Page 116

Lucky

Sometimes, getting blown by your girl?

Not that great.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Sawyer and another Reaper pass us, carrying an unconscious Cole toward the sitting room. Beau needs the bed.

Because Dom was shot .

“Beau? Why is he bleeding?” Eden shouts, her voice breaking. “Beau, he’s hurt! Is he okay? Beau, answer me! Alastair wasn’t supposed to?—”

“Get her out. Beau! You, too. Out,” Deanna barks.

“No!” Beau roars. “Scissors. Clare! Get me scissors!”

I can’t see anything. In the hall outside the med bay, all I see is the trail of blood dripped along the floorboards.

“Just wait, sweet boy,” Jasper breathes.

Right. Beau has him.

My boot smears through Dom’s blood.

Fuck, how did this go so wrong ?

I look up at Jasper, and I force a smile. “Was it like this when I got shot?”

Jasper’s head falls back against the wall, his eyes closed, and it’s only then that I see how pale he is. How strained his face.

Shit. Maybe not the thing to bring up.

“Hey,” I say, swallowing down my own fear. I wait until his eyes open—and they’re silent, horrified pools. “I’m okay. He will be too.”

Jasper’s eyes glisten.

“Jayk needs hands! Where are the Rangers?” Ava shouts from the front door.

I look back at the med bay. Damn it. I need to know. I need him to be okay before I?—

“I’ll go.” Jasper grabs his rifle, his face closing off. He doesn’t even see it—how natural he looks with it now... or how much I hate that it does. “I need to do something. I loathe waiting.”

“Oh, holy fucking Jesus!”

Beau’s shout has both of us stopping in our tracks, staring at the half-open door. Shadows shift inside. Deanna’s shouting instructions and... was that Dom? Dom’s making sounds? Dom’s able to make sounds?

“Oh my God. Dom.” Beau’s relief finally has my heels touching back to the floorboards.

“Dom!” Eden’s sobs are choked.

“Okay, enough. Out, Beau! I have him. Do you trust that I have him now?” Deanna snaps.

“Do you know how to?—”

“It’s not arterial. I can suture. Get out .”

Jasper releases a relieved breath that trembles the whole way out.

Dom’s okay. If Beau’s leaving thenhe’s really okay.

Beau and Eden burst out of the med bay a moment later, and there are tears on both of their faces. Beau turns to look at her, lifting a shaking, blood-stained hand to his forehead like he’s trying to keep it together, but another tear spills over his cheek.

“ Eden . . .” Beau’s voice is thick. Raw. “ What . . .?”

Staring up at Beau, Eden’s eyes fill, too. “Alastair wasn’t supposed to do that. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt.” She breaks, and her tears overflow. “I’m sorry . I’m sorry, Beau. I’m so sorry. Are you mad? I... I’m sorry .”

Beau shakes his head, blinking. He wipes his tears with the back of his forearm, then drags her into his chest, wrapping her in a hug. Dom’s blood stains the back of her shirt. He gets it in her hair when he holds the back of her head, whispering to her shakily.

“I am mad, Eden, but not at you.” A sharp sob escapes her, and he holds her close, soothing her quietly. “He’s okay. Deanna has him. It’s okay. We’re all going to be okay. I’m with you, darlin’. All the way. To the end.”

This wasn’t part of the plan. My last bit of hope snuffs out.

We got played.

Again.

“Rangers! Hands! We have Sinners incoming now !” Ava shouts again, and Beau looks up.

“Shit,” he curses, and Eden snatches her glasses off her face, cleaning them on her shirt as she talks.

“The trees. Beau, they’re going to try to cross into Bristlebrook. Anyone coming across the moat, they need to die. Jasper, they need to?—”

“We’ll stop them.” Jasper glances up at Beau. “Are you?—”

“Nope. Not fine. I feel like a pile of dog shit.” Beau sniffs as he laughs, but then his face firms. “You think it’s okay to work some of my feelings out on these Sinners, Jas?”

I swing my rifle around as amusement flashes over Jasper’s face.

“Consider it a recommended treatment,” he says wryly.

From the hall, Ava begins shouting again—this time for any extra help—and Ethel’s thin, dusty voice echoes from upstairs.

“I’m getting my rifle! Kasey, put your ass back in your bed. Ida’s out there—don’t you make it for nothing.”

Oh, hell.

Exchanging a grim look, Beau and Jasper start running. I make it two steps after them before a soft hand tangles in the back of my shirt, pulling me back.

Eden’s piercing eyes are still red-rimmed and luminous, but her face is set.

“Still my partner in crime?” she asks... and the fact that she’s asking that now ?

Yeah. Pretty sure it’s the scariest question I’ve ever heard her ask.

