Page 6 of Chased

“Roger that. We’ll be there.”

He went over and knelt by the girl’s chair, pulling his combat knife to cut through her bonds. She cowered away from him, making muffled shrieking sounds through her gag.

“It’s okay—you’re safe,” he tried to say, but it only scared her more. So he made himself focus on the job.

This was why he usually stayed away from the victims. To her, he was just as much of a monster as her captors.

He pulled out the gag and she started screaming for real. There was a ladder in the corner leading to a trap door in the roof, so Sanchez draped her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and started climbing. Luckily she was too scared to fight, but her screaming hurt his ears.

Out on the roof, the night air was full of the smell of smoke, cordite and blood. He could hear the thuk-thuk-thuk of the chopper in the distance, and then it came roaring in over the tops of the trees and hovered above him.

One of the team came down on a cable and took the girl, buckling her into a harness. Sanchez could read the soldier’s lips as he talked softly into her ear out of his reassuringly human face—you’re fine, you’re safe, I got you. She clung to him, whimpering, her face buried in his uniform shoulder.

Her hero.

Sanchez sensed movement on the ladder below, and was ready with a kick in the face for the enemy soldier trying to surprise them. He slammed the trap door and wedged it as the girl was raised into the chopper.

Standing at the edge of the roof, not even caring that he was outlined against the sky, he laid down cover fire below as Rex flew the girl to safety.

Then it was time to make the rest of these fuckers regret their life choices. With a feral roar, he jumped two stories to the ground, and joined the battle.

Chapter 4

It was three a.m. when the team’s transport helicopter touched down at the Outlaw Ridge airfield. The guys shouldered their gear and jumped out one by one, heading for the line of Jeeps parked at the edge of the hangar.

Even though it was an easy walk down to the main compound where most of the living quarters were, nobody ever felt like schlepping their combat gear down on foot. So they packed into the vehicles and rode, burning off their post-mission high with jokes and raucous laughter.

Sanchez and his cousins were almost the last out of the helo. He gathered up his stuff slowly, feeling tired all the way down in his soul.

“What’s the matter, Sanchez?” one of the stragglers asked. “Getting old?”

Cisco said, “He’s like Indiana Jones. ‘It’s not the years. It’s the mileage.’”

“Fuck off,” Sanchez said to the world in general. Thirty-two wasn’t old even by human standards, let alone shifters, and they didn’t get chronic injuries unless something catastrophic happened to them. Ninety-nine percent of the time, their shifter healing fixed them up good as new.

It was why they made such kickass soldiers.

But Cisco was right, in a way. More and more, he felt like a tire with the treads wearing thin. Not like he was going to fade away—more like one day he was just gonna be done with all of life’s shit, lose his last layer of fucks to give, and explode into a car crash. And he didn’t know how to stop it.

Switch, their pilot, finished his post-flight systems check and slid out of his seat onto the tarmac. The minute his boots hit the ground, his mate Breanna raced out of the hangar and flung herself into his arms.

Switch pulled her into a long, should-have-been-in-the-bedroom kiss. “Hey,” he said when they finally came up for air. “What’re you doing up here? You should be in bed. Nekkid. Waiting for me.”

Matéo made barfing sounds, which Switch and Breanna ignored. She said, “I heard you took enemy fire, and then the comms went out. They couldn’t reach you.”

Meaning she was worried he’d been shot down in a helicopter-shaped fireball.

Switch’s eyes got that gooey look he always got around Breanna. He cupped his hand around her face and kissed her again, softly. “It was nothing—just knocked the radio out. Everybody’s good. Well, Cisco took a bullet in the arm, but he’ll be fine.”

“Easy for you to say, asshole,” Cisco grumbled, trying to wrangle his pack with his good arm. Sanchez took it away from him and flung it over his own shoulder.

Switch patted Cisco’s back. “You were very brave, sweetums,” he said in a talking-to-a-puppy-at-the-vet voice. “You-ums get a treat.”

“Hand still works,” Cisco said, giving him the finger.

Breanna smacked Switch on the shoulder and said to Cisco, “I left some food in your cabin, in case you all were hungry after the mission. And some cookies. So you do get a treat.”

That brightened all three of them up. Breanna made kickass chocolate-chip cookies. She added to Matéo, “Yours are in the freezer.” That was how he liked them best.