Page 26

TEN

“…think he’s coming around.”

“Bishop? It’s King. Wake up, brother, you aren’t dead.”

Heavy pressure in his chest and searing pain in his skull greeted Bishop as he pulled himself out of a black sleep he didn’t remember falling into.

He followed King’s firm, familiar voice into wakefulness and cataloged other aches and pains in his body, but the worst was definitely center mass.

He also became aware of being on something soft, and of other voices rumbling in the background.

“Wh’hap’n?” he slurred. Why was King here? Where was here? Was he still in the island house with—? “Kensley! Where are you?” He tried to sit up, but the pain in his chest took his breath away, and he fell back down.

A firm hand pressed on his right shoulder. “Rest a minute,” King said. “You’re lucky you aren’t dead, my friend.”

“Kensley?”

“They took him.”

The cold fury in King’s voice helped Bishop focus on his boss and best friend.

Bishop was on the living room couch. King had dragged a chair closer and was sitting facing him, his hand on Bishop’s shoulder.

While King’s eyes radiated anger, they also reflected a hint of fear.

Fear that jolted missing information back into Bishop’s brain.

“Was I shot?” Bishop asked.

“Yes.” King held something up in his other hand. Something on a twine cord. “This stopped the bullet and saved your life.”

Bishop took it. The fork pendant Kensley gave him. The one he never took off. It was bent now, with a spent round smashed in the middle. His eyes burned, and he looked down at his chest. A white bandage covered the spot that ached the most.

“Half an inch in either direction would have killed you.”

He curled his hand around the pendant. “Where’s Kensley?”

“I don’t know. We’re still piecing together the details, but best we figure, someone intercepted the real Dr. Fatima on her way to the airstrip, took her place along with an unknown companion, and they are who entered the compound. They shot you, probably assumed you were dead, and took Kensley.”

“Panic room?”

“I checked. He’s not in it. He’s not on the island.”

Bishop squeezed the pendant until his knuckles ached, refusing to allow grief or fear to control him.

Refusing to be swamped with guilt for not protecting Kensley.

For allowing him to be taken. No, he held on tight to his anger and sense of betrayal, and he glared at King.

“How? How did they know who Ziggy found for a doctor? How did they know we even needed one?” An infuriating thought hit him. “Walsh?”

King shook his head. “Walsh is dead. We found him down by the airstrip. Shot in the chest like you were.”

“Fuck. Why are we still here?”

“Because we haven’t left yet.” He gave Bishop an exasperated stare. “You got a solid knock upside the head when you hit the floor, so I needed you to wake up and prove you aren’t comatose or seriously concussed. Congratulations, you’re not.”

Bishop rolled his eyes then began testing his extremities. None felt broken or damaged; it was just his head and chest that hurt. “Surveillance video?”

“Being downloaded. We’re looking for everything we can find to figure out who organized this, and I’m leaving a cleanup crew behind. You, me and Garvey are leaving in the next twenty minutes.”

“Where?”

“The States. Home.”

“What if Kensley’s on another island? The archipelago is fucking huge.”

“Unlikely, and before you ask, I’ve got people on the island where Dr. Fatima lived, looking in to what happened there. We obviously have to be careful with the local police.”

All things Bishop knew too well, and everything in him wanted to be involved. “Help me sit up, boss, I feel like an idiot laying down like this.”

King clasped his forearm and helped him sit, turn, and plant both feet on the floor. Bishop’s head swam for a few seconds, and he felt like he’d had a stake driven right through his breast bone, but he was upright.

“I’m so sorry,” Bishop said. “I failed.”

“You had no way to anticipate an ambush, and we found you with your gun on the ground, not the holster, so it wasn’t as if you didn’t show caution. I know you, Bishop. You don’t take un-calculated risks when it comes to the job.”

Kensley isn’t a job for me anymore. He’s my whole life.

And his life had been taken away from him. Again.

“He’s sick,” Bishop growled. “He’s scared.

Fuck knows what they’ll do to him.” If one single hair was out of place on Kensley’s head, he’d personally start snapping off fingers.

If someone touched him any other way…other body parts would get snapped off.

Bishop would take joy in exacting his revenge.

They just had to find Kensley first.

“How long has it been?” Bishop asked.

“About four hours. The people who took Kensley didn’t turn off the perimeter alarm when they opened the gate, so we got the notification immediately and headed straight here.”

Bishop wanted to throttle someone. A four-hour head start to gods knew where, to do gods knew what to Kensley, before they ransomed him back to King.

Someone now had a fuck-ton of leverage on King and his hold over the northeastern territory.

But if King was worried, he didn’t show it.

He couldn’t show it, not with so many of his people in the house.

King had been careful not to say Bishop’s real name too loudly when anyone else was nearby.

“So we’re going back to the city to just wait for the ransom call?” Bishop snapped, angry and exhausted, and badly in need of an oxy or something.

“Yes. If there’s a traitor or a spy down here amongst my allies, we’ll weed them out, but that is not our primary focus, you and me. We have other things to do.”

“Fine.” His need to do as King ordered was at war with his need to go feral and hunt down Kensley. But he couldn’t do it alone, even if he was physically at his best, which he wasn’t. He pocketed the pendant as he stood on annoyingly shaky legs. “I just need to grab a few things.”

