I shoot a look to Jack and Ace.
“Get in there,” Jack orders.
I jerk my chin, and we move at a run. This time, we’ve had no opportunity to scout the outside area or determine how many men we might have to deal with when we’re inside. We’re all out of time.
I don’t like going into unknown situations, but sometimes you have no choice. Just like I always have, I draw my emotions down and bury them deep inside. I think of myself as nothing more than a machine, one who has a mission, and who never fails.
Camile, Camile, Camile.
The image of her already dead, her body bleeding red out onto the floor, her beautiful dark eyes glassy and unseeing, jumps into my head. Those deeply buried emotions fight to break loose. It’s like a skittering of tiny creatures inside my chest that want to explode outward and spread through my entire body, taking me down. I can’t let it.
Focus, for fuck’s sake.
Leading the way, with Ace and Jack close at my sides, we burst through the partially open door.
It takes my brain a few seconds to put together what I’m seeing. A young man leaning over a mostly nakedRook and Camile while they cower from the gun he’s aiming at Rook’s skull.
Several other men stand around, looking unsure, while the body of another man lies at their feet. There’s a guy gurgling faintly as blood seeps from his chest. A final man is sitting on the floor, clutching his hand to a bullet hole in his shoulder while dark blood trickles between his fingers.
What the fuck has been going on here? Why is Rook naked? The only possibility that comes to mind is horrifying, and even though I know he won’t have done anything out of choice, a strange, murderous protectiveness rises in me as I look at Camile’s pale face. Her trauma is written on every line of her taut features.
Before I have the chance to react, Ace flies through the air in front of me and lands directly on top of the man I’m fairly sure is Ledger, from the photos I’ve seen. They both crash to the floor, and Ledger’s gun goes off, the bullet punching a hole in the ceiling.
Ace knocks the gun out of Ledger’s hand, and it clatters across the floor. One of the other men still standing lurches for it, but I fire a warning shot and aim squarely at his head. “Don’t even think about it.”
He holds his hands up immediately. “Not my fight.”
His friend nods. “We were just paid to be here. We have no idea what’s going down.”
I don’t know if they’re telling the truth, but it tracks. If they were cartel, they’d not dare say that in front of the man I assume is Ledger. They must be connected to the Revenants somehow. Maybe they are hang-arounds, or prospects. If so, they’re likely dead for getting involved in this clusterfuck.
Ace draws back his fist and punches Ledger viciously in the face. He hits him again and again, the sound of bone crunching as he breaks the fucker’s nose reverberating in the room. Ledger grunts and tries his best to fight back, but he doesn’t stand a chance when Ace is like this. Ace might act like an overgrown puppy most of the time, but when he loses it, he’s lethal. I let him loose for a few seconds—Ace is wound so tight, he’ll explode—but when it looks as if he’s not going to stop until Ledger is dead, I gesture to Big Mike.
“Get him off Ledger. We need to be able to interrogate the man.”
Big Mike nods and stalks over to pull Ace off Ledger.
“Fucking get off me,” Ace spits as he whirls on Mike.
“Ace, stand the fuck down,” Jack orders from the doorway, where he’s surveying the scene with something unreadable crawling over his face.
His gaze keeps hitting Camile, and for a moment, I think he’s going to go nuclear like Ace, too. But he locks that shit down.
Ace finally calms down enough to go stand against the wall, clenching and unclenching his fists. Two of our men step forward and secure the man Ace was beating.
“Ledger?” I doublecheck with Rook and Camile as I point at the man being hogtied.
He looks like the man I’d been searching for near the compound, but now his face is so bruised and bloodied, he’s hard to recognize, and I need to be sure. He could just be a relative and look similar, in which case, the main guy would still be a threat.
They’re both still huddled on the floor, Rook with his arm tightly around Camile, using his naked body to shelter her from everything happening around them. Camile nods, but she doesn’t meet my eye, her lipspressed into a thin, tremulous, line. Rook tightens his arm around her. The bikers Beau sent with us storm in from behind Jack and stare in dismay at the man who is already dead, and the one bleeding out from his chest.
“Fuck,” one of them says.
“They your men?” Jack asks.
“Yes. Beau is going to be pissed.” He shoots Ledger a look. “He’ll want to know how the fuck they were contacted by a cartel in the first place.”
“We can find that out,” Jack says, darkly. “And I think my men will very much enjoy doing so.”
