by Lainey Reese
“I think it’s good we are sneaking in through the back entrance. They’re probably going to have uniforms posted at the main doors to keep people from coming in and to look out for Miguel.”
“Yeah,” Terryn agreed. “They would spot us for sure and then we’d get nowhere fast.” She shot them both a look that made it clear she wasn’t so sure that would be a bad thing. “I have to say this, guys. But are we sure that we won’t be more of a hindrance than a help? We don’t know how to sweep for bombs, and they are bound to be evacuating the hotel by now. I just would hate it if we were in the way and made things worse instead of better.”
“I know,” Cheyenne said on a gust of an exhale since she was fretting over the same thing. “You’re probably right and if we get there and see that they do have everything under control, we can bail. But I just can’t shake this feeling that I have to try. I know it’s crazy to feel responsible for him, but now that I remembered it, I can’t get Miguel’s face out of my head. He looked scared, guys. He looked like he was about a million years old. If there is any way I can help him, I need to try.”
She didn’t voice the other reason she had to go. It was the same reason Terryn and Riley were coming with her instead of letting her go alone. Their men were in that hotel too. Trevor was there. He was going to speak about the drop in crimes committed by teens when there was a well-funded rec center in place. Even though the center was mostly run by Trevor and Riley, Cade was involved as well.
So both of Riley’s men as well as Terryn’s and Cheyenne’s were in harm’s way. Not one of them were willing to sit on the sidelines and wait like a bunch of wilting violets from a bygone era while the men they loved were in danger.
“Let’s cut through here,” Terryn said and headed down a particularly ominous-looking alley. “It’ll be faster than trying to circle the building for the back door once we get there. We can approach from behind instead.”
Ominous or not, it was a solid plan so Shy and Riley followed the redhead in.
“Oh.” Riley’s gasp was a soft exhale of compassion. “Poor thing.”
With each step they got closer and closer to a person hiding behind a huge pile of what looked like construction rubble. Pitiful weeping and unintelligible words could be heard from that direction.
Cheyenne felt her heart clench. She was no stranger to homelessness and poverty. They had more than their fair share where she came from too. However, thanks to movies and the news, Shy had this low level but unshakable—and yes, unreasonable—fear that all homeless people in New York City were knife-wielding lunatics out to steal her shoes. Of course, she also secretly believed that sharks could get her even in swimming pools, so she kept her weird paranoia to herself.
Nevertheless, Shy felt her heart break. The pain was palpable in his soul-wrenching sobs.
Determined to walk by without drawing attention, since she was fairly confident he was back here in search of privacy, Cheyenne and the others quickened their steps. She didn’t see the rebar protruding from the pile until she tripped over it.
“Son of a—”
Sharp, intense and severe pain—the likes of which only happen when you bang your shin or step on a Lego block—brought Shy to all fours. She hardly noticed when the others gathered around to check on her.
Stunned by the sharp throbbing, it took her a full thirty seconds to register that the person crying in the rubble was none other than Miguel Delgado.
Chapter 12
“I can’t do it.” Miguel looked right at Cheyenne and felt no surprise whatsoever—it was like he’d been expecting her. “She’s gonna kill me.” He wiped a grimy sleeve under his runny nose like a lost and frightened kid, but he didn’t see scorn on any of the faces surrounding him, like he’d expected. No, these faces showed him nothing but pity. “Aw, fuck,” he amended, “she’s—she’s gonna hate me. But I can’t do it. I c-can’t.”
And like the child he was, he collapsed against her chest and clung while grief and fear and sorrow poured out of him. She should hate him. They all should, for what his family had done, and for what he had set up in that building. Instead, the three women standing in that alley with him were sharing his grief, crying as they gathered close and wrapped their arms around him.
A boy who’d never known the embrace of his own mother, now in his most dire moment, found himself surrounded and embraced by three. As the years of abuse and neglect, anger and pain bled out of him like an open wound, they held him and soothed and murmured words every child should have grown up hearing, but he never had. Until now.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“We’re here now.”