“Three minutes.”

He resisted the impulse to flip King off, then went into the bedroom to throw a handful of personal items into his duffel.

He also took what he could of Kensley’s personals, like the woven sandals he loved so much.

He wanted to take a minute and remember all the amazing days and nights he’d spent here with Kensley, but there was no time.

No time to reflect on the past, only to spend on the future.

Something in the rumpled sheets caught his eye. Bishop picked up Kensley’s necklace with the shaved shells and two blue beads. Kensley hadn’t taken it off since the day he bought it. Bishop’s heart twisted with anger, and he vowed to give it back to his charus one day. As soon as humanly possible.

Garvey drove them to the airstrip and the small waiting plane.

Garvey went up front to sit with the pilot, leaving King and Bishop alone in the small cabin.

Before Bishop could choose a seat, King swung and punched him solidly in the jaw.

Bishop lost his balance and tumbled sideways into a nearby seat, his chest and ribs screeching in protest.

Shock kept Bishop from lashing out in retaliation—as did the grim line of King’s mouth. He understood before King said it.

“That’s for fucking around with my little brother,” King snarled in a low, dangerous voice, “when you were supposed to be protecting him.”

They’d been friends for too damned long for him to deny it. “How did you know?”

King shot him a glare full of “duh, dumbass.” “Because only one bed has been slept in, and there’s a basket of soiled sheets in the bathroom. It’s simple math, Bishop. How could you?”

“It wasn’t just me. We both made a choice.”

“He’s a fucking priest!”

The phrasing made Bishop’s lips twitch with inappropriate humor.

The pilot’s voice on speaker told them to sit and buckle up, so Bishop didn’t get to reply for several minutes, not until the plane was rising smoothly into the sky.

“Kensley hated being in the Order. He told me so more than once. He was miserable and stifled, and he…admitted to having feelings for me since he was a teenager.”

King glared. “So, you took advantage of a teenage crush?”

“Fuck no. He came onto me more than once, but I…you don’t know the man he is now, King.

You only know an image of him. I got to know him, to see all the passion locked up inside of him, and before you punch me again, I don’t just mean sexual passion.

I mean his joy and his desperation to express himself.

To do more than church services two nights a week and four on Sunday, and eating bland meals over and over.

You should have seen his face the first time I cooked him a real steak dinner. ”

King’s anger seemed to shift into mild interest, but he was still clutching the arms of his seat, which was across the narrow aisle from Bishop’s. “It’s a mortal sin to defile a member of the Order.”

Bishop rolled his eyes. “You don’t believe that bullshit any more than I do, and even if it is a sin? I don’t care. I felt something real and all-consuming with Kensley. I truly believe we are a predestined charum pair. Kensley is my charus. My soulmate.”

King opened and closed his mouth several times, his face an epic contortion of confusion and awe. “That’s just a myth.”

“No, the church says it’s a myth, so they can force omegas and alphas into loyal service to them.

To not question their authority, and to push aside their own sexual desires.

It’s about control, King. And Kensley finally freed himself from it.

I love him. It is killing me knowing he’s suffering right now. ”

“I believe you. You’ve never lied to me, and I can’t imagine you lying about something this enormous.” He swallowed hard. “Does Kens feel the same way?”

“Yes. We’ve never said ‘I love you’ to each other, but we’ve shown it. We’ve felt it. I need him back.”

“Okay. I mean, I’m still pissed at you for fucking my little brother, period, but I understand. And I don’t regret asking you to protect him. You were always the exact right choice.”

“Thank you.” He warily eyeballed his best friend. “So, are you going to punch me again? Or are we square?”

“We’re square. Unless a thorough examination of the security tapes shows you slacking in any way tonight, we’re square.”

Bishop felt slightly queasy at the idea that there might be tape of all the other things he and Kensley had done inside that house. “Um, what about the other footage?”

“We’ll scrub it, I promise. I’ll make sure Ziggy scrubs it.”

“Thank you.” Not that Bishop thought King would want his brother’s intimate moments released as some salacious sex tape, but it helped to hear it.

He rested his hand over his bandaged chest, beyond grateful that Kensley had bought that specific pendant, and that he’d made the chord that specific length. Without it, he’d be dead.

He’d cheated death for a second time in two years.

He looked out the window but couldn’t see the dark ocean below, not even with the light of what should have been a half moon.

It was as if the clouds had enveloped the plane, like fury and fear had enveloped Bishop’s heart.

But he wouldn’t give in to the fear; he couldn’t.

Fury, he could work with. Fury would fuel him.

“So home?” Bishop said to the window.

“Home. We need to be ready to launch a rescue as soon as we find out where Kensley is.” King spoke with so much certainty that Bishop nearly believed it.

He certainly hoped, for all their sakes, but he didn’t quite believe it. Not yet.

There were too many powerful people acting behind the scenes, too many moving parts to see everything clearly. But Bishop knew one thing for damned sure, as he searched the horizon for any sign of the ocean he’d joyfully swam in with Kensley: he’d bring his charus back safely, or he’d die trying.