by Kaylea Cross
Stanislav flipped her onto her back, forcing her head under the water. Amber reared up, driving the heel of her hand into his face as a blow smashed into her cheek, snapping her head back. Water filled her mouth.
“She was mine! She was going to be mine forever, and you took her from me!” he screamed.
Amber choked and drove her fist at his throat, her knuckles hitting nothing but air as Stanislav’s restraining weight was suddenly knocked aside.
She rolled to her knees just as Jesse flew past, the force of his tackle knocking Stanislav back into the water.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jesse dragged in a breath a split second before his head went under the water, the two of them rolling. While Stanislav had been thrashing around with Amber, Jesse hadn’t been able to get a shot off without risking hitting her, so he’d knocked the sonofabitch off her in a flying tackle.
His pistol was in his hip holster. But there was something inherently satisfying about pummeling this motherfucker with his bare fists.
Jesse twisted to the side and came up on top, immediately drawing his fist back to slam it into Stanislav’s evil face. Bone crunched, pain flaring through Jesse’s hand as a bellow of agony escaped the other man.
He and Stanislav both had the same level of training, and a busted nose or cheekbone wouldn’t stop him.
Jesse grunted as a heavy fist plowed into his lower ribs. The next instant he found himself on his back, his head being shoved under the water.
He bucked and flung both hands up to seize Stanislav’s throat, wrenching them sideways. Down they went again, tumbling one over the other, the watery light from the submerged flashlight nearby adding to the disorientation.
Just as Jesse’s head cleared the water and he sucked in a ragged breath, Stanislav’s head snapped back.
Jesse blinked, shook the water out of his eyes to find Amber right next to them. She stepped back into firing stance, having booted Stanislav in the head, her weapon aimed point blank at him.
“Freeze, asshole,” she commanded, moving in as she reached for the cuffs in her pocket.
“Fuck you,” Stanislav growled, struggling to break Jesse’s hold. He shot a leg out beneath the water and swept Amber’s feet out from under her.
She went down hard on her side, rolling to her knees just as two shots rang out from behind them down the tunnel, spraying bits of tile and concrete near her head.
Another shooter in the tunnel.
Jesse bit back a curse and renewed his efforts to subdue Stanislav, wanting to protect her and unable to draw his weapon. They traded more blows, thrashing and flailing in a death struggle in the water. He caught a flash of movement at the last moment and barely ducked out of the way as a blade whipped past his neck.
Stanislav slashed downward. Jesse threw up a forearm to block the wicked slice.
Bone met bone as their forearms connected. He released Stanislav’s neck and gripped the man’s knife wrist instead, wrenching it back and down as more shots exploded in the confined space.
Stanislav yelled in pain and levered backward, dragging Jesse with him. The water made Jesse lose his grip. A hand flailed out, ripped at Jesse’s weapon.
Jesse grabbed for it, missed, and lost it in the darkness. He sprawled face first into the water, shoved up on his hands and felt around for the pistol beneath the water, his gaze darting to his enemy.
Stanislav lunged forward, his face a feral mask of rage as he swung the blade toward him. Jesse bit back a curse and dove out of the way, hissed in a breath as a hot sting burned across his upper arm. He leapt to his feet and faced off with Stanislav, cutting a look toward Amber.
She was partway up the tunnel now, crouched as she returned fire at the shooter. It was too dark to see where Jesse’s weapon was. He needed more time to recover it.
“I’m killing you both,” Stanislav snarled, his right arm dangling at his hip, then rushed Jesse. “First you, then her. And I’m going to make her fucking suffer first.”
Rage and protectiveness pulsed through Jesse. Stanislav wasn’t fucking touching her again. Ever.
He tensed and locked his gaze on Stanislav’s knife hand. The moment his adversary came within range, Jesse darted to the side and kicked Stanislav’s feet out from under him. Stanislav stumbled and went down, and it was all Jesse needed.
He leapt on the bastard’s back, aware that the shooting had stopped, but unable to stop and assess what had happened. He knocked the knife out of Stanislav’s wet grip and clamped both arms around the asshole’s neck, locking him in a chokehold, ducking his head in tight as the retaliating blows rained down on his head and shoulders.
You’re not touching her. You’re not fucking getting near her.
Stanislav’s body began to go slack. Jesse maintained his grip, refusing to let go until he was sure Stanislav was going under.
Stanislav stopped struggling. His unbroken arm flailed once, twice, then went limp as he slumped in Jesse’s hold.
Jesse let up on the pressure and reached one hand down to fish for his weapon.
Finding it, he glanced over his shoulder at Amber. She was coming toward him, holstering her weapon. She appeared unhurt, and his heart started beating again.
“I’m out of ammo. Is he dead?”
“No.” Breathing hard, battling the urge to put a bullet in the motherfucker’s brain, Jesse shoved to his feet. “Got the cuffs?”
“Yeah.”
Jesse wasn’t the one who should finish this.
With one hand he reached down, seized Stanislav’s hair, and wrenched upward.
Stanislav dragged in a heaving breath and released it an enraged snarl, flailing his unbroken arm up to try and break Jesse’s grasp. When he saw Amber he made a sound like an enraged bull and lunged forward.