“We can fix it.”
“We’ve got you.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Wait.” Miguel moved to pull back even though he was still losing the battle for control of his tears. His small chest heaved and his bottom lip quivered as he valiantly fought for composure. “I gotta go back. You guys don’t know what I did. I gotta stop it before someone gets hurt!”
Urgency and tension grew in him with each uttered word—an urgency the women seemed to share.
“Let us help,” the redhead told him softly.
“I can’t.” A lock of lank, greasy hair fell over his eyes when he shook his head. Even as one of them brushed it back with gentle fingers, he pulled farther away. “I can’t take the chance you might get hurt. Any of you.”
“Miguel?” Cheyenne didn’t bother to address how she knew who he was, which didn’t surprise him. The situation was beyond that.
“Honey, whatever it is. We can help. You don’t have to do this alone.”
As he continued to shake his head and back away, Cheyenne and the others matched him step for step.
“Can you at least stop moving and tell us what is going on?” The dark-haired one spoke soothingly, as though to a toddler or a cornered animal. In his fragile state, both images fit. Then she firmed her wobbling chin as well as her voice and scolded. “We know it’s probably about Cheyenne here, and probably involves bombs. Tell us now and we will help you fix this before it’s too late.”
Maybe it was the way she tried to sound fierce when the little brunette was anything but scary, but it worked.
“I put ’em in the hotel,” he said in a quiet, shame-filled whisper. Then he took a hold of himself and squared shoulders that felt far too small for the weight of the next words he spoke. “There is one that will definitely blow when I take it out.” His eyes were dry now, as he locked gazes with Cheyenne and spoke about his own death. “Will you call your husband and tell him to clear your hotel? All but one of the bombs has a basic trigger that anybody could figure out. But there’s one that’s foolproof. It’s a small one, I thought I was being a big shot and that even if all the others came down, this one at least would kill the person disarming it.” His eyes filled with tears and shame as he looked Cheyenne face to face and owned up to his actions. “I rigged it for your husband. Thought at least, no matter what, he’ll die for what he did. I was so wrong. I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have even come here.” He took a deep, cleansing breath. Confessing felt right, it steadied his resolve and his nerves. “I don’t know for sure what kind of damage it’ll make, but nobody else has to get hurt. But I’ll do my best to make sure it only gets me. Just me.”
“Oh no, Miguel.” Cheyenne and the others surrounded him again.
He stood stoic and brave—at least that was what he intended. His violent shaking betrayed him though, broadcasting his fear in Technicolor. “Nobody is dying today. Nobody.”
“You know, that’s how Faulkner saved me. He can dismantle whatever you set faster and cleaner than you can imagine.”
“And it’s a police convention,” Terryn reminded him. “Whatever poetic justice you thought you were extracting before, now that just works in our favor. The people with the know-how and experience to fix this are already there.” She smiled encouragingly and gave his hair a tug.
Mi
guel looked from one to the other of them.
Cheyenne watched him struggle with literally life-and-death decisions. And Miguel saw pity in her expression. Not a pity that made him feel ashamed, but one that he took strength from; one that showed him there was kindness and compassion in the world. It only strengthened his resolve to do what was right.
His voice cracked and croaked when he started to talk, the pent-up emotions tangling with the words he needed to speak.
“Okay, but I still have to go. For the one that’s booby-trapped.” His eyes filled anew. “Not even I know how to disarm the thing. So it has to be me who does it. I can’t stand back and let someone die because I couldn’t stand up for what’s right.”
When his brave face crumpled to reveal the frightened child beneath, he was embraced once again.
“What the fuck?” Faulkner watched in baffled disbelief as Shy, Riley and Terryn sprang apart from their huddle around Miguel. Then experienced the feeling multiply when the three of them closed ranks around the kid.
“What in the hell is going on?” He wanted to know.
“Where have you been?” Brice added for good measure.
“We can explain,” Shy told him.
