Blaze

by Joan Swan

  He tried not to scream. Kept the agony locked behind clenched teeth until that final show of force to drag his body over the lip of the entrance.

  The pain swallowed him.

  His brain went gray.

  The last thing he heard before black washed over him was Mitch yelling, “Grenaaaaade!”

  Keira dug her boots into the sandy dirt and pulled with all her strength alongside Cash, Seth, and Kai. The scream Luke finally let loose tore at her soul. By the time she had his head resting in her lap, he was unconscious and she was ready to puke from pure terror.

  She’d watched those ferocious flames twine and curl around his body, trying to eat him alive. Seen his body jerk, twist, and flip when the bullet hit his chest. But the worst, the very bone-chilling, mind-altering worst, had been the spill of Luke’s warm blood through her fingers as she’d tried to compress his wound.

  Bile rolled toward her throat. She swallowed it back, concentrated on his warm skin under her fingers.

  Teague’s hands planted on the earth, and he hefted his body out of the hole in one muscled push-up. Seth and Mitch already had the doors halfway closed as he rolled out of the way.

  The heavy plunk-plunk-plunk of metal on metal sounded as the hatch shut. A plume of gritty dirt billowed when the men dropped the steel hatch, followed by an earth-muffled series of explosions.

  The ground beneath them shook so hard, Keira feared it might cave and dump them right back into that wretched tunnel. But the shaking stopped and silence rushed in, the only sound their team’s heavy breathing. Each tensed, prepared for the next crisis.

  “Guess that maneuver backfired.” Mitch broke the silence with his typical sarcasm. “Pun intended.”

  “Teague.” Keira fought to keep her voice level. She slid her hand against Luke’s neck, his pulse erratic under her fingers. “Can you do anything for him?”

  Teague tore open Luke’s jacket to expose his blood-soaked shirt. “You mean besides throwing him over my shoulder and carrying him to the truck?”

  As Teague pressed his hand to the wound, Keira kept her fingers on Luke’s pulse with one hand, stroked his whisker-roughened cheek with the other. He was willing to sacrifice so much for her. She would find a way to do the same for him. He just had to live.

  “Mitch,” Teague said. “Get Alyssa on the phone.”

  “I told you I shouldn’t have taken the vest.” The unfamiliar voice forced Keira to refocus. Cash had crawled up next to her, his expression filled with guilt and concern, and pressed his own fingers to Luke’s neck.

  Her guilt for allowing Luke to give the vest away nagged at her. One more thing to make up to him. They had to find a way to be together, because it would take the rest of her life to make things right.

  “He’s too fucking stubborn to die,” Teague said. “He’ll be fine. This will only slow him down and shut him up for a little while. We should enjoy it while we can.”

  “Hey—” Mitch called their attention and pointed to the Bluetooth in his ear. “Get on the line.”

  Everyone clicked on and Alyssa’s controlled but stressed voice filled Keira’s ear.

  “We were making small talk about Panos’s childhood in Greece,” she said. “Someone came to his door, which he thought was odd because he wasn’t expecting anyone. I heard the locks as he turned them, heard the hinges of the door squeak when he opened it. Then a pop. Just one. Then that crackle you get when someone drops the phone. I called his name, but he didn’t answer. Then the line went dead.”

  “Did you try calling him back?” Mitch asked.

  “Are your men still at the house?” Teague asked at the same time. “Do they know?”

  “Yes and yes,” Alyssa said, amazingly efficient. “I called back and got no answer. The men here know and they’ve called in reinforcements.”

  Fear pulled at Teague’s features. “Hang tight, baby. We’ll be home soon.”

  A tremor shook the ground. Small, barely there. But it sent a shiver up Keira’s spine. She was just about to ask if anyone else felt it when the familiar whap-whap-whap invaded her head.

  “Damn,” she whispered, her gaze searching for cover. None. “Choppers coming.”

  “Choppers?” Kai asked. “As in more than one?”

