Heedless: The Hellbound Brotherhood Book Four

by Shannon McKenna

  “Oh no! Did I hurt you when I grabbed you?”

  “No. Please. Hug me some more. It’s my healing balm. Never let me go.”

  He could have stayed in that embrace forever. Just melted into her and stayed there for all of eternity, with his nose buried in her hot, damp, fragrant hair. His bruised body felt weak with relief. Shaking with adrenaline. Awestruck with joy.

  After a while, the noise from the speakers abated. He glanced over at the monitors and saw a car pulling up.

  “Someone’s coming,” he said.

  Elisa stiffened. “Who? Who is that?”

  They leaned over the counter to watch. It was a big black Mercedes SUV. The doors opened, and four men got out. Three of them were heavily armed.

  One of them seemed slightly older, with white streaks in the black hair at his temples, and in his neat black beard. He walked stiffly, with a noticeable limp.

  “That one must be Kimball,” Nate said. “Look at him limping. So his balls still hurt, after Fiona stabbed them with the scissors. She will be pleased to hear it.”

  Elisa leaned over the monitor, watching in dread as Kimball and his men, plus a few others who joined them, walked up the stairs and into the house.

  “Gil,” she whispered.

  “He’s probably dead already,” Nate said. “He must have taken a bullet in that hailstorm. Or maybe he bled out from that cut.”

  Kimball went inside with two of the men, while the third took up a guard position. Elisa toggled screens with the mouse to watch the living room.

  They saw Kimball and his man, finding Gil on the floor. They pulled him up, and began to question him.

  Soon, the screaming began.

  25

  Mace scanned the woods around the wrecked luxury home with the thermal imager as he gave a still-smoking minivan a wide berth, trying not to breathe in the stink of burning plastic and scorched metal. No one there that he could see.

  He skirted a half burned corpse, blood mixed with snow and shattered glass as he made his way up the steps to the wraparound deck. He peered inside the house, then around the corner of the side deck. No one. At least no one living.

  He signaled an all-clear to Jim Wong and to Fiona. Nothing here but blood-drenched bodies. But not Nate’s body, or Elisa’s. Not yet. Please, God.

  Clint and Mitch had recovered from their gas intoxication and had insisted on coming. They were both embarrassed at being brought low by that asshole. They were circling the woods while he, Fiona and Jim Wong took the house.

  So far, nothing and no one. Whatever happened here, they missed it.

  Now all that was left was to hope to God that Nate and Elisa hadn’t gotten caught in this clusterfuck. He braced himself each time he looked more closely at each of the bodies.

  Hard to imagine how anyone could have escaped. Bodies were everywhere. Every wall blood-splattered. Every pane of glass shattered. Walls and furniture torn up. Shredded with bullet holes.

  No sound but the whistling of the wind against the eaves and the tossing and sighing of tree boughs outside. Stray snowflakes gusted through the broken window as he crept inside. Fiona followed. Jim Wong had gone around to the other side.

  He met Fiona’s eyes and signaled that he’d take the living room. She gestured toward the kitchen, moving like a shadow. She’d insisted on coming, and Anton had thrown a shit fit and tried to come, too, but Fiona had put her foot down and told him he wasn’t strong enough. An argument for the ages. Fi was a total hell-cat.

  In this room alone, there were four more bodies. The furniture had been chewed up by bullets. He’d seen at least twelve corpses outside, some shot, some burned, and he hadn’t even been doing a formal tally. Just casually keeping count.

  Hard to say which were Kimball’s crew and which might have worked for Clemens. He put his money on Kimball in terms of the ultimate outcome, but luckily that wasn’t for him to determine. The cops could sort through this smoking mess and figure out who these guys were. In fact, they were already on their way.

  Lying in the middle of a pale, blood-soaked carpet was a body that had not been shot or burned. It had been worked over in a way that had been far slower, more deliberate and vicious. What was left was barely recognizable as human, but he could tell that it was male, and not Nate. And this one wasn’t dressed in fighting gear like the others. This dude wore dress pants. A dress shirt. Expensive shoes.

