She took a breath from her long, impressive list. Obviously, she hadn’t been kidding when she said she’d done her due diligence before coming here.
“Honestly,” she continued, “if it were me wantin’ to find a defensible position where I could corral two teenagers, I’d choose that far north casemate. From there you can see across the parade grounds to the bridge and anyone enterin’ the fort. It’s protected on three sides by thick walls, which means the only worry is the openin’.”
“Get a load of General fuckin’ Patton here.” There was a fair bit of respect in Mason’s tone. “Now are you glad we brought her along?”
Bran opened his mouth to say, Hell no! But before he could, Maddy whispered, “Let me check one more thing.” She darted her head around the corner again. But this time, she didn’t immediately pull back. Instead, she went stock-still.
Bran chanced taking his eyes off his sights and the arched holes of the dark casemates to dart her a quick glance. “What is it,” he demanded, maybe a little too loudly. All the hairs on his body were waving around like semaphore flags, warning him of impending danger. “What’d’ya see?”
Now Maddy jerked back, flattening herself against the bricks. “The men.” Bran’s ears caught the panic in her voice. And when she turned to him, her eyes were wide and unblinking. “They’re crossin’ the parade grounds and headed our way.” She lifted trembling fingers to her lips. “Alone! What did they do with the girls?”
* * *
8:13 p.m.…
“Get inside the magazine house.” Bran barked the order and it was a verbal slap. Then there was the heat in his eyes. It was enough to set Maddy’s soul ablaze.
Death and destruction. She’d been trying to find the right words to describe that particular look that sometimes came over his face, and it suddenly occurred to her. He was death and destruction personified.
Oh no. No, no, no…
“You can’t kill them,” she whispered desperately. The way he moved closer to the corner of the gunpowder magazine house told her he wasn’t paying her a lick of attention. “Bran,” she whispered, grabbing his forearm. “You can’t kill them.”
“No?” He lifted his weapon. It effectively jerked his arm from her grasp. “Watch me.”
“Not until we know what they did with the girls,” she pleaded. It was a tiny island, but there were lots of places to squirrel away two teenagers—or hide their bodies. No. No, don’t even think about that! They’re not dead. They can’t be dead! “Bran, listen to me. We need to—”
“I won’t ask you again, Maddy.” He briefly met her eyes, and she found herself backing away from him. She wasn’t sure why. Bran would never hurt her. But in that moment, instinct took over. Like a gazelle darting away from a recently fed lion, there was no real danger, but the urge to flee was there nonetheless.
He narrowed his eyes. In the dim light, she thought she saw a strange emotion flicker across his face. He almost looked…anguished. But then his expression changed, morphing back into that whole death-and-destruction. “Get in the magazine house. Now!” he hissed.
He didn’t wait for her to comply. He grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the open doorway, shoving her inside—not cruelly, but not very gently either. For the first time in her life, she understood how the term manhandling came about. He was a man. And he was definitely handling her.
“But if it’s me they want,” she insisted, “I could offer myself up, and then maybe they’ll tell us where—”
“Stay.” He pointed a long, blunt finger so close to her nose that she went cross-eyed trying to focus on it.
Now, normally Maddy would come back with some wiseass remark along the lines of Hey, bucko! In case the lack of pointed ears didn’t give me away, I’m not a German shepherd. But she was too scared to be her usual sarcastic self. Scared of what had happened to the girls. Scared of what was about to happen to Bran and Mason in the next couple of minutes.
When Bran turned and darted out of the magazine house, there was a part of her that longed to follow him. The part of her that hated, loathed, and utterly despised being reduced to the little woman who sat in the corner painting her toenails. But the other part of her, the far smaller yet far wiser part of her, piped up and told her she had no business interfering in whatever they planned to do.
She glanced around the dark interior of the structure, looking for something. She didn’t know what. Anything. Something she could use to help. Something she could use to defend herself if all hell broke loose and somehow those three masked men managed to get past the two Navy SEALs—heaven forbid. But there was nothing. Just a small, dark room that smelled of old mortar, damp bricks, and dirt.
