by Angel Payne
No response came from Shay except an angrier coil of his hand, twisting deeper into his thick chestnut hair. Brynn’s throat throbbed with emotion, and she wondered how the man hadn’t fully scalped himself yet. The only thing worse than a loved one in trouble was being helpless to do anything about it.
“Enya, please let me back in. Let me help you through this!”
“You can’t, bibi. Nobody can help me through this except Peter, and he doesn’t care anymore. He never will.”
Of course he hadn’t. And wouldn’t. Someone newer, fresher, and shinier had entered the submissive program at Club Catacomb, captivating the bastard like an infant with a new shiny—the same way Enya had charmed him eight months prior to that.
No time for that bitterness now. She had to stay focused on keeping Shay sane.
“Why don’t I make you something to eat?” She curled a little smile at the spark of interest in Shay’s eyes. “I can’t unscramble security video feeds but I can scramble eggs. Are there some in the kitchen?”
Shay’s forehead crunched, giving his face a uniquely boyish light. Brynn half-expected him to rub the “sleep” from his eyes with a knuckle. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess we do. I mean, we usually do. Zo goes to one of those farmer’s markets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She likes to get tomatoes and carrots and onions…and apples.” His face contorted again. “Yeah. Apples. She loves those. Don’t touch the apples, okay? She’ll want one when she gets home.”
It was a line worth waiting for. When she gets home. If he believed Zoe would survive this, then Brynn would too. If things like psychic connection really existed, she was certain Shay and Zo shared such a bond. Their love was palpable when they were in the same room, infusing everyone around with its magic. Brynn didn’t harbor the illusion of finding such a thing for herself one day; cosmic connection required an emotional bridge she just didn’t have anymore—but she could sure as hell jump on Shay’s train and use his bridge this once.
She made sure he got the point by tightening her fingers around his.
Damn.
Beneath her grip, his skin was icy—or maybe her impression was skewed by Rebel’s nearness. The man was a walking furnace. No wonder his eyes were always intense as blue flames, and his nearness felt like a rush from the oven on a frosty morning.
And there she was, doing it again. Mooning over her personal fantasy pirate when there was a crisis to focus on—when the dearest friend she’d ever had was God-knew-where.
Zoe. Oh God, girlfriend. Hang on!
“Got it.” She forced a small smile along with the reassurance to Shay. “No apples will be harmed in the making of Brynn’s famous scrapple.”
Shay laughed again—but this time, to her shock, seemed to mean it. “No, no, no. Zoe makes the best scrapple.”
Brynn squeezed him one more time before rising with a tease of a glower. “We can settle it with a little friendly competition when she’s back.”
“Yeah.” His laughter faded all too quickly. “When she’s back.”
Brynn swallowed down more rocks. They landed in the aching valley of her chest. Shay Bommer had been a warrior, a fighter, a secret operative, and a spec ops wonder, likely ordered to summon some crazy-ass courage for all those battles and missions—but none compared to the bravery demanded of him right now. Brynn had a sudden yearning to drop back down and hug him in encouragement.
Remarkably, Rebel beat her to the punch.
She looked on, wonderment growing, as Rebel embraced his friend with gruff ferocity. “You’re going to get through this, Shay,” he said. “You and Zoe. You hear me?”
Brynn giggled as Shay muttered, “Yeah, yeah. Fuck you, too.”
She turned to head into the kitchen—
But was stopped short as Rhett and El bounded back into the room.
“Got ’em!” El pumped a fist into the air.
“Thanks to I-Man.” Rhett nodded toward Shay. “Sometimes it takes just a nibble of intel. You gave us the right bite, man.”
El bounced forward again, face full of excitement. “After we determined the most likely route those assholes would take to Henderson Executive, factoring in traffic on highway fifteen and their need for ‘laying low’ as much as possible, Rhett got onto the city’s mesh network and searched for cameras that had any glitches in their feeds over the last eight hours.”
Rhett set his laptop on the ledge between the living room and the entry foyer. A digital map of the city filled the screen, emblazoned with a glowing green path between the Paradise area restaurant where Shay and Zoe had eaten and the tarmac of the Henderson Executive Airport. “They might as well have dribbled paint behind them,” he remarked.
