Page 18

Chapter

Seventeen

GRACE

“ R eznik,” Bones said once I sat down on the sofa.

The “table” in the kitchen wasn’t much and the guys all skipped using it.

The “living room” was more comfortable. Instead, I got the middle seat on the sofa in between Alphabet and Lunchbox.

Goblin sprawled on the floor in front of us while Bones and Voodoo took the seats opposite.

“Captain Thomas Reznik went through boot with me. He was always competitive, but with me, it was personal.”

Voodoo snorted. “What he’s trying to say is they were the top two, and he always lost out to Bones.”

“Not always,” Bones corrected. Someone else might not have wanted to admit that.

Bones, however, detailed the information much as he might a shopping list. These were the facts.

“However, I was also competitive. The challenge drove both of us. I climbed the ranks faster, that never sat well with him.”

Lunchbox gave me a gentle nudge and nodded to the stew. He’d decried what we had in the kitchen, but then served up a thick meaty stew and crusty bread. It all smelled good, but it was also heavy.

Still, I dunked some bread into the stew then took a bite. Oh, god, it tasted better than it smelled. Moaning in the middle of Bones’ debrief would be wholly inappropriate so I fought to contain it.

“Regardless,” Bones dunked some of his own bread, the guys did too. I guessed they’d been waiting for me to eat. “When assignments to train came up for special forces, we were once again in competition. I made the first cut. He didn’t.”

“So, he doesn’t like you cause he’s a sore loser?

” Essentially, that was what it sounded like.

I was no stranger to competition. I’d endured my share of it and participated in far more.

Frankly, I thrived in those circumstances, but fighting for a top contract couldn't remotely be the same as what these guys did.

“More or less,” Voodoo answered rather than Bones. “What Cap won’t tell you is that Reznik had a hard-on to stick it to him from the day Cap got his first team.”

“It was a strike team,” Bones offered by way of explanation. “This team.” He motioned to Lunchbox and Alphabet. “Along with a couple of others.”

A couple of others.

“Doc was one,” Alphabet told me and when I glanced at him, he gave me an encouraging nod. “You met him—well actually, he’s the reason we met you. It was his people that pulled you out of the truck.”

“I remember, he was nice.” He’d been very kind. “Who is the other?”

Lunchbox remained mute, but Alphabet just lifted his shoulders. “O’Rourke.”

The man who… I jerked my gaze to each of them in turn and every single one wore the same expression. Twisted anger, darkness and rage. “ He was one of you?”

“He was never one of us,” Bones said slowly. “Looking back on it, I can see it. Arrogance prevented me from understanding just how far Reznik would go to prove he was superior.”

The self-loathing in his cool, clipped tones was impossible to ignore. My stomach clenched. “What did he do?”

“Betrayed us,” Alphabet delivered the two words in a matter-of-fact tone rather than the sucker punch it had to have been. “He and Reznik went back. They set us up, we went in on a mission with bad intel. It cost me the lower half of my leg and Doc got burned to hell and back trying to save me.”

“Burned with my explosives,” Lunchbox said.

“That you built on my orders,” Bones corrected.

“And deployed on mine,” Voodoo added. The complex tangle of guilt and grief choked all four men. Well, three, because Alphabet touched two fingers to my knee when I would have said something. At his gentle head shake, I covered his hand with mine.

“We’re a unit,” Alphabet said, looking past me to Lunchbox.

“All of us. What one does, we all do. I don’t care which of us built the explosives, we all did it.

” He shifted his attention to Voodoo and Bones.

“We trusted the intel because O’Rourke was supposed to be one of us.

I would have bled for him the same way I would any brother.

Taken a bullet for him. If any of us had to take that hit, I’m glad it was me. ”

Pain twisted up inside of me, because the sober declaration wasn’t bravado or bullshit. He meant it.

“My only regrets are that Doc got hurt so damn much saving me.” Not helping , but saving. I closed my fingers around Alphabet’s and squeezed his hand.

I swallowed back the tears that clawed at my throat. The suffocating pressure around me seemed to contract. Not for me, but for them.

“I’m glad he saved you, AB.” The words seemed far too simple to encompass the depth of emotion overflowing the dam inside. “And going by you four now—I’m going to guess, he doesn’t regret saving you in the slightest, no matter what it cost him.”

“What she said,” Voodoo stated, his own voice thick. “So don’t be a dipshit.”

A snort of laughter escaped Alphabet, but it was Lunchbox who sighed. “Too late. We’re all compromised.” Alphabet gave my hand another squeeze then set it back next to my bowl. An action Lunchbox hadn’t missed because he said, “You stopped eating.”

I made a face, but I dunked more of the hard crusty bread into the thick stew. “You gave me enough for two of me, but I’m eating.” I even took a bite and finished it before I asked, “So, O’Rourke was part of your team, he set you up and then what?”

“Then I buried him alive,” Bones said in a brusque, almost business-like manner. “Set him up. He had no idea we knew.”

“To be clear, we didn’t confirm the betrayal immediately.” Voodoo had finished eating at some point and set his empty bowl to the side. His expression came across more circumspect. “He’d done a damn good job of covering his tracks.”

Bones merely nodded. “We got Doc and Alphabet packed off to the medics, then they were both eventually taken Stateside. The four of us went back and finished the mission. When it was done, so was O’Rourke. He should be dead.”

The bitterness in those last four words leaked through the arctic tempo of his tone. Bones was not unmoved by those events. Far from it. Whether I was getting better at reading him or he was letting me see it, Boney Boy had more than just an axe to grind with those that betrayed him.