“It’s not what you think,” Riley added.
“He’s just a scared kid, Brice,” Terryn told her husband as he stared at them, dumbfounded.
Then Dude couldn’t understand a damn word as the three women rushed to talk all at once.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Miguel turned and ran like he was a fucking Olympic sprinter.
“What the—?” Brice shouted. “Freeze! You little shit, get back here.” And Brice bolted into pursuit.
“I can’t!” Miguel yelled back as he gained distance. Just before he rounded a corner, he shouted, “I’m sorry! Get everybody outta there! I’ll stop what I can. I promise.” And then he flew.
No matter how hard he and Brice pumped their legs, Miguel’s lead on them only grew. “Goddammit!” Brice said and grabbed Faulkner by the arm and slowed them both to a stop. “Hold up. He’s gone. Let’s hope the girls knew what the hell he was talking about.”
They turned and Faulkner was impressed to see all three of the women had joined the impromptu race. Due to shoes chosen for fashion over speed, they were about half a block behind, but not one of them was slowing down, and all looked hell-bent on their mission.
Shy got to him first, but she was too winded to speak and stood with her hands braced on her thighs as she tried to catch her breath.
“He told us the bombs are in the boiler room and where the backup generators are,” Terryn panted as she reached them and wrapped her arms around Brice for a quick but fierce hug. “The hotel needs to be cleared. He says one of the bombs is booby-trapped and it’s going off no matter what.”
“That’s why he ran.” Riley grabbed Brice’s arm as tears fell unheeded down her lovely cheeks. “He says he can’t let anyone die. Anyone but him.”
She turned away from Brice and eyes of liquid brown locked onto Dude’s. Faulkner was not immune to their impact.
“Can you help?” Riley’s voice cracked as she spoke. “He said he made something that can’t be defused. Do you have any SEAL tricks for a situation like this?”
“SEAL tricks?” Shy said with an eye roll. Leave it to his Shy to bring a little light into this dark situation. “Like balance a beach ball on his nose?”
Dude kissed the top of her head and rubbed a soothing circle on her back. He knew she often used humor when she was under pressure. “She’s just kidding, Ry. Bad jokes help her stay calm and keep things in perspective when she’s scared. As it happens, I got a lot of tricks up my sleeve.” He answered Riley while Brice argued with someone on his cell about disrupting his captain’s lecture. “I’ll find Miguel and his booby-trap. Then I’ll do my damnedest to get us both out in one piece.”
Brice hung up and put his phone back in his pocket.
“Since it’s moved from hunch to fact, I went ahead and called it in. We need to move on this, now. Let’s go.”
Both men looked at the women.
“Don’t waste time, honey. Let’s walk while we talk.” And Terryn was off, leaving the others with no choice but to follow. She was right—arguing would obviously get them nowhere and this was an every second counts situation.
Chapter 13
Miguel ran. He didn’t look back and he didn’t slow down. If his hunch was right, he had about three minutes before the cops started swarming the lower levels. He didn’t care about the big bombs. Those were set with basic timers and fail-safes that he knew the SEAL could probably disarm in his sleep.
The only thing he cared about—the only goal he had right now—was to get to the rigged one before someone else got there first. If that happened, that explosion itself wouldn’t be strong enough to cause structural damage, but it would kill whoever was within a ten-yard radius.
It wasn’t set with a timer but instead had a mechanism that would trigger when it was moved or jostled. That was why it had to be him—anybody who disturbed it would die for sure.
Just the thought turned his bowels to ice and Miguel dug deeper and ran faster than he’d ever run in his life.
Deep in the underbelly of the hotel, Faulkner and Cheyenne ran as one. They didn’t waste breath on words, just clung tight to each other’s hand as they raced to stop the unthinkable before it happened.
Terryn and the rest of their group had broken away from them as soon as they’d entered the lobby. They would lead Brice and others to where Miguel said he’d hidden the other bombs.
