The sight of her would send me somewhere ugly if I weren’t so relieved to see the rise and fall of her chest and hear the smooth cadence of her deep, sexy alto.
“I’m here. Unarmed and alone. That’s my part of the bargain. Let them go.”
Even his laugh seems to be accented. Hearing it doesn’t surprise me, though. We always knew these guys had no intention of letting any of us leave here alive.
“Actually, there’s been a change of plans. Turns out there is quite the market for a tech savvy ex-Navy SEAL and an even better one for the newlywed wife of the legendary Post Man. So you see, there’s just too much money to be made here for us to keep up our end of the bargain.”
The three men who pat me down are all clustered around me. One holds my left arm. Another has my right, and the one at my back has his arm linked around my throat, just barely allowing me to speak.Suppose this is my cue.
Using my tongue to remove the tiny remote we painstakingly secured to the roof of my mouth; I position it between my teeth and send up a prayer.Please let my guys be clear.I wink at my wife...and bite down.
The explosion pierces my eardrums and blows me off my feet. The three men surrounding me are all vaulted forward several feet and go to the ground with me. The man who was behind me is dead weight on my back. There’s no time to assess whether he’s alive or not. We needed this distraction to get men inside and hopefully take out some of their key players in the process.
Within seconds, I’m on my feet. The two men at my sides are attempting to get up, but their necks snap fairly easily.
“Vaughn!”
“Yeah.”
Her voice is coming from a different spot.Her seat is empty.
“FUCK! Vaughn!”
“Yeah! I told you I had this. Now you’re blowing shit up.”
There’s a note of humor in her voice, and when I see her...she lights my whole world up.She’s free.She’s standing behind Grizzly using something to saw at his binds.She freed herself. That’s my girl.
My men are coming through the massive hole the car bomb created in the side of the building. When they say guns blazing, this is the shit they’re talking about.These men are lethal.Each time a gun is fired, someone falls. No one was ready for them, and they’ve only just recovered from the explosion. They’re taking men out before they’ve even gotten to their feet.
Adam has a gun in each hand, firing both with precision, dropping two men for everyone else’s one. Eve stands just behind him and off to the side. She’s throwing knives that she pulls from who only knows where, and screams sound off with each one she loses. Cal is...well, he’s laughing. He’s laughing and pin balling around the room like he’s a player in a Nerf war. Cotton is at Eve’s back, watching for anyone coming in from the rear.
Jax and Marshall. Where the fuck are Jax and Marshall?There.Back-to-back. Shooting and turning like they had worked out each move beforehand.
Bullets are lobbed back from the other side, and one hits Dante somewhere high on the upper body. “Ah, fuck!”
Romeo steps in and shoots the guy who fired on Dante in the throat. He grabs Dante and helps him to his feet while Keir and Maso cover their exit.
Men continue to fall from seemingly nothing. That’ll be Mateo and the other shooters on the roofs.
My men take return fire, and some are hit. I can’t concentrate on who or where until Jax goes down. “Fuck!” No sooner have I started for him than Marshall has him back up, and two of Adam’s men, Hunter and Patton, step in to cover their exit.
There are bodies everywhere.Not one of our own, although I know we’ve been hit, and some have been taken outside.Vaughn. Time to get her out.
My blood turns to ice, seizing up every muscle in my body when I see her.
“ENOUGH!” Juris screams out the command so loud that it reverberates through the building before he shoots into the air above twice. Gunshots cease. He has the attention of every person in the room because he has....Vaughn.
I still can’t move.We did it. We had them. Including Juris and Aleksandrs, they have a total of eight men standing, and some of them appear injured. Even Juris is bleeding from the nose. Looks like he got some of the venom. She’d have his ass on the ground if he didn’t have that gun.
We still have thirteen men inside, ready to fight, but...we’ve lost.Aleksandrs stands behind Grizzly. I know John could disarm this man in seconds, but he won’t. He’d risk Juris shooting Vaughn.
My hands go up in a position of surrender. My men look to me for guidance, and all I can do is nod. They don’t even look defeated when they lower their guns and place them on the ground.Do they think I have a plan? I don’t. I have nothing, and I’m about to lose everything.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised. I suppose you aren’t the Navy’s go to soldier for nothing. However, even you can’t stand against us. We are smarter than our predecessors. Maybe we should thank you. You paved the way for a bigger, more profitable business. Alliances that wouldn’t have been possible before have spawned due to our mutual hatred of you.”
“Tell him, Juris. Get this shit over with. I want to go home.”
Juris hasn’t taken his eyes off me. He smirks.Whatever he has to tell me, he doesn’t want to miss my reaction.
