by Amber Malloy
The guards dropped the limp body on the ground before shoving C.T. in his direction. “It took some serious strings to get Ms. Mediocre past the receptionist’s desk.”
“You’ve kept tabs on me all of this time?” Ashe knew the answer. She merely wanted him to admit it.
“The Marcille family cost me a small fortune.”
It took Ashe a moment to recognize the man on the ground. Swollen and bloodied, the psycho who’d driven her to the church needed a doctor.
“Cecilia here shouldn’t have allowed you to file that motion. If my head of security, Marco, hadn’t convinced me to give her another chance, well…” Snell held out his hand. The guard closest to him placed the gun in his open palm. “She would have already been dead. Instead, she ran off with this piece of shit. I believe they even tried to warn you at a charity function, of all places.”
Snell pulled the slider of the gun back and put two slugs into the man’s chest. C.T.’s feral screams vibrated through the broken-down church.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Picking up a pipe, Walker stepped carefully across the church lawn. In a hurry to find Ashe, he swung at the first guard. He aimed at the goon’s head but hit his neck instead. The guy didn’t drop from the pure force of the blow. Walker moved fast to knock the gun out of his hand.
Stocky and solid, the guard uttered a guttural growl before Walker tackled him to the ground.
Walker took a shot to the mug. Momentarily stunned, he shook off the pain. Convinced he didn’t want another five to the face, he used all of his strength and struck out hard.
The first hit to the head only dazed the man, but the second managed to do the trick. His body pitched to the side. Snatching his pipe and the guy’s walkie-talkie from the ground, Walker scrambled to his feet. Walker made his way past the awning of the church. A few feet away stood the rickety door. He searched for the other guard.
Since the first scuffle had gone on without much noise, it allowed Walker to sneak up on the second man. The guy stood to the side, smoking a cigarette.
The lazy and unaware were always his favorite.
He threw the pipe at the chain-link fence across from them. The kid swiveled his head toward the noise and put his hand on the gun. Walker rushed him. Precise with his punches this time, he laid him out. The idiot went to sleep fast.
“The boss is going to love this.” He glanced over his shoulder to see another guard. Unfortunately, this one had his gun at the ready. “He’s about to put a couple of holes in your girlfriend and he loves an audience. I think they call them ‘sadists’.”
Walker put up his hands and tried to think of his next move.
As he stepped into the church, he figured a well-placed kick might work in his favor. However, the man pitched forward before he could make a fist.
“Are you done playing?” Eden asked. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the little maniac had saved him. Flat on his face, the guard appeared dead.
“What is that, the latest model?” He righted himself and nodded at the nifty Taser in her hand.
“Vann made this one with more voltage than the regular ones. It’s super quiet and I can just change out the battery instead of charging it.”
“Nice,” he muttered, a little annoyed that she’d managed to get the drop on him.
“Don’t be like that, Walker. You and Connor were always good,” she told him. “We were just better.”
“Speaking of ‘we’, how’s Lola?” Together they crept to the back door.
“A shoulder hit and a temple graze. Hate to say it, but she’s been thinking about getting out.”
“Yep, that’s generally how it goes.” Any time an agent put an exit strategy in place, a bullet always managed to change the trajectory of their plans. Strangely enough, many spies never got out of the game to consider retirement. They were usually murdered before that could happen.
After Eden pushed the rotted door to the church open, they slipped inside. The moonlight at the end of the hall allowed them to see into the sanctuary. “Not that I don’t enjoy playing catch-up,” he whispered, “but do you have a plan to save my wife?” The techs had informed him that most of the guards and Snell were in the chapel.
“Oh yeah, my earpiece is broken. Would you be a doll and tell Aims to let Ashe loose?” She worked off her earrings and tossed them into a pile of trash near the door. Despite the spy’s high confidence in his wife’s abilities, he stood rooted to his spot.
“Seriously?” he asked.
