This was different.
Neither of these guys was getting a dime, nor did they have a personal investment like he did. If he lost either of them, it’d fucking break him.
The memory of Striker’s weak pulse vibrated his fingertips. There was a good chance he’d lose a man today. He gripped Viper’s shoulder before the hulking beast could hedge into the forest. “Neither of you need to do this.”
“Huh?” Viper’s lip curled with confusion.
Wraith drew back his head as if he’d been clipped in the chin. “The feck you bletherin’ about?”
Roarke huffed impatiently. “Striker might not survive. I don’t need any more dead friends on my hands.”
“Do I look like a fucking ghost to you?” Viper’s voice rose with irritation.
“No, but I don’t want you to be. My memories are already haunted by Twist.” He moved away from the truck, unable to just stand around for another minute.
“If I die, I’ll haunt more than your memories, chum,” Wraith said with a chortle.
“Woooo,” Viper said, pretending to be a ghost before busting into a laugh.
“You’re an idiot,” Roarke said, despite the smile tugging at his mouth.
“I’m not the one getting sappy.”
They started moving through the brush side by side, just as they’d done more times than he could count. The wet ground made their approach loud as hell to his ears. He kept his finger on the trigger, ready to fire at the first sign of a threat.
“Sappy or not. As lead, I need to give you the option to bail before we go in.”
Viper shrugged. “I ain’t leavin’ that kid.”
“Same,” Wraith added.
Gratitude expanded his chest, but he swallowed down the appreciative words before his friends made him eat those, too.
“Good.” He lifted his rifle as they reached a spattering of trees, then dropped his voice. “Spread out. I’ll take center, Wraith east, Viper west. Pull up at the property line.”
“Copy,” they said quietly in unison, splitting off.
Roarke picked up his pace. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. The cool rain on his face and neck was like water on a hot skillet. Movement at his right, a shadow figure in night-vision goggles, ducked behind a tree.
A silenced bullet sliced against bark near his head. Roarke dropped below a fallen log and unloaded two silent shots.
A sharpsplattold him he’d hit his mark. He sprang to his feet and scurried over the marshy ground until he found his target—with a bullet between his eyes.
“One down,” he said into his mic.
Hurrying away from the dead body, he continued toward the property. A minute later, Viper’s voice came through.
“Two down.”
Several beats passed before Wraith announced his kill.
He made it another hundred yards before a sheet of whispering bullets hit the dirt in front of him. He dove to the ground and rolled over the sucking mud to the nearest tree.
Fuck.
With his back pressed against the trunk, he gripped the rifle slung across his chest. More shots were fired—too many to be coming from one shooter. Good. Let them show themselves.
Adrenaline left pinpricks on his arms. His breath whooshed quietly through his nose, as silent as he was deadly. The tension in his body was gone. This was what he fucking lived for.
