Page 59 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

RJ thought he had a dog in this fight? That he could waltz into this room and take Savannah without a fight?

Guess again, dumbass. Keller had never zeroed down as quickly nor been as focused on so much evil in his life.

If Queen Elaine was a voodoo priestess, Rudy John was her lap dog.

Like that scene in ‘Ghostbusters,’ he was a supporting actor, one of those stone temple dogs, a brain-dead zombie, just playing a part.

But Keller was in the fight of his life.

He’d recognized Elaine’s unique stink the second RJ cleared the door. How could he forget the putrid odor of rotted garbage and fish guts, the lingering scent of death? And blood. Always blood. She was here in spirit as surely as her zombie puppet was here in the flesh. But today she would die.

Savannah had collapsed, but Keller couldn’t see any blood on her neck.

She hadn’t been cut. RJ still had a tight grip on her neck, that might’ve caused her to faint.

The guy was quick, but Keller suspected RJ had only caught Savannah because of his witch of a mother working behind the scenes.

Queen Elaine needed Savannah alive for now.

Quick and merciful she was not. Not if this was all about making her son suffer.

Still upright in his arm, Savannah’s head lolled against RJ’s bony shoulder. He ran his nose up her cheek, then licked her, staring at Keller while he did it, the sick fuck.

And Keller wanted to tear him apart.

‘Guys,’ he said to the people he trusted, his Deuces Wild team. ‘Meet my bitch of a mother, the God damned—and I mean that in every sense of the curse—queen of the damned, her fucking highness, Queen Elaine Boniface.’

A cackle filled the room. ‘You’re no son of mine.’

‘Halle-fuckin’-lujah,’ Keller returned with the malice of a lifetime.

‘You have no idea how I wish that were true, Ma.’ He spat that last twisted word for the cold-hearted female who’d given him life.

There was no love for her. No pleasure at hearing her dried up smoker’s rasp.

No reason to let her live. It was no wonder Gran Mere mistook Elaine for a man. She sounded like one.

But the anger he’d held onto all these years wasn’t enough to fight the kind of evil Elaine had honed into a fine art.

And Keller was no idiot. In the last few days, he’d witnessed true magic in action.

It didn’t come from murdering kittens and squeezing the guts out of tiny, yellow ducklings.

It didn’t come from chanting spells, painting blood on your ugly wicked face, or cursing evil on your neighbors.

It came from the simple purity beating in Savannah’s chest. It came from prayers and believing in the goodness of others. It came from reaching out with love instead of hate. And yes, it came from the Man Upstairs, who even now, Keller realized, he had always believed in.

At the most fundamental level of existence, Elaine wasn’t as strong as she thought she was.

But Keller was. Because he now knew to his tattered soul that, yes, he loved Savannah with all his heart.

She and Carol Marie had been true and honest points of light along the dark path he’d been forced to travel.

He’d never deserved them, but that hadn’t stopped either of them from reaching out to him and blessing him with their unconditional love.

Because love was the most powerful psychic talent in the world.

Not hate. Not prejudice. Not rumor or slander.

Love could work wonders. He just hadn’t realized it until now.

Like Savannah would have done if she’d been awake, Keller opened his heart, and cast his first thread into the universe.

He called upon his friends for their allegiance and their God-given psychic talents.

He called upon their friendship and their loyalty to him.

He called the four elements to stand with him.

Air came to his mind on a rush, in the guise of the gentle wisdom of the young genius, Isaiah.

A bolt of lightning from stoic Tate crackled through the distance.

Keller caught the burning lance with his heart and held on tight to a friendship forged in heavenly fire.

Eden, the epitome of Mother Earth’s fertile goddess, arrived with a psychic soul hug and the scent of lilacs.

Lilacs! The lovely fragrance brought tears to Keller’s eyes.

‘Savannah sends her love,’ she whispered. ‘She’d be here if she could, but someone’s blocking her. She’s not worried, though. Knock ’em dead, Kell.’

And his boss? The bonafide Navy SEAL? True to his larger than life ego, Tucker Chase was suddenly standing inside Keller’s room, roaring like one pissed off hurricane, “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory! Let it fuckin’ rain! Hoo-rah!”

Keller nodded, his heart stuck in his throat and completely overcome by the mists of unconditional love swelling around him like a thick security blanket.

That’s what his team was. His cushion and his safety net.

His buddies to the end. Like the humble servant he was, Keller closed his eyes and called upon the one and only Creator of gifts.

“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.”