Eden reached behind her head, grabbing at the two sticks that held her hair up. Curls from her bun fell down her shoulders in long waves.
Taking the lead, she stepped past him. “A little faith, Boy Scout.”
The church had amazing acoustics. Jacked up on adrenaline, Walker wanted to rush in guns blazing. Instead, he hovered near the door on the other side of the sanctuary.
Eden stood in front of him, twisting those weird sticks.
Lost after Raven’s death, he realized Ashe had saved him. More than anyone, he knew how unhealthy that train of thought was. Nevertheless, he’d been skating by for years until she’d breathed life into him.
Since no help had arrived—and from what he could tell, Snell no longer possessed all his marbles—Walker grew anxious. While he tamped down his rage, Eden continued to play with her hair accessories.
“Vann,” she whispered, holding up the gadget in her hand, “heat-seeking feature. Programmed with coordinates, it makes it a pretty spot-on weapon.”
“Poison?” he asked.
Eden gave it one more twist. “Yep,” she muttered.
He tried to keep the thunder of hate between his ears down to a low rumble. Flipping his shit wouldn’t help anyone, especially his wife. The military had helped him manage his thoughts and keep his cool, but J8 had made him deadly.
“But this little bitch,” Snell’s voice boomed.
Eden cracked her neck to the side, a sure sign for him to get ready. It was another one of her tells. She would usually loosen up before she unleashed holy hell. He waited maybe two beats before she threw the sticks. A slight flick of her wrist seemed to give the darts enough momentum.
He made a move to rush in. “Not yet,” Eden said and she grabbed him by the arm. “Go to the front.”
“What about you?”
“Catching the runners.” She took off in the opposite direction. Lola and Eden were the best for a reason. The level of their brand of crazy couldn’t be matched. Being fearless but not reckless made them top operators, pushing them to the number one spot on everyone’s hit list.
* * * *
C.T.’s sobs stabbed at her brain. The anguish reminded her of the jungle, where painful wailing would penetrate eerie silence.
While her partner huddled over the body of her lover, Ashe did a quick check. Five men—including Snell and the guy next to her—made up the room. A guard knocked C.T. off her boyfriend’s body before he dragged him out of the chapel. Snell seemed to wait for her reaction, but she had seen far worse.
“The man who bought your virginity was a blueblood from England. He liked his girls young and broken. Unfortunately, he found your threshold for pain undesirable.” Snell kicked out at the crumpled mess at his feet. C.T. yelped in pain but didn’t move. She continued to lie there. “The amount of torture you withstood wasn’t normal. Tariq seemed to take an extreme dislike to you.”
Flutters from her heart squeezed her chest. She wanted this man dead. Ashe dug her nails into her palms in an effort to control her emotions.
“I had two choices,” he continued to confess, “either kill you or keep you. Considering all the damage your family had caused”—yanking C.T. up by the crown of her hair, he forced the gun to her head—“you owe me.”
“Ashe, this is Aims.” The device in her ear chirped to life. “When you’re ready, give us the safe word. Wait twenty seconds then back out of the room. There’s a door behind you to the right. Oh, and Ed
en is nearby.”
“To be clear,” she said, once Aims had finished with his instructions, “you set a monster on villages to do your bidding because you were pissed about being demoted.”
“Is that what you heard, my dear?” He shook his head. “Feels as though you weren’t listening at all.” Snell pulled back the slider on his gun while C.T. wailed.
“Wait a minute,” Ashe told the evil troll in front of her. “What exactly do you want?”
“The rights to the irrigation system, for starters.”
“Is that it?” Ashe had never made any money off her parents’ invention. All of her money had come from years and years of litigation. Sun Labs should have been the ones holding a gun to her head. She had cost that company millions.
“The rest of your parents’ patents.”
“Pretty sure those are out of date by now.” She sniffed.
Since her parents had been geniuses, most of their inventions had been viable. Perhaps a little tweak here and there would make them worth millions, but who had the time? Between her law career and revenge, Ashe’s plate had been pretty full.
