45. Brady
Brady
I land on top of the elevator and force my way out onto the deserted floor. Drawing my Glock, I make my way down the hall. As I pass the closed doors of evacuated apartments, I hear more assault rifles several floors below. There’s the loud bang of a grenade, and Finn’s voice clicks on in my ear.
“I got ten, including the injured guy,” he says, his breathing heavy. There are more gunshots, then he adds, “Eleven. Fuck. I’m stuck in the security office. There’s too many bodies blocking the door. The rest are headed your way, up the stairs.”
“Roger. Good work,” I tell him. “I’ll handle the rest.”
Nineteen, just for me. I grin as I open the last door on the right and lock it behind me.
It’s one of my weapons rooms. A cinder block cube, guns and grenades on the wall. A security feed. And a vent that looks down into the stairwell.
I designed it all for this exact purpose.
I holster my Glock and grab two more guns from the wall, both fitted with silencers. Then I get in position on the raised ledge, invisible behind the vent.
Burly men in stealth gear rush up the steps. They’re armed to the teeth, a black parade of assault rifles spiraling upward. By their formation and steadiness, they’re frighteningly well-trained.
I wait until the first two make it up the stairs and past me. The third guy in any group always has his guard down. No matter how good his training.
I squeeze the trigger.
One, two, three, four.
All four crumple to the stairs, dead. The rest of the men start yelling. Now it’s a shootout—they know my position.
I’m out of the way before they shoot through the vent cover. They waste their bullets on air. I take a grenade and wait for them to get closer. On the wall beside me, the room’s security feed shows me when they’re in position.
I lob the grenade, then duck and clamp my hands over my ears.
It’s a smaller frag model, designed to obliterate hostiles in the stairwell without damaging this room.
But the blast still shakes my teeth and leaves my ears ringing.
My eyes sting with tears from the smoke.
I blink them away and take a quick puff of my inhaler.
As the acrid smoke clears, the camera shows my grenade got ten of them.
Gotta love explosives in closed spaces.
The two men I let past don’t return to check on the blast’s damage, or on their comrades. They must still be going up the stairs, men who follow the directive.
Seven knows how to recruit.
And how to train.
On the security feed, the three men left on my floor stay well clear of the vent. I curse as I watch them go around to find me. They barge out of the stairwell and shoot open the door to my hiding spot.
I’m ready for them.
With a silenced gun in each hand, I unload into the first guy. I dodge the second guy’s shot, winging him before I get him in the forehead. The third guy’s smarter. He keeps the wall between us as we exchange fire. He waits until both my guns click.
Then he rounds the corner. I toss down my empty guns, pulling out my Glock as the fucker closes in. He’s fast. He shoots my Glock out of my hand, then grins at me. Pauses.
He’s the type to play with his food.
He’s a big guy, at least seventy-five pounds on me. And he’s got two guns trained on me at point-blank range. I straighten. Facing my death.
Once this man kills me, I’ll have permanently failed in my duty to protect Cora.
In my earpiece, Blackbird asks if it’s time for the rocket launcher he has trained on the other side of the building. The explosion is our cover story, and we need to fire it before the police arrive.
The grinning giant in front of me keeps one gun on my face. Lowers the other to point at my kneecap.
“Finn?” Blackbird asks when I don’t answer. My younger brother hesitates, then makes me proud.
“Do it,” Finn says.
The building quakes violently. But I’m ready for it.
The giant is not.
In his split second of surprise, I lunge. The man’s a solid wall. When I crash into him, he drops his guns with the impact, but keeps his feet, only a stumble to recover. A second later he’s got me by the throat, slamming me into the wall.
My head cracks against the cinder block. My vision flickers out. I feel consciousness slipping like oil through my fingers.
This man wants to kill my wife.
As I struggle for air, I grope at the wall beside me. My scrabbling fingers find a grenade. I grab it, then bash it into the giant’s head. It’s enough for him to lose his grip on my neck.
I slide down, heaving deep breaths, my vision returning.
Then he’s back on me, trying to pummel me into the floor. I throw an elbow into his face. Another elbow into his neck, a heel into his groin. Flailing, thrashing, I manage to get out from under him.
I leave the grenade beneath his stomach, the pin clutched in my hand. It takes every ounce of my strength to keep the giant bastard down on the floor. My shoulder screams with the effort.
Three, two, one.
The detonation’s disgusting. The giant’s guts splatter all over the floor, shards of bone sticking out of them. I push myself off him, spitting on his corpse. The dead man’s blood is slippery as I stumble out of the room.
“Finn?” I ask. “Blackbird?”
Then I realize I don’t have my earpiece. The giant must’ve torn it off during our fight. There’s no time to look for it, if it even still exists.
