Into the Fire

by Kyla Stone

  “He was shot in the shoulder, though,” Dakota said, worry building in her chest. “It wasn’t bleeding too badly, but—"

  Someone pounded on the front door.

  Everyone jumped. Several guns aimed at the door simultaneously. Logan, watching at the window, remained unfazed. “It’s Maki.”

  “Boyd’s hurt!” Maki called from the other side of the door.

  Logan unlocked the multiple deadbolts and stepped aside as Maki stumbled in, Boyd’s arm draped around her shoulder. Dark red blood leaked from a torn gash in his upper right thigh.

  “One of those scumbags nicked me with a lucky shot,” he grumbled, wincing as Maki lowered him carefully to the couch.

  “Damn it, Boyd!” Archer went pale. “What’d I tell you about playing the hero?”

  Boyd rolled his eyes as he grimaced. “It’s a flesh wound. I think. Tell me it’s a flesh wound, Haasi.”

  Haasi held her crossbow in one hand and fisted her free hand on her hip. “I can do no such thing. We need to get you to my place so I can examine it.”

  Archer sighed. “Just tell us if he’s gonna live.”

  Haasi eyed Boyd with pursed lips. She leaned her crossbow against the couch, knelt next to Boyd, and untied the bandana from around her neck. “Let me see.”

  Boyd’s ruddy face went fish-white beneath his beard. He gritted his teeth against the pain as Haasi wrapped the bandana around his thigh above the bullet wound to staunch the bleeding.

  She frowned. “Since you’re not gushing like a hose, it missed your femoral artery. You’ll live. Probably.”

  “Told you that you weren’t gonna die,” Maki said.

  Boyd leaned gingerly against the couch cushions. “See? Leave it to Maki to always see the bright side.”

  Maki only scowled harder at him.

  “You saved us.” Dakota couldn’t pull enough air into her lungs. A giant vise squeezed her chest. She felt lightheaded, dizzy with relief. “I didn’t think you would come.”

  Jake shrugged. “I for one wasn’t planning on it, until those arrogant scumbags invaded Haasi’s home and threatened us all.”

  She glanced at Boyd, then all of them. They’d all earned her gratitude tonight, that was for sure. And her respect. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

  Haasi stood, wiped her hands on her pants, and put one hand on Dakota’s shoulder. “Evil has a way of spreading beyond its boundaries. People think you can contain it, but you can’t. The evil in that place would’ve spilled into our lives sooner or later. It’s not your fault.”

  “What happened at your place?” Julio asked. “How did they get hold of Park as a hostage?”

  At the mention of Park, everyone’s smiles faded. Guilt pierced her. Park had paid the ultimate price—and it wasn’t even his fight.

  Soberly, Jake explained the earlier events of that night. “Maddox Cage offered us a devil’s deal. He’d let us live if we stayed out of the fight with you. If we didn’t, he’d kill our children.”

  Haasi picked up her crossbow and slung it over her shoulder. “They confiscated our radios and left a man with a submachine gun to make sure we kept our end of the bargain.”

  Julio managed a weary smile. “I see that went well.”

  “Maki pretended to cry,” Zane said. “She got the moron to go right up to her to see what was wrong. She whispered something and he leaned in close—you know, the beautiful damsel-in-distress thing. He never saw it coming. She jumped up and punched him in the face! Then she kneed him in the crotch, grabbed his gun, and cracked his skull with it. She had him unconscious in two seconds flat.”

  Maki blushed and turned her face away, but a faint smile tugged at her mouth.

  “Guys?” Boyd attempted to lean forward but fell back against the couch cushion, his ruddy pallor going a pasty shade of white. “As much as I appreciate this post-battle party, I’ve got a chunk of lead puncturing my thigh. My leg isn’t feeling so good, and neither am I…”

  Zane and Jake rushed over to their brother. “He can ride on my bike with me,” Jake said, “but we need to get him back so Haasi can work her magic.”

  “Bring Ezra over so I can take a look at him.” Haasi was already moving for the door. “Boyd, get your ass off that couch.”

