Retribution (Moonstruck Genesis #4)

Chapter 15

THE CONCUSSION from the explosion knocked DJ on her butt. Antoine was on his feet—all four of them—and howling. He nosed her back into a corner and stood between her and the bars on their cage. Acrid smoke drifted in, smelling of ammonia and concrete dust. Human and wolf both sneezed. DJ pulled the neck of her T-shirt up over her nose to act as a filter. It didn’t help much but was better than nothing.

Multiple footsteps pounded nearby. Shadows flickered in the smoke. Another explosion, further away, added to the confusion. Someone whispered her name. Antoine whined and nosed her hand where she gripped the phone with white-knuckled concentration. The voice was coming from there.

“Hello? Hello, we’re here.”

“Marshal, can you tell if you’re on an outside wall?”

DJ resisted the urge to cheer and fist pump. The cavalry had arrived. “I don’t think we are, but I’m not positive. I woke up in a steel cell, then they took me to an exam room down a long hallway. The cage we’re in is down the hall the opposite direction. I…There may be other prisoners. I counted twelve cell doors when they brought me back to Antoine.”

“Roger that.”

She could hear small arms fire now. Pistols and automatic rifles. DJ would give just about anything to be armed. More boots pounded and the smoke grew thicker. The gunfire came closer and when a stray bullet pinged off the far wall, DJ squatted down to make a smaller target. A large shadow loomed at the bars and Antoine growled.

“Get back and stay down!” Sean yelled. He packed something against the lock, inserted some sort of tube and ducked away.

DJ grabbed Antoine and pulled him close, covering his head with her body while she covered hers with one arm. She heard a spitting sound followed by a fizzle and a loud pop.

“Let’s go!” Sean was back. He kicked at the barred door and it swung open drunkenly. “Can you walk?”

Scrambling to her feet, DJ headed toward the door, her fingers knotted in Antoine’s ruff. “Let’s get out of here!”

Sean glanced down. “Ah hell. You’re barefooted.” He leaned to one side. “Get on. I’ll piggyback you.” Antoine growled, but subsided when Sean stared at him. “Has to be done, man. Don’t want her feet cut worse when they’re healing. Same goes for you. Walk soft.”

The wolf chuffed and, nose down, he headed down the hallway following Danny. Sean, with DJ on his back, jogged close behind.

AT SEAN’S acknowledgment that he and Danny had liberated Antoine and DJ, Mac and Nate set charges to blow up the empty exam rooms. Crashing through the door, Nate took down a guard with a hard chop to his throat. Checking the man’s pockets, he found an electronic key. It fit the nearest cell door. When it proved empty, the two of them went down the row of cells. The next three were empty but set up to take prisoners. The fifth held trace scents from DJ. In the next cell, they found a little girl, unconscious. Nate shook with fury.

“Keep it together, Nate. Get her out of here. I’ll check the rest.”

Despite his fury, Nate picked up the drugged child with utmost gentleness. Cradling her to his chest, he nodded. “Roger, that.” He paused at the door long enough to ascertain the coast was clear and then he dashed out, headed toward the wall where they’d first breached the building.

“I’ll need cover, Lightfoot,” he shouted into his mic. “I have a casualty.”

The sniper’s voice was tight, but calm as he replied, “One of ours?”

“She will be.”

After Nate left, Mac checked the remaining cells, thankful they were empty. He headed toward the sounds of gunfire, determined this time to end things. Scorched earth. That’s what they’d promised DJ and he was even more resolved since finding the child. After a few turns, he caught up to the others.

“You said Nate had a casualty?” Sean glanced behind Mac, looking at the other man, his brow veed in concern

“Yeah.” Mac scrubbed at the top of his head. “Little girl. He’s taking her out through the breach.”

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks. Antoine growled as DJ made a distressed sound in the back of her throat. Mac stared into the eyes of each of his men, then Antoine’s wolfish gaze, before settling on DJ. Before he could speak, his SAT phone buzzed.

“Little busy here, Harjo.”

“The Senator was assassinated. He had a meeting the night before. Guess who all was there.” It wasn’t a question so Mac didn’t reply, waiting for his former commanding officer to explain. “John Smith. Secretary Jarrett of Homeland Security. Senator LaMotte.” Harjo sounded hollow. “And Mac? General Bradshaw was there.”

“Oh, fuck no.” Hannah’s mentor. The man who had originally assigned her to take care of the Atlantis Project and the Wolves. “Are you sure he’s part of it?”

Regret shimmered through Harjo’s voice. “Yes. We’ve checked the finances.”

“This ends, Harjo. Here. There. It doesn’t matter. I’ll personally take every fucking one of them out.”

“Grenade!” Danny reacted first to the metallic thunk of the explosive device hitting the concrete floor and rolling their direction. He leaped toward it and when he couldn’t scoop it up, he fell on top of it, scrambling to get control of the device to throw it back.

Antoine hit the back of DJ’s legs with his shoulder, knocking her backwards against the wall. She just managed to glimpse blond hair as the man who’d thrown the grenade disappeared down an intersecting corridor.

Sean and Mac both yelled, but their words were lost in the muffled explosion. Danny’s body lifted off the floor and then settled back down in a limp bundle of bloodied clothes. Whether their ears were damaged by the concussion of the blast, or simply from shock, silence enveloped them.

DJ shook her head, trying to swim out of her stupor. Sean had Danny in his arms, cussing and pleading with the other man to hang on. Antoine’s warning growl alerted them to another presence. Was it the blond again, the one who’d tortured Antoine? DJ scrabbled for a weapon but couldn’t find one.

