Hot Contract

by Jodi Henley

  Jen reached out. A trickle of blood ran from under Kate’s coal-dark hair. “Aunt Ka—?”

  Kate’s long silver gun jammed up under Jen’s chin, tipping her head back. Jen closed her eyes. Fear strangled her, a world of regrets. I’m sorry, Keegan. So sorry.

  “You’ve been quite the inconvenience, Jenny-dear. Any last words?”

  Jen opened her eyes, only to wish she hadn’t. It was a long fall into that kind of madness.

  She stuttered out the one question that had bothered her for years. “Does D-dad know about the insanity in our family?”

  “It doesn’t breed true,” said her aunt. She brushed at a smear of blood on her knuckles and a tiny line formed between her brows as she thought. For a second, Jen got a glimpse of the woman she had known all her life, but the second passed, and Kate slid to another subject, horribly similar to the first.

  “He did kill her, you know. With a meat mallet, or was it a hammer? I can’t remember, it was so long ago. Lance told me. Stupid, I told him. The boy escaped. Tris is rotten get. I told him, he should have killed the boy first. The woman wouldn’t have been able to leave with the boy gone. It scared him, you know. Rainey leaving. He wanted to keep her forever. She was going to leave us. No one leaves us.”

  Jen swallowed. “I like Tris.”

  Kate nodded thoughtfully. “You would.”

  The gun clicked.

  Jen rolled her head, surprised to find it still attached to her body. “Omigod, the fall damaged your gun.”

  “Be dead already!” shrieked Kate.

  Jen pushed to her feet. “It isn’t so easy when I’m not taped up, is it?”

  “You care for that young man, don’t you?” Kate followed her up. “You and that blonde girl have caused me no end of trouble. I’m sure killing your men will hurt more than your own deaths.”

  For the first time, Jen was grateful for her emotional training. She pulled on it, smoothing her nerves down into an air-tight box. “Aunt Kate?”

  “Guinevere?”

  The façade of normality startled her. She wasn’t the only one with training.

  “Kill me and leave Keegan alone,” she blurted.

  Moonlight striped Kate with long black shadows. For a second Jen thought she’d gotten through, but something in Kate’s eyes changed, a quick sideways shift.

  “Sorry, but that won’t do anymore.” Kate fluffed her hair and started away, working the slide on her gun.

  ****

  Keegan pulled his sister down into the shelter of the overturned altar. “Fallon?”

  A fusillade of bullets pinged off the stone slabs, chips flying like shrapnel. Fallon slapped at his arm and swore. “What?”

  “It needs to end here,” said Keegan. “How fast can you reload?”

  Silence. “Fifteen seconds.”

  Keegan pointed to Kimo's position. “White phosphorus—is he in range?”

  “No.”

  “Corlis, lay down cover.”

  “On a ten-count!” she shouted. “One—”

  Fallon sprinted into place, brought the grenade launcher up to his shoulder and took careful aim. Columns of flame shot up, turning the bleak Volcano night into a roaring inferno. “Fall back!” he yelled.

  Corlis ran to him, dropped to one knee and swung around, gun punching out bullets meant to keep him safe. “C’mon, Keegan! Get a move on.”

  Someone flung a chunk of C-4 over the wall where it hit the altar and stuck like a wad of wet toilet paper. Keegan froze, heart choking the air out of his lungs. It was only a matter of time before someone remembered the fuses.

  They had to get Jen out. He turned…and went ballistic.

  “—Keegan!”

  “She’s missing, Liss!”

  Corlis grabbed his collar and hauled him down off his feet so hard his teeth clicked. “Is she still on the platform? Goddamn it, calm down!”

  “Jesus—I don’t fucking know! I told her not to move.”

  Lack of cover meant no one could get close, but it also meant DalCon couldn’t leave. If Jen had left of her own free will, she’d left before the firefight had turned into a conflagration. Corlis pulled a corner of her shirt up over her nose, breathing in through the fabric.

  “Fallon? Hear that?”

  “Yeah,” growled her partner.

  The distant thwap! of choppers grew louder. Big, black helicopters came over the horizon, blades churning the night into a madhouse of panicked shouts. They formed into a neat line and landed, one by one.