Jesse shoved him in the opposite direction, sending him reeling.
Unarmed and outnumbered, Stanislav stumbled, caught himself before he fell. He stared at them both as a taut silence spread through the tunnel, his shoulders and chest heaving, water dripping from his hair and face.
“It’s over,” Jesse told him, voice cold.
Stanislav leveled one final hate-filled stare at them, then turned and raced away down the tunnel.
Jesse drew his weapon.
“No,” Amber said, catching his shoulder.
He turned to her, flipped his weapon over and extended his arm, handing it to her. “He’s all yours.”
AMBER TOOK THE pistol from him, searching his eyes in the dim light afforded by the submerged flashlight now trapped against the tunnel wall.
Jesse knew. He knew this was personal for her, how important it was to her, and that she needed to be the one to end this.
Turning to face Stanislav, his silhouette barely visible now as he neared the next turn in the tunnel, she raised the pistol and fired once.
He cried out, grabbed the back of his left thigh and fell headlong into the water.
Amber stalked toward him, Jesse a few paces behind with the flashlight. He wouldn’t interfere, knew Stanislav was hers, and damn she loved him for it.
A torrent of emotion bombarded her as she approached the downed man. She’d been trained to operate with a cool head, never letting emotion interfere with her decisions or reactions. Now she all but trembled with it, remembering the hell this man and his lover had put her through.
Yury was struggling to get to his right knee, unwilling to surrender. Not that she was surprised.
“Hands in the air, asshole,” she called out.
His shoulders were heaving, his uneven breaths echoing off the tunnel’s walls. He turned his head, nailed her with a look of pure hatred. “You think I’m scared of you, bitch? I know all about killing Valkyries. Come and get me.”
“Oh, I am.” She was fired up, goosebumps racing across her skin as she neared her target. She was tasked with capturing him, sanctioned only to kill as a last resort in self-defense. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. “Hands behind you
r back.”
“Fuck you,” he snarled, sneering in defiance through busted lips.
Amber marched forward, lowering one hand from her weapon to reach for his broken wrist.
His left hand whipped out, yanking her blade from its holster on her calf.
She reared back just as it sliced upward toward her belly. Fury ripped through her. She found her footing and kicked at his hand.
The blow sent him falling back on his elbows, his eyes glittering up at her in the dimness. The blade was still in his grip.
And the look on his face told her exactly how this was going to end. That there was only one way this could end.
He wanted to kill her. So badly that he was willing to die here and now for the chance to try and make it happen.
Do it. Go on, do it, she dared him silently. She was ready to finish this.
Holding that evil stare, Amber reached into her pocket for the cuffs, her weapon still trained on him. “When you get to hell, say hi to Zoya and the others for me,” she told him.
Yury bared his teeth and lunged upward, blade arcing up to strike.
Amber squeezed the trigger, firing point blank at his head.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sun was just setting as Amber stepped out the back door of the manor house and into the garden. All around her the sweet scent of roses carried in the air, her boots crunching lightly over the pea gravel with each step she took toward the stables.
She’d needed to escape the house for a while. She needed time to process everything and think.
Exhaustion pulled at her. After killing Stanislav in that sewer—the most fitting place for a piece of shit like him to die—the rest of the day had passed by in a blur.
Whoever Trinity had called had located the hacker Stanislav had been using to rig the hatches. He’d been arrested and was currently being interrogated in the same secure facility Amber had escaped from a few weeks back.
Trinity had also called in a cleanup crew to deal with the aftermath while the entire team had packed up in a hurry and driven the hell out of London. They’d arrived back here to Laidlaw Hall just as the sun came up, and ever since they’d been split into groups for various meetings and debriefings, giving statements and all the messy paperwork that came with this kind of an op. Even an off-the-books op had some kind of paper trail.
She hadn’t seen Jesse since leaving London, and she missed him. They’d been separated soon after emerging from the tunnel, and undergone private debriefings and various meetings before being transported back here. He’d sustained a few shrapnel wounds from the frag grenade, but they hadn’t required surgery, and the slices on his arm and ribs had only needed a few steri-strips and a couple stitches.
As for her, she had numerous bruises and cuts, and the bullet hole in her vest was a pointed reminder of how close she’d come to dying in that tunnel. Yet she was still alive, and Stanislav was dead. Not the outcome Rycroft and the other higher-ups had wanted, but it was the best outcome in Amber’s opinion. He’d needed to die.
A golden rectangle of light spilled out of the stable’s open door, warm and welcoming. But it was the person inside it that beckoned to her most of all.
Megan looked up when Amber entered and paused brushing Rollo. “Hi,” she said with a smile that seemed a little forced.
“Figured I’d find you here. You been out here long?”
“An hour, maybe.” She swept the brush over Rollo’s sleek neck. The horse watched Amber with large, dark eyes, his ears pricked forward. “He wants you to come say hi.”
Amber stopped within arm’s reach and held her palm out. She couldn’t help but smile as the horse’s muzzle whispered across her skin, whiskers pricking, nostrils blowing warm breath as he smelled her. “Does this mean we’re friends now?”
