Absolute Trust

by Piper J. Drake

  And because Forte had listened to Sophie manage the man, chances were fairly reasonable in favor of the man being an idiot.

  “I wanted to meet you.” Asshole definitely had dirty laundry to unload. “Your name, Brandon Forte, has come up a lot recently. Right up there with David Cruz and Alexander Rojas. The three of you have reputations, you know. You’re supposed to be the badass super professionals every mercenary team wants. You and your dogs. Fucking exceptional or some shit.”

  Forte raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Not easy to look unconcerned when you had a weapon in your hands, but it could come in handy if you could master the art of it.

  To be honest, he hadn’t thought of the possibility of them developing reputations in the circles of influence maintained by mercenary organizations. He figured they’d made a few enemies, yeah. But building reputations had a different connotation to it.

  And he should’ve had better insight into it because even Raul Sa had mentioned it. If one established organization acknowledged them, others would, too.

  Forte had assumed he and Cruz and Rojas hadn’t needed to know more about the private sector than what it took to assure themselves their dogs were going to ethical companies. They’d been more focused on the welfare of the dogs and what purposes the working dogs would be used for rather than the influence the organization had in the industry as a whole.

  If he survived the night, he was going to have to take steps to be more aware. For himself and his partners. “It’s good to know we’re well thought of in the industry.”

  The other man scowled, his mouth twisting into a bitter grimace. “You fucks screwed up the prospects of a close friend of mine. Brothers in arms. He’s worth ten of you fuckers. We served together, planned to go into private contract together. He’s in jail now. Because of you fuckers.”

  Aw, c’mon. Forte cursed as much as the next man. And he was a firm believer there was a time and a place where a solid curse expressed a sentiment more clearly than any twenty-dollar vocabulary word could. But damn, a lack of variety when a person indulged in cursing was just lazy.

  “Ah, well…fuck. Sorry you feel that way.” He wouldn’t apologize for the actions Cruz had taken to protect Lyn almost a year ago.

  Cruz had incapacitated several kidnappers when he’d pulled Lyn out of a warehouse in downtown Philadelphia. More than one man had ended up behind bars as a result, but only one of them had been a former military veteran. Actually, that wasn’t true, either. Forte had an idea of who this guy was referring to.

  Cruz had gone head to head with an ex-Navy SEAL, dishonorably discharged. There were bad examples of humanity in every branch of every military in the world, and this guy had been one of the irredeemable. He’d been willing to stoop to stalking, kidnapping, and potentially killing Lyn just to get ahold of Atlas.

  There were good men and women both actively serving in the armed forces and retired from them. But like any other aspect of the universe, there were twisted, bad individuals in the mix, too.

  Seemed like it was his turn to come face-to-face with his share of them. Again.

  A soldier could survive to walk off a battlefield, even go home. But life had a way of making every day a different kind of fight.

  “You know the company I work for was impressed?” The man spit to one side, on Sophie’s medical boot. “You all kept it quiet. Neat. Minimal issues with the local law enforcement. Excellent public relations, they said. Your entire community went on believing you were all hometown heroes. I couldn’t resist starting out our little party with a present to make sure all that blew up in your face.”

  If it’d gone as planned, Sophie would’ve gone up along with the car. The man probably thought he’d been clever. Even better if he’d succeeded.

  Anger burned low in Forte’s belly. He banked the emotion, leveraged it to keep his thought process sharp. Keeping his joints loose, his posture relaxed, he had his finger off the trigger but ready for the split second he could acquire his target.

  There’d be a window of opportunity. He needed to wait for it. “No. I didn’t know anyone was impressed.”

  Always interesting when you could give the truth to the person who hated you for it.

  “They wanted to bring you on as an asset. You and your mutt trainers were supposed to be valuable additions. Fucking eliminate my friend and they want to offer you fuckers a position, serving with me? I don’t think so.” The man tightened his hold on Sophie’s hair and brought his gun to her skull.

  Her eyes glistened, but she kept them open and on Forte, watching him for any cue. The calm faith in her gaze split his heart. His brave, beautiful, smart Sophie.

  “I did receive an offer. I didn’t accept.” He only wanted to antagonize the idiot to the edge of reason. He didn’t want to push the man into enough of a rage to finally kill her.

  “No? You mean not yet.” The man ground out the words. “But I had a better idea, especially when this contract came in. I volunteered for it. You know, there were assassin organizations back in the old days.”

  Did the man actually know some history? Could be.

  “Define old days.” Forte invited him to keep talking, hoping the man would get tired of holding Sophie so tight.

  “More than decades, centuries ago.” The idiot tossed his head. “Exact time doesn’t matter. What matters was those organizations had an initiation system.”

  This was sounding more like the backstory of a video game than an actual history lesson. There could be some valid history in there somewhere, but it was lost in this guy’s interpretation.

  “Back then, the final rite of passage was for one initiate to kill another.” An ugly grin split the man’s face. “I like it. I came out here figuring I’d get paid to kill this bitch and I’d take the opportunity to make sure to take you out, too. Man of your reputation? It’d be worth a raise for me to prove I’m that much more of an asset.”