The kid hadn’t said where the rigged one was set up, but Faulkner had an idea. He’d waded into situations like this too many times to count, in circumstances more dire than this. Masterminds who ran militias and/or entire countries had set up most of those incidences. Dude got that the kid was scared and believed his detonator was un-breachable, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t dismantle a rig fixed by a seventeen-year-old novice.
Down one dusty corridor to the left, then a quick pivot and they barreled down the one on the right. Left. Right. The lighting grew dimmer and the air danker the further they went.
Dude was pretty sure poor Shy was going to have a few broken bones in her hand. He’d also come close to yanking her arm out of socket a couple times when he’d changed directions on her. Since she refused to stay away, he was keeping her glued to his side where he could assure her safety for himself.
He couldn’t say he was positive where they were headed, but his years in this business gave him a better than average guess, so he was going to follow his gut, then work outward until they found what they were after.
They rounded another corner, slammed through a heavy steel door and found themselves in a dank, unfinished area with exposed beams and electrical wiring everywhere.
Dude stopped and pulled Shy close as they both panted and looked around. There were three doors leading out of this room. One had an exit sign above it, the other two were unmarked. They had a fifty-fifty chance of heading in the right direction.
Faulkner cursed under his breath and felt like laughing when his childhood drifted through his mind with the singsong “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” skipping along his jumbled thoughts.
“Oh God, honey.” Shy’s grip tightened and she pointed toward a shadowed corner. “Look.”
“Don’t.” Miguel sobbed, his arms full of what looked like a pretty straightforward homemade boomer. “Don’t come any c-c-closer!”
Tears and snot smeared his flushed face and Dude saw what Shy had seen all along—just a scared, lost kid. When he sniffled and awkwardly wiped his cheek on one bicep, Dude felt his heart twist with compassion.
“Just hold on, son,” he said, lifting his hands to show one was empty and the other held Shy. The boy had nothing to fear from them. “Let me help.”
“No.” Frantic head shakes and more sobbing. “No. You can’t. Didn’t she tell you?” His swollen, tear-wrecked eyes turned t
oward Cheyenne for one trembling moment, then back to his with renewed desperation. “You need to get her out of here. She knows! It’s gonna blow up. This one can’t be stopped. I gotta get it outta here before people get hurt.”
“That’s not gonna happen, kid,” he told him plainly. “No way in hell you’re getting out of this room with that thing. Now, lay it down and step away. If it’s gonna blow no matter what, we can evacuate and set it off without anybody getting hurt.”
“I can’t!” Miguel yelled. His voice cracked and his body quivered with the force of his conviction to right his wrongs. “Don’t you listen? Don’t you get it? I have to do this! It’s the only way.” Hiccupping sobs shook his armful in a way that made sweat prickle on the back of Faulkner’s neck.
“Enough!” Faulkner shouted. Miguel and Shy both jolted at the loud and unexpected burst. “That’s not a toy you’re cradling, boy. That’s a fucking bomb! Now put it down, and step the hell away so I can do my fucking job.”
It almost worked. For a second, his tone got through and the kid nodded his assent and bent forward as though he were about to lay his burden on the floor.
Then the unthinkable happened. Dude heard the slightly metallic snick as his bundle shifted.
“Freeze!” he shouted, but he needn’t have, Miguel heard it too.
As long as Dude lived, he knew he’d never forget the look in those huge dark eyes when they met his.
He didn’t have time for diplomacy and wasted none on finesse. With all his strength, he shoved Shy as hard as he could in the opposite direction and raced for the kid.
Miguel stood trembling and braced for the end, but Dude wasn’t gonna let him go without a fight. With one hand, he grabbed the bomb. The other, he clamped on to the boy’s collar and yanked the two apart, flinging the bomb toward the door marked exit.
White. Hot. Brilliantly bright and brutally loud, the bomb exploded with the roar of a dragon. Even as he felt the full body impact from the blast peppered with shrapnel, he wrapped his larger frame around Miguel’s as they crashed to the floor in a shower of fire and smoke.
