Chapter 50
HATCH
The ruins explode, and X takes that for signal it was and begins to shoot. When the shooting starts, we fan out.
Grady trips and staggers to standing, screaming, blood welling between his fingers. “What the fuck are y’all doing? Shoot him!”
The rest of the men scramble for weapons. Dorman bolts behind a headstone, phone clutched to his chest. The barrel fire flares as someone kicks it, sparks spiraling into the dark, casting dancing shadows in the forest, strange and disorienting.
Of course, that’s when one of the card players stumbles upon me and levels a shotgun right at my goddamn head.
I lift my pistol, but I already know I’m too late—
A crack splits the air from across the marsh, and the man’s head jerks so hard it looks like the flame-shadows yanked him sideways by the skull.
The side of it gives way in a wet, red burst, and he drops face-first into the sand before I ever get a shot off, his shotgun clattering from his hands and plopping into a dip in the sand.
“Nice shot, old man.” I huff out a breath and grin toward the darkness across the water, throwing up a quick thumbs-up. Then I mutter, “Wait a minute. Does this mean I’m gonna have to apologize for all the shit I gave him? Fuck.”
A second, the same bastard who’d been pissing all over a fucking church, swivels toward the sound of Harry’s rifle, but I’m already raising my pistol.
Another crack cuts across the marsh, and his leg kicks out from under him so hard he spins before slamming down behind a gravestone, clutching his thigh and howling. He shakily aims his AK, and I sigh as I take two steps closer and pick him off with a bullet to his forehead.
Then I cut a glare over the dark marsh. “Alright, easy now. Leave some fun for the rest of us.”
Meanwhile, X breaks from the west wall at my six in long strides, pure focus carving his features, the axe in one hand and my backup piece in the other.
He eats up the distance toward the fire like a bat out of hell.
A man rises from behind a toppled headstone and levels a pistol at his chest, but I’m on it, firing once, center mass.
X doesn’t so much as hesitate more than a brief thanks as the guy crumples, hopping over the body and headed straight for one guy in particular it seems.
Jabber.
“Shit.”
I hop into a sprint.
In all honesty, they aren’t evenly matched. As big as X is, Jabber’s got at least fifty pounds on him. Now he has a knife in one fist and the dead-eyed calm of a man who has no qualms snuffing out a life and X isn’t exactly at full strength.
As soon as X gets close, Jabber swings hard, catching him across the forearm with a glancing blow that opens skin and sends blood splatter flying. X just absorbs it with a snarl and swings his axe.
I’m about to try to jump in, but I catch Grady in the corner of my vision, one hand clamped to his bleeding shoulder as he drags himself back to where our girls are huddled behind the gravestones.
“Oh no you fucking don’t.”
I set off after him with my knife in one hand and my gun in the other, ready to use either.
Another guy with shaggy hair and a feral grin rounds the corner first, cutting me off, rebar in hand and hitting it against his palm like an extra from a movie about wannabe gangsters.
When he raises it, I step to him on instinct, catching the metal before he can bring it down.
I wrench it free then, reverse my grip, and borderline javelin it into his face.
Something crunches with a gross slurping sound as his eye socket sucks in the metal and refuses to give it back.
He drops, and I skirt around his large frame trusting I won’t have to worry about him getting back up.
Gunfire cracks through the ruins, the sound ricocheting off broken stone in staccato snaps. Something burns hot along the side of my neck, and I feel the smear of blood where a bullet grazed me close enough to piss me off. Not close enough to slow me down, though.
I duck behind a column covered in the Spanish moss that drips from the tree above, chest heaving, and risk a quick look around.
X and Jabber are still going at it, with X bleeding from his forearm. But he’s got Jabber backing up now, the axe swinging in sharp, controlled arcs that force the bigger man to keep giving ground.
Jabber lunges with a rusted chain now—where the fuck did that come from?—wrapped around one fist and swinging like David with his slingshot against Goliath. Sucks for him. He’s Goliath.
X ducks, shouldering him in the gut and forcing him to double over. Then X swivels around him fast, raises the axe high as Jabber tries to jackknife back to standing, and brings it down like a guillotine.
Jabber’s head drops before his knees do.
Eyes still and unmoving, mouth open like he wanted to finally say something, but death stole the last word.
His hands twitch out like they’re trying to catch him, but they’re unmanned, and fold in on the wrists as they land hard in the ground and he topples sideways, his jagged neck spilling blood and viscera over the gravestone.