“Yesss,” I reply cautiously.

She takes my hand and starts dragging me toward the porch. “Wonderful. I need you to help me blow some people up.”

I grin, and in the next instant, I’m dragging her to find our new danger pack.

“This is couple goals for me, I hope you know that,” I tell her, and Eden’s weak, snuffly laughter makes my steps begin to fly.

Murder by explosives might be couple goals—but making Eden laugh is my life’s goal.

“What are we blowing up, anyway?” I ask as I push open the front door.

Her face darkens. “The side tunnel. Alastair knows where it is.”

My stomach sinks.

But I’m glad one of us is thinking.

“Come on,” I mutter.

Outside, the battle is raging. Under fire, dozens of Sinners are carrying three heavy, flattened tree trunks toward the moat. Makeshift bridges.

They’re coming to us.

Between the trees, there’s another swarm of men waiting impatiently for them to be placed, their weapons at the ready.

They’ll blitz us as soon as those bridges are down.

“Take them out !” Jayk roars from the forward-most platform, storming down it. “Now! Fire for effect! We are not inviting them for a playdate!”

Beau runs toward the moat, lobbing a grenade, and it takes out several Sinners in a deafening burst. The remaining men stagger under the weight of the tree—but more Sinners race out of the forest to replace them.

Jasper kneels beside Beau, pounding out shot after shot. Covering him.

“How many Sinners did you say there were again?” I check with Eden, as casually as I can, tugging her toward Platform Two.

Billy and Baa-bara are straining against their ropes, tied to the porch, and my girl Henrietta’s all in a panic as we pass her. I’ll make it up to her.

If we live, I’ll make it up to her.

Eden’s wide eyes are on the encroaching Sinners. Another grenade goes off, and the blaze is reflected in her glasses.

“Ninety. Or.. . ninety tents? Do they sleep more than one to a tent?” she asks while we jog, like the idea only just occurred to her.

Almost definitely.

“Nope! Probably a bunch of decoy tents up, too. Inflating their numbers, you know? Nothing to worry about,” I tell her in a rush, then shout up to the platform. “Hey, Katherine! Danger pack me!”

A heavy backpack drops from the high platform a second later, and I catch it with a yelp.

“Oh my God,” Eden mutters, staring at it, her pulse pounding in her delicate neck.

Shouts and blasts crash through the background.

The tidy pocketed rows of C-4 are still secured, the frags still in their pouches, but...

My heart pounds as I laugh. Fuck me. “It... probably wouldn’t have exploded.”

Probably. C-4 is usually nice and stable.

They’re pretty old, though.

Eden pivots toward the platform. “Do not throw the danger pack, idiots!”

Laughing, I grab several blocks and stick them into my pockets, and she scowls at me, too. I snag some clips. The shock tube initiator I slip into my jacket pocket.

She’s so cute when she’s bossy.

“Beau, get it loaded up. I want cover. On foot, push in! Target the left. Fire on three!” Jayk shouts. “One, two...”

Behind us, beyond the moat, there’s an explosion so heavy that the ground rumbles under our feet, and the harsh smell of fumes stings the air. Smoke seeps out along the field beyond the moat, engulfing the Sinners, the bridges, the forest.

Eden’s head whips back toward the moat.

“Three!” Jayk roars.

A ferocious, rhythmic crash of gunfire follows, and men begin screaming, lost and dying in the smoke. Pained shouts and confused panic roar from the Sinners, and one man runs shrieking from the billowing cloud, only to impale himself on the pikes.

Quickly, I grab the reel of detonating cord and some tape and spring to my feet. I take Eden’s hand... but she holds me still.

Her eyes are scanning, searching for the screams in the smoke.

“Lucky? What is...? We can’t see them.” Her chest rises quickly. “What if they make it over here? What?—”

“Back up!” Jayk shouts. “Back up before it settles!”

The civilians retreat, falling in behind the platforms.

And there’s a beat as the cloud begins to fade, falling like a mist of snow.

When we can finally see, Eden presses a shocked hand to her mouth—and the civilians’ weapons begin to thunder as they cheer.

The left bridge is down, over fifteen men shot down around it, underneath it, running from it. The other two lie abandoned in the grass, left in the Sinners’ panicked confusion. Several more men lie dead around those.

“Oh my... God ,” Eden mutters, and I tug at her hand, laughing.

“Come on, beautiful. Jayk has this covered.” When she stumbles after me, adorably incredulous, I can’t help my grin. “He’s letting Beau play with the Gustaf .”

As the smoke dies, there’s a shiver of movement by the tree line.

Alastair stands at their center, right where he stood the night of the first attack—only this time he’s not cloaked in midnight and fire.

