was actually using words like “cryptic” in the same sentence as Tait Bommer.
And maybe the earth was flat now, too. And aliens were lurking in the stratosphere, ready to probe everyone like extraterrestrial kinksters.
But the cosmic issues had to go on hold for now. Shit storm ahead. Brace for impact.
The second Tait hooked the car off Highway 159 and onto the access road to the ranch, the glow from hundreds of white party lights nearly made it possible for Tait to cut the car’s headlights. The bulbs hung were suspended across one of the ranch’s rustic picnic groves, with smaller lights wound around the supporting tree trunks. Old-fashioned oil lanterns rested on the banquet tables, which surrounded a wooden dance floor accented by big barrels brimming with sunflowers and wedding-type foof. It was a Wild West-themed wedding with all the gussy extras, and even from here, laughter filtered out from it on the wind.
There was a day, not too long ago, when Dan would’ve found such a sight enchanting. Hell, he’d probably have even conjured wistful thoughts of what his own wedding reception would be like. Now, the extra light was just an aid for illuminating his phone screen.
“I’ve got cell reception again,” he told Tait. “But I really want to lie to you about that.”
Tait cocked a brow. “You only gotta dial three little numbers, dude. Nine, one, and one.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s not one of the numbers.” His jaw clenched as Dan snorted. “Okay, do you really want to go there, man? To know his blood is on your hands—for the rest of your life? Before you give me the ‘amen, brother’ on that, listen to the guy who lines up sniper shots for a living.” He exhaled through his nose and shook his head. “That crap sticks to your soul, Colton. It follows you—and not in the good ways.”
Dan gripped the roof harder before retorting, “Right. Because I wouldn’t know anything about ‘crap’ that follows a guy around.” Like half a face full of burn scars.
“Just make the call, dickhead,” Bommer growled.
As he guided the Escalade toward a spot at the back of the parking lot, a voice crackled through in Dan’s ear.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
He peeked once more at Stock. The guy’s drooped in his pasty, sweaty face. Now you know what it’s like to wish you were already in hell, motherfucker.
“Hello? Hello? Do you have an emergency?”
“How about a sack of shit who won’t die?”
Tait swore under his breath before demanding, “Give me that, goddammit.”
As he yanked the phone away to give the operator real instructions, a commotion erupted at the other end of the parking lot. Okay, maybe not a ‘commotion’—but enough of a stir to lift even Stock’s head for a second. That was the kind of
effect Shay Bommer had on the air, anywhere he went. To be fair, he couldn’t help it. Shay was an actual force of nature, genetically altered as a child by one of Stock’s many “business partners” so his “animal side” was his animal side. As the guy stalked across the pavement, his massive body strained at the confines of his white shirt, ivory tuxedo vest, and tailored dress denims. His new bride was just a few steps behind, cobalt boots kicking from beneath her lacy wedding gown.
Dan exited the car then leaned against the hood. Might as well act relaxed, even if his bloodstream wasn’t in sync. “Congratulations, you two. Sorry I had to borrow your best man for a while—but I’ve returned him with a gift.”
Tait jerked up his head, shooting over a fresh glower. “E kala mai ia u,” he muttered into the phone. “Just one moment, my friend.” He looked fast to Shay. “It’s not a gift, brother. Stay back and for fuck sake, keep Zoe away. She’s in no condition to see this.”
Dan tossed his head back, barking a laugh. “Really, man? You don’t know your own sister-in-law better?”
“Keep me away from what?” Sure enough, Zoe Chestain-Bommer bolted forward like Tait had lassoed her. “And what do you mean, ‘no condition’? I’m pregnant, not schizo.”
“Don’t go near that one,” Dan warned Tait. “Not with a hundred-foot pole.”
Fortunately, it took three of Zoe’s steps to match one of Shay’s. “No way, dancer.” He caught her by the elbow in time, tucking her behind him. “Not until I’ve played the full shell game on this first.”
“Que?” The little Latina’s eyebrows arched. Technically, the word was a question. Not-so-technically, she’d told her new husband oh no, you didn’t.
Shay received backup in the form of his groomsmen, consisting of Rhett Lange and Rebel Stafford, both still serving with the First SFG and instrumental in saving Shay’s ass on that last off-books mission. They were joined by Ghid Preston, the walking rhino of a man who was passionately devoted to Shay and Tait’s mother, Melody Bommer. It actually surprised Dan that Melody wasn’t right behind—
