Chapter Thirty Seven
“This place is crazy,” I whispered to Zeke who was next to me as we crouched in the forest, staring at the complex in front of us. It was deep in the Blue Ridge mountains but lit up like the damned Fourth of July with flood lights illuminating every inch of the place.
Several smaller houses dotted the area but what we were circling in on was the larger house with a wraparound porch in the center.
“Alphas Primus has been on our radar for years,” Agent Harris, an FBI agent who was running the operation explained into my earpiece. “But the fact that they were ballsy enough to plan this operation is concerning. Trying to disenfranchise an entire election seems too big a fish, even for them.”
“You think they have someone paying them to do this?” Maverick asked, his voice crackling in my ear.
“That’s above my pay grade, kid,” Harris said. “All I know is that I’m not sure how we move in when they have those guard towers at twelve, three, six, and nine o’ clock. It’ll be a blood bath before we can even get to Flicker. They’ve also got enough fire power to turn this into another Waco.”
“So what is it that you propose we do?” Zeke asked, glancing into the dark in the general direction of where the agent and his men were.
“I’m still figurin’ that out. We haven’t had enough time to fully scope it out.”
“And we don’t have enough time to do so either, unless you think the president dropping out of the race is an option,” I said, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in my voice.
McDaniels and the rest of his group of lawyers who’d been following him around weren’t even sure if it was even legal for her to drop out of the race with only two days left until the election.
Which didn’t bode well for Lennon’s chances of survival.
“Hey,” I heard Maverick say in the earpiece. “Do you guys feel that?”
“What?” Zeke asked.
But I grabbed his arm and gave him a hard thump on the chest.
A thread of pain, panic, and determination that wasn’t my own had slowly started to wind down the bond I shared with Lennon. The bond that up until a few minutes ago had been cold and dark because she had been blocking us out.
I sent a quick wave of comfort at her, hoping I could soothe her even from out here.
“She knows we’re here,” I said. “Which means we have to go in and get her.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Agent Harris asked. “It’s not like we can just storm the place without a huge loss of life.”
“You have seventy-five agents in these woods. Thermal imaging shows fifty of those assholes.”
“And heavy artillery, Wilson,” the agent said dryly. “So I’m not going to just go in there guns blazing when they have an advantage.”
“Both of you shut up for a second and look at the window at the bottom left of the main house, the one built into the foundation of the porch,” Zeke cut in, lifting his rifle scope.
I did the same just in time to see the window get busted out and smoke start to billow from the freshly broken window.
“Is that a fire?” I asked, frowning as I continued to watch.
Men started to run around the complex like ants as flames started to lick out of the window and up the house, catching on the old wood and creating a veritable tinderbox.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Agent Harris whistled. “I think your girl has organized us a little distraction.”
My feet were already moving by the time he finished.
“Brooks!” Maverick shouted from behind me. “Gods damn it, Dallas is going to kick my ass if you get hurt.”
I didn’t care, my rifle was already aiming for the large flood lights.
“Let’s see how much of an advantage you have in the dark,” I muttered as I shot the ones I could see out, sending half of the complex into darkness as the men began shouting about an ambush.
The rest of the agents flooding the compound could handle the other lights. If Lennon had set a fire in the basement, then I needed to get her out of there before she got hurt.
Bullets started to fly by the time I made it to the porch, one of the guys holding up a pistol in my face that I knocked out of the way with my rifle. Then my boot met his chest and I kicked him in through the open door and right into his buddy who shot him in the back.
The house was absolutely crawling with them, an Alphas Primus flag hanging on the wall in the living room and a football game on the TV.
I turned my brain off for a bit, just like I used to when Dallas and I served in the military.
Human thoughts and emotions did soldiers no favors in combat, so they needed to go and the alpha needed to emerge.
Instincts ruled in combat where everything became targets and triggers.
I moved through the house, some getting knocked out for the agents sweeping in behind me to handle while others were not so lucky.
None of it mattered as long as I found the door to the basement and got to Lennon.
Following the source of the smoke down the long, winding hallways of the house, I eventually found the door and lifted a foot to kick the door down.
Smoke billowed up from inside of the dark room.
“Lennon!” I bellowed, coughing as I stared inside.
Descending the stairs quickly, I found that the flames were climbing up the back wall of the basement and out of the window that she’d broken like she’d directed them that way. Smart girl.
But where the hell was she?
“Brooks?”
I turned, looking for the source of her voice.
And there she was, standing just behind the stairs with a l-shaped pipe gripped in her hands.
Letting my rifle hang at my waist, I swept her up in my arms and squeezed her to my chest. “Lennon.”
“I knew you guys would come for me,” she sobbed, her voice tiny.
