by Kit Rocha
Too bad. The pervs were easy to deal with. Their dicks made them stupid, and Ana heartily enjoyed applying the heel of her boot to the source of the problem. But the look this guy was giving her was something far less disgusting and far more dangerous--curious assessment mixed with fascination.
His roving gaze stopped in the smart places. Her muscles. Her weapons. He catalogued them the same way she studied him, picking out strengths and envisioning weaknesses. Ana wanted to put him down simply to end the threat he represented, but this bastard wanted to smash her down. Make her small. Put her in her place. Convince her she never should have left it.
Not as stupid as the pervs. But she could work with it.
“So.” The man strode closer, stopping only a few paces away. “You’re the one who got Axel.”
Ana raised both eyebrows. “Which one’s Axel?”
“Smart mouth.” He glanced past her to the corpse on the ground, and though his brow furrowed with mild displeasure, there was nothing of the vengeful rage Ana would have felt if their positions were reversed.
He looked back at Ana, his eyes still amused. Still curious. With his gun trained on her forehead, he raised his voice. “I’ve got the girl. You can come down here nice and friendly-like, or I can put a bullet between her eyes. And that’d be a waste. She seems fun.”
Ana nearly laughed. A smart man would have pulled the trigger and taken his chances with Ashwin. Faced with a physically intimidating foe like Hunter or Reyes, Ana didn’t doubt he would have.
But she was the girl. So she was hostage-bait.
God bless men and their rampaging, incapacitating egos.
Boots slapped on the pavement behind her. Something made the man’s eyes widen, and in the next moment he lunged for Ana. His arm wrapped around her throat tight enough to choke as he hauled her back against his chest like a human shield.
The gun barrel dug into her temple as she stared at Ashwin, who filled the mouth of the alley, his gun trained toward them. His eyes caught hers for a split second, and her brain kicked into gear as he nodded slightly and then spread his hands, pointing his pistol at the sky.
He’d spooked the guy on purpose, to let Ana get inside his guard. They’d spent weeks training on this scenario, but her muscles still burned with the effort it took not to let instinct take over until Ashwin nodded a second time.
She flowed into the defense like they were back in the Riders’ barracks. Her left hand slapped down on the arm around her throat. Her right caught the muzzle of the gun and shoved it behind her head. Her attacker’s height worked against him as she spun under his arm, twisting his hand with her until his wrist bent at a torturous angle and the gun was pointed back at him.
One hard strike opened his fingers. She caught his weapon with one hand and slammed him in the chest with the other, startling him into stumbling back.
A guy like him would have aimed for the knee. A guy like him would have gloated. Ana raised her arms and shot him in the head three times with his own weapon.
She didn’t bother to watch him fall. She ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, and tossed his gun aside, then turned to face Ashwin. His normally blank expression broke into something almost like a smile--close enough for Ana to feel an answering grin curving her lips.
“Perfect form,” was all he said, but coming from Ashwin it was the greatest of compliments. Her adrenaline surged again, stronger than before, and she knew she should be afraid. That she should be somber and serious like Gabe, not high on the thrill of being better than these assholes.
Maybe she wasn’t as righteous as she liked to think.
And maybe, after a lifetime of being challenged and doubted, it felt fucking good to win.
More footsteps raced toward them, drawn by the sound of gunfire. Ashwin reloaded his sidearm and glanced at her with one eyebrow arched. “You ready?”
Her gun slid into her hand like an old friend. Her mind was clear.
It was trite as hell. If Reyes had been there, he would have given her shit for the next year. But as she met Ashwin’s gaze, the words tumbled out, and they’d never felt truer. “I was born ready.”
Gabe
For Gabe, nothing felt right. Nothing had for days, not waking or sleeping, not keeping to himself in solitary thought or being surrounded by other Riders, not even engaging in the meditative dance of sword practice.