  So Kimball had mistaken Gilbert Clemens for the buyer of his virus, and had treated him accordingly. The suitcase that Nate had taken from Clint’s car was open, and empty. Clint’s dirty socks and underwear were scattered over Clemens’ corpse.

  He ran his eyes over what had once been Clemens, his gorge rising. He might almost have found it in his heart to feel sorry for the man, but after talking to Elisa’s brother Josh…nah. Not really.

  Clemens had gotten exactly what was coming to him. But fuck, had he ever gotten a stiff dose of it. It was hard to look at.

  What Kimball had done to Clemens was exactly what Kimball would have done to Mace’s brothers, and Fi and Demi. And Mace himself, for that matter. But he wasn’t losing sleep over that. It was the specter of losing the others that haunted him.

  Fiona appeared in the entrance between the living room and the kitchen. She shook her head. No one alive in there. Just corpses, and ruin.

  Mace pulled out his phone. “There’s no one around to hear the ringtone,” he said. “I’m calling them.”

  Fiona nodded in agreement. Yet another billowing drift of snowflakes came in. The drapes that had hung in front of the picture window billowed inwardly. They were filled with ragged bullet holes that were lit from behind, like little stars.

  The phone rang. No one answered. It went to voicemail, and the recorded voice invited him to leave a message. Dread congealed inside him.

  He closed the call after six rings, still paranoid about exposing them to Kimball’s wrath, and then they both heard it. He and Fiona looked at each other as they heard the creak of a floorboard, and instantly shifted back into defensive positions. Crouched behind the doorways. Guns at the ready.

  In the back of the room, there was metal spiral staircase. The metal groaned under the weight of a person climbing the steps.

  “Mace.” Nate’s low voice from inside the stairwell made Mace’s body sag with relief. “It’s me. We’re coming up the stairs right now, so don’t shoot us, okay?”

  “Oh, Jesus. Nate.” Mace let the gun drop. His hands shook.

  Fuck. Too soon. He could not crash while he was still right here, in this slaughterhouse. He had to stay sharp. Anything could happen here. Still.

  Nate’s head emerged from the stairwell. His arm was soaked with blood, and his face was colorless, but his eyes were clear. He scanned the room before looking back at Mace. “You didn’t see Kimball’s crew leave?”

  Mace shook his head. “They’re gone. We waited, as per your direction. We heard some police chatter on the radio. They’re on their way right now.”

  “Yeah, Kimball must have heard that, too,” Nate said. “That’s why he left.”

  “We missed the party,” Mace said.

  “Thank God,” Nate said emphatically. “We couldn’t have taken him. Not without the others. Maybe not even then. He would have flattened us with those armed drones. How the fuck is a person supposed to fight those things?”

  “Never mind that. We’ll worry about it later,” Mace told him, as Elisa’s head emerged from the stairwell. Her hair hung loose and wild around the pale oval of her face, and her eyes looked enormous and shadowy. Her crimson sweater was the only spot of color in the place. Other than all the blood, of course.

  “You shot?” Mace asked, focusing on Nate’s blood-soaked arm.

  “Just a flesh wound,” Nate said. “I’ll be fine until we get to a doctor.”

  Elisa was moving toward the body of her ex, and Mace stepped in front of her, holding up his hands. “You don’t want to look at him,” he told her. “Trust
me.”

  Elisa shook her head and pushed past him. “I have to,” she said, looking down at what was left of her former husband. Her face was a mask of self-control.

  She crouched down, and Mace was startled to see her reach into the pocket of his trousers, fishing until she pulled out a small flash drive. It was sticky with blood.

  She stood up and held it out. “This was the cause,” she said. “Nate said Eric could probably decrypt it. We need to do that as soon as possible, and get what’s on this all over the press before Sinclair sends another army to get it back. Josh could help. He’s great at that kind of stuff.”

  Mace took the flash drive gingerly. “We’re on it,” he said, with renewed respect. “And yeah, we’ll use Josh. That kid is a serious bad-ass. Tough as rawhide.”

  That earned him a wan smile. It vanished as she looked back at Gil’s body.