Garrett lived up to his call-sign by eyeing the monitor like a wary hawk. “Or maybe they left the digital breadcrumbs on purpose, to throw us off?”
“Excellent question.” El nodded. “One we also asked,”—she paused as Rhett clicked his tracking ball, bringing up a new image—“until we found this.”
The buoyancy drained from her tone. The next second, everyone understood why. Brynn’s gasp was smothered by the guys’ f bombs as a security camera feed appeared, time clock in the corner, along with the words Tarmac Two. The footage wasn’t so grainy to prevent everyone from recognizing an unconscious Zoe, her baby bump evident at the front of her tiny form, being carefully dragged from the back of the van by a pair of muscle-heads. The second they transferred her onto a rolling gurney, they stepped back and let a third man take over. Clad in dark dress pants and a crisp white dress shirt, he moved swiftly over Zoe, taking her vitals—and possessively clutching her round stomach.
Chapter Two
‡
SHAY LUNGED AT the laptop. Garrett and Rebel held him back. Other than his agonized grunts, nobody else said a thing, watching like they were subjected to a silent horror show. Though Zoe and the mystery man were fully clothed, it was torture to watch that stranger grope Zoe as if the unborn child were his.
Brynn’s teeth grated like nails on a chalkboard. If the footage made her feel like this, no wonder Shay had turned into a powder keg.
The bearded man stepped back and adjusted his glasses, nodding in satisfaction. The new angle allowed a better view of his features. He had close-cropped dark hair, a well-manicured beard, and gangly limbs, which added to the creepy vibe he gave off with every movement. He reminded Brynn of some rare spider, skinny but lethal.
At least Doc Man’s distance from Zoe served to calm Shay by a fraction—until the man motioned to one of the henchmen, curling fingers in like a tarantula. The guard stepped forward and locked Zoe to the gurney with thick leather straps—
Officially morphing Shay from man to beast.
“Cocksucker!” His eyes bulged, his neck strained, and his body lurched, a bull at full attack. He seized the laptop and swung it over his head, preparing to hurl it across the room, but Rebel leapt and swept the device away in just enough time. His reward was an elbow in the chest, Shay’s blow hurling him against the wall with a sickening crash. Brynn choked, barely controlling the urge to race to him, but Zeke and Kell had entered the fray so she didn’t dare. The pair grunted, fighting to restrain Shay from his own grief and fury.
“Cocksucker!” he bellowed again. “You perverted, pathetic, depraved dick of a cocksucker!” He snarled, kicked, writhed, and even bit Zeke’s arm. Brynn winced though Z barely flinched. Most importantly, he didn’t relent his grip any more than Garrett or Kellan—a good thing, since Shay’s wrath climbed higher by the second. “I should have killed you when I had the chance. I should have listened to my gut when it told me to drive that dagger through your neck, Royce. I should have listened. I should have listened!”
Rebel handed off the laptop to Rhett, the action as poetic as a pair of relay runners passing a baton, without wavering his stare from Shay. “Wait. You know that guy, Bommer?”
The question bordered on redundant. The four-way wrestling match clearly wasn’t fun for anyone, es
pecially Shay—though processing Rebel’s words was the douse of logic he needed to tether at least part of the beast. Shay went limp before surrendering to a long groan.
“Nyles Royce.” He seethed both syllables. “He’s one of Adler’s ‘team’ though I’m pretty sure he snatched the Doc Wonder wear off of Costume-Crazy dot com. If that monster is a real doctor, I’m the Shah of Persia.” He stopped, forcing down hard breaths. “The bastard knows his knives, though—and just how to use them.”
With eyes closed, he ran a hand up under his shirt, lifting the fabric as he went. There was no way to miss the ugly row of scars beneath his trembling fingers. One, two, three…Brynn shut her own eyes after he reached six, remembering the night Zoe had tearfully told El and her about the cuts…which marred every part of his body.
“One day, he got careless. Left my arm unlocked while turning to clean off one of his blades—so I took the biggest one I could find on the tray.” He let out a breath in stumbling spurts. “I yanked the bastard down. Had his face against my stomach. I could have slit his filthy throat, making him eat my balls as I did it. But I didn’t. Goddamn it, I didn’t!”
