“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Behind me, a glass shatters to the floor and I turn enough to keep an eye on the woman. She’s standing there, mouth open, but excited at the same time. Her eyes flick from me to Rob and back to me. She smiles.
Typical fucking female.
“Darlin’, do me a favor and go grab your boyfriend some clothes,” I tell her, giving her an encouraging wink. “He and I are going for a little ride.”
“He ain’t my boyfriend no more,” she says and her robe opens several inches. Then she shouts at him. “Hear that Rob? We’re through.”
I stifle an eye roll and press harder on Rob’s throat, giving it a good squeeze. “You can have couples counseling later. Right now, you’re going to tell me everything you know. Blink once if you understand.”
The pussy’s eyes flutter closed and I step away, drawing the gun at my back. He slides to the floor, holding his neck, coughing in great lung fulls of air. He starts to cry when I aim the Glock at his forehead.
“I don’t know nothin’,” he says between coughs. “I was just messing with you earlier.”
I rack the slide, appreciating the sound of metal on metal and the clear message it sends out to others. “What did you tell the men who were here before me?”
“Nothin’! I swear! Just sent them on a wild goose chase.”
“He’s lyin’,” the blonde spits out and Rob shoots her a look. She shoots him a look right back. “They gave him ten thousand dollars and he told them about Grace’s papaw’s place out on the river. He didn’t know where it was exactly, but gave them round about directions.”
“Thank you, darlin’,” I tell her and she gives me her best sultry look. “Think you can get him some clothes? Boots? Quickly.”
She nods, eager to help. She saunters behind me, giving my ass a pat along the way. Reason two hundred and eight as to why you can’t trust a woman. They’ll chase the biggest dick in the room.
“Get up,” I tell Rob, turning my attention back to him. Then I pull the radio from my pocket. “Tate to Bird One.”
“Bird One over.”
“Bird One, extract now. I’ll have a guest. Over.
My pilot’s response is immediate. “Roger that. ETA three minutes. Over and out.”
The blonde comes back into the room with a pair of jeans, t-shirt, socks and boots, tossing them to the still sobbing man. She’s put on some lipstick and a wave of perfume comes wafting over to me. How sweet. She primped.
Signaling the whiny bastard to get dressed, I wink my thanks to the woman before speaking into the radio again. “Bird Two, prepare for standby. Will scramble location upon arrival. Over.”
The static crackles momentarily before my second pilot’s voice comes to life. “Roger that. Preparing for standby. Over.”
“Where you taking me?” Rob asks, pulling his jeans up his legs.
I shutter down my annoyance. “The direction you point me in, Rob. Thought we were pretty clear about this.”
“Why should I?”
Ah, he’s a big man again. I lift the gun, pointing it between his eyes. At the last second, I shift and pull the trigger. The blast reverberates through the small home, punching a hole through the wall. Rob screams and grabs at his right ear.
“You shot me!”
“I nicked you. You’ll know if I shoot you, which I will do if you don’t have those boots on in ten seconds. One … two … three …”
I inhale. I love it when people do as I ask.
“Where did you send the first team?” I ask as he laces the boots.
He swallows and presses his dripping ear to his shoulder. “I told them I’d only floated by Grace’s papaw’s place, but never been in it. Rumor has it that he made some kind of cave. Prepper, end of the world shit. There’s a road to it, but I don’t know how to get there that way. Like I said, never got the invite.”
“Where did you send them?” I ask him again, listening for the blades of the chopper coming in the distance.
The blonde crosses her arms beneath her breasts, pushing the generous mounds up to nearly breaking point. “Tell him, Rob,” she says.
He glowers at her and stands up. “Told them to get out on the bridge and head about six miles up river.”
Six miles. I look at my watch. Shit.
“What type of terrain are they dealing with?” He looks at me blankly. “Rugged? Flat?” I prompt.
“Well hell man, it’s Tennessee. Ain’t got no flat spots to speak of.”
I grab his arm and propel him toward the door, kicking it open and shoving him through. He tries to yank away, then stares wide-eyed at the sky. “A helicopter? You didn’t say nothin’ about a damn helicopter.”
The blonde is behind us. “He said ‘bird one’ and ‘bird two’ you dumb shit. Whadidcha expect? A goose.”
I glance back at her. She’s enjoying herself. She sees me looking and she pops those damn boobs back out. “Thanks for your help, darlin’. There’s a reward for information on their whereabouts. If we find them, I’ll be sure to let the officials know how helpful you were.”
She grins and strikes a sexy pose. “Will you deliver my prize?”
I give her a wink. “You might want to go back inside. Lot of wind coming. Stirs up a lot of debris. Don’t want you to get hurt.”
She pouts, but doesn’t go inside and I can see the plan she’s creating in her eyes. She’s going to wait on the wind, let it Marilyn Monroe her little robe.
I wait for it.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
She squeals and looks embarrassed as she tries to keep her robe together, but ends up giving every human and raccoon in a thirty-mile radius a little show. I shake my head. Just once, I’d like a woman to surprise me.
