Beasts of Byron (Silvers Invasion Book 2)
Page 6
“What the fu—” Jackson’s curse cut off with a thump as the jeep swerved into an uncontrolled stop.
Pulse thudding in her throat, Beth’s gaze shot across just as he bounced back off the windshield and slumped into his seat, blood seeping from a thick gash at his temple. The bursts kept coming, all around them, jarring her skull and pumping pure terror through her veins. She grabbed Jackson’s arm, pure reflex, she wasn’t thinking, was barely breathing, and jerked him down.
“Beth, what…?” he groaned.
“Shhh.” She threw out an arm to pin him down.
Would it help?
She didn’t have a bloody clue.
Where the hell were those shots coming from? The thought was there before conscious understanding, but that came next. This wasn’t a drone attack. The fighter drones were silent in flight and fight. Someone was shooting at them.
“Jackson!” She had to shout to be heard above the gunfire. So much gunfire. How were they not already dead? “Stay down, okay?”
He lifted his head, but only enough to look up at her. “Don’t.”
Don’t what? Even she didn’t know what she was going to do, and then she did. She fumbled in and around his body for the rifle, her hands shaking, her entire body trembling.
Dammit.
She was supposed to be stronger than this.
Her fingers touched cool metal and wrapped around the butt of the rifle, dragging it out from beneath Jackson. She was still trying to figure out a way to shift position in the cramped space without getting her head blasted off when the continuous firing ceased. The abrupt silence left an echo ringing in her ears.
Jackson’s eyes widened on her, the question obvious.
She shook her head, mouthed, How the hell should I know?
“Easy now,” came a gruff voice, slow and bored. “Don’t make me get blood all over my new ride now.”
Beth went rigid.
“Shit,” Jackson muttered, burrowing out from under her.
“Uh, uh,” a second voice said.
Beth’s eyes flicked to the man standing over Jackson’s door, rifle trained on her, steely gaze on the M4 carbine her grasp had frozen on. Middle-aged, clean-shaven with a buzz-cut. Could she take him? Both of them?
The jeep’s suspension shuddered as a third man jumped into the back. Greasy black hair and a long, narrow face that hadn’t seen a wash in weeks. He reached over, grinning as he plucked the carbine from Beth’s fingers.
“Okay, let’s move,” said the first voice at her back. “Out the jeep.”
Jackson placed a restraining hand on Beth’s arm, as if afraid she’d do something stupid. As if there were anything she could do, she thought bitterly, studying the three men as she pushed the door open and stumbled out on jellified legs. These weren’t desk jockeys driven to desperate measures. Even the short one packed more muscle power in one bicep than her and Jackson combined. They carried their weapons like old friends, wore street-hardened expressions and leather vests that showed more ink than skin.
Her legs steadied slightly when she saw the jeep from the outside. All that shooting and not a single pockmark. They don’t want us dead. Then she remembered the gruff greeting. Correction, they didn’t want to hurt their new ride.
“On your knees,” barked the buzz-cut.
Jackson dropped to the ground but Beth couldn’t do that. She turned a glare on the man who’d barked the order. “What are you going to do to us?”
He slung his rifle over his shoulder, pulled a pistol from his hip and pressed the barrel to the back of Jackson’s head.
Jackson went white in the face.
“I said…” The man cocked the trigger carelessly, his full attention on Beth. “On your knees.”
Sweat beaded her brow and she bit down so hard on her lower lip, she tasted blood. She’d seen this movie, knew how it ended. She was usually the one yelling at the screen idiot to run. Better to get shot in the back than hand yourself up on a platter. Your mother, brother, lover, friend, was dead either way and your sacrifice wouldn’t save them.
But real life didn’t work like that.
The black top of the road seemed to fold around her as she sank to her knees beside Jackson.
- 6 -
Chris
The river cut through the woods about a quarter mile behind Little Falls into a wide bend with natural rocky pools. A good spot for scooping and Chris was on the fourth trip of his daily six, carting water to Doc Nate’s and some of the town’s elderly. He had a wheelbarrow to transport the plastic gallon containers and he didn’t really mind the hard work, but he was on his own today and the mundane task stretched and stretched.
Not that Rachel ever did much to help, but nothing felt like much of a chore when she was around.
He still couldn’t quite grasp how badly that had ended. Why the hell hadn’t he shut his mouth last night?
Muttering curses directed mainly at himself, Chris went down on his knees by the edge of a gulley pool and pressed the open neck of the container below water level. From now on, he was going to start listening more to Williams. The man was a big fan of the need to know basis. That seemed like a plan—a damned excellent plan—going forward.
The padded thud of footfalls on the woodland trail broke his chain of thought. His pulse gave a kick as he bent his head to look, flattened just as quickly at the flash of blond through a leafy bough. Of course it wasn’t her. A moment later, the rest of Jake appeared on the river bank.
His least favorite person in this town.
Chris didn’t hold a grudge, it was just residual dislike. What was there to like about a boy who thought it was fun to run strangers off the road with his bike?
The idiot was friendly with Rachel and Bran, though, so Chris generally tried to keep it civil. “Rachel’s not here.”