  After they’d left, Julio looked out the shattered window. “I’m going to find a place to bury Park.”

  “Let me get Ezra and Eden, then I’ll help you,” Dakota said.

  Julio half-turned to her, unconsciously touching the gold cross at his neck. His shoulders were hunched, blood leaking from his ear, but his gaze was firm and unyielding. “I want to do this myself. You go be with your family. I’ve got it.”

  “The shovel is still out by the hen house.” Logan still stood by the window, tensed and silent. Greasy sweat matted his unruly black hair to his skull, little curls clinging to the sides of his face. Sweat, dirt, and blood smeared his cheekbones. His expression was stony, a haunted look in his eyes.

  It took everything in her not to go to him right then.

  Julio nodded without a word and slipped out the front door, his boots crunching over shards of glass and ceramic, chunks of drywall, and spent shell casings.

  Dakota needed to go, too. She still needed to check the bodies on her way to Eden and Ezra. She couldn’t wait to tell them it was over, that Eden was safe.

  She longed to wrap Eden in her arms and feel the warm softness of her, to see that sweet, bright smile lighting up her sister’s face. She’d hug Ezra too, no matter how ornery he got. He didn’t have a choice.

  She wiped her brow with the back of her arm. Every inch of her body was caked with sweat, dust, dirt, and blood. Her jaw ached from clenching it so tightly. Her muscles protested with every movement. She was so tired she could sleep for a week.

  But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  They’d won.

  67

  Shay

  “There you are!” General Randall Pierce barreled out of the conference room and hurried toward them. “I was hoping you’d stop by.”

  Shay was in the middle of blowing a huge bubble with her gum to impress Hawthorne. She popped it quickly and swallowed it, nearly choking as she scrambled to her feet.

  General Pierce enveloped her hand in a vigorous handshake. In his mid-fifties, General Pierce was a formidable black man with short, wiry gray hair and a graying beard. He was as tall as his nephew but at least a hundred pounds heavier, solid as a slab of concrete, and imposing in every sense of the word.

  He was the State Coordinating Officer for the Joint Field Office at the EOC—the Emergency Operations Center—which made him in charge of basically everything related to the blast and the recovery efforts in southern Florida, according to Hawthorne.

  “So nice to see you again, sir,” Shay said.

  Without preamble, General Pierce swiveled to Hawthorne and embraced him in a giant bear hug.

  “Sir?” Hawthorne grunted. “Not that I don’t enjoy this, but…I can’t breathe.”

  General Pierce released his nephew and stepped back with a sigh. “All this death. I just needed to be reminded that there’s still life, too.”

  Hawthorne grinned weakly, still recovering his breath. “However we can help, sir.”

  Shay liked General Pierce. He was affable, but also frank—what you saw was what you got with him. Genuine warmth sparkled in his dark eyes, though they were lined with stress and fatigue, and his short, wiry hair seemed more gray than the first time she’d met him.

  Two burly, suited men passed close by them, heading down the long corridor, their faces sullen as they muttered under their breaths. They trailed a fast-walking balding man with ram-rod straight posture wearing an expensive, pale-blue seersucker suit.

  General Pierce scowled as soon as they were out of earshot. “Don’t trust those guys as far as I can throw them. Something squirrely about ‘em. After several decades of honing your B.S. meter in public service, you learn to sniff out the crea
m from the…” He glanced at Shay. “Well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

  Hawthorne winked at her. “We appreciate that, sir.”

  “Who are they?” Shay asked.

  “The skinny one strutting like he’s got a stick up his butt is the liaison to the governor’s office, Alfred T. Forester. Always insists you say that damn ‘T’, too. He’s Governor Blake’s mouthpiece, and a giant turd if you ask me. Instead of doing everything he can for the victims, he’s quibbling over jurisdiction, fund allocations, and politics. As if anyone in Florida gives a damn about Blake’s re-election.”

  “And the other two?” Shay asked.