Jamming the gun in a reluctant Rob’s back, I hurry him to the chopper, ducking us under the blades. “Get in,” I yell at him as I open the door and he just stands there, looking ready to piss himself. I shoot the ground, taking off the tip of his boot. He jumps back, looks up at the blades rotating inches above his head and I lift the gun to his face. “Now.”
Inside, I toss him a headset and want to smack the shit out of him when he looks at them dumbly. I play flight attendant and give him visual instructions as the chopper noise drowns out anything verbal.
“Which way and don’t fuck with me,” I say to him once he has them over his ears. “Let’s start at their entry point. The bridge.”
He looks out the window and points east. Randall, my pilot, nods and we’re off in the direction of the brightening sky. I look at my watch again.
Damn.
This is going to be close.
Chapter 3 – Grace
As the morning begins to brighten by a sun still hidden by the mountains, I sit on the bank of the river, watching the water flow.
He left.
A part of me understands why.
No. All of me understands why. Just as all of me rages at the cruel and heartless way in which he did it.
Men can be so stupid.
Even the strongest, most intelligent, most beautiful, most loving ones can turn into inept little boys, throwing tantrums or shutting down. Demanding their own way. Thinking they know best.
School failed us all.
They teach us math we’ll never use. They force us to put too many stupid commas in a sentence and insist we remember dates that Google can supply on demand.
But do they teach people how to talk to each other? Communicate? Understand emotions and feelings? Hell no! Do they teach us how differently men and women think? How to compromise? Have difficult conversations?
No!
They teach boys not to cry and suck it up and be a man while they encourage girls to play with dollies and make-up and express ourselves emotionally and verbally at every opportunity. Then these boys and girls grow up and are expected to freaking live together happily ever after.
I growl.
> Yes, society has set relationships up to fail.
I watch the river flow and imagine I see our rings at the bottom, sinking into the silt to become fossils for some future generation to find. Will there even be wedding rings by then? Will the institution of marriage even exist? Or will people like ISIS have taken over the world, making women their whipping posts, children their shields?
I shiver at the thought.
My mind wanders back to Link, as I imagine it will the rest of my life. I think about his mouth and the way he kisses me, like he’s a starving man and I’m his food. I think of his hands. The long fingers, the callused palms that can go from gentle to rough in a heartbeat.
He’s so beautiful. So perfectly formed. So strong. He’s a hard shell of strength filled with tiny cracks of weakness. And those cracks make him fragile.
I try to imagine what it was like to have people you care about die right there beside you. Sometimes within arm’s length.
I’ve been so lucky. Other than Ryland, I’ve not experienced that kind of grief in my life, not the kind that’s also twisted with guilt. My baby boy haunts me. He will always haunt me, I suppose. The would haves. The should haves. The didn’ts and what ifs will lay beside me in my grave. Along with the ghosts of the babies I’ll never have.
Other than Ryland, the only other funerals I’d ever attended were of my great-grandparents several years ago. They were all so sweet, so funny in their own way. I grieved their loss one by one. But they were so old, they’d lived such fulfilling and happy lives. And they had seemed ready to pass the torch to their children and their grandchildren and us greats. My dad’s grandparents died within hours of the other. My great-grandmother lay down after she’d gotten home from the hospital where GG-dad had passed. She simply went to sleep and never woke back up.
They had been married over three-quarters of a century. They’d gone through the depression together. Lost infants together. Raised a horde of living children together. Watched some march off to war. Mourned those who didn’t return. Cared for my uncle who came back, but would never be the same. He stared at a wall for twenty years, never speaking of the horrors that had trapped his mind in that space. Or so I was told. He died before I was born.
Shell shock, they called it then.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, they call it today.
One and the same.
I think of Link’s nightmares. I think of the times he ran and trained so hard, running from his ghosts. The times I caught him staring at a wall. Blank. Lifeless.
The times he’d jumped when a loud noise happened unexpectedly. The way I always pretended not to notice.
And he isn’t the only one. Thousands and thousands of soldiers are dealing with this same thing. I wonder how their spouses cope. Their children. Seeing the same man or woman who got on that plane come back so very different. Is that why there are so many homeless veterans? Because the stress tore the families apart? Like Link, did some of those soldiers think they were doing their family a favor by leaving?
I’m afraid for him.
I’m afraid that his self-hatred will cause him to risk his life unnecessarily, especially now that he doesn’t have someone to protect. He would have handled the cabin raid differently if I hadn’t been there. I know that. He never would have ran. He would have stayed and fought it out to the end. Captured one of them. Tortured that person cruelly for information.
I shiver.
I’d laughed about waterboarding Rob, but things like that really happen in our world. Worse things. Every day.
The mercenaries. I think of them too. Remember how Link told me that ex-soldiers joined security teams and simply did as they were told, taking out targets for reasons that didn’t matter to the man holding the gun. Then go home to their wives and families at the end of the day.
I’d watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith a number of times and it suddenly clicks in my brain that they were mercenaries too. Companies for hire to take out bad guys. Companies competing against each other to get there first. Win the prize. No matter what.