Another silence wrapped around the room.
“Fuck,” Zeke finally growled.
“One way of putting it.” Kellan wrapped a hand around Shay’s shoulder. “It’s all behind you now, brother.”
Shay whipped his head around. If glares could turn into real fire, Kell would’ve been charcoal. “But it’s not behind her.” His raw rasp ripped the air. “It’s not behind her. And Royce…likes to play with his food. A lot. He—gets off on it.” He moaned and whirled back as if to add to the crater collection in the wall. Instead he braced both fists to it, dropping his head between his shoulders. “His ‘sessions’ with me…many times, we weren’t alone. He’d call in a woman. Sibelle. Long red hair. He demanded she arrive with her hair down, wearing nothing else. He’d cut out his ‘sample’ from me then fuck her. Wouldn’t give me the painkiller until he was done with her. Sometimes not even then. He’d want another ‘sample’. Would watch me scream while he stuck his dick into her again. Then again. Over and over…”
“Shit.” El sobbed it before rushing toward Shay but was stopped by Zeke, who shook his dark-haired head. Wisely, El conceded. When a soldier sensed a comrade needed their space, they were usually right.
“What’s he going to do to her?” Shay grated. “What’s that worm going to do to my tiny dancer and our child?” He withdrew his hand, only to let his bruised knuckles slide down the wall. “Let it be me again.” His prayer bled out his soul for them even more. “Please. Please. Let it be me again. I won’t even scream this time. I’ll let them slice and dice all they want…for the rest of my fucking life…whatever they want…as long as it’s not my beautiful girl…and my perfect, innocent baby…”
Rhett, now the closest one to him, pulled in a long breath. Without questioning how, Brynn discerned his intent as if it were her own, and stepped over to take the laptop before he hauled Shay into a tight hug. Brynn clutched the laptop to her chest, as if it could prevent a single tear from sliding down her cheeks. Still, she didn’t move. Stood and lent Rhett the support he needed to pull his friend through the bleak, hard moment.
He smiled at her in thanks.
She smiled back.
Oh, hell.
Long story short: he stole her breath.
Forget about the brilliance of his smile, the fortitude of his jaw, and the twinkle in his dark eyes. Right now, his resplendence had everything to do with the energy he radiated. Tenderness and concern flowed from him, securing Shay in the invisible bond that only another man of valor could comprehend. It didn’t matter that they served on different teams across the world from each other. Evil was evil—and right now, it only mattered that evil had gotten past the gates then dragged two innocents into its shadows. Wrong move, if Rhett Lange or any of the guys in this room had anything to say about it.
And she wondered why men like this turned her self-restraint to mush? Maybe it had something to do with this shit, right here? Their shared character, honor, purpose. Their understanding of the price their country asked of them, before putting on their uniform anyway. The men who slogged through the hard stuff, who forged the difficult decisions then supported their brothers-in-arms when the boots were on the other feet, without conditions, definitions, or limits.
She and Enya used to have each other’s back like that. Through Dad’s desertion and Mom’s withdrawal, through junior then senior high, through college and first jobs and first loves, they’d hung in there together. Loving without question—
Until Enya pledged her submission to a Dom.
And lost the rest of herself in the deal, too.
Crying over that train won’t bring it back to the station. Don’t be stupid.
Another stupid move: picturing what it would be like as the woman of one of these guys. To have all that devotion and passion showered on her…
Yep. Stupid.
Absurd. Impossible.
“Hey.” Rhett gave Shay an affectionate shake. “We’re going to get her back, man. You hear me?”
Shay dipped a hesitant nod. “Okay. Okay.”
“Good. But we still need your help.” He tapped on Shay’s forehead. “This gray matter, all the way in this game. Got it?”
“Yeah, man. Got it.” Shay clawed a hand through his wavy russet hair. Stared at the room’s opposite wall, only this time in remembrance instead of remorse. “Since Royce is involved, we have to assume he’s answering to Adler, since Stock and Newport are out of the picture.”