  Well, that explained why Sophie hadn’t died outright. She’d been smart to keep the man talking. The idiot wanted to talk, wanted the validation of revealing to everyone how clever he was. But there were only so many words inside the man’s head, and he was running down the clock now.

  “Okay.” Forte smiled in return, taunting him. “So kill me.”

  It’d be a Wild West quick draw. And he only had one chance.

  “Oh no.” The man shook his head, his gaze sharp. “You can watch her die first. You can go to hell knowing you weren’t better than me.”

  Sophie’s arm swung up in an arc, and she twisted to add more momentum to her backswing. The thing in her hand contacted hard with the side of the man’s head. The gun came away from her head, and he lost his grip on her hair as he stumbled a step to one side.

  Forte raised his arms, took aim, and fired.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sophie curled around Haydn, covering him with her body as well as she could. She imagined how painful it would be to be shot in the back or the head. And she tried to brace herself for it. At this close range, even if Brandon had managed to shoot her attacker, she was going to be hurt.

  Or at least, she refused to be stupid enough to assume she wouldn’t be.

  Tremors shook her body, and she clutched Haydn’s prosthetic leg in her right hand. It’d worked to get her loose from the man, give Brandon the opening he needed. But she might need to use it again. Or maybe she couldn’t make herself let it go. She wasn’t sure.

  There’d been a gun to her head. The whole logical thought process thing was limited at the moment.

  “Sophie.” Brandon’s voice came to her low, soft, warm.

  He hadn’t sounded human a few moments ago. She’d never heard him that way. He’d been cold, sarcastic. His words had cut the air, devoid of any caring. He’d told her once, after he’d come back into her life, that he’d become good at compartmentalizing.

  What he’d meant was that he’d taken everything human, everything that made him Brandon, and shut it away.

&n
bsp; She’d seen him, heard him, and desperately looked for some hint of the Brandon she knew in the man who’d stood facing her. And she hadn’t been able to see him. Instead, she’d had to believe he was still in there somewhere.

  “Sophie. Are you hurt?” Leaves crunched as he kneeled next to her. He still hadn’t touched her.

  She was relieved he didn’t. Not because she didn’t want him to, but because she couldn’t stop shaking. “You’re back.”

  A pause. “I wouldn’t have left you.”

  Funny. It was as if they’d gone right back to the conversation they’d been having before guns and fire and people had interrupted them.

  She shook her head. “I’m not bleeding. Haydn is. He needs help.”

  “Let me see.” Brandon took hold of her shoulder then, and gently eased her away from the big dog. She moved, but she kept her left hand pressed against the spot where she could feel hot blood seeping out. “Keep a look out ahead of us. Don’t look over your shoulder.”

  The man behind them might be dead then. She’d never seen a fresh corpse. Hadn’t ever thought about Brandon as a man who’d killed someone. The idea of a man defending his country had been a lot easier to hold in her mind than the reality a few feet away from her.

  She was grateful. She was also still trying to grasp what was going on around her while it all happened too fast.

  Haydn was still breathing. When Brandon pressed against the GSD’s shoulder, Haydn whined. “We’re going to need light to see how bad this is. You’ve got pressure on the one spot, but I can’t tell if the bullet exited somewhere. He could be bleeding from an exit wound.”

  Her heart dropped into her stomach and both of them churned. “We need to get him to an animal hospital.”

  Brandon turned his face to her, meeting her gaze. His hazel eyes were still hard and fierce. “There are two more men out there. I can’t carry him and keep you safe.”

  He was making a decision. Just like that. This might not be the first time he’d had to leave someone behind to save someone else.

  It was the right thing to do. But it shouldn’t be for her.

  “I’ll hide here.” She could do that. It was a valid alternative. She could stay out of the way. “You can take him to get help and come back for me.”

  “No.” Brandon reached for her.

  She leaned away. She wouldn’t leave Haydn here. “He’s dying. Don’t let him die…for me.”

  The last words came out whispered, and she hated herself for crying, for wasting time arguing with him. She’d become somebody she didn’t recognize anymore. She could not remember a time when she had ever endangered them by questioning Brandon’s judgment when urgent matters were at hand. When it came to emergencies, she’d always believed a person should listen to authorities and firemen and Brandon. They were trained, had the expertise and the skills to make a difference.

  But right now, this was happening because of her. She was going to have to live with the sight of Haydn burned into her mind. The warmth of his blood was always going to be against her palms.

  “Don’t let him die for nothing.” Brandon’s rebuke stung.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  She didn’t fight more as he cupped his hand under her elbow and helped her to her feet. Her ankle hurt, but she gritted her teeth and put weight on it anyway. If he couldn’t carry Haydn, he couldn’t carry her.

  He waited until she was steady, then he stepped in front of her. “Stay with me. Be ready to find cover if I tell you to.”

  “I’ll do my best.” She pitched her voice low, quiet, like his.

  This was what it took. She wanted to live through this. And she didn’t want him hurt, too, because of her. She couldn’t make him safe, didn’t have a gun to help provide cover for him or whatever a real partner could do. Even if he’d given her a weapon, she didn’t know how to shoot it.