The sky is still streaked in orange and red with the sunrise.

A new dawn for all of us.

“Sinners!” he says simply. “ Attack .”

Shit.

Are we too late?

I take off.

Squeezing my hand hard, Eden races behind me back into the house. We dodge Ethel as she shouts back at Kasey and twist around Clare as she comes out of the med bay. I let go of Eden’s hand so I can start tying the knots I need in the detonation cord before clipping it.

One block would probably be enough to cave the tunnel. Two to be safe.

I tug the first one from my pocket, backing through the door into the gym.

“Should you really be doing that while you’re running?” Eden asks.

“According to our EOD training officers, or...?” I ask, connecting the second charge to the first as we head over to the tunnel’s entrance.

I almost drop the detonating cord, and Eden flinches.

“You’re really making me second guess this, Lucky.”

I snort.

I open the door and duck inside, taking a second to work out where to secure the charges. Annnd... maybe a bit farther in. The civs won’t be happy if I blow out half their sleeping area.

When I glance back, checking the distance, Eden’s tense face looks back at me from the doorway.

Does it look small enough?

Should I go deeper?

I take a few long strides backward.

Here?

“You’re.. . you’re joking again? Damn it, Lucky! Please don’t blow yourself up! This is safe, right?”

Well.

No.

I’m eyeballing weights and guestimating how much rock is about to get blown into pixie dust—not to mention that I have no idea how this will affect the structural integrity of the house.

So, yeah. My officers really would have had my ass for attempting this one without clearance, but...

Muttered curses echo through the shadowed, rocky tunnel.

Gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

My pulse kicks into fast, frantic action. Quickly, I secure the second charge to the rockface with as much tape as I can rip off with my teeth in one swipe.

Eden’s eyes widen in sharp panic as she hears them too, and she gestures urgently for me to come back.

Fuck. If they rip through here before I can set up the initiator...

Eden is right there . Dom is in the med bay, and I doubt he’s up for a gunfight. Clare. Deanna. Kasey is upstairs.

The footsteps echo louder, clattering close enough that?—

Ice freezes my veins as the realization sinks in.

They’re around the next corner, maybe the one after that.

“Go!” I shout soundlessly at Eden, but she shakes her head stubbornly, on the verge of tears.

Damn it, no .

I back toward Eden, unravelling the detonating cord with harsh, hurried tugs.

Almost, almost, almost.

“ Lucky !” Eden whisper-shouts from the doorway, and I’m so close. I cut the cable with my pocketknife, and fumble for the initiator.

“Run!” I beg her,

“No! Not without you!” she snaps.

The men turn into the final bend, a crowd three-wide and I can’t see how many deep. They stop dead as soon as they see me.

Then the one at the front steps forward, smiling.

Partners in crime.

I can’t do this. I need her gone. Away from the men and the charge and?—

Shit. Is there anywhere safe right now?

Where the fuck is my initiator?

The man at the front laughs, then surges forward.

Taking my own advice, I scramble backward, shoving my hand into my other pocket. I can’t blow shit without my initiator, but I can’t find it.

The men are running toward me, crashing against each other and the walls.

“Left side!” Eden urges me, tugging me back. “Lucky, your jacket!”

Shit.

I pull it out, connecting it to the cord, just as Eden drags me out and into the gym. I secure it in seconds—and she secures me.

We back up farther, and a few moments later, I see the Sinner’s face in the doorway.

Eat dirt, motherfucker.

“You want the honors?” I ask Eden, passing the initiator to her, and she grins.

Then yanks the pump.

Damn it. This is going to hurt.

The force punches us back in the next instant, ripping us off our feet with bone-bruising force. I crash into Eden, grabbing her to me and twisting at the last second in a way my mom would have been proud of. It’s not exactly what she had in mind for aerials, but...

I slam hard into the gym floor, and Eden comes down on top of me in a mass of knees and elbows I never appreciated for their sheer brutality until now. We skid through blankets and knock over water bottles and someone’s lacy panties end up locked around my boots.

And then we stop.

Both of us roll onto our backs, gasping in shock.

Blackened plumes of thick, ashy smoke unfurl through the room, spreading out from where the side tunnel used to be. Small pebbles of rock and debris clatter onto the floor with shuddering little cracks.

I blink, then cough, my mouth full of dust—but it sends a thousand spurts of agony all through my body.

I think I finally did it.

I think I crushed every bone in my body.

“ Ow ,” I groan.

Suddenly, the rock wall groans, and I shove myself up, dragging Eden farther backward as another chunk of wall crumbles in front of the side tunnel, burying the twitching hand of the Sinner in rubble.

“Next time . . .” Eden gasps. “Use less .”