Page 7

Chapter

Seven

BONES

“ I ’m not fighting you.” The fact I had to repeat it should have told him everything he needed to know. Not that Voodoo paid a damn bit of attention to me.

“I heard you the first time,” he said, flexing his hands in the wraps. “My answer is the same. Now get your ass over here. If you don’t burn off some of that aggression, you and Alphabet are going to come to blows.”

The fuck we would. “I’m neither a child nor a man under your command.” If I needed to remind him that I outranked him, this would go even worse.

“We're also retired,” Voodoo said with the faintest of smirks. “You get to call the shots only when we let you call them.”

Throwing my own words back at me was dirty pool.

“So, any more chicken-shit excuses to duck this beating you deserve?”

Chicken-shit…

I glared at him. “You want a fight.”

“You’re damn right I do. So get your ass over here.” Hostility edged every single word. It was as much a request for help as it was a demand for action.

The problem, however, lay in the fact… “I don’t think I can hold back.” My temper had been fraying in the pitched silence, with both of my hands wrapped around its throat to strangle the life out of it.

“Then don’t.” He gave me the barest of shrugs.

“Bryant…” I exhaled.

“After,” he said, the crack in the pair of syllables offering zero negotiation room. “Let’s go. You need to purge.”

I needed something, but lashing out at my team was not an acceptable way to handle my temper. Fuck…

Yelling at civilians wasn’t either.

Rolling my head from side to side, I soaked in the sound of the crack. It might have relieved some of the tension, but really, it just highlighted how stiff and unyielding I’d become.

“Fuck it,” I muttered, then moved away to strip off my own shirt. I toed off my shoes. His were already gone. We were both in jeans, not ideal, but then we weren’t going for finesse or points.

The only concession I made was to wrap my hands. Frankly, bare-knuckle brawling would feel too goddamn good. As much as I craved the pain, I needed to maintain some semblance of control.

Once I was ready, I faced one of my oldest friends. The patience in his expression and the ease in his stance decried the very real irritation he’d demonstrated earlier. I’d pissed him off. This was how we resolved it—for the most part.

“Bryant… Don’t let me hurt you.”

With a roll of his eyes, Voodoo just jerked his head to the “ring” we used for sparring. It didn’t actually have ropes, but the padding on the floor was thicker. Made movement more of a challenge than you might think. The walls closest to it were also padded. Training didn’t mean breaking.

His eagerness didn’t overcome strategy or experience and Voodoo never turned his back on me. Nor did he lunge forward. No, he was playing the long game. In forcing me to go to him, it let him choose how we engaged. Irritation scraped along the inside of my skin.

It would serve him right if I made him come to me. Which of us was the most stubborn?

Someday, we might find out.

As it was, I packed away the annoyance his tactics provoked. The fact he knew to do this was a testament not only to how well he knew me, but also how much I needed this fight.

“I really fucking hate it when you’re right,” I said before surging across the mat. I expected him to dodge and evade, so I was already lunging to the left and leaping over his leg even as he tried to sweep mine from beneath me.

What usually followed was a combo of hits. But he changed the playbook and caught me in the jaw with a backhand. The metallic tang of copper flooded my mouth. It was a wakeup call, sharpening my focus.

Instead of leaving me to chase him, Voodoo closed the distance and delivered three sharp blows to my side and one to my kidney before I caught his arm. Mother fucker had been training.

Turning his arm around, I yanked him off his feet. But he didn’t just let me control the fall. He shoved himself right into me, forcing me to release him. His arms were around me and we hit the mats together.

It was hard to get him in a grappling hold. Slippery bastard kept getting away from me. The fourth time he broke the hold, he caught me in the jaw with his forehead. Blood exploded through my mouth and seemed to drench my temper in kerosene.

I drove my left into his abdomen twice even as I tumbled us back and over. I got my foot up and then I shoved him off me. Rebounding to my feet, I blocked his right, then his left, then his right again.

Old combo, bad call.

I let him through on the next left, because it opened up his right. The moment he swung, I let the impact push me away. Not far, though, because I wanted this opportunity. A series of swift combo, hammer blows had him gasping as I drove him back across the mats.

Three times I landed blows to his kidney. His elbow caught me right in the back of the head. It sent me stumbling forward right into the mat-covered wall. The blow to the face wasn’t painful but it did knock the haze off.

I staggered back to find him on the far side, watching me with narrowed eyes and raised fists. Blood decorated his wraps and I didn’t have to look at mine to know they were likely spotted and soaking as well.

Air came in hard little pants. The haze over my vision, however, cracked, then splintered before it shattered.

Fuck.

This wasn’t just me being annoyed. This was… fractured training. I was letting my temper win. This would get someone killed.

“I hate when plans derail,” I admitted aloud. “I hate it even more that it was my call that left Alphabet and the client?—”

“Grace,” Voodoo said, not letting me dismiss her to a category. “Her name is Grace.”

I wiped the blood from my face with the back of my hand and stared at him. “Fine, it was my call to leave Alphabet and Grace at the safe house. That put them well out of reach when shit went sideways.”

