Page 38

CHAPTER 38

Toxic

“ E leven…twelve…thirteen,” I counted softly as I crept around the property. “Fuck. Brently wasn’t playing this time,” I muttered to myself.

My rifle swung to my left as a soft sound broke the silence near the barn. A squat little shadow with a tail held high came trotting up to me. I dropped the muzzle of the rifle toward the ground. “What are you doing out here, you little demon?” I asked.

In response, Eris leaned against my leg. Her solid weight was a comfort. I reached down and scratched her ears.

“Once this kicks off, you need to get out of here. You should just go back to the house,” I told her. “Protect Billie.” She just stared up at me with that weird glowing gaze as her eyes caught some ambient light in the darkness. “Okay. That’s creepy. Let’s go.”

I slung my rifle over my shoulder by the strap and pulled out my Ka-Bar knife. Shifting it in my hand so that it rested comfortably, I crept around the barn toward the man standing around, waiting. He was the lookout. The backup in case we put up a fight inside the house. I needed to get rid of some of these fuckers before taking on the men outside the ranch house. Which meant I needed to do it as quietly as possible.

The first man went down without a sound when I wrapped my arm around him from behind and slid my knife over his throat. The spill of hot blood over my arm didn’t bother me as I used my hand to muffle any sounds he might have made. I let his body fall in a controlled manner, down toward the ground, guiding it so it didn’t make a heavy thump and alert the second guy who was only a few feet away on the other side of the barn.

I didn’t need to look to know Eris was trotting alongside me. I had no doubt her tongue was lolling out with eagerness for the excitement to come. Fucking crazy ass cattle dog. I planned to gift one to all my future children. I knew those little cattle dogs would protect my kids with a single-driven focus like no other breed would. So they would all be given their own little demon once they turned three. Hell, maybe we’d breed Eris so that her line of sons and daughters could protect mine.

I was grateful she was keeping her growls and barks contained as we snuck through the darkness toward the next man. She understood the assignment, as unnerving as that was. Twelve guys was a lot to take on alone. I wanted to whittle the numbers down toward something more in my favor.

Unfortunately, you didn’t always get what you wanted in your life. As I rounded the corner of the barn there were now two men there, and one was facing directly toward me.

“Pete?” he called out.

Now both men faced me, trying to determine if I was their buddy in the moonless night. I couldn’t call out to reassure them, so I sheathed my knife, and settled my rifle on my shoulder. All hell was about to break loose on the Cholla Summit Ranch.

I stopped moving and that alerted the men to the fact that I wasn’t a friendly. Gunfire split the air as they separated and started peppering the barn behind me with bullet holes. Fuck. I was going to have to fix that later. I just prayed one of the rounds didn’t hit the horses housed inside. It would break Billie’s heart.

I returned fire on the man who was running toward the house. A scream of pain and fear came from my right, but no more rounds were coming from that direction, so I focused on the guy who was going for help. Not that the gunfire wasn’t going to draw the rest of them down on my ass just as easily as his warning would. That was alright, better to me than to Billie.

He went down with a thump as one of my bullets made contact. Turning, I ran toward the front of the barn, then stuttered to a stop when I saw Eris lift her head. She was only about forty pounds, but she’d managed to take the guy down all the same. He’d landed on his own fucking knife, I realized when I checked the body. He’d probably tried to stab the dog while she hung off the arm that was controlling his gun.

“Good girl,” I told her, patting her head. “Let’s get these animals out of here while we have the chance.” We ran into the barn and I opened the horses’ stalls toward the fields where Billie turned her horses out during the sunny daylight hours. It would give them a chance to get away from all the danger. Or more of a chance than being stuck inside the barn anyway.

Eris snapped at the heels of any horses who balked about leaving their stalls. That got them moving further out into the fields and away from the threat.

I left the animals and headed back out into the darkness. Those assholes were going to be breaking into the house now that they knew we were awake and aware of their presence. I wasn’t going to let them touch a fucking hair on my family’s head. I was just glad that, even though I was here alone, none of my brothers’ families were here or in danger. I doubted Brently would have sent anyone to the clubhouse, that place was a fortress. The ranch was his goal. Which meant the other women and kids were safe.

I just needed to make sure my woman and Pops would be, too. Running toward the house, I scanned the area, searching for the fuckers who were threatening my family. They were going to regret that decision come morning. Or just as soon as I caught up with them.