  “His minions, I suppose. Not sure exactly what they do other than follow him around and mutter angrily in his ear.” The general watched Alfred T. Forester strut around the corner, trailed by his muscled entourage. He rubbed his eyes and gave another weary sigh.

  “You wanted to see us?” Hawthorne asked.

  General Pierce turned back to them, his expression solemn. “We were waiting on the last report from NOAA and the National Hurricane Center, hoping against hope we wouldn’t have to do this…”

  “What?” Hawthorne asked warily.

  “The hurricane. Overnight, it strengthened into a category three.”

  “Oh boy,” Hawthorne said. “That’s not good.”

  “It’s worse. A high-pressure system is forcing the storm from its original path toward Cuba into a northward curve. The scientists from the NHC called it a Bermuda High or something. They threw around a lot of terms—subtropical ridges, vertical wind shear, beta drift—but the result’s the same.”

  Shay’s gut tightened. Her palms went damp. “Tell us.”

  “The order comes from the top. We’re evacuating.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Shay asked. “What about the mobile hospital tents? All those sick and injured people—”

  “They’ll be dead if we don’t move. Hurricane Helen is projected to hit Miami dead-on sometime between tomorrow night and early Monday morning.”

  “So there’s still time,” Shay said with a wild, desperate hope. “It could still shift and make landfall somewhere else, or miss Florida altogether.”

  General Pierce shook his head heavily. “It could. But the meteorologists say it’s unlikely. That was the spirited discussion we just had. Governor Blake, through the mouthpiece of Alfred T. Whatever-his-name-is, insisted we couldn’t take the risk. If the hurricane hits us as a Category 3, the resulting catastrophe would be utterly devastating to morale, not to mention our military assets and at-risk civilians. In this case, I fear I must agree with him.”

  Shay chewed anxiously on her thumbnail. She wasn’t worried for herself. She’d go wherever she was needed. But all she could think of were the thousands of injured and dying patients, how difficult it’d be to move them to safety so quickly without causing further harm.

  She thought of Dr. Webster and her friend Nicole, giving everything she had to keep those patients alive, even though her husband had been killed in the blast, too.

  Her stomach clenched in dread. Dakota, Logan, Julio, Park, and Eden were stuck out there in the swamp—with no idea a killer hurricane was bearing down on them. What would happen to them?

  “Where is the evacuation point?” Hawthorne asked.

  “FEMA’s set up a massive tent city south of Orlando, somewhere near Celebration. Maybe they’ll take over Disney World. With them, who knows? According to reports, it can house several hundred thousand people. Greater Orlando is supposed to have some open beds in nearby hospitals, too.”

  “Okay,” Hawthorne said. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “We’re requisitioning every bus, chopper, plane, and transport vehicle within a fifty-mile radius to transport refugees. Evacuations begin at zero six hundred hours. I wanted to give you two an early warning.”

  Beside her, Hawthorne stiffened. “Just civilians?”

  “Civvies first. But everyone goes.”

  “But we’re investigation leads here,” Hawthorne protested. “And we’re making significant headway against the Blood Outlaws. We’ve already regained Hialeah, Gladesview, Brownsville, and we’re pushing hard into Little Havana—”

  “Everyone goes,” General Pierce said with finality, his voice forceful, eyes flashing. “No exceptions.”

  Hawthorne was just as tall as his uncle, but the general loomed over him, every inch radiating power and authority. There was no arguing against him. You obeyed this man. No wonder he was a general.

  Hawthorne pursed his lips unhappily but squared his shoulders and gave a sharp nod. “Yes, sir. We’ll do what we need to do.”

  “I know you will.” The general’s satphone beeped several times. He laid a huge hand on Hawthorne’s shoulder, his fierce expression gentling. “If I don’t see you beforehand, we’ll meet up in Orlando. Stay safe, son. My sister’ll murder me if I let anything happen to you.”

  General Pierce turned to go.