“Doesn’t matter. I want them.” He relaxed his hold on C.T.
“Then you’ll let us go, free and clear?”
“You, maybe. But this little bitch?” He nodded at her former partner. “She’s going to cost you.”
“After all of these years…” Ashe craved his pain in the worst way, but to recognize herself in this man made her realize all the time she’d wasted seeking revenge. “You still have a hard-on for me.”
“Don’t be crass, sweetheart. I want my due. Is that too much to ask?”
Tired of this man, Ashe calculated her odds. Two outside the door and another two near Snell. Snatching the knife from her back, Ashe stabbed the guard next to her. She knocked away Snell’s gun hand then shot him in the shoulder.
Something whizzed past her head. It took out the two men by his side.
Snell dropped the gun. “You stupid little fuck—”
One Chinese hairpin stuck out of the guard’s throat and the second one had punctured the other man’s chest. Eden had shown her the remote-control-driven weapons years ago. After the coordinates were programed in by compass, she could aim at her targets.
“Now, now, dear,” she mimicked the pretentious shit, “don’t be crass.” Training her gun on Snell, Ashe kept the injured guard in front of her for cover.
“What are you going to do. Shoot me?” he muttered, nursing his shoulder. “The diplomatic community will string you up by your stupid little head.”
“Ohh, that sound,” she cooed. “It reeks of fear, Fredrick! Are you scared?” Ashe detected a small buzz. It rang overhead. With better-than-great hearing since her abduction, she decided it was time to wrap up this shindig.
“Shut your fucking mouth!” he yelled. Blood seeped from his face. The man appeared gray. Ashe wondered if his lack of color had to do with the gunshot or his anxiety. “No matter what you think is going to happen, I have diplomatic immunity.”
“Ah, Fredrick?” She giggled behind the guard’s head. “That’s a dream, a fantasy—kind of like…snapdragons,” she called out her safe word.
Drones dropped through the hole in the roof. She counted to twenty before the robots dumped canisters on the cathedral floor. Firing off a warning shot, she shoved the guard to the ground.
“No matter where you go, I’ll find you!” he cackled through the wall of smoke, in true villain fashion.
Ashe stepped away from the toxic cloud.
* * * *
Following Eden’s instructions, Walker ran out of the abbey’s side door and toward the other end of the church then skidded to a halt. A team of six—outfitted in SWAT gear and gas masks—stood outside the doors. The team member in front motioned with his automatic rifle for him to proceed.
Walker sprinted past the awning and over the dead grass. Ashe stumbled out of the door. Snaking his hand around her waist, he pulled her off to the side of the building. After pushing her against the stone wall, he greedily claimed her lips with his.
Smoke wafted from the church, forcing him to release her. He moved her farther away from the carnage.
“Fancy meeting you here.” Ashe’s beautiful face lit up with a glorious smile.
He stared deep into her eyes, ignoring the crazy world around them.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he whispered. “Thought I’d stop by and make sure everything was okay.”
In desperate need of another taste of his wife, he ducked his head to capture her mouth again. With a groan, he moved in closer to her glorious body, but three single gunshots broke their embrace.
“Now tell me which one of you fuckers shot my partner!” Eden screamed.
“Did something happen to Lola?” Ashe asked.
A couple of pained screams accompanied Eden’s request before everything fell deathly silent. Kinetic energy spun all around them, but Walker kept his eyes on Ashe. He couldn’t care less what hell Eden had rained down on those degenerates.
“Nothing serious, just a graze.”
Her beautiful features softened at the news. “Did you catch that drone show?” she asked in awe. “That was frickin’ amazing.”
“Couldn’t hold a candle to you, sweets. Where did you learn all of that bad ashe-ness?” Full of surprises from the day he’d met her, she kept him on his toes.