“Alphabet’s a big boy,” Voodoo said, clearly unimpressed with my reasoning. “He’s also more than capable of taking down an opponent, which I remind you, he did. He also has Goblin and Goblin is more than capable of taking down his fair share.”

Leaning my head back, I tried to get the pounding in my temples to slow down. “It’s not the point.”

“Actually, it is the point. Alphabet isn’t an invalid or incapable. If he suspected more of an issue, he would have been the first one to say something.”

Fine, I could admit it. He had a point.

“The real issue isn’t just that someone showed up at the safe house, it’s that they got their hands on Grace. That could have gone a hell of a lot worse.”

“She shouldn’t have been outside while he was on ops.”

“No, she shouldn’t,” Voodoo said with a shrug. “ You made a choice when you snapped at her. Not sure where the fuck you thought she was going to go, but it is what it is.”

“So you think everything is my fault.” Though it wasn’t a question, it definitely came out far surlier than intended.

“Does it matter what I think?” Like me, Voodoo had gotten his breathing regulated. The longer we stood here, the more in control I felt. Still, he wasn’t backing down yet.

Good. I didn’t want him to back down. “No,” I said. It really didn’t matter.

“Because you’re going to blame yourself regardless.” As much as he shrugged off the words, it wasn’t that easy.

“People get hurt when I don’t account for the variables. We have a plan for a reason.” Risk assessment. Contingencies. Deployment. We engaged in all of it and we planned out our strategy.

“Absolutely. As much as we try to plan, as much as we build in contingencies, sometimes shit just goes sideways.”

Unacceptable. I shook my head. “Let’s get back to this.” I didn’t want to debate this with him. We would never agree. The last time I’d had a plan go that sideways, Doc had gotten burned and Alphabet lost part of his leg.

Mistakes hurt everyone .

“You thinking again?” Voodoo challenged me and I shot him a bland look. “Good,” he said. “It’s about time. You’re down to me by four points.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped back at him but it was with more laughter than irritation this time.

“Put your money where your mouth is K, let’s do this.”

“Dick.”

“Yep.” He didn’t deny it.

This time, when we clashed, it held a lot more finesse and control. I still ate the mat more than once and I put him down an equal number of times. At the end of another hour, soaked in sweat and stinking of it, I didn’t argue when he called a halt to it.

Instead, I just laid flat on my back to get my breathing under control. The whole exercise worked to sand down all the jagged edges.

“Grabbing a shower, then I’m heading to Grace’s room,” Voodoo told me. I debated calling him on it. The fact he wanted to be in there as much as he felt like he should be was another problem.

Not one he wanted to listen to me on right now.

“You should do the same,” he said. He’d pulled the wraps off his hands, and he was in worse shape than I was from the sweating.

He was also going to have a hell of a black eye. I’d feel bad, but he damn near broke my nose. So I figured that made us even.

“I’ll be fine,” I told him, shoving up from the floor as he headed toward the exit. “And tomorrow…”

I didn’t have to look at him, he’d stopped at those two words.

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow. Explain things to her.” Probably should have done it before now, but we hadn’t had the time.

“Or…” Voodoo elongated that syllable and I turned to find him staring at me. “We all discuss it with her. We also listen to her and not just give her orders.”

I snorted. “We don’t agree,” I reminded him.

“I know,” Voodoo said with a smile. The faint kind that said he knew he’d already won the argument, but was doing me a solid and not gloating about it. “That’s what will make it so interesting.”

Then he was gone and I took the time to pull the wraps off my own hands. Everything ached. But it ached in a good way. The bruises were mine and I’d damn well earned them. The tightness in my gut was gone, the sick worry that left me unsettled and second guessing everything was also absent.

The job had been simple. Deal with the Rojas operation. They were more a ring than a cartel. The job called for us to eliminate their processing houses and if possible, burn the stashes with it.

More than a warning shot across the bow, the move was designed to hurt them. Mentally, physically, but most importantly, financially. We’d failed on two fronts. We’d have to go back. Unfinished business was not something I planned to leave in our wake.

It wasn’t until I’d gotten up to my own room and stood under the hot spray to wash off the sweat that it hit me what questions we hadn’t asked. What question I hadn’t asked.

Someone had betrayed us. That meant it could have been the client themselves—hiring us to what? Get taken out? Create a reputation? Improve one? One way or another, the Rojas had been alerted to our arrival. They’d shifted operations, abruptly. They’d also caught us on our way out, sending heavy pursuit and firepower to eliminate us.

A stretch, maybe. But the tenacity in their pursuit didn’t smell like an accident or just stubbornness. The farther we went, the more likely they were going to be the ones led into a massacre—which was exactly what happened.

So why do it?

Because they were following orders.

Wiping a hand over my face and then up over my hair, I glared at the wall. That left one other question. The man at the safe house? Dumb luck? Or sent there on purpose? I turned that info over as I showered.

Instead of going to bed when I was done, I dressed and headed back downstairs. The house was quiet, security engaged. I didn’t stick my head in to check on Grace. Voodoo had that job.

After brewing a fresh thermos of coffee, I carried it into my office and locked myself in. I wanted some answers before they were up, that meant reaching out to contacts in the Network.

They were going to Iove hearing from me.