Nothing felt right until the moment Deacon confirmed the identity of their attackers, and Gabe drove a knife into the heart of the first Suicide King and felt the man’s blood slick his fingers in a hot river of righteous vengeance.
Gabe had never savored a kill before. He’d savored his skills, perhaps. His efficiency. The training that ended lives as neatly and painlessly as possible, because his goal had always been to stop his target from hurting anyone else.
But as the first Suicide King bled out under his hands, Gabe thought of his aunt, who had cradled him on her lap and read him stories. The aunt who’d kissed them goodbye with tears in her eyes as his grandfather sent her to forge an alliance in another sector, one meant to bring them precious livestock and feed that would give the family’s textile business an edge over the Reyes ranch.
He could barely remember her face, he’d been so young. But he could remember his mother’s grief-stricken tears, the hysterical demands for vengeance that had fallen on devout, unwilling ears. The noble families of Sector One did not take lives. They didn’t take revenge. Trading one of their daughters to an outsider in one of the brutal, godless sectors had been a desperate gamble, and it had paid off in humiliating failure.
Gabe’s aunt had disappeared from family discussions, written off as if she had never existed--at least until Deacon’s quiet confession resurrected the pain and the terrible injustice in Gabe’s imagination. It taunted and tortured him with no appropriate outlet until today, when he’d finally come face-to-face with an acceptable target.
But now even that fleeting feeling of rightness was slipping away. The mercenary’s heart stopped, so Gabe shoved himself to his feet and went to find someone else to kill.
The fight around him was chaos, with too many hired men he didn’t have time to deal with. A blur of movement caught his eye--a man in a leather vest with the Suicide Kings’ emblem emblazoned across the back. The stylized king from a deck of cards holding a knife through his own head--only on the vest, the face was a skull and the knife dripped blood.
Appropriate. Gabe’s knife was dripping blood, too. But not enough. Not nearly enough.
He launched after the retreating figure, flying around the corner of one of the massive shipping containers. He was almost to the end of the row when a black hole opened next to him and an arm shot out.
There wasn’t time to dodge. Strong fingers caught his arm and jerked. He stumbled, pitching into the darkness of the container and ramming into the opposite side hard enough to stun him.
Metal screeched. He twisted in time to watch the door slam shut, every bit of light seared into a painful afterimage as total darkness fell.
A boot scraped over metal. He heard an indrawn breath and lunged, crashing into the person who’d trapped him and pinning them back against the wall with the weight of his body.
“Relax, man.” A low but decidedly feminine voice echoed in the darkness. “Jesus fuck.”
Gabe tensed and tried to remember if the Kings counted any women amongst their ranks. The body pressed against his was long and slender--taller than Ana, less muscular. But when he shifted his weight to check her for weapons, he encountered curves--full breasts and hips that flared under his hand as it ran down her body.
Nice curves, but not nice enough to distract him from the guns. So many fucking guns--a large-caliber revolver on her hip, a semiautomatic tucked into a holster strapped around her thigh, and another at the small of her back. She probably had another in an ankle holster, but when he slid his hand down her leg, she slapped it.
“I’m heavily armed,” she bit out. “And
you’re welcome, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For saving your life, that’s what. They almost got me with that trap, too.”
He still held his knife in his opposite hand, but he eased back--mostly so he wouldn’t stab her by mistake if she moved. “Who are you?”
Her hair brushed his arm and snagged on his shirt as she edged past him. “I’m Laurel. I work with Six.”
Gabe turned to follow the sound of her voice, his mind sifting through his memories of the war. He could remember Six and her squad of female fighters. Several of them had rivaled the Riders when it came to hand-to-hand combat, and a few snipers--
The memory caught. “You’re the sharpshooter.”
“A little overly simplistic, but I’ll take it.” She lapsed into expectant silence.
Waiting for his name, no doubt. With adrenaline still pounding through him, answering was reckless. She could be lying. She could be with the Kings. She could be anyone in the dark.