Ashe’s smile dimmed a bit, but she didn’t totally lose the bright shine that touched her face. “After Sierra Leone, it was hard coming back to civilization. Thankfully, Eden took time off and worked with me.”
“A world-class spy trained you?”
“Yeah, she didn’t want me to be afraid anymore. Kicking ass, along with a lot of counseling, got me on the road to being a halfway functional human being.” Emergency vehicles cornered the block.
“I think you’re better than half.”
As a pretty large crowd began to form, people stepped out of the nearby houses. EMTs ran into the church with stretchers. He twisted a long strand of her hair around his finger, ready to go in for another kiss.
“Hey there, Walker,” Vann’s voice came over the earpiece. “Once my wife is done wreaking havoc, do me a favor and stop at Loyola Hospital.”
“Ten-four,” he responded before returning his attention back to Ashe. “Our work here is done. We can start living in wedded bliss from now on. I mean, if that’s what you still want?” Of course, nothing in him wanted to let her go, but he still offered the beauty an easy way out. “We were pretty drunk on adrenaline when we pulled that trigger.”
She drew her hand down the side of his face. “I wouldn’t have married you if that hadn’t been what I wanted.”
The soft feel of her caress drew out a groan. Momentarily forgetting the world had flipped upside down, he kissed her again. He paid no mind to the chaos of the police, paramedics and SWAT that swarmed all around them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Apparently, Fridays were the worst time to go to the ER. Nurses and doctors ran around the floor dealing with the first wave of DUI-related car accidents.
“Walker, is that you?”
“Conman!” His ex-partner headed straight for them from the lobby. He slapped hands with his exact opposite. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“An exotic locale full of bad guys,” the devilish version of Walker told him. They always got mistaken for brothers—or at least cousins. It had helped save their asses on their more unsavory missions.
“Ashe, is that you? I haven’t seen you in forever.” He dropped his hand down to kid height then shrugged. “Well, more like this.” Connor lifted his hand a little higher.
“Hey, Cons.” Ashe stepped forward to hug him.
“Don’t get any ideas, dude. We’re married,” Walker told him.
Connor gave a slick smirk behind Ashe’s back before Walker reached out and pulled her away.
“I’ve known Ashe forever,” Connor offered.
The two laughed at him. After Walker had spent his night fighting to keep her alive, he refused to entertain Connor’s crap.
“That’s never stopped you before—”
“I swear, one step closer with that needle and I will be forced to fuck you up,” a loud Spanish accent cut through all of the madness of the ER.
“Shit.” Panic slithered across Connor’s face. “Come on. You know how she gets.”
They walked fast along the corridor to a private room. “Hell, man, do you?” Walker asked pointedly. After Lola had stabbed Connor, he’d never thought those two would occupy the same state, let alone the same building.
Their small group hovered near the doorway to witness Lola’s meltdown. She was holding the hospital guard and nurse off with a food tray. Since she was still sporting her evening dress, the sight of her leaning on her IV stand seemed insane but adorable. Lola looked no worse for wear. A small bandage covered her head and a bigger one protected her shoulder.
“We need another vial of blood, ma’am, for testing. If you don’t comply—”
“Stand down.” Connor flashed his bullshit FBI badge. He had access to the Federal Bureau but no real agency credentials. Walker couldn’t believe he still pulled the same stunts he had ten years ago.
“It’s just that we need to get—”
“Come back later. She might be in a more cooperative mood.” Everyone who knew Lola laughed. Even she chuckled a little bit. Nevertheless, Connor’s charm did the trick and the staff left.
“Oh, babe.” He headed straight for Lola and wrapped his arms around her.
“You know the rule. One needle if I’m conscious.” As she complained, he guided her to her hospital bed.
“Sorry, sweetie. I would have teleported here if I could have.” He kissed her cheek before he let her go.
“Fine.” She pouted. “But next time…”
“Cut the man a break, Lola. He had to take the chopper.” Eden slipped into the room with the rest of the J8 crew behind her.