  ****

  “Guinevere?” Someone lifted Jen straight up and off of Kate, her arms and legs dangling like a spider.

  She thrashed wildly, fists swinging. There was hair was in her eyes, snarled like her emotions. “Let me go! She’s going to kill him!”

  Percy dropped her onto her feet, and pulled her into his arms. “Stand still. She’s not going anywhere, she’s not even moving. Can’t you see I’m trying to hug you? What did you do to her?”

  “I don’t know. I tackled her, and then…I don’t know.”

  The Aina were in retreat and StallingCo Security spread out. Josh ran past, shouting directives into a headset. Someone lifted Kate and carried her away as a flash of green polo shirts separated Jen from the aunt she’d somehow wrestled into...what? Death?

  Jen burst into hiccups and sniffled, fists knotted in her brother’s shirt. “Oh, God...P-Percy...”

  His arms tightened. “That was too close,” he whispered. “I lost Mom. I won’t lose you, too.”

  “It’s not fear,” said Jen, desperate for him to understand. “I normally don’t…don't cry. It’s relief—”

  “I know about relief,” said her brother.

  She wiped her nose on the back of her arm. “How did you get here?”

  He turned her in the direction of the parking lot. A tight formation of black Sikorsky Pave Hawks, with the stylized slash of StallingCo Security picked out on the tail, filled the narrow access road, one after the other. Searchlights threw the temple into harsh relief and slanted over Deacon’s crumpled form, all alone in the smoke-filled courtyard.

  “You didn’t hear us land?”

  “I hear that one,” she yelled, over the whup-whup of a smaller, British-built Lynx.

  The sleek military helicopter hovered three feet above the parking lot, kicking up a swirl of dust. The hatch slid back and a large black duffle dropped down to the gravel.

  Tris dropped after it and waited a bare second for Rafe to fall into place beside him before waving the chopper off and grabbing his bag. Despite Tris being part of the Security Triumvirate, Percy’s men hesitated to approach him. Tris had the cold, flat eyes of a killer.

  He stalked into the courtyard with two headsets and flung one to Percy. “Toggle off,” he said. “You’re live.”

  Tris’s resemblance to the rest of the family was more a matter of coloring than facial characteristics. He had the same black hair and dark eyes, but his hair was long and hung to his shoulders and his eyes were black, flecked with brown. Dressed all in black, he wore heavy combat boots, ripped jeans and a long sleeved black t-shirt pushed up to his elbows. A Heckler and Koch G3 assault rifle hung at his side in a swivel sling.

  “Tris!” Jen ran into his unwilling embrace and hugged him tight. It was like hugging a statue, hard and utterly cold.

  His assault rifle bumped up between them.

  “My G3 is set for light pressure,” he said in a low growl, his voice tinged by just the faintest trace of a foreign accent.

  “I’m happy to see you too,” said Jen. She kissed his cheek and he un-bent just enough to let a faint smile touch his thin lips.

  Kate lurched past them, her words denigrating into a garble of spittle-clotted shrieks.

  Tris stepped back and eyed their aunt with undisguised contempt. “Good evening, Aunt Katherine.”

  Kate struggled against her guards, arms waving. “Unclean! Don’t talk—make him stop!”

  Percy sighed and rubbed a han
d over his face. “All right,” he said, almost to himself. “Tris?”

  Tris went to the nearest Pave Hawk and brought back a straitjacket. “Gag, too?”

  “No,” said Percy. “Leave her some dignity. She is our aunt.”

  “...with a meat mallet, until she was dead!” screamed Kate.

  "Gag her," said Percy. He pulled Jen aside, searching her face.

  For what, Jen wondered. Her sanity, maybe? “I should have called,” she said. “Gone into hiding like you wanted—”

  “No,” said her brother. “You did what you had to do, and I can respect that. Aunt Kate was a total wildcard. If those DalCon operatives hadn’t called, I’d have never known. Of all people...Aunt Kate. Makena must have been going insane. I wish he’d talked to me. I thought it was—” A whisper of sound came from his headset. He turned. “You copy that, Tris?”

  Tris tapped his ear. “Yeah.”