Everyone tensed—and rightly so. Cameron Stock and Kirk Newport had been Adler’s allies after the government caught wind of Adler’s unorthodox methods and yanked funding for the Big Idea lab—at least until the guys’ rescue raid for Shay, in which Newport was apprehended. A court martial and prison sentence had followed. Stock had eluded capture for a few months longer, but Dan—indulging a personal vendetta that also wasn’t too popular on Brynn’s “quirky boyfriend traits” list—had found him in Mexico, bringing him to Zoe and Shay’s wedding as what had to be the world’s most bizarre wedding gift.
Kellan hitched a hip against the easy chair. “So that rules out Area Fifty-One as their destination.”
Shay commented on that with a dark growl. Again, nobody faulted him. Newport had abused his military clout to get Adler a lab in a clandestine bunker inside the famous military base on the outskirts of Vegas, where Adler had turned the middle of the Nevada desert into the Island of Dr. Moreau—atrocities Shay had witnessed before helping to destroy the lab. The experience had foreshadowed his own fate at Adler’s hands.
“So they took her to the old facilities in D.C.?” Rhett ventured.
“Them.” Arteries pulsed in Shay’s arms as he fisted both hands. “Where they took them, damn it.”
Wisely, Rhett withheld from responding.
Zeke lumbered forward, swarthy face focused. “When we were in Myanmar last week, Franzen mentioned that the D.C. warehouse hasn’t been touched since the raid. It’s still a possibility, though my gut says no. Homer baby is wily enough to know we’d consider it. He also knows we’d be able to request boots from Fort McNair faster than he could take a shit and Charmin-shine his ass. By the time he flushed, we’d have the building peeled open like a can of stewed tomatoes.”
“Way to kill my appetite, Z—but yeah.” Garrett sidled next to his friend but kept gazing at Shay. “There has to be another choice.”
Everyone let out a collective breath when Shay not only nodded, but did so with assurance. “Yeah. There is.”
“And?” Zeke prompted.
“Austin.”
“Austin?” Garrett scowled. As in…Texas?”
Shay nodded again. “At the outskirts of town. The site of the old Verge Pharma building, or close to it. I learned the whole story last year, when Colton let us hide in the suite at the Vdara when everyone on the planet was looking for me.”
Brynn couldn’t help one small smile. Oh, how she remembered that week of holing up at the Vdara. It’d seemed like a luxury staycation, except for the times they were reminded that every law enforcement agency in the city—plus Stock, Newport, and Adler—were out to capture Shay any way they could. She didn’t doubt that all the danger fed her attraction to Dan, the G-man just as commanding as his soldier friends—and mind-bendingly gorgeous, to boot. The feeling had been heady and heart-stopping…
And temporary.
But, as she’d come to learn over the last few months, not worthless. Despite the heartache of the relationship’s end, everything about her journey with Dan had brought her to who she was now. Clearer about why she’d made that mistake. More resolved to never make it again.
That determination prompted her head up again. “Learned it from who?” she asked Shay. “You and Dan were pretty picky about the suite’s guest list.” The two of them had been so bossy about the issue, El and she had nicknamed them “the old ladies”. Zoe, already deep into the “yes, Sir” and “no, Sir” thing with Shay, hadn’t joined the fun. While their dynamic wasn’t nearly as intense as the shit Enya had gotten into with her Dom, it had all still made Brynn giggle—and mightily razz her friend at every chance she got.
Get back here alive, Zo, and I’ll never tease you again. I’ll be too busy thanking God for you.
“Ghid Preston,” Shay answered her. “You and Ry were watching a movie in the other room.”
Zeke grunted. “Ghid. Yeah. Good man.”
“He filled in some blanks for Tait and me,” Shay offered. “About why our mother fell off the grid after the Big Idea project was discontinued. He told us about a site outside of Austin, supposedly the home of Verge Pharmaceuticals—but that was only what the building said on the outside. Inside, it housed Adler’s new lab facilities. They abandoned the building after Newport got them cleared to move to Area Fifty-One.”
As he spoke, El grabbed the laptop back, snapped it back open, and clacked at the keys like a teenager in chat mode. “Got it,” she announced ten seconds later. “Right here.”