Wait. There!
Her eyes adjusted and she spied a shadow in the corner. It was long and thin and propped against the wall.
Scurrying over, she discovered it was an old piece of driftwood about three feet long. It was dry and cracked, but it felt sturdy enough to survive one or two good whacks upside the heads of the bad guys, should she need to use it that way. The tip was sharp. Stake-sharp. It could be used that way too. And even though it was ridiculous—you didn’t bring a knife to a gunfight, much less a brittle piece of driftwood—she felt better once she was armed.
Then she heard it…
The quiet clink of metal against metal. The muted crunch of boots on dirt.
The bad guys.
Maddy held her breath and pressed back against the brick wall beside the door. The old mortar was cool, and for a moment her mind drifted to the men who had fired the bricks and laid them. They were all dead now, left to the pages of history books. Their testament to life was a decaying ruin in the middle of nowhere. But at least they had a testament.
What would her testament be?
Please, not the deaths of two innocent girls, Lord. Please!
She turned her head and strained her ears so hard it was a wonder she didn’t burst an eardrum. More boots on uneven earth. A hissed exchange of words she couldn’t make out. The sound of someone tripping and cursing.
They were close.
“Damnit, Dustin,” one of the men, the one with the Southern drawl, said. “That bum knee of yours is a problem. Rory should’ve never let you come on this job.”
Who is Rory? What job? Her kidnapping?
“Fuck you, Luke. Just cover me for a second.” It was the tyrant talking. Maddy’s jaw clenched at the same time her fingers tightened around the piece of driftwood. She thought she felt a splinter sink into the pad of her thumb, but couldn’t be sure. Not with her attention eagle-eye focused on the men and their whispered conversation.
Well, it was focused on that and the distinct lack of sound coming from either Bran or Mason. Their silence was unsettling.
The Angel of Death comes on silent wings…
It was a line from a poem she’d read somewhere. But never had it made as much sense as it did in this moment.
But the girls! she wanted to yell. We need to know about the girls! Instead, she bit her bottom lip, welcoming the pain that grounded her.
Tick-tock went her internal clock. Lub-dub went her thundering heart. Drip-drop went a bead of sweat from her temple to her shoulder.
Jesus Christ and all his followers! What’s happenin’ out there?
She didn’t have long to wait for the answer.
“This whole thing is shot to shit,” Luke of the Southern accent griped.
“No, it’s not,” Dustin the Tyrant insisted. “Just because those two meatheads decided to hole up in the ranger’s station instead of trying to rescue the girls, that doesn’t mean we can’t still do the job.” There he went again, using that word. Job. “We just have to get to the boat and—Fuck!” he yelled, causing Maddy to jump. Then his voice dropped to an angry grumble. “Something told me I might be staring down the black hole of your gun again before thi
s night was over.”
“Tit for tat, dicksmack, since I recall you pointing that SCAR-L at me on the beach.” Bran. “Where are the girls?” he demanded.
Maddy stopped breathing as she waited on the answer. Her stomach knotted like someone twisting a wet towel until the fabric screamed with the strain.
“How the hell did y’all get in here?” Southern Accent Luke demanded. “We been watchin’ the entryway—”
“Where are the girls?” Bran’s voice held a world of menace.
“We didn’t hurt them,” the one called Dustin said.
“Good,” Bran answered. “Then toss your weapons my way and tell me where they are.”
For a second, none of the men responded. Finally, the Southerner said, “Once we do that, what’s stoppin’ ya from lightin’ us up?”
“Guess you’ll just hafta trust me,” Bran said.
“Fuck that,” the tyrant spat. “And fuck you.”
“Oh, eh.” Bran laughed. “Not even on your birthday, sunshine.”
“We’re not giving you our weapons, asshole,” the tyrant snarled.