I look up the river, thinking I heard the snap of a twig. Probably a deer or a squirrel. I listen harder, more intently, but only hear the sounds of mountain life all around me.
The day is growing brighter and it’s already growing warm, the humidity of the day stirring around in the air. I stretch, testing my shoulder, pleased that my range of motion is increasing, the pain lessening.
I freeze.
Another snap of a limb.
Then another.
Looking back at the shack, it now seems a million miles away, especially across the open expanse of green field.
Another snap, and my heart beat increases, terror building in my gut. I rise to a crouch, looking hard into the trees, looking for movement.
Snap.
Still crouched, I begin walking in the direction of the old fishing shack. From inside, I hear Fate begin to bark.
Snap.
I run.
Over my ragged breath, I hear another sound that terrifies me.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
A helicopter.
To my left, something is crashing through the trees now. No stealth. All rush.
I run faster, seeing the guns Link left on the porch and head in their direction.
The sound of the helicopter behind me is growing closer. I feel like an X is marked on my back. I run, trying to zig and zag without losing speed. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right.
God help me, I don’t remember.
As I make it to the old porch, heading to the guns, the first bullet flies past my head, punching into the old wood and I scream.
Crouching even lower, I change directions. The door. I’ve got to get to the door.
Bullets.
I can’t count the number that punch into the shack all around me.
Please God no, the bullets are so close.
I reach the door and dive inside.
Not that it will do me any good.
Chapter 4 – Duffy
Pushing the truck past its limits, I punch the gas and it heaves over a huge log that’s in the way, nearly tipping over onto its side. I’m past the grove where I parked earlier, past the goat trail that offered some semblance of direction and protection. I whip the steering wheel to the right, and feel the back wheel fall off the edge of the drop just inches from my left before the right wheel catches and jolts the truck back on solid ground.
When I’d topped the mountain, I saw the helicopter lights against the dawning sky. And I’d known. Grace was in trouble. Alone.
With the battery in the prosthetic growing low, I need to stay in the truck as long as possible. Plus, the noise I’m making will hopefully draw the mercenaries in my direction and away from her.
I curse as the truck leaves the mountain floor, then crashes back down, fishtailing the backend into a tree. I straighten it out and hit the gas, heading toward a gap and prepare for the landing as the truck leaves the ground again.
My teeth click together as I land, fishtailing again, this time broadsiding two trees. I throw up dirt and leaves as the tires spin, looking for traction, then I charge forward, lurching out of control down a sharp drop. The jolt of the landing is tremendous and the truck dies, the engine having stalled on impact. I’m still rolling and thrust it into neutral before I turn the key. As soon as it revs back to life, I hit the gas and swing away from another thatch of trees.
Trying to determine my location, I realize I’m getting close to the clearing near the shack, but no way in hell can I beat the bird.
Shit.
Too many trees ahead, no gap. I choose the smallest one and hit the gas.
The windshield shatters with the collision, but I manage to topple the tree and jolt over the fallen trunk. I wrap a jacket around my fist and hit the crashed windshield, dislodging it from the frame.
Damn.
Just as I have visual again, I see the boulder up ahead. I turn sharply, but not qu
ick enough. The truck pushes up on two wheels, teeters there and for a few seconds I think gravity will be kind. Then it’s not. The truck begins to roll, flipping several times and I prepare for sudden impact.
One hand on the ceiling and one hand on the wheel, I attempt to get a visual of where and when I’ll land. Shit. The driver’s side window implodes as a thick limb crashes through the truck. It pins me into the seat, the sharp bark pressing into my chest.
The scream of the metal is deafening as I continue to roll. The thick limb bars any attempt at escape and I have no choice. I can’t bail. I have to wait it out. I force myself to relax into the roll, going against all instincts to brace. With a final crash and jarring impact, I open the eyes I closed against the shattering glass and am happy to see I landed right side up.
As the noise of the wreckage stops, I can hear gunshots echoing through the woods.
No time. No time.
I’ve got to get out of here.
Pushing the tree limb back through the window, I look around for my ammo and guns. With an M4 and my Glock in hand, ammo stuffed in a bag, I toss it out, then crawl through the crushed front window and begin to run as fast as the terrain will allow.
Chapter 5 – Tate
Following the river as it snakes through the base of the mountains, I train my binoculars on the ground. I’m looking for some type of old building. I’m looking for movement in the trees. I’m trying to not toss the asshole beside me out of this bird after I pull his tonsils from his throat.
“It might be around that next curve,” he says for the third time and I swear to God, if he causes me to miss them, I’ll serve him his balls for lunch. “There!” he says, excitement and relief in his voice.
I turn and curse. This isn’t what I was hoping for. The rival team got here first.
“Call in coordinates,” I tell the pilot. “Circle west, come in from that direction. Warn them that we’re going in hot.”
Randall affirms my orders and I pull out my M4 before tugging on an armored vest and slapping a mag in the gun. I hand the gun to the co-pilot. “You’ll have to cover me.” He nods, taking the two extra magazines I hand him.
Badass - The Complete Series: A Billionaire Military Romance Page 39
