Good thing they’d trained for exactly this type of situation.
“You say they are no longer here. So then, where do you propose they have gone?” Floppy Hat demanded, his tone telegraphing his belief that they hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Doesn’t matter,” Leo said, tightening his finger on the trigger, breathing out slowly to steady his heart and solidify his hold. He could feel his friends’ tension vibrating through the night air like a storm about to break. They were ready. And waiting on his signal. His world squeezed down to Floppy Hat and the spot in the center of his forehead. “You’ll never see hide nor hair of ’em.” And before Floppy Hat could reply to that, he bellowed, “Now!”
The roar of three simultaneous shots and another a split second later boomed over the deck, making his eardrums pop. Even still, he heard his own triggerclickominously. Jammed.Fuuuuccckkk!Down the length of his sights, he saw red holes erupt in the heads of Floppy Hat’s men just as the muscles in Floppy Hat’s forearm bunched when he tightened his finger around his trigger.
Bang!The sound of a fifth shot blasted by Leo’s head. The whiz of the bullet slicing through the air by his ear told him Olivia had been the one to take aim.
Floppy Hat’s neck burst open at the same time his eyes flew wide. He dropped his weapon to claw at the wound that was spurting thick sprays of blood in rhythmic, steady streams. He made an awful gurgling noise, then collapsed onto the deck of the fishing boat next to two of his men, his legs scrabbling dreadfully in his death throes. The remaining two men had fallen over the railing, their arms dangling down, their heads dripping blood into the sea between the boats. Five dead in less than two seconds. It was as gruesome as it was impressive.
Somuchneedlesshorrortoday. So much dying.He wished there could have been another way and sent a prayer of thanks up to Rusty once more for making them all promise to stop living in a world that required this of them on a daily basis.
Blowing out a breath, he turned to see Olivia lower her weapon to the deck. She was trembling, her face completely drained of blood like she’d been exsanguinated, and her blue eyes taking up her whole face.
“See,” he said, realizing he was trembling too. “I told you that you didn’t have anything to worry about. You had my back, stepped up, and did what you had to do and—”
He stopped right there because she bolted upright and raced for the railing, the back of her robe billowing out behind her in a navy-blue ripple of terrycloth. Leaning over the side, she gasped again and again like she was trying to keep from retching. He shook his head at the brave, fearless,softheartedwoman he loved. He felt a lump in his throat as he swung his M4 over his shoulder and started in her direction.
He’d gone no more than two steps when he saw the barrel of a machine gun edging from around the corner, pointing straight at Olivia’s slender back. He didn’t think, he didn’t hesitate, he simply roared her name and ran. Three leaping steps brought him to the corner of the living quarters. His right hand connected with the barrel of the weapon, pushing it off target just as the motherfucker operating it squeezed the trigger.
Boom!The shot flew wide.ThankChrist!From the corner of his eye, Leo saw Olivia spin around, hands raised to her mouth. Then he was ripping the weapon away from some guy in a wet suit, snarling as he tossed it overboard. He started pummeling the sack of shit in the face with both fists. The rage was on him now. He was seeing red. This man, whoever he was, had been a split second away from shooting Olivia in the back. And that meant Leo would kill him, beat him to a bloody pulp and then stomp on his remains.
Wet-Suit Guy’s nose exploded under Leo’s fist, blood streaming over his mouth and chin. He staggered back against the bulkhead as Leo aimed body blows to his midriff over and over again, growling, howling, loving the ache in his arms and the skin that split over his knuckles. He was a beast. An animal bent on protecting its mate. Savage and unyielding. Mindless. Berserk.
He didn’t know how long he stood there slugging away at the guy, hearing the crunch of bone meeting bone, watching as skin flayed open and bled. But at some point, he realized Olivia had laid a hand on his shoulder and was whispering his name in that smoky, beloved voice.