“What we have here,” Bran said, and Maddy silently finished the sentence with him, “is a failure to communicate.” Cool Hand Luke.
“I could drop you where you stand,” Dustin the Tyrant warned.
“I’d so like to see you try,” Bran answered with a feral-sounding snort.
Maddy wanted to scream her head off. Enough with the dick-measurin’ contest, you idiots!
But she didn’t scream. In fact nobody screamed. Not a word was spoken. Not a breath was taken. The island itself seemed to be holding perfectly still, waiting, anticipating. She couldn’t see the moon from inside the gunpowder magazine house, but she knew it was shining down on the men, a watchful spectator of events to come.
Finally, Bran said, “Look, I’m being magnanimous here and giving you two choices. You can drop your weapons, tell us where you’ve stashed the girls, and leave this island alive and well. Or you can keep your weapons, keep your secrets, and leave this island in a body bag. I’m happy either way.”
“You seem to be miscountin’ again,” the Southerner piped up. “There’s three of us and only one of you.”
“Man, you seriously need to get your eyes checked.” Mason’s low voice rumbled from the opposite direction. Maddy reckoned he’d skirted around the other side of the magazine house to come up behind the bad guys. He and Bran were quite a pair. And, boy howdy, she was glad they were on her side.
“Shit,” the third guy cursed, probably after having glanced over his shoulder to find Mason taking aim at his head.
Yessiree, boys, Maddy thought with a savage, frantic sort of glee. That’s what you might call bein’ stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bran being the rock and Mason being the hard place, of course.
“Don’t try it,” Bran rumbled. His voice had all the gravity and solemnity of someone speaking at a funeral.
Try what? Oh! She so wanted to peek her head out and see what the heckfire was going on.
“I’m serious,” Bran continued. “I won’t hesitate to turn you into an organ donor. There’s a real shortage of assholes lately, so I hear.”
And Maddy suddenly had the distinct urge not only to peek her head out, but to march out there and wring Bran’s neck. He was baiting them. Egging them on almost as if he wanted a reason to—BOOM! The sound of a shot echoed around the fort and inside the magazine house like an exploding cannonball. She was pretty sure her heart exploded right along with it.
Chapter 12
8:15 p.m.…
The guy with the bad knee is a grade-A, double-D douche canoe.
That was the thought that spun through Mason’s brain when the fuckface squeezed off a shot that flew by Bran’s head and stuck in the brick corner of the old gunpowder magazine house.
Bran returned fire without flinching. Two shots. Both hit Bad Knee center mass, dropping the man in under two seconds.
Mason sighted down his barrel as he readied himself to take out the remaining masked men. But they took one look at their buddy and tossed their rifles to the ground.
Now, not every decision Mason had ever made in the midst of a gun battle was one of moral clarity. But this one was. There was no way he could justify shooting two unarmed men.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” the one who sounded like he should be skinning squirrels and sipping sweet tea on a porch swing yelled when Bran swung the business end of his M4 in his direction. “We’re unarmed!” He and his pal threw their hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!”
Should’ve given that advice to your buddy, fucknuts.
“Dustin!” Southern Boy shouted, glancing at his squirming friend who was flat on his back, writhing and clutching at the wounds in his chest.
“Forget it,” Mason told him. “He’s a dead man. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
When Bran aimed to kill, he didn’t miss. It was just one of the many things Mason loved about his brother-in-arms.
“Damnit!” the third guy screamed. “I didn’t sign up for any of this shit. It was supposed to be an easy snatch-and-grab. It was supposed to be—”
“Shut up!” Southern Boy snarled.
“Screw you, Luke!”
“Why don’t you both shut the fuck up,” Mason grumbled, having heard enough. An easy snatch-and-grab? So this had been about kidnapping.
