Mastered By The Mavericks(65)

Until Zoe stiffened. Crumpled. Fell to the bed once more, a taut scream pouring out of her.

"What the fuck?"

So much for Shay buying a clue.

Brynn whipped toward the next-best hope for Bommer brother logic. "She's  in labor," she told Tait. "We need to get her out of here. Now!"

Tait's scowl, copied nearly feature-for-feature by Kellan, wasn't the  answer she'd hoped for. He glanced at his little brother and Zoe as if  hoping Brynn's assertion wasn't true. A hard exhalation left him. "At  the moment, that is much easier said than done."

Kellan nodded. "Adler's booby-trapped the building. The second we  breached the hallway, steel doors dropped behind us. There's also a set  blocking the route to the front door."                       
       
           



       

Another form materialized from the gloom. Her heart turned over at the  sight of a scowling, grit-covered Rhett. Though his eyes nearly matched  the smoke as they caught sight of her, nothing else about his face was  gentle or reassuring. The next moment, they all learned why. "That's not  the worst of it." He swung his gaze back toward the corridor. "If I'm  reading the control panel right, he's rigged the whole room to blow in  ten minutes."

Brynn blinked. "This whole room?"

Shay lurched to his feet, eyes more fierce than one of the animals his blood was spliced with. "Not an option."

Rhett grunted. "Want to tell me something I don't know?"

"So why the fuck aren't you doing something? Christ, Lange! My wife's in labor!"

Tait planted a hand to the center of Shay's chest. "And you're not doing her or your child any good with the melodrama."

Shay snarled. "He's the goddamn tech specialist-"

"And you're not helping him focus!"

Rhett dropped his head, but not before Brynn took in every tormented  twist of his noble face. He thrived on being a hero the way other people  needed air and water. Shay's agony, while justified, was tearing him  apart. She yearned to run to him-and confess her love to him. If only  nine minutes remained of her life, she wanted to spend every one of them  declaring how deeply his and Reb's devotion, passion, and patience had  changed her, to the very bindings of her heart.

"It's not a matter of focusing," he finally confessed. "I can't just go  into the panel and cut the red wire or the blue wire. Adler's system is  on an auto cut. If the sequence gets started and the box is popped, the  explosives will fire right away."

Tait scrubbed a hand over his grimy face. "So we have either nine minutes or thirty seconds."

As he finished the bleak prognosis, all their comm links squawked. The  sound echoed in Brynn's ear too, making her jump. In the chaos since  she'd exited the bathroom, she forgotten about her audio bud. The voice  that filled the link, husky and thick with odds-be-damned resolve,  seared her belly with dread-and wrenched her heart with love.

"Double-Oh … I've got this."

In front of her, Rhett's head snapped up. His mouth was contorted-and  his eyes were wide with terrible knowledge. He scared the living shit  out of her even before shouting, "The fuck you do!"

"Tell everyone to get back. Way back."

"No! Goddammit it, Rebel!"

But everyone shot to action, anyhow. Tait, Kellan, and Shay helped Zoe,  yanking the bed to its side to shield them. Garrett and Zeke towed their  prisoner and hunkered against the wall too. Brynn rushed the other way,  reaching out.

"Rhett?"

He grabbed her in return, clutching her so close that her breath punched  out, shaky and shocked. Just as abruptly, he shoved her away. "Brynna,  what the hell? Get down!"

"Why? What's-"

"He's going to try and blow the hall door. But all the explosives he has  left … it's all too much fire power." He fell to his knees, jerking her  down with him. "He won't have time to try and figure it out. He's just  going to use too much and-"

"And what?" She seized his face, forcing him to lock gazes with her.  Though she hated every dark, awful light she confronted in his eyes, she  peered deeper-hoping to find a single shred of hope. "And what, Rhett?"

Her answer came in the form of a deafening explosion from the hall.

Literally, a deafening explosion.

By the time she pushed through the ringing in her ears and the pounding  in her blood, she realized that she was standing. No … walking. Then  running. No, that wasn't right, either. She was attempting to run, urged  on by Kellan. Somehow, he'd latched onto her elbow. He was also yelling  things at her.