Keller sensed Eden standing in Sanctuary, her head bowed and her hands clasped over her heart, whispering devoutly, ‘For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.’

Tate’s reverent, ‘Only the kingdom, the power and glory. Forever and ever,’ reverberated across the miles.

Isaiah too prayed, ‘The kingdom. The power. The glory.’

Again. The chant swelled around Keller from the four corners of the universe.

And again. Filling him. Crowding the darkness out.

Lighting his way. It all came down to this one truth.

Darkness could not stand in the grace of one pure light.

It wasn’t fundamentally, scientifically, or spiritually possible.

Savannah had shown Keller the way of grace, and he believed. He finally believed.

But he was injured and growing weaker. Elaine was not. If anything, she’d gathered strength from crushing the weak. ‘Nice show, chicken shit, but someone still has to die.’ She summoned her slave. ‘Kill her, Rudy John. Cut her throat. Now. While he’s watching!’

‘No!’ Keller knew it then. Elaine wouldn’t be satisfied until she had her blood sacrifice. ‘Take me,’ he begged on what he hoped was their private channel. ‘Order RJ to let Savannah go and take me. I’m the one you’ve hated all these years.’

An eerie silence filled his ears even as the Deuces Wild team continued their chant.

Elaine cackled, ‘Still so much like your worthless father. Still so weak. I should’ve killed you when I killed him. Would’ve been easy. I’ve always hated you and Hell’s been coming for you all your life.’

With every word she uttered, Keller could feel the icy chill of Death’s breath on his soul. Just like with Carol Marie, Elaine had never intended to let Savannah live. ‘Why? What’d I ever do to you?’

‘Because you lived! Because the drunken bastard wouldn’t let me kill you when you was born! Then you run off to school and you learned things!’

Mommy Dearest never could control her temper.

But to finally hear her verbalize her hatred, to know she had tried to kill him, her only child, when he was an infant, was still a hard kick in the gut.

But Keller had also heard something else in her psychotic rant.

Elaine wasn’t just hateful. She also ascribed to the horrific practice of infant sacrifice.

The only reason Keller was alive today came back to Shane.

His father had interfered in whatever ritual Elaine had conjured to murder her baby.

The man Keller had forgotten had not forgotten Keller.

By then, sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes.

Weary to his soul, Keller focused on Savannah.

Nothing else mattered. Elaine was only there in spirit, and RJ was just an unwitting puppet.

When she released her control on his mind, RJ would either drop dead or wake up.

Keller didn’t much care which. The man still held a scalpel to Savannah’s throat.

He deserved to die. All he had to do was tremble and nick an artery and Savannah. ..

‘Why Rudy John?’

Her grunt of indifference came through loud and clear. ‘Still don’t recognize him, huh? That’s Scratch’s kid. Another bastard. Another disappointment. Like you.’

Keller almost felt sorry for RJ. For a second, they were brothers.

They’d both come from the same shithole town, the same dirt poor beginnings.

They’d both had the same idea, to get as far from home as possible.

Yet look where they were today. Staring each other down.

On opposite sides. One still striving to be good. One goddamned evil.

‘Let Savannah go,’ Keller told his wicked witch of a mother. ‘I’ll go with you quietly. Willingly. Hell, I’ll kill myself for you if it’ll save Savannah. You can watch. You know you want to.’

‘It is tempting,’ she cackled, ‘but where’s the fun in that?’

Keller knew he’d been wrong then. There was no compromising with evil. She had to die. Risking all, he shot a quick glance at his boss and ordered, “Now!”

Tucker engaged without hesitation. Both hands came up. Both pistols roared with fire. RJ never stood a chance. He crumpled behind Savannah. Two to the head. One center mass. The blade fell to the floor.

Queen Elaine wailed as if she’d been sucked out of the room by an unseen vacuum. Which she had. Her curse was broken. Her slave ripped from her poisonous grasp.

Against all odds, Keller tumbled out of his hospital bed in time to catch Savannah before she sagged into the bloody mess that had been Elaine’s puppet.

With her safe in his arms, he crab-walked backward to the foot of the bed, his chest on fire and screaming, but not screaming as loudly as his heart.

Savannah was safe. That was all that mattered.

Tucker was on RJ, checking his pulse, emptying his pockets. “One down. One to go,” he said as he produced a cylindrical glass vial filled with golden fluid. “Want to bet this is another dose of poison?”