Slowing, I crept around a corner of the garage. Running straight out into the open was a stupid fucking idea, and I wasn’t stupid. I might have been the pilot for Butcher’s team, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t trained with them. I had. He’d taught me everything he knew. So had the special forces instructors who worked with us until the military figured out our team was just as proficient as any men they set in front of us.

Most saw me as the happy go lucky asshole who made jokes. And I was ninety percent of the time. The other ten? These men were about to be introduced to that man.

I hit the man with his back toward me so hard he stumbled forward a few steps as he tried to dislodge me. He wasn’t fast enough. Gripping his head between my hands, I wrapped my legs around him to give me a solid base, and twisted as hard as I could, my shoulders bunching with the strain. The snap of his neck sounded so loud to me that I looked around as we dropped to the ground.

I went down with him just in case one of his friends came to the rescue. But no one came. That wasn’t a good sign. It meant they were busy somewhere else.

The shotgun blast split the night like a thunder clap. My teeth gritted together as I surged to my feet. I ran toward the back of the house.

“Stop!”

I halted my forward momentum, looking out of the corner of my eye for the man who had me in his crosshairs. Fuck. There wasn’t time for this. Slowly, I started to turn.

“Don’t fucking move or I’ll-” His high pitched scream was the only thing I needed to know that Eris was helping out again. I turned, swinging my rifle his way. A canine yelp of pain echoed through the darkness right before I pulled the trigger and put three rounds in the shadowy figure’s chest.

Running over, I checked that he was dead before I looked around. “Eris? E-” A tongue flicked out from the side and landed in my mouth. I sputtered. “Fucking gross, Dog,” I told her spitting out the canine contaminated saliva from my mouth. “Don’t fucking do that again,” I told her, pointing my finger right at her nose.

Her little whine of agreement told me she seemed to understand I meant for her not to get hurt again, not about the licking thing. Billie would murder me if her dog got injured out here. But the little bundle of crazy was proving just how useful she was, so I was glad she’d stayed by my side.

Gunfire was coming at a steady stream from the back of the house. I knew I needed to get in there before Pops or Billie was hurt. Shoving to my feet, I made it to the last edge of the house that stood between me and the back door. The night was lighting up from behind the chicken coop and the little shed where Billie stored her bird feed. I didn’t see any shadows lurking between the house and those buildings. I knew all eight of them weren’t hiding behind them. That would be an idiotic move. There were at least a few who were probably creeping around toward the front, but they weren’t shooting yet, so I needed to take these assholes back here out first.

I’d have to deal with the rest afterward. Running away from the house, I made my way further away from the action so that I could circle around behind the guys hiding behind the coop. There wasn’t a lot of return fire coming from the house, and I knew I had Pops to thank for that. They were only shooting when someone got too close to the house, but didn’t want to end up hitting me if I was out here running around. No if about it, really. Pops knew I was here and he was doing his best to make sure I wasn’t hit in the crossfire.

It seemed to take an eternity for me to run around behind the men shooting toward Billie’s house. In reality it was only a minute at the most, but every gunshot ticked my anger up another notch. Those fuckers were trying to kill my woman. I only wished I had the time to make them die in the most painful way possible. That would take too fucking long though, so I had to be satisfied with shedding their blood as quickly as I could.

Kneeling down, I raised my rifle and found my targets in my scope. The night vision had them lit up like the fourth of July. There were two hunkered down behind the feed shed. One was down on one knee, while the other stood over him as they took turns shooting at the house.

I focused on the one standing first. The guy on his knee would take an extra second to stand before he turned. Unless he was really well trained and just spun on his knee instead. Most of these men weren’t highly trained. And though it seemed like the logical thing to do, spin before standing, in a high anxiety situation like this your brain moved a bit slower than your instincts. It was why we practiced so much in the military.

We needed everything we did to be muscle memory, so that our bodies reacted in the appropriate manner while our minds tried to catch up with what was happening. Guaranteed this guy was going to want to face the threat on his feet, not his knees because being lower down felt, to his lizard brain—the part that processed the automatic response of fight or flight—like a more vulnerable position. I planned to use that to my advantage.

The rifle kicked in my hand as I shot the first man, then aimed in on the chest of the second. My muzzle raised as he did exactly what I expected him to and I shot him center mass while he tried to stand to face me. He fell forward, landing in the dirt.

Bullets whizzed over my head as I zig zagged my way toward the shed. A quick check showed that the men were dead. But the rest of them knew where I was now and were bearing down on me.

Taking the only chance I’d probably have, I let out a whoop to call attention to myself and made a beeline for the barn. I needed to draw these guys away from the house.