An arrogance he rarely felt rose inside him, decades of pride in his heritage and the family name. “I’m Gabriel Montero.” And if you turn out to be one of the Kings, I’ll kill you.
“Sounds fancy.”
He’d never had his lineage so blithely dismissed before. Some people hated the Monteros. Some envied them. Some aspired to join them.
No one was...bored by them.
Perturbed in ways he didn’t want to admit, Gabe felt for the edge of the doorway and froze when his fingers collided with her shoulder again. “What are you doing in Sector Two, Laurel? This isn’t Six’s territory.”
“It’s not Rider territory, either.” Something metallic clicked, then rasped, and the flame from a small lighter blazed in the darkness. “Looks like we both fell for the same bad intel.”
The flame danced as her words stirred the air, casting long shadows on the walls of the shipping container. He could see her face now, gilded by fire and clear enough for him to recognize. She was the silent warrior at Six’s side during the final battles of the war, memorable for her piercing eyes and the bright pink streaks of hair framing her face.
She looked irritated now. And as her words penetrated the lingering bloodlust, he understood why. “Bad intel? This was a trap?”
Her expression changed, her brows drawing together over suddenly concerned eyes. “Did you take a whack to the head or something? Of course it’s a fucking trap.”
His pride stung, and he glared at her for a moment before dropping his gaze to the knife in his hand. Blood still clung to its edge, and if he didn’t wipe it away soon, it would dry there. He dragged up the hem of his T-shirt to clean the blade, his brain finally starting to work. “A trap with a wide net, if we were both caught up in it.”
“Truth.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Wish I knew what they were after.”
Gabe had a strong suspicion. His churning emotions had been so focused on the pain he felt at Deacon’s revelations that he’d stopped thinking. A deadly mistake.
Deacon had done terrible things, things that might make it hard for Gabe to ever look at him the same way again. But if he was forced to be honest, none of those things had betrayed Gideon or the Riders. Deacon had committed his sins before knowing what alternatives existed, and when the choice to follow a different path had been presented to him, he’d taken it.
The only person Deacon had ever truly betrayed was the one who’d sent him to kill Gideon.
Chapter Nine
Deacon’s first three kills went down easy. The fourth drew blood with a move he recognized in his bones.
The memory buzzed in his head, stronger than the searing pain of the shallow slash across his abdomen. Keep your knife hand low, see, and tuck the blade behind your arm. And when the bastard comes at you, you wait. Wait until you think he’s gonna end you for sure. Then, last second, you jerk that blade up. You’ll be cleaning the bastard’s guts off your shoes, kid.
Damn near thirty years, and he could still hear the words, hoarse and firm. Three decades, and Deacon remembered the old man’s lesson when it counted--in the center of a chaotic jumble of shouts and screams and blood.
As the fourth man slumped to the ground with a blade buried in his heart, Deacon confronted the truth. Some of these were hired guns, little more than thugs picked off the street with the promise of a few hundred credits, but the man at his feet was well trained and well equipped.
He was a King.
And Gabe, God damn his sudden impulsivity, had run off into the fray, with no one to watch his back.
Deacon turned. All of his people were still on their feet, and he bit back the urge to warn them. They didn’t need it. They’d fight well, no matter who they faced.
Instead, he motioned to Hunter, who answered him with a quick nod that turned into a spine-chilling shout as he knocked an attacker away from Reyes’s back.
Deacon slipped down a shadowed alley near where he’d last seen Gabe. Christ, if he ran off in a blind rage and got himself killed because of Deacon--
No.
Up ahead, the shadows lightened into an open space--an empty lot between two buildings. Deacon readied his pistol, crept up to the clearing--
The unmistakable sensation of a gun barrel poking him in the back of the head drew him up short. “Drop it.”
Before he had a chance, another black-clad shadow melted forward to pull the gun from his hand. Deacon glared at him, but he didn’t know his face. Just the casual, unconcerned look that burned in the man’s eyes.
Fuck, he’d walked straight into this one.