Come on.

Move, Brynn. You have to move.

Run. Run. Run.

But the world was a bowl of Jell-O. A giant, smoke-flavored gelatin,  through which she tried to force her feet with terrible, painful steps.  I'm trying. The words reverberated in her head as if she'd spoken them  but Kell didn't let up on the pressure, just kept pulling her toward-

What?

She finally understood. There was a knife in the gelatin. Kell wanted her to get to the knife. No …

it was …

light.

It penetrated at strange angles, cutting through the dark one way then  the next as different figures crossed the acrid-smelling corridor.

Shadows. There were so many shadows. With her hearing still so jacked  up, she couldn't discern which were real and which weren't. In one, she  found the tatters of her purse. Real. As she jerked Kell to a stop in  order to pick it up, her gaze rolled to the next-which held another  strange shape.                       
       
           



       

A head.

Homer Adler's head. Severed … somehow. Blown off by the blast? Hacked away before or after? Did she care?

She screamed. At least her head vibrated as if she did.

Kellan, thank God, jerked her back to her feet, and farther away-

Until another shadow moved. This time, prompting her to throw down her  purse, shove away Kellan, and deny anything else existed-even time.

The shadow surrendered a man.

The Viking of a man she loved.

Steps ragged. Dirty face tracked with tears. Arms stretched up and out … carrying the limp body of the other man she loved.





Chapter Nineteen





‡


They were out, thank fuck. Free. Then running as fast as they could,  through the fence Rebel had severed with that first grenade launch, into  the wide field beyond. With burning legs and raging lungs, Rhett pushed  himself faster. Torqued himself to the edge of cardio resistance, in  order to get as far away from the next detonation that rocked the  twilight air, exploding more birds out of the trees, and turning the sky  more orange than the sunset toward the west.

Thankfully, the ground dipped a little. The nine of them dropped into the crevice, breathing hard, anxiously eyeing their wake.

"Holy crap," Kellan panted.

"Holy shit," Tait seconded.

"Holy fuck!" Zoe screamed.

Shay, having never left her side, murmured words of encouragement that  did little to ease the tension in the air. Though emergency truck sirens  wailed in the distance, Kellan and Zeke went elbows-up against the  berm, sighting the horizon through their guns in case any of Adler's  goons decided to play hero and give them pursuit. Tait had joined his  brother, attending to Zoe.

That left Garrett and Brynn to join Rhett-at the side of the man he'd  laid in the grass as if he were suddenly handling sheer glass.

"Moon." He touched fingers to Rebel's face with the same hesitant care.

Rebel didn't move.

He pressed in harder.

"Moon."

He lifted his hand, brushing the distinct black waves back from that  noble French forehead. They were covered in so much soot, they now  looked gray. Shit. The Cajun bastard was going to be just as hot as an  old man as he was now.

You will grow old, damn it. Prove it to me now. Prove it, and laugh in my face all you want to about it.

Garrett leaned in. Rhett snarled at him, and at the hand he extended  toward Rebel's carotid. "Get away." He glared at Garrett's hand, making  it clear he was ready to bite it off if he had to. A little blood and  flesh would blend fine to the stew of agony boiling in his gut.

Garrett froze but didn't back off. "Double-Oh. Let me help."

"You can help by backing the hell off, Hawk. Are you fucking listening  to me?" He lunged out, hovering over Reb like an overprotective wolf,  until a soft, quivering hand scraped against his scalp.

"Rhett." Brynn's husky whisper shook as erratically as her fingers. "Let him help. We-we need to know-if-"

Her high gasp sliced it into a hundred shaky slivers. Each one of those  blades gashed at him, too. He hated his own breath. Hated himself for  sitting here, whole and alive, while-

No. Not whole.

He clutched Brynn's hand in, smashing it against his face. He framed  Reb's face the same way. "Cold. He's so cold." It tumbled out of him on  one of those hated breaths as Garrett checked for vitals … and was  ominously silent about what he found. Or hadn't found.