“Of course, we promised you we always would,” I said, trying to catch a whiff of her scent underneath all of the dense smoke to reassure myself that she was real. “Now come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Pulling her fully into my arms, I climbed the steps back up into the hallway only to be immediately knocked upside the head by something hard.
My world spun as Lennon screamed my name.
A man in a vest stood over me, blood streaming down his face as he gripped a baseball bat.
“You fed-fucking bastards!” he shouted as he glared at me.
Lennon was on the ground next to me, her back against a wall as she glanced between me and the man, her fingers gripping the pipe.
I tried to shake my head, telling her not to do whatever she was thinking about doing.
He lifted the bat over his head again and I closed my eyes, hoping Lennon would close hers too.
Then I heard her feral scream and the man’s grunt.
“Leave. Him. Alone!”
Thud! Thud! Thud! Crunch!
The sound of her hitting the man over and over with the pipe filled the hallway mixed in with her heaving wails as I rolled onto my stomach and managed to get onto my knees, the world spinning around me.
I was definitely going to have a nasty concussion from taking a bat to the dome, but for now I needed to get Lennon out of here.
“Lennon, love,” I said as I hooked an arm around her waist. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”
“No, I’m so tired of this shit.” She continued to cry as she weakly brought the pipe down again, her hands and face covered in the guy’s blood.
“Shh,” I told her as I pulled her up in my arms and she let the pipe drop to the floor.
I barely gave the man a look as I stepped over his unmoving body because, frankly, he deserved it for being a part of kidnapping an innocent woman. I had no sympathy for an asshole like that.
Gunfire echoed in my ears as I moved through the house and bullets whizzed past us as agents overpowered the men and flames continued to steadily engulf the rest of the rooms, smoking out anyone who might have been hiding.
“Hell of a distraction,” I told Lennon once we stepped outside, my breathing suddenly catching as I felt a pain in my side like I had a cramp.
“Thanks,” she said quietly as she held on tightly to my neck, her tears wetting the skin. “My dad taught me to do that.”
“Sounds like he was a smart man.”
My tongue was starting to feel numb, making it hard to talk as I finally reached the edge of the clearing where I found Zeke talking to one of the agents.
“There he is, Mr. Blazing Glory,” Zeke said with a grin, his eyes lighting up when he saw Lennon. “And he has our princess… who is covered in blood. Jesus, Lennon, are you okay, honey? Are you hurt?”
Lennon was immediately pulled from my arms as I tried to figure out what was wrong with me.
“I’m fine, it’s not my blood,” Lennon said, whipping around to look at me, her gray eyes taking in my form as I stood in front of her. “But something’s wrong with Brooks.”
Her hands began to pat at my face and head where the baseball bat had hit me, but that wasn’t what was hurting me.
“I don’t think…” I said trailing off as the world spun. “I think I need to sit down.”
I let my knees fold underneath me and hands helped me down to the gravel ground.
“What’s going on?” Maverick asked as he slid on his knees in front of me, his hands going to the Velcro on my bullet proof vest.
“What’s going on in the house?” Agent Harris asked.
“Almost clear,” Maverick said, not looking at the man, his brown eyes on me. “B?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wincing as the vest was pulled away.
Then I saw Zeke and Maverick gape.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Zeke cursed as his hands pressed hard to my side.
“Ouch,” I groaned as my lips went numb.
“What is it?” Lennon asked as she leaned around my front to look, her gray eyes going wide. “How? He was wearing a vest!”
“He must’ve gotten hit from the side and the pressure of the vest was keeping him coherent and we just took that pressure away. He’s starting to bleed out,” Maverick explained as he turned to bark over his shoulder, “I need a medic!”
I stared at them, confused, why would they need a medic?
“Brooks, we’re going to take care of you, I just need you to hang on okay?” Zeke said as I was laid back against the gravel.
More pressure against my side and I let out a yelp.
“He’s in pain,” Lennon protested, her hand slipping into mine.
“Believe it or not, that’s actually a good thing,” Maverick explained as he put his hand over Zeke’s and pressed harder. “It would be worse if he felt nothing.”
“There’s a chopper on its way, on the president’s orders,” Harris said. “They’ll get you to the hospital ASAP.”
“Good,” Maverick said. “Because it wouldn’t look good to let her son-in-law die after he rescued her daughter.”
“Die?” I asked, panic finally cutting through the confusion. “I’m not going to die am I?!”
“No you are not going to die,” Lennon told me firmly, her gray eyes looking down into mine as she gripped my hand hard. “You have to live, Brooks, because I ordered a Red Riding Hood outfit and who else is going to chase me around in it if you die.”
I pursed my lips, remembering our conversation from that day when I’d told her about my fantasy. I gave her hand my best squeeze, more sure than ever that I was going to survive this and fulfill my hunter-prey fantasy with the woman I loved.
… and then I promptly passed out as soon as I heard the sound of chopper blades overhead.