“I know.” Jake smirked and held up a square of paper pinched in his fingers. “Your girlfriend asked me to give you this.”
Chris eyed the note greedily. Even if it was a F.U. letter. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Tell someone who cares.”
The glug-glug-glug topped out and Chris yanked the container from the water onto the rocks. “Why didn’t she come herself?”
“I’m doing Rachel a favor here, but she said nothing about me having to listen to your boring questions.” He crushed the note in his fist and turned to go. “If you’re not interested…”
Chris bit down on his back teeth. Why had Rachel used Jake as her errand boy anyway? To piss you off.
After a beat, Jake let the balled-up note drop from his hand like an afterthought and walked off into the shaded trail.
Chris stacked the gallon containers on the wheelbarrow before going to pick up the crumpled paper. He stuffed it in his jean pocket and didn’t pull it out again until after he’d delivered the water and returned the wheelbarrow to Doc Nate’s back yard.
Even then, he wasn’t sure why he bothered. He had some experience with girls and break-ups and the long list of grievances they suddenly remembered the morning after. Did he really need to read through an A4 page of how much Rachel hated his guts?
When he shook the note out, however, there were only four words written in a loopy scrawl.
I’m at the cave.
She wanted to talk?
Chris hesitated, considered ignoring the sparsely worded command. But he’d be gone soon and he didn’t want to leave things this way between them.
That thought led to Williams and he made a lengthy detour by the Henderson’s on route to the cave. No truck. Williams and Sean were still scouting out the compound. Both men were highly capable and definitely not reckless, and there were soldiers stationed at the fort. Chris wasn’t worried, just curious to hear about what they’d found.
Where his overactive imagination left off, thoughts of Rachel took over, more so as he approached the last press of forest where the well-trodden path delivered him into the clearing at the cave.
A br
ush of wind shook a leafy branch to his left.
Not wind.
Too late.
Someone jumped him from behind, sent him sprawling face first. Before Chris could catch his breath, a dead weight crashed onto his back. A hand grabbed at his hair, using it to shove his face into the dirt and keep it there.
Chris shouted, a muffled noise that went nowhere. He squirmed, tried to buck the man off, slammed his palms down to push up, but the guy straddled his spine with beefy thighs.
“Where is it?” a voice Chris didn’t recognize hissed.
Not talking to him. He recognized the answering voice all too well
“Just a minute,” Jake said, sounding out of breath. “Here.”
What the hell!
Chris stopped squirming, channeling his energy like Williams had taught him. Think. Fight smart.
He scratched in the packed ground, loosening a clutch in each fist. Then he stretched forward with both arms and flung it over his head.
Useless. He must have tossed wide. The guy sitting on him didn’t even notice.
Chris couldn’t see, but he knew it was Jake moving around him, grabbing his hands, bending his arms behind his back, binding his wrists with rope.
Finally, the weight shifted and Chris could scrabble onto his knees. That’s as far as he got and then he was yanked backward, down to his butt. He twisted around to see what Jake was up to…tying the end of the rope around a slender trunk. “Jake, this is crazy.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Jake said, coming back around. “Todd’s not gonna hurt you.”
“Todd?” Chris snapped his gaze forward. He was tied to a tree, his mouth tasted of dirt, but the giant who’d jumped him wasn’t a thug or even a man, it was just Jake’s burly friend. He’d seen the boy around, hanging with Jake. “This was your idea?”
“Sure was and we did it.” Todd grinned. “We went and caught ourselves a president’s son.”
“Rachel told you?” Chris glared at Jake. The betrayal stung more than anything these two clowns were up to. He hadn’t told her it was a secret, but she damned well knew he wasn’t spreading the news around.
Jake stared at him in sullen silence, then his eyes popped wide open at the sudden eruption a short distance away. A rapid burst of gunfire.
Where? Chris went still, listening.
Again. Rat-a-tat-a-tat.
This side of town? The far side? He doubted it came from the town itself. There’d be more action than the sporadic bursts they were hearing.
“What’s happening?” Todd dropped to a knee before Chris. “Where’s that coming from?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re the president’s son.”
“That doesn’t come with psychic powers,” Chris informed him on the tail of another sporadic burst of gunfire.
“Don’t play dumb,” Todd snarled. “That Captain Davis keeps you informed, don’t he? You hear everything ‘cause of who you are.”
“Even if that were true—”
“Who told you about the Silvers battlecruiser, huh?” He looked at Jake, back at Chris. “We know that came from you.”
Was there anything Rachel hadn’t told them? Chris shook his head and tried again. “Even if that were true, he couldn’t tell me about an attack before it happened, could he?”
“You think you’re funny?”
“Attack?” Jake wrapped his arms around his midriff. “Someone’s attacking us?”
The kid looked like he was about to puke and Chris took pity on him. “It’s probably someone trying their luck at raiding one of the farms. The army supplied them with assault rifles. And listen…”
The gunfire appeared to be over. There’d also been no return fire.
They listened for a couple minutes more.
Nothing.
Todd straightened. “I’m going to check it out.”
“What about me?” whined Jake.
“Keep an eye on him,” Todd said, pointing at Chris. “Make sure he stays put.”