  “More than one.” She couldn’t tell how many. “Two for sure. Maybe three.” She pushed at Luke’s shoulders, lifting him toward Teague. “I’m going to take you up on that offer. You carry, I’ll shoot.”

  “I don’t hear any—” Cash’s statement was interrupted by the swoosh of a chopper as it crested the Castle and dove toward them. He rolled to a crouch, M14 in hand.

  “Do you speak Greek?” Keira asked him.

  He sent her a distracted look. “What?”

  “Greek. Your son speaks Greek. Do you?”

  “It’s rusty—”

  “Better than nonexistent. Just translate what he says to you the best you can.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I’ll explain later.” Another chopper swung in from the north, panning its beam along the ground. “If you want to get out of this alive, talk to your son.”

  “That’s not what I need to hear.” Alyssa’s voice floated into the black night. “It was disturbing enough to hear a man I didn’t know get shot thousands of miles away.”

  A third chopper came in from the south. All three swept the area with floodlights. All three had artillery jutting from their flanks. All three had a man in fatigues hanging out the side door with a subgun in his hands.

  “Sorry, Lys,” Keira said. “Can you get Mateo talking to us? We need an escape route.”

  “He’s right here, looking at the phone like it’s a pastry.” Alyssa clicked the phone to speaker. “Go ahead.”

  But Mateo was the first to speak. “Baba! To’ksera oti tha erthis gia mena, baba!”

  Cash sucked in an audible breath. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  The choppers made another sweep, closing their search circles.

  “Cash,” Keira nudged.

  He nodded and finally spoke, his Greek coming in fits and starts with lots of hesitation and ‘ums’ in between. But the two evidently communicated, because Cash turned and started into the desert at a forty-five-degree angle to where their vehicles were parked.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  “The trucks are over there.”

  “But he says cover is over there.” He lifted his chin in the direction he was headed. “Those choppers are going to close in fast. Let’s go.”

  All Keira saw was rolling desert terrain in the distance. Then again, she hadn’t known that hatch had been there, either. Mateo had a one hundred percent accuracy rate so far. No sense in doubting it now.

  Teague hefted Luke over his shoulder and fell into line with the others. To keep her eyes off the sickening sight of Luke’s limp body swaying with every step Teague took, Keira brought up the rear, watching the choppers turn in smaller and smaller circles, twisting her stomach in tighter and tighter knots.

  “How much farther?” she called ahead.

  “He’s not sure,” Cash said. “He says we might be halfway.”

  “Remember,” Mitch said, “he’s not good with distances.”

  Keira swore, cutting her eyes between the untraveled path beneath her feet and the threat above her head, already creating plans A, B, C, and D. “What kind of cover?”

  “A bunker they used for training.”

  “Who used? What training?”

  “The government, and who knows? We’re on the edge of Area Fifty-one. Nobody but insiders knows what happens here.”

  “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” she muttered.

  Above, one of the choppers made a sharp turn, picked up speed, and swooped their way. Keira’s stomach dropped.

  “We’ve been spotted,” she called. “Run!”

  But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew Teague would never make it anywhere near fast enough carry
ing Luke. The chopper was moving too fast.

  Within seconds, the pop of rapid-fire weaponry tattered the air. The thud of bullets hitting the ground cascaded across the desert floor only a foot away. Her heartbeat spiked. An involuntary scream rose in her throat. She kept moving, kept pushing forward, as mini-plumes of dust created a temporary veil of concealment. When the next chopper swooped in the first’s wake, his shots were more than five feet off-target.

  The other five men were a good twenty yards ahead of Teague, Luke, and Keira now, weaving to make themselves difficult targets. The chopper’s windstorm picked up grit and blew it into their eyes. Teague swore and spit. Keira’s eyes burned like they were on fire.

  Another round of shots startled her. She hadn’t seen the third bird coming. Didn’t know how close they’d hit. She stopped and turned, searching for the enemy. They were diving right at her, the artillery mounted on either side of the chopper sparking orange in the night.

  She tripped over a clump of brush, fell backward. The chopper bore down on her. The panicked call of her name drowned in the bird’s churning engine, the burst of gunfire.

