Of course, that relief was instantly replaced by the hot burn of bile when she saw the two men who’d been aiming their weapons at Chrissy and Uncle John lying dead on the ground. The contents of their heads leaked through the fabric of their masks and what remained of their skulls.
“Don’t,” she heard Mason snarl, and lifted her chin to find his arm around the commodore’s chest in a steely grip. The edge of his blade was pressed tight to the old man’s neck. “I swear if you so much as twitch, I’ll slit his throat from three to nine.”
Alex tracked the direction of Mason’s gaze and found the masked man from the hallway was now behind her, the barrel of his weapon a mere inch from her head.
“Same goes for you,” Mason added, and Alex carefully turned her head to discover that the man whose hand Mason had broken with his crazy kung-fu, Jedi, ninja move had transferred his aim to Chrissy and Uncle John.
Holy hell. This is a tinderbox. One wrong move will be the spark that has this whole thing going kaboom!
“Tell whoever is in the trees to come out slowly with their hands up, or we kill your friends,” Hallway Guy hissed.
“Do it!” the commodore shouted. “Kill them all!”
“No!” Mason bellowed. “Haven’t we had enough of that to last us a lifetime? No one else needs to die here today. No one else needs—”
Alex didn’t hear what Mason said next because Broken-Hand Man pulled the butt of his weapon tight against his shoulder. It was a small move, but she recognized his intent. Apparently, the remaining Deep Six guys did too—justtworemaining.Oh god.She couldn’t think of that now. She’d have to think of it later.
Before Broken-Hand Man could squeeze off a round, muzzle flashes glowed from the shadows of the mangrove forest. Blood sprayed as bullets slammed into him. He hit the ground, wheezed once, and then made a terrible gurgling sound that had Alex longing to cover her ears again.
“No!” Hallway Guy roared, turning to aim into the trees. He got off a handful of rounds, thebwarrrof his automatic sounding enormous as it echoed over the lagoon.
Something warm and wet sprayed Alex’s face a second before Hallway Guy stumbled. He went down on one knee, a hand pressed to the open wound in his chest. Anothercrackcame from the direction of the forest. And right in front of her eyes, a neat hole opened up in Hallway Guy’s right cheek.
He tumbled backward, dead before he hit the sand.
Her gorge rose. Unfortunately, she had no time to indulge in the esophageal eruption she so richly deserved because Mason cried, “No! Hold your fire!”
She spun to see the commodore had wiggled from Mason’s grip and now stood in front of him, breathing heavily.
“Please don’t, Commodore,” Mason pleaded with the man when the commodore pointed a matte-black handgun at Mason’s chest. “The only way outta here for you is a body bag unless you lower your weapon. And haven’t enough died already?” He gestured to the carnage of corpses littering the ground.
Alex’s knees ached where the grains of sand dug into her flesh. She thought if she squinted, she could see the air vibrating between the two men.
“I knew this island would be the death of me,” Bagheri said in his thick accent.
“It doesn’t hafta be.” Mason’s expression was imploring.
“Oh, but you see…itdoes.” An expression of fatalism drifted across the commodore’s face. “I long to be reunited with my wife and children. But first, if there is a hell, I must see you in it.”
The light of the moon cast the tendons in Bagheri’s hand in stark relief as he began to squeeze his trigger. Alex’s mouth stretched wide over a silent scream. But before a round could belch from the end of the commodore’s weapon, gunfire once again blasted from the tree line.
The old man grunted when two bullets plowed into him. Slowly, almost gracefully, he sank to his knees, his weapon slipping from his lax fingers.
“Hettie,” he wheezed and then whispered something in Farsi before toppling sideways into the sand.
This time, Alex couldn’t contain herself. Leaning over, she retched onto the ground.
“Fuck!” Mason bellowed. “Fuck! Fuck!Fuck!”
Wiping the back of her hand over her mouth, Alex looked up to find him standing over the commodore’s lifeless body. His face full of anguish.
“Mason…” She jumped to her feet and ran to him.
“Do you see now?” He waved a hand at the dead men. “Do you understand now that this is my life?”
The shattering heartache in his eyes cut her to the core. She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away to run agitated fingers through his hair.
“None of this is your fault,” she told him quietly.
