Page 3 of Ignited

Whether the rest of his team appreciated it or not.

Chapter 2

By the time the troop transport plane approached Outlaw Ridge, Boomer’s mood had turned to crap. Half the mission team was still pissed at him for what Dobe called his “reckless disregard for his team’s safety,” and Sanchez—their best tracker and biggest asshole—called his “fucking know-it-all hero complex.”

As if Sanchez didn’t do crazy-ass kamikaze stuff all the time.

But their not-even-that-near-death experience had apparently put a damper on the team’s usual post-mission celebratory mood, because they were all grumpy and shit, and hardly anybody would talk to him on the flight back.

That was fine. He had Call of Duty on his phone.

Not that he wanted a fucking parade or anything, but still. This was what they did, right? Put their asses on the line to save people? And they had saved them. So what were they bitching about?

When the plane landed, Boomer grabbed his gear and shoved his way past everyone else to be the first off. He didn’t bother to wait for the Jeeps that usually drove them down to the main compound to drop their combat gear; he just shouldered his stuff and hiked up to the cabin he shared with his brother, near the ordinance testing field.

The testing field was Boomer’s personal domain, where he and his handpicked crew tested new types of bombs, did experiments on blasting everything from buildings to caves or rock falls, or just blew shit up for fun.

He was probably the only explosives expert in the country with an unlimited budget, thanks to Thanatos, the mysterious billionaire who funded Outlaw Ridge and chose their missions.

But not even the thought of his latest project lifted his mood. Inside him he could feel the burning seed of anger and hatred that he usually covered up with jokes and pranks, complicated problems in explosives, or just flat-out destroying something. The bigger the better.

He stomped up the cabin steps and pushed the door open, going straight through the living area to the big workroom that took up the whole back half of the cabin. Dumping his gear bag on the floor, he pulled off his weapon holsters and laid them on the table. Heaving his tool kit up on the workbench that ran across the back of the room, he opened it to start his post-mission check.

The lone string of Christmas lights strung between the worktop and the shallow cabinets that lined the wall behind it caught on the zipper of his bag. With a muttered curse, he shoved them out of the way.

Fucking Christmas. He was in no mood.

But he always took care of his kit first thing, no matter what kind of mood he was in, or if the mission had succeeded or failed. You never knew when there’d be an emergency and you’d just have to grab your shit and go.

Usually he found the routine soothing: making sure all the tools were there and in place, restocking any supplies that were running low, lining up all the knives and cutters he’d used by the blade sharpener before replacing them with freshly sharpened ones.

He found himself slamming the tools down harder than they deserved. They’d saved the kids, hadn’t they? What the hell had everyone expected, that he’d let them die?

He opened the door of the cabinet to his right, stepping back to swing it all the way open. The inside of the door was a cork board, covered in layers of photos, some of them old and fading. Men, women, kids, old people. The ones they’d saved. He didn’t have all of them, but he had a lot. Going back years, even before his first missions at Outlaw Ridge.

He ripped open the Velcro tab on the top left pocket of his combat vest, and pulled out two more photos, cradling them in his palms for a minute. It was the two kids from this afternoon—he’d swiped the photos from their file before the mission. They were so fucking young and innocent. A tow-headed little boy missing a tooth, and a sweet-faced girl about eleven.

He knew this wasn’t a game, dammit. He’d carried the victims’ pictures like he did on every rescue mission, to make sure he never forgot what the stakes were. It was why he’d refused to give up.

He ran his hands over the pictures on the board, touching one or two of them lightly. He didn’t think about the people in the photos very often, but he liked having a tangible reminder of them. Memory was too unreliable, and when the world got really dark, it was hard to dredge the good up out of the sludge in your mind.

He sorted through the layers, swiveling the pictures on their thumbtacks, until he got to the bottom. The first one.

Like that seed of anger inside him, he’d covered up this picture, but it never really went away. It wasn’t even a photo of a person. Just a cutout from a faded carnival poster—the ‘Mystical Siberian Tiger’. A white tiger with blue eyes, staring out of the photo. A shifter—one he’d never even seen in human form.

He’d risked his life for her; he’d thought he saved her. And then later he found out that he hadn’t really saved her at all.

That knowledge ate away at him, deep down inside. Hell, he still dreamed about her. He hadn’t for a long time, but lately the dreams had been coming back. Heat and flames, like he’d died and gone to Hell. Her eyes, staring at him through the smoke. And then she was gone, and in the dream, he was searching for her endlessly.

But he never found her.

He cursed again, and put today’s kids up on the board, stabbing the pins in. He heard the door, and then his brother’s footsteps coming across the front room, and he tried to shut the cabinet door really quick, but it tangled with the fucking Christmas lights again.

“Dammit!” He yanked the lights off the wall and threw them across the room. Still fucking twinkling, since they were battery-operated. “Fucking Christmas. Fucking decorations. Christmas should die.”

“You were the one who wanted to put them up.”

Boomer heard his brother’s gear bag hit the floor, and then the sounds of him at one of the other cabinets, getting out his weapons-cleaning gear. Oil-absorbent cloth for the worktable. Barrel swabs. Cleaning solvent. Rags. Gun oil. Boomer knew the drill without even turning around to watch. It was his brother’s ritual after a mission, just like the pictures—and repacking his kit—were Boomer’s.