29
Merc caughtthe flash of gunfire from the back door and saw Marissa go down, Cotter on top of her. His chest thudded painfully. From here, he couldn’t tell if she’d been shot or Cotter. But he could see Rainier stalking forward, his gun aimed at the pair on the ground.
“No!” Merc roared and took off in a dead run, lifting his gun as he went. He squeezed off one round and missed. Dammit.
Rainier went to his stomach on the grass.
Another shot blasted in the backyard, but from Merc’s right. Merc dove left, rolling in the grass behind the fountain. There was a second suspect in the woods.
Merc checked his pistol. Only one fucking round left after that shit storm in the house. No one else on his team had seen Rainier and the girl leaving.
It was just Merc.
He drew in a breath and rolled to his stomach. He slowly peeked over the edge of the fountain to see Rainier getting to his feet and the other figure emerge from the tree line.
The entire world stopped. Merc’s vision blurred and flashed to that day in the streets of Afghanistan. His brother-in-arms in his arms. Blood covering him, dripping onto the dirt, his blonde hair plastered to his head from sweat. Reaper.
Suddenly the memories flooded back in painfully. Reaper standing in a glass cell right next to Merc’s, his hands pressed to the glass. Bright fluorescent lights blinking overhead. A woman in a white lab coat, her name in bold face type on her right breast pocket. Dr. Winter. He remembered sitting there calmly as she injected him with a pale orange fluid. And then a surge of pure unrefined raw power that followed.
Merc blinked and the memory disappeared just as quickly as it had come. Now he saw Reaper advancing on the pair on the ground. His teammate. His brother.
Merc jumped to his feet, holding his pistol aimed on Reaper, as he stalked forward.
Rainier spotted Merc and blanched. “Reaper, grab the girl. Now.”
Reaper shook his head. “No. It ends here. You can’t do this to anyone else.”
Nightshade tried to shove Cotter off her, but he was dead weight.
“I order you to holster your weapon soldier,” Rainier commanded but Reaper kept coming, unresponsive to the General’s commands.
Rainier hesitated only a second before lifting his pistol to take aim at Reaper.
Merc leveled on the General. “Don’t do it.”
“He can’t kill her. She’s the only one left,” Rainier kept his aim on Reaper.
“I’m sorry Merc, I know what she is to you, but she can’t be allowed to live. They’ll keep using her. They’ll use her blood to make more of the drug. I can’t let them do that.” Reaper now stood only a foot from Marissa, who lay trapped beneath the dead weight of her father.
“But we know what he’s doing now. We can stop him.” Merc edged closer to the group, carefully shifting his aim to Reaper. He couldn’t lose Marissa. Even if it meant killing his brother.
“He’ll never stop. He’s put too much into Midnight. You heard him, think about how much this is worth.” Reaper held steady in his aim. “He’s already done enough harm to our team and he’ll keep doing it. He’ll keep creating more soldiers like me if I don’t stop him.”
“Put the gun down, Reaper,” Merc said in a desperate command.
“Listen to your brother, Reaper. Put the gun down. We can talk about this,” Rainier said.
Merc caught the General taking a small step backward, while keeping his gun leveled on Reaper. The urge to put a bullet in Rainier was so strong Merc’s hands shook, but he couldn’t take his attention off Reaper, who had his weapon aimed at Marissa.
“You never wanted to talk before. Not when I told you about all the side effects your program was having on my men. Not even when I begged you to stop. Why should I believe you now?”
What had Rainier done to him? The soldier standing before him with his gun trained on Merc’s woman wasn’t a man anymore. He seemed hollow and hard at the same time. A man without anything to lose.
Merc knew he believed he had no other choice but to kill Marissa. She was the only one left who could create the drug responsible for Midnight and for what sounded like the destruction of Reaper’s team.
Which meant that had been your team….
“I swear on my life I will help you take him down, but you can’t hurt her. I love her.”