  Before she could think better of it, Shay grabbed his arm. “I apologize, sir, but what about my friends? Logan and Dakota. They went into the Everglades.”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for them.” He looked down at her, genuine sadness and regret in his eyes. “We already have an impossible task before us. It’ll take every ounce of our manpower and then some to evacuate the entire EOC, the thousands of injured from the local and emergency hospitals, not to mention the FEMA camps. For every person outside of those parameters, it’s every man for himself.”

  “We have to warn them, at least,” Shay said. “I’ve tried calling several times today. They’re not answering.”

  “They have a ham radio, don’t they?” Hawthorne said. “I’m sure they already know.”

  “That’s not good enough. Do they know they need to evacuate? Can they even get out? We have to do something.”

  General Pierce gave a weary shake of his head. “I’m truly sorry.”

  “God help us,” Hawthorne breathed.

  “God help us all,” the general said.

  Shay and Hawthorne watched him stride away, his broad shoulders hunched, his head low, as if he were already braced for the coming storm.

  68

  Logan

  “We did it.” Dakota turned to Logan, her eyes bright and shining, triumphant. “We actually did it.”

  Logan looked down at her, at the tilt of her jaw, the soft slope of her cheekbones, the faintest spray of freckles beneath the smudges of dirt. It didn’t matter that she was covered in soot and grime and splatters of blood, that her clothes were a mess or that she held a pistol she’d just used to blow a man’s head off.

  She was radiant. The smile she gave him was full and genuine and unguarded.

  It struck him like a punch to the gut.

  Ezra was right. He could never give her what she needed, what she deserved. It would hurt her, but she was better off without him. She was better than he was, in every way. And nothing he could do would ever change that.

  The world was broken. So was he.

  He’d done what he came to do. She’d saved his life, so he’d saved her family. He’d kept the promise he’d made to her back in the theater. Her sister was safe. He was finished.

  He didn’t belong here.

  She moved for the door, then paused. “I’m getting Ezra and Eden, but first I need to check the bodies. I want to see him dead with my own eyes.” She reached out and touched his hand. “Come with me.”

  He flinched from her touch. He was empty, hollowed out. Only the darkness remained inside him.

  He felt it, pulling at him, promising him a sweet release, a place without pain, without this feeling like his beating heart was being torn wide open right in front of him.

  “Logan? Are you okay?” Dakota squinted at him, a faint line appearing between her

  brows. Strands of her auburn hair stuck to her cheeks.

  It took everything in him to not brush them behind her ears. Not to lean
in close, slide his hand behind her neck, and tilt her mouth up toward his.

  He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and never let go, to feel the warmth of her body pressed against him, both their hearts beating in tandem. He wanted more than that.

  But it didn’t matter. A man like him could never have something like that.

  His nerves were exposed, raw. Exhaustion tugged at him as the adrenaline leaked away, leaving nothing but a bleak despair. He had to end this. “I’m leaving.”

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving tonight. My bag is already packed and ready.”

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I fulfilled my end of the bargain. I said I’d protect your sister, and I did. Now, I’m done. I’m leaving. I want to leave.”

  She took a step back. Shock registered on her face. She blinked, shaking her head. “No. No, that’s not true, and you know it.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  The impact of his words sank in. Her expression changed from confusion to disbelief to something like grief. She opened her mouth, closed it.

  He had to go. He couldn’t stand this, couldn’t bear the stunned, betrayed look in her eyes. His heart splintered inside his chest. Every word he spoke was bitter as ashes on his tongue. “I have to go.”

  “Logan—”

  He turned away from her. “I’m sorry.”

  69

  Dakota

  Dakota holstered her pistol, pulled out her penlight, and hurried out into the storm. Rain slapped her face. She almost stumbled over the first body—just a shadowy lump in the darkness. Body number one.

  Ezra and Eden were waiting for her. But she needed to check the bodies. She had to. The scars on her back prickled, like her body knew what was waiting.

  She needed to see him, to make sure it was finally over.

  She started in the front yard and then made her way around the property, circling the opposite side of the cabin to the back, slowly making her way toward the shed.