Betrayed his team.

Why shouldn’t he?

“Apparently, he’s more of a cockroach than we realized.” Acid threatened to etch Lunchbox’s words into the concrete floor of this little box we occupied.

“And working with Reznik.” Voodoo looked thoughtful. “Apparently, they are both tied up in this syndicate of human trafficking operations…” He tested the words like he wanted to test their veracity.

“They’d have to be considering where they’ve turned up,” Alphabet stretched out his right leg and began to rub his hand up and down his thigh. Goblin let out a grunt as he flipped over onto his back on the floor before he started snoring.

At least he could relax.

“But why?” Voodoo asked the question and none of the others answered. “That’s the part that bugs me. This doesn’t seem to fit O’Rourke’s profile, unless we were just wrong about fucking everything.”

The emptiness in the last part of that question scraped against me. I hadn’t seen Reznik, or met him. I had O’Rourke. I couldn’t answer the question for them either. With the exception of the bite, he hadn’t hurt me.

He’d definitely had time to do more harm if he’d wanted.

I managed another two bites, but the food turned to ash against my tongue the more I turned over all the chances O’Rourke had. Since I was already full anyway, I handed what was left to Lunchbox.

“I ate plenty,” I told him at his frown, raising a hand. “I’m stuffed.”

He studied me briefly, then nodded once. “Okay.” His expression gentled. “You still doing okay?” He dipped his gaze to my hand and I turned it over to show him my wrist.

It was definitely not pretty. “I don’t think it’s infected, and I scrubbed it in the shower.”

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” Voodoo said. “Does it still hurt?”

“Just like a bad bruise.” It stung like hell when he did it, between the pinch and scrape of his teeth.

Alphabet shifted next to me and I dropped my left hand down to his thigh to try and massage the twitching muscles.

I would have tried to be gentle, but he kept white knuckling when he dug his own fingers in.

“Fuck,” Alphabet said, elongating the word with a groan. He tilted his head back and gritted his teeth. “Don’t stop…”

“It’s hurting you AB.” So yeah, I was a little worried.

“It always hurts, Gracie,” he assured me. “You’re also loosening it up, so don’t stop.”

Scraping my teeth over my lower lip, I dug back in and twisted so I could use both hands. My bruised wrist wasn’t a huge fan, but the fact Alphabet let out another deep groan encouraged me.

“Pretty sure that shouldn’t sound as dirty as it does,” Voodoo commented with a hint of a smile. Alphabet lifted his left hand and flipped Voodoo off. A rough chuckle spread around the men. “Hey now, I don’t judge. Firecracker is definitely my kink too.”

Lunchbox snorted behind me, but he rubbed my shoulder as he stood. “She’s a good kink to have. Anyone else hungry? If not, I’m gonna pack us supplies for the drive tomorrow. We’re going to have to avoid the larger motorways, which means fewer options to refuel.”

“Pack it up,” Bones said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “We should stay here for the next twenty-four hours.” Not that he sounded committed to it. If anything, he sounded less inclined.

“We could hit the road tonight,” Alphabet speculated verbally, his words punctuated with hissing breaths and little gasps as I kept loosening up the cramp that kept trying to seize the muscle.

“It’s late, but we change out the plates.

We could change the van's appearance, or just swap it out entirely.”

“Four of us,” Lunchbox said, rejoining the conversation. “We tag out the driving…”

“Five,” I volunteered. “And I do know how to drive.”

That got me four frowning looks, but Bones said, “Five drivers. But eight hours is more than enough time to get to just about anywhere we want to near Paris—even taking backroads.”

His gray eyes went distant.

“We haven’t replaced the safe house there.”

Voodoo sighed. “No, we haven’t. I was supposed to do that next month, but the work has been piling up.”

“I could probably find us a short term rental,” Alphabet said on a longer sigh. “Fuck me, Gracie. You have magic hands.”

Heat actually scorched my face at that admission. Still I didn’t let up because those muscles were still spasming. “What do you need for a safe house?”

“Good location, preferably with a decent population that we can blend into, but not so thick that they pick up on the fact we’re strangers,” Voodoo said.

“Good locations would include near transpo, public and otherwise. Also, access to stores for supplies,” Lunchbox added.

“Not on a tourist route,” Bones said. “While tourists can provide vital cover, we don’t want to create too much of a hazard and those areas tend to also involve a lot more in the way of surveillance and law enforcement.

“Need a park or at least some green areas so we have cover for Goblin,” Alphabet suggested. “Not a do or die, but preferable. Room for all of us, or if necessary, side by side apartments so we can control who is next to us and we can secure it.”

“That’s it?” I checked, sweeping all four with a glance before looking back at Bones. He was the final decision maker.

“No, but it’s the solid basis and that type of location would do us well and it would put us in a larger city. Harder to track while Alphabet digs into the data. We can retrench, restock, research, and recon.”

“How very alliterate of you,” I murmured, because it was kind of funny. “Would you be opposed to me asking someone I know if we can borrow their place?”

“Who?” The question came from four different directions, with varying degrees of emphasis and concern.

“A friend,” I said slowly. “A photographer that I’ve worked with. They have a place in Paris, but they aren’t always there. It’s a lot bigger than they need, so I’ve stayed there a couple of times.”

The hard silence greeting my statement was so thick and tangible, I half worried that it had actually formed in the way an invisible wall would in a movie.

“What is his name?” Bones asked finally, his eyes narrowed.

His name?

Oh.

“ Her name is…”