Chris waited until he was out of sight and out of hearing before he turned to Jake. “Jake, come on, man. Let me go.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you.” Arms still wrapped tightly, as if to hold himself together, Jake paced a short line up and down the path. “We just want you to tell us about the Silvers. Where they’re from. Why they’re here. Why the government never told us they were coming.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Behind his back, Chris rubbed his wrists to test the rope. There was just enough slack to chaff his skin, but he went to work on it anyway. “I know as much, or little, as anyone else. Whatever Rachel’s been saying—”
“Rachel didn’t tell me anything!”
Chris cocked a brow at him.
“I mean…” Jake stopped walking to scuff at an exposed root. “I overheard her and Bran talking, okay? Leave Rachel out of this. She doesn’t need to know about…”
“About what an idiot you are?”
Jake scowled at him.
Chris shrugged and worked harder at loosening the knot at his wrists. He didn’t want to think about what an idiot he was himself. Didn’t want to think about Rachel raging over how he’d deceived her, so wrapped up in being comforted by Bran that neither noticed Jake eavesdropping. He just wanted to free his hands and be done with this town.
“Hey.” Jake stepped closer with a suspicious look “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Chris said, and realized it was true. Besides giving himself rope burn. Time to change tactics. “You know kidnapping is a federal offense, right? What do you think’s going to happen to you and Todd? Kidnapping the president’s son?” He blew out a wow breath.
“No one cares about that stuff anymore,” Jake said. “There’s no more police, no more FBI. That’s what Todd’s dad says, there’s only the law of the fittest now.”
Charming. “Is that why Todd took off?”
“He went to check out that shooting.”
“Or maybe he had second-thoughts and left you to take the fall.”
Jake’s face flushed. “Todd wouldn’t do that.”
“You sure about that?” Chris pushed. “Law of the fittest. That means everyone looks out for themselves.”
“Shut up,” Jake muttered. “You don’t know anything.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Chris said. “I don’t know anything about the Silvers or their mission statement. Hell, I don’t even know where my father is. You’re causing yourself a lot of trouble for a whole lot of nothing.”
Jake sent him a mutinous look and started pacing again. Up and down, then up and up and up…
“Jake!” Chris shouted as he kept walking deeper into the woods. “Hey! You can’t leave me here. Jake!”
Shit.
- 7 -
Sean
Two hours of Cassie’s frosty attitude was about as much as Sean could handle. She had not been happy to see him and Williams scale the wall and sneak into her guard house. She’d actually pointed her rifle at him when he’d refused to leave, might even had pulled the trigger if Private Evans hadn’t intervened. No, she was not happy and Sean hadn’t come all this way just to be chargrilled by her death stares.
He stepped back from the cut-out window and turned to Williams with a curt nod. Williams swiped their bag of gear up from the floor, ready to do this. The man had been ready inside fifteen minutes of their arrival, but Sean was less confident in their ability to face off with a Silvers battalion. He’d wanted to make one hundred percent sure there was no movement down there first. He adjusted the M4 strapped to his chest and followed Williams to the door. Not quick enough.
Cassie shoved away from her look-out hole to intersect him. “Where are you going?”
“Is that an invitation to stay?”
“Hell, no.” She drilled him with a sharp, searching look, then finally stood aside to let him pass. “You do realize this is going on my report to the captain.”
The door closed behind them. Williams crouched to set the bag gently on the ground and extracted the coil of knotted rope. He sent Sean a questioning look as he straightened, looping the coil over his shoulder. “The sergeant’s report will burn your bridges with Captain Davis.”
“If she goes through with the threat.”
“That’s not a threat, McAllister, it’s her job.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sean crept along the back of the guard house.
“Keep up,” Williams instructed and shot past him, skimming alongside the hilltop boundary wall with a light-footed run.
Sean hustled after. Any second now and Cassie would start wondering why she wasn’t seeing them toss the grappling ladder over the wall. Then she’d look this way.
The path narrowed with a sheer cliff dropping from his left, then broadened again as the cliff gave way to a slope knitted with shrub and grass. By the time he caught up to Williams, the man was tying one end of the rope around a gnarled stub of hardwood shrub.
Williams gave a hard jerk to test the hold. “I’ll go first.”
The spot he’d chosen gave them the cover of long grass and bush, but had a steep incline of about 30 feet that would require a cheap and dirty version of abseiling to reach the gentler gradient. Williams made it look easy, though. Hand-over-hand on the rope, using the knot intervals to set the pace, he walked himself down in sturdy lunges.
Sean hunched low, a quick glance to check for any sign of Cassie in pursuit, then his gaze swept the valley below. He had an angled view of the fort from the side, an imposing stone wall with deep set windows perched few and far between. The battlecruiser filled the courtyard out front like a mystical black beast veiled in mist.
The rope shivered as Williams released it and ducked behind a bush.
Sean grabbed the rope with both hands and scrambled over the edge to plant his feet. He only managed one, the other slipped out on a shower of loose stones. The slide scraped fire inside his grasp until it hooked the next knot. Swallowing a curse, he stabbed wildly with the toe of his boot for purchase.