  Nate joined her. He took her hand, and met Mace’s eyes. “I’m sorry I burned the counter-surveillance plan,” he said. “I didn’t even think it would work. I figured that any kind of disruption at all might give me my opening. I had to try.”

  “I understand,” Mace said. “So do the others. It was crazy, but you’re still alive, so what the fuck. It’s all good.” He pounded Nate on the back, stopping short when he saw the look on his friend’s face. “Took some rounds to the vest, did you?”

  “A few,” Nate said, wincing. “Ribs probably cracked.”

  “Shit. I hate it when that happens. Come on. Let’s get you guys out of this hellhole and get you taped up.”

  “Sounds great to me,” Nate said fervently.

  Mace walked over to Elisa, who was staring out the opening of the window. “Be aware,” he said. “I wish I could tell you it’s all over and you can relax, but I’d be lying.” He glanced at Nate. “If you weren’t on Kimball’s shit list before, you are now. Your troubles aren’t over. They’ve just done a lateral shift. You now have a new homicidal asshole to worry about. Welcome to the exclusive club, the members of which Redd Kimball would do anything to kill and maim. Congratulations.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across Elisa’s face. “At least I’m in good company.” Her eyes flicked to Nate. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

  “Well, yay for your positive attitude,” Mace said sourly, but he might have saved his breath, because Elisa wasn’t listening. She was looking at Nate. Nate was looking back. Neither of them knew that he was there. They only saw each other.

  Damn. It’s not like he hadn’t seen this coming from miles away, but for fuck’s sake. Nate, too? Right fucking now?

  “Get in the car,” he grumbled. “I want some distance from this place.”

  “Don’t we need to talk to the police?” Elisa asked.

  “I’m sure you will, and at great length,” Mace said. “But at the moment, we’re probably being watched, knowing Kimball. And you guys need to get looked over by a doctor. The cops can talk to you afterward. To their hearts’ content.”

  “Are we going to Josh?” Elisa’s big golden eyes fixed on his with startling intensity. “You’ll take me to him?”

  “Straight to Josh,” Mace assured her. “Granger Valley Hospital, here we come.”

  Elisa slid into the back of the SUV, right into Nate’s embrace. He draped his good arm around her and clamped her up against his body like he was afraid someone was going to rip her away from him.

  Thought, to be fair, someone had just tried.

  Well, damn. It was good that Elisa’s most pressing security problem had been resolved, but the one she’d exchanged it for might be even worse.

  She didn’t seem too worried, judging from her starry-eyed look as she—oh, for the love of fuck. Seriously? They were kissing? Here?

  He just didn’t get it. Love and passion was great, yeah. Sex was awesome. They’d find no argument from him about that universal and self-evident truth. Getting laid rocked. That said, now was not the time to dive into the bottomless pit of amour and wallow in it. And both his brothers and their respective ladies were doing that right now. Now Nate, who might as well be his brother after all these years, and who ought to fucking well know better, had fallen into the same trap.

  Boom, boom, boom. Tumbling one by one, like overripe fruit.

  He didn’t begrudge Nate his good luck at finally getting the woman that he wanted. God knows, the guy had worked for it. Paid for it, too.

  For that matter, all of them had paid. Kimball wouldn’t let himself be manipulated a second time. They would never get that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw him into a trap again. But he didn’t begrudge Nate his crazy gambit. Elisa’s life was unquestionably worth it. Everyone would agree with him on that.

  Still, they’d stirred up Kimball’s hornet nest. They’d beaten on it with a great big stick. They’d ratcheted up his revenge vibe to its highest frequency yet. And Eric was still thousands of miles away on his romantic fucking honeymoon, and Anton and Fi were rolling around whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears. Now Nate and Elisa were lip-locked, in the back of the car. Right after all that apocalyptic bullshit had come down on their heads. The fuck?

  He needed all hands on deck. He needed one hundred percent of everyone’s energy and attention, and he wasn’t getting it, not by a country mile. With all this pink-tinted love-fog in the air, it fell to him to be the lone, solitary grown-up on duty.