“Better get the rest of his weapons.” Seth’s voice rasped out of the darkness, deeper than Deacon remembered. Harder. “I’d hate to take a knife in the face before we finish our conversation.”
Then he stepped out into the light, clad in leather and beat-up denim, and Deacon studied him as two other men patted him down for weapons. Seth’s hair and beard were a little silver now, his face lined by the years. He’d lived hard, and Deacon didn’t mind telling him so. “You look like shit.”
A bitter smile twisted Seth’s lips. “And you look soft. Running into traps, now, are you?”
“I couldn’t miss seeing you. Wasn’t an option.” Deacon shook his head. “What do you want?”
“Oh, just to spend some time with an old friend.” Seth gripped the knife at his side, rubbing his thumb slowly over the hilt. “Been looking for you for a while, now.”
“Bullshit. It’s no big secret where I’ve been.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. If the old man knew, he held that real close.” Seth’s blue eyes were like chips of ice. “He always had a soft spot for you, even after you knifed him in the back.”
Something about the way he said it prickled over Deacon’s skin. “Had?”
“Too bad you missed the funeral. We did it up real nice for him. Sent him off into Lake Tahoe in a burning boat like a goddamn Viking.”
Why did it hurt to hear? The old man would have been at least seventy by now, old by anyone’s reckoning. Ancient for a merc. “I’m sorry, Seth.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” With a swift jerk, Seth unsheathed his knife and flipped it in his hand, holding the edge up to catch the light. “I’m glad you weren’t there. He deserved better than to be soiled by the blood of an ungrateful traitor. And we would have had to kill you fast.”
“I couldn’t stay. Doesn’t mean I wanted the old man dead.”
“Don’t pretend you give a shit.” He flipped the knife again, catching it by the blade and balancing it on his fingers as if preparing to throw it. Then he grinned. “Or maybe you do. We could use you, you know. I’m sure you know all sorts of useful shit about the sectors. What do you say, Deacon? Wanna come home? Everything forgiven, no hard feelings?”
He was alone, unarmed, surrounded by half a dozen men who could put a bullet in his skull at any moment--if they even had to. He and Seth had trained together. A flick of his wrist, and Deacon could be dead before he h
it the ground.
It didn’t change his answer. Maybe it should have, but there was one thing Deacon had always prized, even above his own survival. Honesty. “I can’t, and you wouldn’t want me. I’m not that person anymore.”
Seth barked out a laugh. “Oh, I know exactly who you are. You’ve always been too good for the rest of us. Maybe the old man never saw it, but I did. You were happy to live large on the Kings’ reputation, but you never would get your hands dirty with the ugly shit it took to earn it, would you?”
“You’re right.” There were some lines he would never cross--not for the Kings, and not for the Riders. Not for anyone or anything. “See? You don’t want me back. So where does that leave us?”
“Someplace beautiful.” Seth pulled his wrist back and laughed when Deacon tensed. Instead of letting the knife fly, he flipped it again, gripped the handle, and shoved it back into its sheath. “You don’t think I’m going to let you off this easy, do you? Not when you still don’t regret a goddamn thing?”
“Seth--”
“But you will, Deacon.” Seth bared his teeth in a chilling, terrifying grin. “By the time we’re done with you, you’re gonna regret it all.”
There were only a few things worse than death, but Seth’s glare promised that he would bring every single one to bear on Deacon before it was all over. The possibilities shattered out before him like shards of a mirror, wicked and sharp. Before he had time to ponder them, one of the men to his left stepped forward, his rifle raised.
But the blow came from behind, quick and hard, and Deacon tumbled into darkness.
Chapter Ten
Kora usually had a light touch, so Deacon knew he was at least moderately fucked when she gently prodded the back of his scalp and he had to grit his teeth to hold back a savage curse.
“It’s not good,” she said finally. “I want a scan, and you’ll have to be under observation for at least twenty-four hours.”