X stands over him breathing hard, the axe hanging from one hand, blood running down his arm.
My brow raises. “Fuck man, you want a job after this? That was badass.”
He snorts. “So long as you don’t make me work with fuckers like that again, then…” He nods. “Yeah, let’s talk.”
Then he doesn’t even spare the body or me another look and just turns and runs for Duchess.
I’m about to follow him to check on Lucy, but Dorman pops up from behind another headstone with his phone against his ear and his handgun firing in a wild panic.
Stone chips at my back and moss flutters down like slow streamers onto my shoulders.
I surge forward before he can get an actually decent shot off, grab his wrist, and twist until something pops.
The gun plops into the sand with a thump.
I snatch it up and shove it under his chin.
“You picked the wrong fucking side, bo. And now you’ve got to…go.”
He goes whiter than he already is, and the acrid stench of urine wafts in the wind.
I almost laugh, something maniacal and sadistic I’m sure—I’m feeling extra un-fucking-hinged right now.
But instead, I crack him hard enough with the butt of the gun to drop him, leaving him slumped against a statue that’s so ate up by salt, I can’t tell what it is.
He’s not worth the bullet and he’s definitely not worth the time.
Then I hear it. An engine.
Not one of the little puttering boats like Harry’s skiff. This one is louder, faster, cutting through the channel at a roar. A second later, floodlights blast across the ruins, casting the graveyard and the broken church white as bone.
I tuck behind a weather-worn stone column near Lucy.
Thank fuck, she seems semi-alert, just exhausted, breathing hard beneath the low stone bench set in front of the child’s grave.
Her wide eyes find mine, and I put a finger to my lips.
She nods and scootches deeper into the shadows until she all but disappears.
Good girl.
I risk a look around the stone column to see a speedboat scrape against the pier. Men pour off it in quick succession, armed and moving with coordination that screams military, syndicate, or both.
Fuck.
I scan the area for escape routes, and find X huddled with Duchess behind a tall, crumbled statue. His posture mirrors mine, gun in his firm grip and ready to fire. He glances at me, a question in his brows, and I hold up my fist and mouth, Wait.
Two, three, four… nine men hop out of the bowrider and fan out fast, leaving one sitting at the back of the boat, and at the center of it all is a red-haired man with a gun and murder on his bearded face.
Kian Fucking McKennon.
“‘Bout time,” I mutter.
He seems to clock the island in one sweep, and orders his men to open fire on the three assholes trying to regroup at the tree line, and suddenly Grady’s crew has nowhere left to go.
Kian drops one, one of his team drops another, while the third throws down his weapon and gets zip-tied before his knees even hit the dirt.
That’s my opening.
I step slowly out from behind the column with my hands visible and my gun lowered just enough to be prepared but also avoid getting swiss-cheese’d on sight.
“We got two friendlies and two women back here,” I announce.
Every weapon on that side of the graveyard swings toward me.
Kian’s eyes slam into mine, and Jesus Christ, I’m glad looks can’t kill.
I push through the guy’s rotten attitude to get to what matters.
“One bastard’s on the loose somewhere round here.”
“You mean you?” he sneers, and my jaw tics.
“Come on, McKennon—”
“Fan out. Find him,” Kian barks, interrupting me. His men obey, and behind me, X carries out a bleeding, crying Duchess from their hiding spot, and I quickly jog to—
I stop at the gun barrel suddenly in my face as a man emerges from behind a column. My blood runs cold.
“So you’re Grady Wilde,” I say low, putting together Duchess’s accusation and what I saw with my own fucking eyes. My hands go up slowly, and my eyes flicker between him and the woman he’s holding to his chest before I vow, “You’re a dead man.”
The son of a bitch used the chaos between me getting Kian up to speed and him ordering his men to crawl back into the ruins. Now he’s got Lucy on her feet in front of him, swaying and half-gone, his arm locked around her throat.
“Back off!” he shouts, blood and sweat pouring down his face. He pulls her body taut against his chest like shield. “Or I blow her brains out.” He jams the gun to her temple, and my breath knocks out of me.
No.
Everything stills.
In my periphery, Kian freezes mid-step, gun raised. His men are just as frozen. X, halfway across the graveyard with Duchess behind him, shifts for an angle that doesn’t exist. There’s no clean shot.
The skeleton made up of church and graveyard holds its breath.
“Who the fuck are you?” Kian growls.
“Grady Wilde.” He grins. “And the man who owns your daughter.”