  That had never been his role. His brothers had always occupied that job, at least when it came to dealing with Shaw’s Crossing. It did not come naturally to him.

  It made him feel tense and alone.

  26

  Shaw’s Crossing, two weeks later…

  Elisa stepped back from the painting on the wall and studied it while she mixed a lighter shade of pale yellow to highlight the heart of the flower.

  The painting covered the whole wall. Four meters by three, and she’d covered the whole thing with panels of stretched canvas. The room was a mess of drop cloths and stepladders and frames for stretching canvas.

  So far, she’d only painted the center panel. The rest were covered with preliminary sketches, and the drafting table behind her was heaped with discarded ideas. It was all still evolving, every minute she worked on it.

  What was coming out onto the canvas continued to surprise her. She no longer even tried to control it. As soon as she got to work, something took over and painted through her, for hours on end. She forgot to eat and sleep sometimes.

  The image was a huge well of darkness full of barely perceptible monsters. It emanated looming disaster, but in the center, a big hole was torn through it, like an exit point from a cave that let the light spill in. Outside the darkness was a blaze of color, luring the viewer out. Flowers, plants, animals. Life. Hope.

  Two small figures were silhouetted in front of that opening, running toward it. Their long shadows stretched out behind them to merge with the darkness.

  It was huge. By far the biggest painting she had ever done. And thank God she had something to work on. She’d be a basket case if she didn’t have a project. The only time she could breathe at all was when she was painting something.

  Or rather, painting was the only time she could breathe when Nate wasn’t here to help her. Nate had his own wicked, delicious ways of making her calm down.

  Just thinking of them brought a dreamy smile to her face.

  The doorbell made Elisa spring up into the air, panicked. Shit. Who…?

  The security system in the building was state-of-the-art, and all entrances were guarded by professionals, and still that doomsday feeling was so hard to shake. Her mind just couldn’t convince her body to relax. But a glance through the peephole showed that Demi and Eric stood outside, and panic was swiftly replaced by joy.

  She threw the door open and hugged Demi hard, then gave Eric the same treatment “When did you guys get back?”

  “Just this morning,” Eric told her. “We crashed last night in a hotel near the airport and took off at the cr
ack of dawn.”

  “Right,” Demi said, looking up at him ruefully. “Because this guy can’t seem to sleep past five AM, no matter what I do to him all night long.”

  “Come in, come in.” Elisa dragged Demi into apartment by the hand. Demi looked great, glowing with a freshly acquired tan, some brand new freckles, and the soft-focus all-over sparkle of being madly in love and utterly sexually satiated. Eric gave off more or less the same blissed-out vibe, in masculine form.

  So it was all good. The honeymoon had rocked. Yay.

  “You guys look gorgeous,” she said, squeezing Demi again. “So tan.”

  “We spent all our time lolling on the beach and swimming,” Demi admitted. “Which was great, but the sky fell while we were gone, and we missed it!”

  “I’m really sorry I wasn’t here to help when you needed it,” Eric said.

  “I’m glad you were both well away,” Elisa said fervently. “And I’m also glad that I can finally be straight with you about everything. It bothered the hell out of me that I had to lie to you all the time. I hate being dishonest with a friend.”

  “You were just trying to protect us,” Demi assured her. “Forget about it.”

  “Good thing Nate was with you when that bastard finally found you,” Eric said.

  “Oh hey, I’ve got something for you,” Demi said. “Eric? Show her.” Eric hoisted up a large planter with a luxuriant fern plant bursting out of it.

  “It’s a housewarming present,” Demi told her. “I’m so excited that you’re my neighbor now, and right upstairs from Anton and Fi’s apartment, too. So excellent.”

  “Yeah, it’s wonderful,” Elisa agreed. “If I have to be under a security umbrella, at least I have fabulous company there.”

  “God, yes. Kimball knows that hurting you would hurt us. So we’ll be in each other’s pockets until we’ve sorted this out. And in my pocket is my favorite place for you to be. All the best people, right at my fingertips. It’s my dream come true.”