  In that instant she knew she was going to die. But, dammit, she was going to make sure those goddamned sons of bitches died with her.

  She aimed her gun, focused the pilot in her crosshairs, and pulled the trigger. Held it down as she panned her weapon, tracking the chopper’s trajectory.

  Pang-pang-pang-pang . . . Her bullets continued to punch metal and glass. The dirt around her kicked up as a storm of gunfire from the chopper hit. She curled into the smallest target possible. The angry roar of the engine changed pitch. Angled downward. Then the ground convulsed. Followed by an ear-piercing crash of metal.

  Stray shrieks and scrapes of metal continued to erupt from the downed chopper as Keira finally drew air. And promptly choked on sand. Still coughing, she repositioned her helmet and night vision and scanned the terrain. The helicopter lay in a smoking pit of sand, blades winding down like a broken windmill half a mile away. She scrambled to her feet and took off in the direction the others had gone. Luckily, none were in sight, which she had to assume meant they’d found the bunker. Now, if she could just find it before the other choppers—

  Seth’s earlier words rattled in her head. Too late.

  An engine growled behind her, becoming a roar in her ear as it grew closer. Keira sprinted, pushing as far as she could before she turned, set her stance, and aimed.

  This chopper started shooting sooner. So did Keira. She aimed at the gas tank, a larger target than the pilot. Her chest filled with adrenaline-laden vengeance. And it was intoxicating. She pulled the trigger and held it down with all her strength, letting the rifle kick her shoulder again and again as she trailed the chopper overhead and away, relishing that familiar, repeated pang-pang-pang of metal.

  Droplets hit her face, as if it had started to rain. Then the pungent, unique scent of aircraft fuel reached her nose and satisfaction filled her chest. But not for long.

  A burn in her right thigh dragged her attention to her fatigues and a dark stain growing there. “Dammit.”

  When she tried to take a step, her leg went out from under her and she landed in the dirt. Pain dug in, transformed into a deep, piercing throb that traveled like poison in the blood.

  “Are you hit?” The voice startled her. She swung her weapon up and around with one hand, the other pressed against the wound on her thigh. “Whoa. It’s only me.”

  Cash looked down at her. She dropped her weapon, her gaze turning back to the sky and the third chopper making a final, tight turn toward them. “Get back to the bunker.”

  “You’re coming with me.” He bent to pick her up, sliding one arm under her knees and one low on her back.

  “No time.” She pushed him away. The last helicopter came at them with all the fury of revenge for its lost comrades. “Cash . . . Shit.” No time to run. “Get the fuck down.”

  Keira lifted her rifle. The gun fell from her hand, tumbling end over end, stopping five feet away. Her arm dropped to her side. When she looked down in panicked confusion, she saw another stain of blood spreading over her sleeve.

  “Goddammit!”

  She looked up at the chopper again. Red flashed on either side of the gun pods—missile ports ignited. Yep, they were officially pissed off and going to make sure there was nothing left of her to bury.

  “Cash, run!”

  He laughed, the sound an evil, vengeful chuckle. “And miss this fun? No way.”

  The helicopter angled in. Two missiles shot from the bird’s tubes. Pop-shhhhh-boom. Cash covered Keira with his body. She curled into his protection as the world exploded around her. If she died, at least she wouldn’t die alone. She’d found her family. But Luke . . . God, how she’d miss Luke.

  Plumes of fire ebbed to smoke, then to sand and dirt.

  Cash stood, drew his arm back, and bulleted something toward the chopper on its way out of the swoop, yelling, “Lousy aim, jerkoff!”

  Another explosion. Midair. Huge. Violent. The chopper burst into a fireball, pieces flying off in every direction. Blades, gunpods, wheels, tail rocketing at the desert floor in a three-hundred-sixty-degree trajectory.

  Cash covered Keira again and ducked his head. She watched from his protective hold as the chopper’s momentum carried the remaining bulk of the bird toward the compound. Toward one of the buildings on the east side of the property. The fireball smashed into the building.