  A shot rang out, sharp and clear over the deafening noise. Jen stretched up on her toes. She couldn’t see what was happening on the platform.

  Percy followed her look. “We got most of them.”

  She tried to pull her fears back into her. Not to mention her heart, up there on that platform with Keegan. “Kimo laughed when I said you’d find him.”

  Percy tipped his head back, a cruel light in his Stalling-black eyes. “There is no hole deep enough. He can run, but I’ll find him and when I do—”

  “Keegan?”

  Her brother saw right through her. But then, he always had. “The bodyguard, Guinevere?” His mouth flattened. “They’re coming down now.” He shot some directives into his headset.

  Jen jiggled from foot to foot. Keegan had to be safe.

  Percy toggled through the settings on his headset and half-turned away, speaking into the mouthpiece. “Guinevere? I know you’re my sister, but you’re distracting as all hell. Please don’t bounce. And where the hell is your bra? Josh? Now. My sister. Clothes in the chopper.”

  Josh hurried toward them, a bag tucked under his arm. “Ms. Stalling? If you’ll come this way? I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed.”

  “Keegan!” she demanded.

  “Guinevere!” Percy shot her an irritated look. “I’m carrying over thirty highly trained operatives, and the last thing I want in my reports is the fact that you aren’t wearing any underwear!” He glanced at the group coming down off the heiau. “I won’t kill him for messing with my little sister, and I won’t delegate it. He’s safe for now, so please? You’re making me dizzy.”

  ****

  Keegan stumbled off the steps and found himself staring down the wrong end of an assault rifle held by a hard-faced man in corporate khakis.

  “Mr. Dalfrey?”

  At Keegan’s nod, the barrel fell, although in his opinion—not far enough.

  The man turned. “Follow me.”

  The outer courtyard was full of noise and choppers. It felt like Star Wars, but instead of armor, the storm-troopers wore hunter green polo shirts.

  Keegan recognized a face. “Caravaggio!”

  Rafe changed direction, his black leather trench flaring out behind him. “Twice in one week, trying for some kind of record?”

  “Have you seen Jen?”

  “No,” said Rafe. “Not that I’d tell you if I had. My boss is mad at me, I’m trying to keep my job, and you show up with Makena’s mother in tow. Per Dio, most people avoid Tris.” Rafe started away and half-turned, still walking, backwards now. “It’s been an exciting couple of days. Don’t make it a habit.”

  Keegan’s guard directed him to a group of men. The one in the center looked enough like Kualani to be his brother. He stared Keegan up and down, and lifted one elegant brow, obviously not impressed.

  “Where is she?” demanded Keegan.

  Percival Stalling all but rolled his eyes and sighed. “My sister is changing.”

  He gestured the remainder of his team back toward their transports and waited until they left before saying, “You’ve slept with her.”

  “Don’t jerk my chain, Stalling.”

  “Then don’t mistake my meaning, Mr. Dalfrey. Jen has free will, just like everyone else in this family. But, if you want to hide your activities, please take into consideration…there is a certain smell.” Jen lived in the shape of his arrogant nose, but there was little of her in Stalling's cool, saturnine expression. “What does she see in you, I wonder?”

  “Why don’t you ask?”

  “I don’t think I want to know.” The head of StallingCo Security shook his head. “Why are you still here? You’ve fulfilled your contract with us.”

  A cluster of men wrestled with Jen’s crazy aunt kicking and twitching in a long white jacket. Her arms were tied behind her and there was a gag in her mouth, but she was still audible, eyes bulging and red-rimmed.

  “I hope there’s a lock wherever you’re taking her,” Keegan said.

  “Yes,” said Percy. “Whatever our faults, we take care of our own. We’ll hold her until she gets better. Or simply hold her. Her choice.”

  Percy tipped his head to the side, his eyes going distant as he listened to something coming over his headset. “My father wants to talk to you,” he said. He toggled through the channels. “Tris?”

  Tris emerged from the tangle of men with a chip on his shoulder so large it was a wonder he could walk. He had to be a Stalling. The resemblance was too strong. Shoulder-length black hair and a cropped black goatee made him look almost as sinister as he probably was. His function was obvious. Keegan had seen warmer eyes on a corpse.

