The room fell silent-until a small sob stabbed the air to Brynn's left. She reached over, locking hands with El and Ryder again. The woman who'd danced with her as many years as Zoe, along with the male model who'd become the D'Artagnan to their Three Musketeers, joined their desperate grips to hers. The connection was comforting, but didn't fill the void left by Zoe's absence. Nobody knew her as deeply as Zoe. Enya didn't count. Not anymore.
Stay strong. You have to stay strong. Zo would do the same for you.
She managed to keep from trembling-until a three a.m. breeze snuck in through the patio, threaded with enough of a March chill to thwart her effort. El began to shake, too. Ry yanked them both against his chiseled chest … again, a huddle missing a key player.
"Zoe." El's sob was broken with grief. "Oh my God … Zoe."
Her cry yanked Rhett's head around. As he took in their miserable clump, a grimace stabbed his soldier's veneer. "Fucking bollocks." The desperation in his voice, underlined by the accent clipped by both London and New York, reached into Brynn's heart. "We have to figure this fucker out."
Rebel stalked back across the room. "Damn it, Bommer. I get that this is hell for you-"
Shay surged up, a bestial sound bursting out. "You get it? Is that so? Then enlighten me, Moonstormer." The call-sign might as well have been hot oil on his tongue. "Tell me what the hell you get. You go through a different submissive each month. You flog 'em and fuck 'em, with aftercare barely over before you're eyeing the next skirt in line. Forgive me, asshole, if I have trouble believing how you get this."
Under other circumstances, the accusation would've earned Shay a black eye from Rebel, followed by the other guys in the room. Every one of them had dropped everything to be here for their buddy in his blackest moment. Rebel and Rhett had flown from Seattle with Garrett Hawkins and Zeke Hayes, where the four of them still served in Special Forces out of Joint Base Lewis McChord. Another former battalion-mate, Kellan Rush, had arrived an hour ago from Hawaii-an odd sight, since Tait Bommer wasn't with him. Shay's older brother was also Kell's best friend, damn near surgically attached to the man except for when he'd been hauled off for training in the middle of the ocean. Also taking part in that training were the battalion's captain, John Franzen, and language specialist Ethan Archer. While awaiting clearance for leave from the training, Franzen and Archer had joined Tait in calling every hour to check on Shay. The coincidence was very likely a blessing in disguise. Shay was already crumbling at the seams. Tait's presence would likely make that worse.
As if the assumption needed affirmation, Shay twisted back, trying to use his forehead on the wall. After three attempts, he gave up. The mountains of his shoulders heaved with his breaths.
Rebel filled in the other end of the composure spectrum. With barely a change to his stance, he calmly murmured, "Glad we got that covered. Do you want to talk about something that matters now?"
Shay's breaths stretched longer. "Left," he finally grated. "I think they turned left."
"That means they went south." Across the room, Rhett flashed a small smile. He'd clearly been hoping for that answer.
"Out of town, then?" Ryder queried. "To California? Or Arizona?"
"Not necessarily." El added her knowing gaze to Rhett's. Brynn looked on, hiding a bizarre bite of envy for their connection. Or was it that strange? El's mind worked like a hard drive, able to process a thousand pieces of information and spit out a conclusion in seconds. It was the key behind her impeccable dancing, why she always got audition callbacks before Brynn, who performed mostly from her gut. Two different routes to the same result-except when that outcome was impressing a man as incredible as Rhett Lange.
Focus! This is your best friend's living room, not a damn cocktail bar. Phone numbers on napkins are not why you're here.
Getting Zoe back. It was the only thing that mattered-no matter what it took from all of them to do so.
"The airport." El's hazel eyes favored dark green, betraying her anxiety. "Shit. They could have been headed for the airport, right?"
"Airports," Rhett corrected. "Not just McCarran. In this case, Henderson Executive fits that bastard's MO better."
"MO?" Brynn looked from him to Rebel, who nodded grimly. "What bastard?"
"Yeah," Rebel muttered. "It does."
"What bastard?"
El twisted her lips. "Homer Adler. He's the only one who makes sense. Right?"
Rebel's jaw hardened while throwing another glance at Shay-for good reason. Even the mention of Adler's name stripped the color from Shay's face. Could he be blamed? Brynn's gut wrenched, thinking of what that beyond-mad scientist had put him through as a "test subject" of the Big Idea, a secret human-animal genetics experiment. As the only victim who'd been dosed with the serum as a child, Shay had become critical to Adler as a grown man. After weeks of cutting him open to learn the secrets behind his animal strength and speed, Adler had Shay drugged into a stupor, preparing him to be the main stud horse for mutant super babies.
A lot of the guys in this room had prevented that from happening, staging an off-books rescue worthy of a Hollywood adventure. The team hadn't failed-thanks to the secret weapon they'd brought along for the mission.
Zoe.
Who, beyond anyone's knowledge but her own, had already been carrying the super baby so important to Adler and his goons.
Important? As adjectives went, it barely dinged the bell-and was probably the only treat that could've enticed Adler out of whatever slime hole in which he'd been hiding for the last year. Clearly, the worm had learned of Shay and Zoe's happy announcement, and gotten so eager to get his hands on the baby, he'd bounded back into the limelight with a damn ballsy leap. By grabbing her tonight, Adler had shot to the top of every government watch list ever conceived, including countries who weren't even friends with the US. Finding Adler and his minions meant finding Zoe-and the first baby of an entirely new race of humans. That meant a new breed of warriors. And, in fifteen to twenty years, an unstoppable army.
"Fan-fucking-tastic." Zeke growled it low and tight, exposing the dismal downturn of his own thoughts. Garrett scowled with similar intent.
On the couch, Kellan leaned forward, chin balanced on his clasped hands. "Those piranhas could have very well slithered back into the bog they came from, too. Vanished without a trace."
"With a gagged pregnant woman?" Brynn countered. They might have forced Zoe to stay on her feet, but no way would she be quiet about it.
"Valid point." While his tone remained at mission gravity, Rebel cracked an approving smile. "That narrows down the search."
His smiled widened. Brynn's heart flipped a little, and the reverberations didn't stop there. Great. She had her dread over Zoe and a throb between her legs to contend with now.
Rhett's nod coincided with his buddy's, doubling the pressure of her frustration. The speed at which the two men processed things was as captivating as the packages their brains came in. "Right," he agreed. "We focus on Henderson Executive."
"Let me help." El scooped up her laptop again, then nodded at Rhett. "Amazing what a girl in dance tights and heels can get the guys in the Caesar's security office to spill during her break. I may know a few new shortcut hacks into the airport's security feed."
Rhett chuckled. "Legally, I'm not supposed to love every word you just said."
"Me neither." El shrugged, making the piercings along her right ear wink in the light. She tucked a strand of her pink pixie cut behind the row of jewelry. "But I hate everything about the reason I'm here, so it's a wash."
Rhett's full lips thinned into a commiserating line before he led the way back to the dining room. In their wake, nobody else had much to say. Brynn only had to take a glance around to know thick silence wasn't the norm for these guys. If they were working, conversation was likely all Spec Ops sarcasm between the soldier acronyms and radio code. If they were off the clock, it was probably more smack-talk, blended with their chosen off-duty "amusement"-a term Brynn was determined to leave alone right there. She'd overheard enough conversations between Zoe and her sister, Ava, as well as their cousin, Rayna, to figure out what those pastimes might be. Ava and Rayna, now both married to guys on the team, used expressions like safe word, subspace, and aftercare as if they merely chatted about the new flowers they'd planted or movie they'd seen. It hadn't escaped Brynn's notice that with Shay's arrival in her life, Zoe had joined that party.