  They scrambled down the bank. She had to sit and scoot forward on her butt because her ankle wouldn’t hold her, and she didn’t want to risk falling all the way down. Brandon hadn’t said anything, hadn’t shown any sign of being upset with her. He’d only kept scanning the area around them as he waited for her to stand and be ready to continue.

  He pointed to her left, along the dry creek bed, and she breathed a sigh of relief. This was easier footing, less for her to trip over. She could do this.

  “Down!” Brandon’s urgent command struck her like a physical blow.

  Her knees collapsed almost without thought, and she fell forward on her hands as he pressed her forward, against the incline of the steep embankment. He was shielding her with his body.

  She didn’t try to get out from under him or run. She only curled up as small as she could and tried to listen to what was going on around them. She kept her eyes open wide, trying to see what was going on.

  If a moment came to help or to move, if Brandon needed her to do something, she’d be ready.

  “Friendly.” A voice came out of the darkness. “Forte, is that you? We’re friendlies.”

  The tension eased in Brandon’s posture. “Sa.”

  There were friends here. Relief flooded through her again, and she wondered how many times her muscles could go from tense to limp in the space of a few minutes.

  “Affirmative.”

  “I’ve got a dog down.” Brandon didn’t put away his gun. Instead, he let the other man approach. A black-and-tan shadow approached, the cold nose passing swiftly over her cheek.

  “H-Haydn.” The tears were falling again, and she wiped them off her cheeks, angry with herself. Crying was useless, and she still needed to be able to see where she was going.

  “We neutralized two threats just inside the tree line.” Raul Sa directed his words to Brandon. Which was just as well because Sophie wasn’t sure what she would’ve done with the information.

  Brandon nodded and holstered his gun in a harness under his T-shirt. “That’s it, then. I took out two here in the woods. Both are still alive and unconscious. One has a minor bullet wound. It’ll take hours for him to bleed out. We need immediate transport.”

  “On it.” Sa touched his hand to his throat and issued a few terse comments to no one in general.

  Sophie stared hard at his throat. He had some sort of equipment at his throat. A communication device. Brandon didn’t look surprised.

  Instead, he seemed to be softening, his posture relaxing. When he turned to her, the look in his eyes was thawing. “We’re safe now. We’re going to take you out of here.”

  Safe.

  She breathed slow and gathered up all of those trembling nerves. Swallowing hard, she shoved away the helplessness and fear. One step at a time. Every moment wasn’t a life-or-death decision anymore for her or for Brandon. She could face all that later and be grateful she’d managed to come through it all somehow.

  Straightening, she looked from Brandon to Raul Sa and back to Brandon again. “Then we’re going to make sure Haydn gets help. Right now.”

  Brandon smiled. It was a new smile, one she’d never seen before. Fierce and friendly at the same time. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  There was an animal hospital with full emergency surgery facilities within twenty minutes of the bed-and-breakfast where they’d been staying. It was a lucky thing for Haydn.

  If there’d been one thing Forte hadn’t thought to check out when he’d decided to bring Sophie to this area for hiding, it’d been the proximity of a veterinarian.

  The staff had reacted with admirable calm when they’d come rushing in. The nurse on duty had called in the veterinarian on call and they’d taken Haydn into a back room to prep him for immediate surgery. They’d taken one look at Forte and Sa and hustled them into a private area to keep them out of the way.

  Sa, for his part, opted to head back outside to watch the perimeter with his team. His dog, formerly one of Forte’s own trainees, had accompanied him outside.

  So here Forte sat, in a tiny office, waiting to hear about
Haydn.

  Sophie had curled up in the corner chair with her feet tucked under her. She’d leaned into the corner of the room, staring at the wall, until her eyelids had drooped. For the time being, rest was the best thing for her. He didn’t want to disturb her, even to get her injured ankle out from under her.

  It was still in the medical boot so it had proper support. And Ky would be there in the next couple of hours to help work things out with the local law enforcement. Time enough to get her to elevate the leg and ice the ankle. When there was someone else around to nudge her. She’d hit her tolerance point of following directions from him for the night.

  And she’d done wonderfully.

  She was a strong, brave woman, whether she realized it or not. And she’d been pushed hard over the past week leading into tonight. Anyone else could’ve broken down into screaming hysterics. But not his Sophie. No. Once the imminent danger had passed, she’d pulled herself together and insisted on seeing to the well-being of his dog.

  She’d looked around as they’d left, but she hadn’t complicated things by asking about her cat.

  Always sensible, even when she didn’t want to be, Sophie’d made the choice not to distract anyone by looking for Tesseract. Not when Haydn needed immediate help.

  If he had to, Forte would go out and look for Tesseract as soon as he knew for sure what the outcome would be for Haydn. It didn’t matter what the surgery would cost. The dog had taken a bullet for Sophie. They’d take care of him first and worry about the financial logistics later.

  Of course, Forte was going to be up to his eyeballs in debt paying off the damage to the cabin, but hopefully they had enough information from the four attackers captured on site to split the costs into something reasonable. Those men were going to jail, so it wasn’t as if they’d need those wages in the meantime.

  Cold comfort and not any sort of line of thought to cheer him up.