  Percy waved vaguely, already drawn away by something coming over his headset. “Tris will set up the link, and make sure you aren’t disturbed.”

  Tris jerked his head. “This way.”

  A cordon of men stood around the nearest chopper, rigidly at attention, eyes moving—tracking everything. Keegan started for it.

  Tris blocked his way. “Art, first.”

  “Jen’s in there.”

  “Yeah,” said Tris. He had some kind of strange accent that Keegan couldn’t place. “But the guy who signs your paycheck is waiting to talk to you in there.” He pointed to a plain black chopper with no markings. “Tell me your priorities.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  There were two sets of plush leather chairs centered by flat panels and Jen's father occupied both. The hands-on CEO of a company the size of a third world country, Art Stalling was a big man with the pallid skin of someone who didn’t get out much and harsh, dark black hair.

  He jabbed a long white finger at Keegan and got right to the point. “I’ve had you investigated—you and your sibs, and that two-bit company of yours—and I’m telling you right now, boy. Stay away from my daughter.”

  Keegan gave Art a tight smile. “Fuck you.”

  Art's gaze swept Keegan contemptuously. “No, Mr. Dalfrey. Fuck you. You’ve heard of the golden rule, haven’t you? The guy with the gold makes the rules? Dump my daughter, or your brother dies. I’ve heard it’s a painful death.” The screens went blank.

  Keegan stumbled out of the helicopter, past Jen’s cousin to the now deserted temple. He stopped just short of the platform, arms wrapped down over his gut, everything he’d fought for condensed to this one point of total self-hatred. The bad guys were contained, the Project was safe and…Jen was no longer in danger. She was free to go anywhere she wanted. Without him.

  Kai's kid had put DalCon on the Samoy's shit list and Connor would die because Keegan couldn't keep his pants zipped. He had some kind of self-destruct—bound and determined to do the one thing guaranteed to fuck them all. Smoke rolled from the crevasse, sharp and putrid, coloring his messed-up world puke-yellow.

  Jen ran through the entrance and threw her arms around as much of him as she could reach, face pressed to his back. “Keegan?”

  There must have been a brush in that chopper, because her hair was smooth and clung to the filthy Volcano tourist jacket she’d bought him like nothing of her wanted
to be apart.

  Pain roared outward, throbbing out an insane need to grab her and run. His hands clenched, pulling him back from a precipice he refused to look over. She wasn't worth it. No one was worth it—there was only family. And right now his family needed him to do the right thing. He reached back to shove her off.

  Jen bounced up and down, eyes dancing. “We can catch a ride with Percy,” she said. “But we have to hurry. They’re getting ready to leave—”

  Percy. Keegan refused to look into the shadows just inside the entrance. Jen’s brother would want it done fast.

  “You’re quiet,” she said. “That’s not good. When we get home, I’ll make you scream.”

  “Back off,” he grated.

  Her grin melted on his soul like napalm. “There’s a store on the way...I can buy more condoms.”

  “Do I have to lay it out? I thought you were smarter than that.”

  Jen laughed. “Percy and Tris, my dad, videoconferencing? Really, Keegan. You don’t have to draw me a diagram. I'm smart. I promise.”

  “Get real. It wasn’t even good sex.”

  “It was great sex and I want to do it again. You’re mine, Keegan Dalfrey." She stepped right up to him and locked her arms around his waist. “And I refuse to let you go.”

  Keegan looked her in the eyes. “How are you going to stop me?”

  “Like this,” she said, and kissed him.

  He was going to explode. Her lips were so soft, she was so soft—and he wanted her so much. He slid his hand up between their lips and pushed, shoving her back against the stairs.

  “What the fuck is your problem? If you chase every guy that does you, sugar, it’s no wonder you’re alone. I’ve already told you, the sex wasn’t good. I’ve had better, and I don’t want seconds.”

  It took time for her smile to cycle through uncertainty to disbelief. Keegan didn't hold back. He shoved her again—hard, and sent her crashing into the wall behind her.

  She cried out, one hand clenched to her wrist. “You’re scaring me!”