Mac simply stared at the man who appeared in the hallway. He was blond but wasn’t dressed the same as the asshole. Something like a look of recognition passed between them before the man pivoted and disappeared back the way he’d come. Mac stood guard over Sean while he shifted from demolitions expert to medic. Once Danny was packaged, Mac shifted his teammate to his shoulder. He tossed a pistol to DJ.

“You need to cover our rear.”

“Absolutely.”

Mac spoke into his mic. “Danny’s down. Anything that moves but us is dead.” Lightfoot’s answering “Roger that” whispered in Mac’s ear. He settled Danny more securely and nodded to Sean. “Head out.”

Antoine joined Sean, his nose alternating between the ground and the air, sniffing out the enemy. DJ gave up worrying about her feet. A few more cuts and bruises were nothing compared to Danny’s injuries. “Why doesn’t he shift or something? Isn’t that how it works?”

Mac snorted. “This isn’t Hollywood, Marshal. We’re hard to kill, but we bleed and die just like anyone else.” He stopped suddenly at a hand signal from Sean and DJ almost collided with Danny’s back. When Sean motioned them forward, Mac followed, DJ hard on his heels.

DJ lost track of time, her feet and legs numb from the hips down. She was pretty sure she was leaving bloody footprints in her wake, but she refused to look down to check. She couldn’t afford the lapse in focus. Somehow, Sean led them to the front entrance. Her stomach rolled over. Bodies—and unidentifiable body parts—were strewn around like a toddler’s toys after a temper tantrum—if that kid lived in the middle of a war zone.

Hit once again with what the Wolves had to do in order to survive and keep their families safe, DJ resolved to do whatever it took. She should be freaked out. She should be running straight back to Las Vegas ready to make a report—a report that would get handed up the chain and buried. And her report would leave a big ol’ fat target in the middle of their backs. She couldn’t do that. Not even if Antoine didn’t totally rock her world, though being honest, that had a lot to do with her feelings.

Sean and Antoine paused at the entrance. She could hear screams and gunshots. Her brain took a minute to process that men were going down before she heard the sound of the shot. Lightfoot. He was a sniper. Mac glanced around.

“We have a boat. We’ll have to make a run around the building to get to it. I’m sorry about your feet, Marshal.”

“DJ. And to hell with my feet. They’ll heal. We have to get Danny out of here.”

A flicker of emotion glinted in his eyes and then was gone. DJ figured she’d just passed some sort of test.

“We have one minute. Stay close. Run like hell.”

She had time for a quick nod before they took off, dodging bodies and ducking around the corner. She ran flat out, her breath heaving in and out of her lungs, her feet flying across the mud and sticks on the faint trail. An occasional bullet thwacked into trees or the ground nearby. DJ glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one followed them. She hooked a toe on a root and pitched forward. Strong hands caught her, lifted, and tossed. Another set caught and steadied her on the floor of an airboat.

The boat had barely made it out into the channel when a massive explosion rocked it violently. DJ was thrown across the deck and she just barely managed to avoid landing on Danny’s body. She raised panicked eyes to Mac when she realized only he and Sean shared the boat with her and the injured man.

“Antoine and Lightfoot are going back on foot as a rear guard. Nate’s already on his way with the girl.”

She huffed out a quick breath. “Good. Good. Okay.”

“They were clear, DJ.” She glanced at Sean. His face was grim, but sure. “I timed the charges.”

“Yeah, okay.” She had to force air into her lungs again to settle her nerves. “What can I do?”

Sean knelt to work on the man while Mac steered the boat. “Hold Danny’s head.”

Kneeling down, she pulled Danny’s head into her lap. His skin had turned gray and his lips looked blue, but he was breathing. Barely. She touched his cheeks with gentle fingers for whatever comfort she could provide. She was shocked that his face was injury free while his chest and abdomen had turned into a mass of blood and guts. Literally.

The hard expression on the alpha Wolf’s face softened. “We won’t be able to look at your injuries until Danny’s stabilized—”

Sean made a choking noise, cutting him off. The big medic glanced back at Mac. While his expression was frozen into an emotionless mask, his eyes betrayed the truth. Even so, he didn’t stop working. A massive medical kit had appeared from seemingly nowhere and he packed dressings, tied off arteries and veins, and did whatever else medics did in the field.

In far more hours than it should have taken, and in reality was probably only twenty or thirty minutes, they landed at a dock after crossing a wide expanse of water—either a lake or a true bayou. DJ didn’t know the difference. A knot of people surged forward. In the confusion, she hung back. Men carried Danny into a beautiful house, Sean, Jacey, and Liz hot on their heels.

The other Wolves, including Antoine now in human form and wearing loose jeans, conferred with several older men carrying impressive hunting rifles. Hannah and Annie had gathered Sally into their arms and the two women escorted Danny’s mate to the house. DJ stood on the dock wondering what the hell she was supposed to do. An older woman approached.

“I am Camille Fontaine.”

DJ blinked several times and her forehead drew down into an unconscious vee as she worked to process that information. She finally offered a hand only slightly bloody after she wiped it down the side of her filthy T-shirt. “DJ Collier.”

The woman smiled, not unkindly. “You are Antoine’s. We were not sure if he would share you or not.” She chuckled softly and rested a palm on DJ’s arm, drawing her toward the house. “I am Antoine’s maman . Come. We need to fix you up.”

“Oh, um, yeah. So…you’re Antoine’s mother?”

The woman laughed, all the while moving her toward the house. “Yeah, I be d’at boy’s maman .” She paused on the porch and surveyed DJ from top to bottom. “I t’ink he did good wit’ you, bébé . You come in. Meet yer family. We gonna take good care o’you.

Somewhere in the back of DJ’s mind, the thought registered. This woman was essentially her mother-in-law. She opened her mouth to say something, but only one word came out.

“Oh.”