Chapter 49
Sean
“Fuck, I’m wired,” Jace mutters as he drops into a blood-splattered chair. He runs a hand over his head as he props a foot on the coffee table. “I feel like I could go head-to-head with a mountain lion and win.”
“That’s your adrenaline talking,” Viktor comments, striding into the room with a bottle of clear liquid dangling from his fingers.
He thrusts it toward my best friend, his torso now exposed to reveal streaks of blood across his chest and back that leak from his apparent gunshot wound.
He doesn’t seem all that worried about it, though.
“Here. This should help. It’ll bring you down enough to get a couple hours of sleep. ”
He’s been on the phone with both his cleanup crew—who are coming tomorrow—and the Russian authorities to tell them this was Bratva business and not to get involved.
Mercer looks exhausted as he drops another soldier on the heaping pile in the corner. Tacky blood is smeared over his neck and arms. The gash on the outside of his shoulder is still seeping so much that nearly his entire arm is bright red.
His onyx hair is wet-looking, and it’s not from fucking hair gel. Not that I’ve fared much better. I’m covered in scratches and blood from my buzzed head down to my boots. I’m looking forward to a nice, hot shower.
There’re two more piles outside. “That’s the last of them.”
He falls onto the stained couch dramatically, and I take the seat on the other end.
It’s a damn miracle we survived that. They had everything they needed to take us out: the numbers, the surprise attack, the intel.
The only thing that saved our asses was that they underestimated engaging two professional killers, a weapons expert, and two best friends hellbent on not dying tonight. It was a close call, though. Too close.
“Where did you get that?” Lou asks, glancing up from her examination of the SIG Sauer M17 she pilfered from one of the dead soldiers.
“I found it at the back of the cupboard. The one over the oven.”
Jace pops the top and scrunches his nose when he sniffs the contents.
“Huh, I didn’t realize that was here.” Louhi pulls a face and shudders as she picks up a Beretta M9.
She inspects it carefully, empties the clip, then shoves it into her pants.
It takes everything in me not to snort at the ridiculousness.
Like she can’t afford to buy a thousand handguns from Viktor.
She looks as though she’s breathing oxygen for the first time whenever she’s in possession of a deadly weapon.
I’ve never seen someone smile more than Lou does with a gun in her hand.
She looked incredible tonight, pulling triggers and giggling while she did it.
Not prettier than when she was telling me she loved me, though.
“Uh, does vodka go bad?” Jace wonders as he takes a long swig from the glass bottle. He blanches, and I wonder if he regrets waiting for an answer before tasting it.
Viktor drops into a seat and dabs at the wound below his clavicle with gauze. “Maybe after fifty years or so. It has a long shelf life.”
“When did you buy it, Louhi?” my best friend asks.
She shrugs, her attention still on the various handguns. “I don’t like the implication that I’m fifty.” The corner of my mouth lifts. “I don’t remember purchasing it, though, so it might’ve been here when I bought the place.”
“If I get sick, I’m going to be using your bed as a trash can,” Jace tells Viktor.
He lifts a blond eyebrow. “Might I suggest using a toilet like an adult.”
Jace glares back at him. “Just for that, I’ll wait until you’re in bed before I empty my stomach.”
My head drops back against the cushion as Lou’s tight, toned body falls into the vacant seat between me and her brother. She tucks herself into me, and I wrap a hand around her shoulders, my blood tingling when our skin touches.
“You’ll be waiting a while,” Louhi tosses out. “Viktor never sleeps in bed.”
Mercer sniggers as he reaches for the bottle from Jace and tilts it nearly upside down before shaking his head like a dog.
“Why don’t you sleep?” I question. It strikes me how easy the conversation is, like we’ve all been friends for longer than we have.
Viktor smirks as he continues to bandage himself up. “I sleep, just not in bed.”
“Do you even have a bed?” Jace wonders, and I groan. He’s sporting a long, vertical cut in his forearm and another small puncture in his side that he must’ve gotten after we were separated.
“I have a bed,” Viktor confirms smugly. “It’s reserved for…entertaining.”
Mercer holds up his hand. “There’s not a single person in this dacha who needs to know anything else about your bed, Vik.”
“Actually,” Jace interjects, stretching out his legs in front of him. The gleam in my best friend’s eyes indicates that he knows precisely what he’s doing. “I’d like to know where you sleep.”
“In my office, mostly. I don’t sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, so there’s not much point in crawling into an actual bed when I can get more done by sleeping in my desk chair.”
There’s a twinge in my shoulder as I scoop Lou into my arms and drag her onto my lap sideways. I want the contact.
“Digs?” Mercer offers me the bottle of vodka, but I shake my head. He shrugs. “More for me, then.”
“Hey,” Lou protests with a giggle, swiping the bottle from him.
He frowns. “I figured you’d want wine.”
“I’m making an exception tonight.” She tosses back the bottle, and I cringe as I watch her throat work. You’d never even notice that she drank liquor rather than water as she returns the bottle to her brother.
“I hate to be the one to point this out, but when this unit doesn’t check in, they’re going to send another squad to retrieve the dead,” Jace asserts.
“How long do we have?” Mercer pipes up, snatching the vodka bottle from my best friend.
“Eight, maybe ten hours,” I supply. Really, I can’t be entirely sure, but they won’t send anyone here until they’re sure they won’t lose more men. So long as we’re long gone before they get here, they won’t.
“That gives us a few hours for some sleep, which we all need. I’ll have my chopper get us in the morning. I’ll take first watch, and Mercer can switch with me at three.” Viktor lays out a plan for us.
“Mercer, if you get tired, just wake me up, and I can relieve you,” Jace offers, and Louhi’s brother nods.
“Will you come with us, Mercer?” my girl asks her brother, once again in possession of the vodka. There’s so much hope in her voice that I grip her tighter as though I can physically protect her from the inevitable letdown. “Or do you want me to send the plane for your revenge crusade?”
He pulls the bottle from Lou’s grasp and winces slightly as he throws back a heavy swig. “I’m coming with you. I’ll spend the next two weeks healing with you, then go back to Boston and kill Conall McQuaid.”
Lou’s lips spread in a striking grin that could send every man and woman in an eighty-mile radius to their knees.
She flings her arms around her brother, who grunts, but the soft smile on his lips says he doesn’t mind her display of excited affection.
I have no doubt that she’s going to try to talk him out of embarking on that suicide mission.
“It’ll be like old times when we lived together. ”
Mercer snorts, the corner of his lips lifting. “I don’t remember there being roommates at our flat.”
Lou giggles as she continues to hug her brother.
“What’s going to happen to this place now that it’s obviously compromised as a safe house?” Jace stretches his arms behind his head.
Lou sighs as she sinks back into my arms. “I’ll sell it and buy a new safe house. Maybe I’ll burn it to the ground and turn it into a gun range. Sky’s the limit.”
“In that case,” Viktor remarks, the bottle finally making it back to him. “Would anyone care for a smoke?”
I hold out my hand immediately. The vodka holds no appeal, but the cigarette? Yeah, that’s ideal.
I pluck a cancer stick from the offered box and catch the Zippo Viktor tosses in my direction. Once I light it up, Jace and Viktor follow suit. It calms my jittering nerves better than alcohol.
The exhaled smoke snakes through the air as I sink farther into my seat. It reminds me of sitting on the rooftop, stealing moments of solitude with my best friend at Exile Island, except somehow better.
As I glance around the room, taking in Viktor and Louhi, laughing as they pass the vodka back and forth, I get the sense that we’re going to be alright. Maybe even better than okay. Thank fuck, it’s all over. Now, we can start to try to create a new life.