  The crash initiated another explosion, one that seemed to come from within the building. A second later another explosion. And another. A chain reaction, ravaging the entire compound.

  Keira’s mind jumped back to the warehouse fire. The way those barrels had exploded with unexpected violence, taking out everything around them. “What the hell was in there?”

  Cash pulled away from her and stood, hand to his forehead in distress. “Chemicals. A shitload of fucking chemicals. It hit the lab. God,” he ground out with anguish. “I hope Q . . . I hope they took Q out before . . .”

  As Keira watched the fire destroy building after building, portions of the flames shifted from neon orange to purple. At the center of some of the explosions, cobalt blue sparks jetted against the violet flames.

  Yeah, there were chemicals in there, all right. The sense of satisfaction, of payback, of a certain justice rendered was there, but veiled by Cash’s tormented concern for Q’s fate.

  Keira scooted toward her gun and studied the sky. What next? Would they send out the air force after them now?

  But as the compound continued to burn and explosions continued to burst, she wondered if there would be anyone left alive in that facility to send anyone anywhere for any reason. Including Dargan.

  As Cash leaned down to pick her up, three dark figures ran toward them from the bunker. Mitch, Kai, and Seth, coming to their aid.

  “Just help me up,” she said. “I can walk.”

  The three men crouched near them. Kai scanned the blood on her pants. “How bad?”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. “How’s Luke?”

  “You mean besides bitching at Teague to stop working on him and let him up to come out here to get you?”

  Cash cast her a sidelong look. She couldn’t tell if the suspicion in his familiar blue eyes came from the topic of Teague or Luke. Or both. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Shit, Teague.” Luke squirmed beneath the press of his friend’s hand. “I’m fine now. Keira needs—”

  “Keira’s got four big strong guys out there with her, none of whom she really needs. We need her more than she needs us.”

  I need you. Hadn’t she said that to him in the tunnel? Along with we can be a family, have a family.

  Now, with the pain ebbing, his wound healing, his brain came together, but everything she’d said to him while he’d been floating through different conscious states seemed to elude certainty.

  Regardless of what she’d said or hadn�
��t said, nothing would quell the urge to get to her. To see to her safety himself.

  While Teague’s healing powers poured into Luke’s chest, he watched the bunker’s entrance, willing Keira to appear. And with each lengthening moment that no silhouettes took shape, Luke’s stomach dropped lower and his heart rate hiked higher.

  All the moments in which he could have lost her over the last few days replayed in his mind, and the same question plagued him after each scenario—could he have lived without her? He kept coming back to the same answer—unequivocally, no.

  And that very real fact put the fear of God into him now.

  Luke used his good arm to grip Teague’s wrist, pull his hand off the front of his throbbing chest, and push it away. “I can’t just sit here.”

  As he stumbled to his feet, voices sounded from the bunker entrance. Luke moved that way, holding his arm to his side, grimacing against the pain. The group arrived, but all Luke could focus on was Keira, clinging to Cash as she hobbled forward.

  Keira’s gaze lifted and locked on his. The physical pain in her eyes mirrored what he felt in his body.

  “Teague!” Luke yelled.

  “I’m right here,” he said from a step behind. “You don’t have to scream.”

  Teague went directly to Keira and started unbuttoning her jacket.

  “How bad is it?” Luke drew close, supporting her opposite Cash.

  She shook her head, her beautiful face twisted with pain. “They’re nothing. They just hurt like a sonofabitch.”

  Luke almost laughed, but he choked on a sudden, gut-wrenching wave of gratitude. She was alive. He was alive. They had another chance to make things right between them.

  “You can’t be serious,” she muttered.

  Luke’s chest tightened. Had she read his thoughts? Rejected them?

  But her gaze had gone distant, the way it did when she was hearing something in her head. She used her good arm and swung her weapon toward the sky. “Another chopper.”

  Luke squinted into the night, strained his ears, but heard nothing beyond the sound of the distant fire. Then lights appeared, like stars against the dark, growing brighter. A second later, the familiar whap of blades.