“I’d listen to him if I were you,” Bran said, skirting around Bad Knee, kicking his dropped SCAR-L away, and not sparing the dying man a glance. It wasn’t that Mason and Bran were unmoved by death and killing. It’s just that very early in their SEAL careers they’d learned that sometimes there was nothing to do but put rabid dogs down.
“And while you’re listening to him,” Bran said, “you can tell us where you’ve hidden those girls.”
“Well, which is it?” Southern Boy asked. Even though Mason couldn’t see his face because of the balaclava, he was pretty sure by the sound of Southern Boy’s voice that he was sneering. “Do ya want us to do what that jackhole says and shut the fuck up? Or do ya want us to tell you where the girls are? I’m gettin’ mixed signals here.”
Bran glanced over the man’s shoulder at Mason, raised brow saying, Can you believe this bozo? When he turned his attention to Southern Boy, he said, “Wise guy, eh? Well, wise guy, unless you fancy a round in your shoulder, you’ll stop with the lip service and answer my goddamned question.”
“We really didn’t hurt them,” the second half of the duo answered quickly. “We tied them up—”
“I told ya to shut up!” Southern Boy screeched. “Those girls are our only bargainin’—”
His sidekick ignored him and went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “They’re in the far north casemate on the second floor and—”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Southern Boy was apoplectic.
“Thank you,” Bran said. “Now, both of you get down on your knees and put your hands behind your heads.”
“B-but,” the chatty man stuttered, “earlier you told us we could leave and—”
“Sorry, gavone,” Bran told him. “That ship sailed. And then it sank. Now, on your knees.”
They hesitated and Mason rolled his eyes. He contemplated swinging his M4 like a baseball bat at the backs of their knees. The longer they fought against the inevitable, the longer he had to wait to send up that flare.
And the longer Alex is alone out there.
He hadn’t stopped thinking about her—worrying about her—since the moment he’d chucked himself overboard the catamaran. Then again, she’d pretty much been a plague on his brain since she exploded onto Wayfarer Island like the pint-sized bombshell she was.
Bran proved he was suffering a similar fate—having a woman on the brain—when, instead of insisting the masked assholes do as he told them, he yelled over his s
houlder, “Maddy? Y’okay in there?”
For a couple of seconds no sound emerged from the gunpowder magazine house. Then Maddy poked her head around the corner. She held a piece of driftwood aloft like a baseball bat.
“Bran?” She scooted out from behind the building, glanced at the unarmed men, and swallowed. “Can I go find the girls?”
Her firm chin and straight back were a testament to her mettle, but Mason heard the tremor in her voice. And even under the dim light of the moon, he could see that her complexion was so pale she looked like she’d been to the blood drive but hadn’t been given the requisite post-donation cookie and juice.
He wondered if he’d ever met a woman as dauntless and determined as Maddy Powers.
Alex, a voice whispered inside his head. Ya-huh. Sure. Alex was what you would call dauntless and determined…if you were prone to understatement.
And fuckin’ hell! Were all his thoughts going to lead back to her tonight?
“Wait ’til we—” Bran began, and the masked men took advantage of his distraction.
“Run!” Southern Boy shouted, taking off like a shot toward the fort’s arched entryway. His cohort bolted after him.
Mason swung his weapon in their direction and took aim. But he didn’t pull the trigger. Once again he drew the line at shooting unarmed men in the back.
“Let ’em go,” Bran said.
Mason didn’t take his eyes off the targets as his breathing slowed right along with his heart rate. His finger twitched on the trigger. “I could wing them. Or take out a knee.” Apparently, he was having a knee fixation tonight. Odd.
“No need,” Bran said as the duo zigzagged their way across the parade grounds.
“But what if they’re going to the ranger’s station to—” Maddy started, only to be cut off by Bran.
“They’re dumb, but they’re not that dumb,” he said. “They’re outnumbered and weaponless.” He nodded to the SCAR-L rifles lying in the dirt. “Dollars to doughnuts they’re making a beeline straight to their boat. But don’t worry, even then they won’t get far.”
Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) Page 12
