Chapter 25
Cowboy, Harrison, Red, and Hawk ran to the bridge. The ship’s halls were nearly empty, the announcement for the guests to stay in their rooms seeming to have made quite an impact.
Cowboy was the first to reach the captain. Blood soaked the captain’s upper right shoulder all the way down to the middle of his chest. He looked dead. Cowboy felt his neck for a pulse, surprised when he found one. “Captain!” he called. “Captain, can you hear me?”
The captain’s eyelids twitched for several moments before they opened, his eyes unfocused and glassy. “The disco,” he said. “He’s in the disco.”
Cowboy looked to Jax, then back to the captain. “Who is in the disco?”
“Beaudreau. My first mate.”
“Did he do this to you?” asked Jax.
“Yes.”
“We need to get you to the infirmary,” said Cowboy.
“No. You go. Tell them I’m here, but stop Beaudreau before he hurts somebody.”
They were moving again, racing to the infirmary and sending help to the captain before heading to the nightclub. Cowboy couldn’t help but wonder if their elusive enemy had been there while he danced with Charlotte.
If you hadn’t been distracted, you might’ve seen something. You never should’ve taken up with her in the first place.
Not on the job.
Hell, not at all.
Now that this mission had gone south and HERO Force was here in the cold light of day, Cowboy could see it had been a mistake to be with her.
Logan had been a lot less than happy to find out Cowboy and Charlotte were sleeping together.
That much had been painfully obvious from the look in his teammate’s eye.
Cowboy moved along the darkened hallway, leading the pack, as the evenly spaced emergency lights gave the corridor the look of some futuristic time machine. Cowboy wished he could go back in time. Change the decisions he had made that would cost him to lose his promotion with HERO Force.
Would you really erase the time you spent with Charlotte if you could?
No way in hell.
Even though he knew better, he couldn’t make himself wish it away. Even though Logan might never forgive him, and Jax was surely pissed, too. Their time together was worth it, even if that made him a self-centered prick. He liked her.
He liked her a lot.
And given the chance, he’d do everything again.
He rounded a corner, the disco coming into view. Its sign was dark, as was seemingly everything inside. He couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d been here as he paused to let his eyes adjust as much as possible. He reached for his cell phone.
“Could be one man, could be a hundred,” Hawk whispered next to him.
Harrison pushed in front of them both. “Let me go first. I know this place better than you do.”
There was just enough light coming from beneath a distant door to cast everything in the faintest shadow. They moved as a unit, quiet and stealthy, as Harrison led the way to the employee area. When they reached the door from where the light came, he stopped. “Are we ready?”
Four thumbs up.
Harrison pushed open the door to a commercial kitchen with one motion, his weapon drawn. He never had a chance to fire. Six men were waiting, their weapons trained on the door. Four of them fell with Harrison, shot by Cowboy and Hawk. The next two were just a moment behind.
Cowboy sank to the floor to check on Harrison.
One shot to the head and multiple shots to the chest. There would be no saving him, and Cowboy mourned in the second it took Hawk and Matteo to make sure the others were dead.
He stood and reloaded his weapon. “Beaudreau and Abby aren’t here.
We need to find the power. The computers.
The second bridge where they’re running the show. ”
They were close. You didn’t encounter six armed men if you weren’t getting hotter. Where was the electrical center of a dance club? It had to be powering the lights or the music.
Music began blaring from the disco. “The DJ booth,” said Matteo.
“Wait,” said Jax. “He’s baiting us.”
“We still need to go out there,” said Cowboy.
He turned to Hawk. “You’re with me. You two go that way,” he said, gesturing to another exit from the kitchen to the dance floor.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and turned on its flashlight.
When each team was positioned at an exit, Cowboy turned off the kitchen light, opened the door, and slid his phone out into the room.
Gunfire exploded.
Cowboy moved into the room, Hawk right behind him, staying low and heading for the corner from where the shots were fired. The light from his cell phone was just enough to reflect off the glass of a structure beside the dance floor. The DJ booth. He ripped open the door and froze.
Silhouetted against the light of the room were two figures, one big and tall, one smaller. The tall one held a handgun to the head of the other.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” said a woman in a proper British accent.
Princess Violet.
“Let her go,” said Cowboy, training his weapon on the other man as best he could in the darkness.
“You think you’re saving the day, but you are too late,” said the man.
“We found your bomb in the theater. There isn’t going to be any explosion.” Cowboy’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and he could just make out the features of Beaudreau and the princess.
The first mate laughed. “You took out one bomb, and you think you saved the ship!”
A sickening wave of dread mixed with bile in the back of Cowboy’s throat. More bombs. “How many?”
“Why would I tell you?”
“Because you want me to know. You want everyone to know exactly what you did.” Cowboy took a step closer to the pair.
Beaudreau’s elbow went higher in the air and the princess screamed. “You come any closer and I put a bullet in her temple. I’d hate for her to miss the show.”
“How many bombs?”
“Twenty. There used to be twenty-one—a very lucky number—then one of my men had an attack of conscience.”
Cowboy thought of the murder scene Harrison had found. The murdered crew mate. “So you killed him and threw his body overboard.”
“That’s right. Just like I killed the prince.”
The princess screamed hysterically and fought back against Beaudreau, swinging and punching. Her first outburst knocked his weapon to the floor. Beaudreau met Cowboy's eyes across the darkness.
Cowboy fired directly into the other man’s head. The first mate went down, his head hitting the floor with a sickening smack.
The princess covered her mouth but kept screaming. Cowboy went and put his arm around her. “It’s okay now, your highness.”
“I want my husband. He killed my husband.”
“Shh…” He tried to soothe her but his own emotions were screaming. It had been his job to protect them both, and his fault her husband was dead.
He thought of the avalanche rolling down the hill, coming to destroy everything in its path. He’d made a decision that had brought his whole world caving in on him.
He thought of the love that was so clear between Violet and Hugo. Love like that deserved to live, and his actions had stomped it out.
A man called over the princess’s sobs. “Vi?”
“Hugo!” She dashed out of Cowboy’s arms and into the darkness. The lights came on just as they reached each other, her sobs of relief mixing with the prince’s calming tones. He had a large bloody wound on his forehead.
I could love Charlotte like that.
He shook his head to clear it. Matteo crossed to him. “Where was he?” asked Cowboy.
“The cooler.”
“Anything else back there?”
“Computers, walkie-talkies, a whole bunch of shit.”
“But no Abby?”
“Nope. No Abby.”
Cowboy nodded. “Come on, we’ve got to move. The ship is wired to blow up in less than an hour and we have to evacuate the ship.”