‘Boss, I distinctly heard you fire four rounds,’ Isaiah interjected quietly. ‘You hit RJ three times. Where’s the fourth round? Can you see it? Did you miss? Is it in the wall? '

Keller looked up at his boss, daring to hope. “Did you—is it possible you—Boss, did you shoot Elaine?” he asked out loud, in case Tucker was too rattled to hear psychically. ‘Is that even possible?’

Tucker’s brows lifted. The whites flashed bright around his dark pupils.

“Well, I wasn’t about to let her kill you,” he growled out loud.

“I heard that bitch. She meant for RJ to torture Savannah while you watched. Didn’t matter what you promised, he was going to kill her.

When you said ‘now,’ I must’ve… I might have…

I could have…” He holstered a pistol, then scraped a quick hand over his hair.

“By God, I hope I didn’t send that round into thin air. Did I? Isaiah!”

‘You think you killed a woman in Louisiana all the way from Florida?’ Isaiah asked, the awe in his tone palpable.

“I honestly don’t know, damn it. I’m not the psychic expert here. You are.” Tucker’s shoulders lifted as he cleared his pistol and checked his magazine. “You’re right, I fired four rounds. Tell me where that last one went.”

Eden was unusually quiet, as was Tate. Like Keller, they were probably watching their boss come undone at what he might’ve unwittingly done.

Gun safety was paramount in this business.

Backstops were a hard and fast rule. A shooter never unholstered his piece unless he meant to kill someone, and by hell, he never unleashed a round unless he knew precisely who his target was, and what was behind that target.

But man, if Tucker did what Keller hoped he’d done…

If he’d ac tually, psychically ended Queen Elaine in Louisiana when he’d fired at RJ…

Keller didn’t know what psychically transferring a smoking hot bullet through the universe all the way to Turkey Creek was called, but he wanted in on that psychic talent. That was a gift worth a thousand F10 migraines.

‘Holy fuck,” Isaiah murmured. ‘Ah, Boss. Sorry, but, umm, sorry to have to tell you, Keller, but yeah. I reached out to Queen Elaine Boniface, and she’s, umm—’

‘She’s dead, Keller,’ Eden cut in pragmatically. ‘I checked on her sorry ass, too. First ever psychic headshot in history. Longest sniper kill ever. Not that it’ll ever be recorded but yeah. Congratulations, Boss. You ended Queen Elaine Boniface, thank you very much.’

‘Six hundred forty-two miles, straight as the crows flies,’ Tate added dryly. ‘Not bad shooting. Not bad at all.’

‘You made that bullet travel through space and time with the energy of your mind,’ Isaiah declared like it was something to be proud of . ‘You’re a no-kidding telekinesist. I’ve never met one before. You can move physical objects with your mind.’

“Oh, bullshit,” Tucker cussed as he was prone to do when confronted with the unbelievable and bizarre. “You don’t really believe that crap, do you?”

‘Yes, I do. It’s true,’ Isaiah replied, ‘and I can prove it. ’

‘And I know where the missing round is,’ Eden added. ‘I’m sorry that your mom’s dead, Keller. No, not really. She earned that bullet in her brain. That’s where the round is, guys. She won’t be bothering us anymore.’

‘She was never my mom. Not really.’ Keller wasn’t sorry.

He didn’t feel bad, not for one millionth of a nanosecond.

If anything, he felt lighter. Queen Elaine’s brutal, conniving reign had ended and he was free.

She’d only ever been evil and cruel. By her own mouth, she’d admitted murdering her husband, and she would’ve killed Savannah.

She’d murdered Carol Marie and who knew how many others. Good riddance.

Overcome with an odd rush of giddiness, Keller tipped his head back and laughed.

Out loud. The most extraordinary miracle had just taken place.

Sure, no one would ever believe that a bullet could travel from Jacksonville, Florida, to Turkey Creek, Louisiana.

Just as surely, Tucker would never deny or confirm such an outlandish charge.

But these fellow agents, these friends, this crazy Deuces Wild team was Keller’s most fervent dream come true. They were his family.

Tucker was the first to join in with a big manly belly laugh. Then Tate chuckled. Finally, Eden busted out in giggles. Even Isaiah laughed along. By then, Savannah was awake and smiling. “It’s over,” she murmured, her fingers splayed on his chest, tapping out her Secret Agent I love yous.

He covered her hand with his. “I love you, too,” he declared for all the world to hear .

“I hope so,” she answered demurely. “You asked me to marry you.”

“I did,” he agreed, his cheeks hurting from grinning. “Hey guys, we’re getting married!”