“Leo. Shhh. Stop now.” The red slowly eased from his vision. The rage roaring through his veins like molten steel cooled. He dropped his hands, flexing his fingers. And without his fists keeping Wet Suit upright, he crumbled to the ground at Leo’s feet, curling in on himself.
“It’s okay.” Olivia brushed his hair back from his face. “Leo, look at me.” He glanced over at her, breaths sawing from his lungs. She smiled and stood on tiptoe to press a soft kiss to his lips. It anchored him, grounded him, settled him in a way nothing else could have. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “See? I’m alive. You got him.”
To his utter dismay, what sounded like a sob burst from somewhere deep in his chest. And then he was grabbing her up, holding her close as his friends and the crew of theBlackGoldgathered around them. For a few glorious moments, he breathed her in and felt her strong heartbeat against the lips he pressed to her neck. Then the guy lying in a heap at his feet groaned, and Olivia turned her head, gasping.
“What?” Leo asked, reluctantly releasing her. If he had his way, she’d be permanently attached to him.Conjoinedtwins, connected at the genitals.Okay. All right. He was making jokes, which meant he hadn’t gone off the deep end for good. He covertly released a pent-up breath. For the first time in his life, he understood how it was possible for a man to lose it, to slip over the edge of sanity. And it was a chilling glimpse into the dark void. Goose bumps lifted the hairs on his arms.
“I think I…” Olivia bent down, looking at the stranger. “You’re Agent Jonathan Wilson, aren’t you?”
Chapter Twenty
7:48 p.m.…
“So tell me, Agent Wilson, are you working with someone inside or are you working alone?”
Maddy sat on the plush sofa in the yacht’s main living quarters, watching Olivia question the bleeding, trussed-up sole survivor of the shootout. And she must be in shock or something…or…maybemoreshock was what she was in.Isitpossibleforshocktocompoundonitself?Because her hands weren’t shaking. Her heart wasn’t racing. And she wasn’t ten seconds away from passing out. As far as she could figure, after witnessing what she had secretly titled “Yosemite Sam-style DustupNúmero Dos,” she should be experiencingallthose things.
Or maybe Bran was right when he’d told her the repercussions of what she’d seen would likely hit her hours later, when she least expected it and was all alone.Shitfire. That’s probably it.She’d probably be a blubbering mess in about… She checked her watch but got distracted when the Bleeding Dude snarled, “Stop calling me Agent Wilson! My name is Banu az-Harb!”
Sothat’swhat Lead A-hole had been saying over and over again.Banoo. Banoo.Clearly, he’d been talking to this guy.
“Yournameis Jonathan Wilson,” Olivia insisted, standing beside the man who was tied to a chair at the big mahogany table. Even wearing nothing more than one of the yacht’s terrycloth robes, she still managed to look cool and in charge. Completely kickass.Getdownwithyourbadself, my sister from another mister!
“I know that’s your name because we’ve been in a dozen meetings together. We’ve sat across the table from one another and given situation reports. And things will go better for you if you cooperate with me now. I’ll make sure the higher-ups know you were helpful, and my testimony to that fact will go a long way when it comes to sentencing. So, now, who are you working with inside? Who else has been leaking—”
“Ha!” Banu or Jonathan or whatever his name was—Maddy was going to go with Jonathan simply because the balding blond man didn’t look anything like a Banu—barked out a laugh. It was overly loud and sort of insane-sounding. It caused the three men seated around the table to frown. Leo shifted unconsciously closer to Olivia.
“You think I neededhelp, Agent Mortier?” Jonathan thundered. “You think I couldn’t have done everything alone?Iam it.” Maddy fancied that if his hands weren’t tied, he would have punched a thumb into his puffed-up chest. “Iam The Company’s worst nightmare!”
The company? Was that capitalized? Also,AgentMortier? So Olivia actuallywasCIA. Maddy knew that much from the movies. And speaking of the movies, right about now she could really go for a bag of popcorn. She had a real-life, honest-to-God drama unfolding in front of her eyes.