“Pretty sure, yep.” She glanced at Amber, moving the brush down to the horse’s shoulder. “So, how you doing?”
“I’m good. You?”
“Great.”
They were both lying. Amber laughed softly. “God, we’re so messed up.”
A real grin tugged at Megan’s lips. “I know, right? But it helps knowing we’re in the same boat. And now we have each other.”
Yes. They did. But it had been close this morning. She’d almost died and had nearly gotten Megan killed when it should have been Amber taking the risk all along.
She rubbed the back of her neck. “About what happened earlier.”
“Don’t. We’re all okay, and Stanislav’s burning in hell. Couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”
Amber nodded. “It’s funny, though.”
Her sister stopped and straightened, watching her. “What is?”
She shrugged. “The thought of dying never bothered me before. But I think it’s because…” She drew a deep breath, covering a wince as her ribs expanded, pulling on the bruised tissue beneath her right collarbone. “Because I never had anything to lose before. No one to leave behind.” Now she had a sister, and a supportive team of women just like her who cared about her.
And Jesse. Although what the hell she was going to do about him, she still didn’t know. He made her want things she’d never dared dream of before, and now she couldn’t stop thinking about road trips and picnics somewhere she’d never been before. With him.
“Yeah, I know.” Megan tossed the brush into a bucket and led Rollo back into his stall. “That same thing ran through my mind when I thought I was trapped down there. About Tyler and you.”
“Makes it a lot tougher to do what needs to be done, doesn’t it?” Not so easy to sacrifice yourself when it meant leaving people you cared about behind. Getting attached meant losing your edge, and that could prove deadly for all of them. It was so much easier to stay unattached.
Except when a man like Jesse Cordova made that impossible.
“I know,” Megan said. “What opened that hatch, anyway? Tyler said it started unlocking on its own.”
“I had Lady Ada override the system before I left the building. It finally kicked in when you were trying to get it open.”
Megan let out a soft laugh. “My genius sister.” She shut the stall door and turned toward Amber. “You want to walk for a bit?”
“Sure.” Megan always had tons of excess energy to burn off, and tired as she was, Amber could use the opportunity to settle herself. Though the op was over, she was keyed up, unsettled.
Once again she was in legal limbo, waiting to see what would become of her. If Rycroft and the powers that be decided she wasn’t trustworthy, or that she was criminally responsible for killing Stanislav rather than capturing him… Or if they decided to turn her over to the Syrian government for the people she’d killed there, her days of freedom were numbered.
She could always run, but…she was tired of running. And this time, two extremely special people made her want to stay and fight for the future she’d always denied herself.
They walked up the side of the barn together and through a gate into a field that joined the hills rolling into the distance. The evening air was still warm. A few birds were still singing in the trees they passed, the apples in the orchard almost ready to be picked. With every step, the green, sweet scent of crushed grass rose up.
“It’s like a slice of paradise out here,” Amber murmured, gazing out across the hills.
“I know, I love it.” Megan angled a look at her. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, have you found any intel on Chloe Wilson?”
The Valkyrie specializing in demolitions who Megan had befriended during her initial training, the way Amber had with Kiyomi. “I’m following up on a few leads. Nothing concrete yet.” There were a total of seven Valkyries possibly still out there somewhere. Amber was doing everything she could to figure out which of them were still alive, and where they were located.
“Oh. You’ll let me know if you find anything?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks. Since you’ve brought Kiyomi here it’s made me think of Chloe a
lot more. I want to find her.”
“We will.” One way or the other, Amber would find out what had happened to her.
Her sister smiled softly and changed the subject. “What exactly’s going on with you and Jesse now? You guys seemed pretty tight back there in London.”
“I have no idea.” And even if she was considering the idea of giving a relationship with him a shot, nothing could happen until she knew what her fate would be.
Megan snorted. “That’s such a copout. Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. I’m way out of my depth here.”
“Ahhh,” her sister said in a thoughtful tone. “Okay, that I can relate to. How do you feel about him, though?”
She squirmed inside, uncomfortable with talking about this, even with Megan. Although Megan was the only living soul she would ever have this conversation with. “I’m…attached to him.” The thought of losing him, never seeing him again sliced her heart to pieces.
Megan lifted her eyebrows. “Attached as in, you like jumping his bones? Or attached as in, you feel like your heart will be ripped out of your body if he leaves?” Her eyebrows rose higher.
Oh, God. “Closer to the second, I think.”
“You think.”
Amber groaned. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”
Her sister chuckled, her ponytail bobbing as she walked. Its own little ball of energy, just like Megan. “Join the club, sis. But I gotta say, after having a few months more of experience in these matters than you, it’s a pretty damn great club to be in.”
“He stayed to back us up on this op when he didn’t have to. He put himself in the line of fire for me twice. And at the end he…let me take Stanislav down alone.” Amber looked at her, knowing her sister would understand the significance of that. “How did you do it? Decide you wanted to be with Ty.”
Thankfully, Megan didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I surrendered, I guess.”
A totally foreign concept to a Valkyrie. “I don’t know if I can.”