In the stairwell, I take two pistols off the bodies. I check they’re still loaded, nearly full clips in each. I keep one drawn and put the other in my Glock’s holster. Not quite the right fit, but close enough.
On the ground, one guy twitches, so I double tap him in the head. Blood sprays like pink mist in the fluorescent-lit stairwell. It patters back down onto Seven’s men. A beautiful rain.
Before it’s done falling, I’m sprinting up the stairs.
When I’m two floors below our penthouse, I kick off my boots and socks. I’m silent as I climb past the closed door to Finn’s place. Above me, the emergency door to our home is ajar. Scorch marks and bullet holes surround the broken lock.
I hurry closer, cocked gun in my hand.
“Where is she?” a gruff voice demands. One of Seven’s men, shouting at Connor.
From those three words, I can’t tell if they’re in league or not. And with my ears still ringing from the explosions, I can’t hear Connor’s reply.
I also can’t be sure if there’s a second Vanleusen man in there with them. I let two up the stairs. If only one of them is on this floor, I have to kill him quick and find the second man before he finds me.
I burst into my home and fire at the intruder’s head. My shot goes wide. But it blows off a chunk of his ear before he dives into the kitchen, out of my line of fire.
“Connor!” I shout.
And now for the test.
Time to see if my wife’s brother is the traitor I suspect him to be.
From where he’s standing, Muloney can see both me and Seven’s man. He’s holding the blank-loaded Smith & Wesson I gave him. But it’s pointed at the floor.
If he draws on Seven’s man, I’ll use the distraction to kill the goon myself.
If he draws on me, well. I’ve been hit with blanks before. It’s no picnic, but I’ll still be able to squeeze a couple rounds into Seven’s man before I kill Connor.
The kid’s hand is shaking, the gun trembling at his side. We don’t have time for this.
“Connor!” I bark.
He raises his gun toward the man in the kitchen. Surprising, but good. Test passed.
I step around the corner firing. Two shots in the chest, and the man’s on the ground. It’s what he fucking deserves for breaking into my home.
I heard Connor’s gun firing along with mine. Now he’s looking at it in his hand, confused. He’s not the traitor I thought he was. Which means he deserves a real weapon.
I reach for my backup piece, but my fingers find leather instead of metal. I glance down. There’s nothing in my holster.
Shit. There’s still one Vanleusen man left. If I can’t arm Connor, then I’ve signed the innocent kid’s death warrant. There’s no time for guilt, so I channel it into resolve. I’ll have to protect him myself.
“Where’s the other one?” I demand. I go into the kitchen to double tap the guy on the floor. Click. Fucking empty.
“What other one?” Connor asks. Then he shouts, “Fuck!”
I vault out of the kitchen. A second later, there are three guns drawn.
Mine, which is empty.
Connor’s, which is loaded with blanks.
And the final Vanleusen man’s. Which is pointed at me.
Connor fires into the man’s chest. He lurches. I whip my gun at him, but with his jerky movement, it bounces off his arm. He catches himself against the wall, barely injured.
I rush for him, but he lifts his gun at me again. It’s over.
Forgive me, Cora. I failed you.
The man howls and drops his gun. He stumbles as he turns around, revealing Cora behind him.
What the fuck?
How is she here? I blink several times, but I’m not just imagining her.
My wife’s eyes are crazed, blood spattered on her face and dripping from the switchblade I gave her. She’s panting, her teeth gritted as she readjusts her grip on the hilt.
When she leaps for the man, she thrusts her knife up into the hollow of his throat. Stab. Shouting with effort, she rips her blade through the man’s neck. And slash.
Just like I taught her.
My incredible wife.
Blood flings across our walls. The man thuds to his knees, then slams face-first onto the floor. Seven’s final man, dead.
“Cora!” I sprint to her.
How the fuck did she get out? Regardless, she’s safe now. It’s the only thing in the world that matters.
She whirls around to point her knife at me. I skid to a halt. Her ice-blue eyes are still crazed, her chest heaving erratically.
“What the fuck is wrong with your gun?” Connor shouts.
Cora and I both turn as he points the Smith & Wesson at the metal lamp beside him. He fires. The lamp clangs to the floor. But the glass table beneath it doesn’t shatter like it should.
Cora figures it out before her brother does.
“You gave him blanks?” she shrieks at me.
“It was a test.” I hold up my palms, a sinking sensation in my gut.
She knows what it means that I armed the kid with blanks.
I was going to have him killed to prove my point.
It’s not something she’ll forgive. I go dizzy with that realization, nausea churning in my stomach.
I could lose her over this. But it was all to protect her, in case her brother was a traitor.
“I thought he was working for Seven,” I say. “He had—”
“You sent him into a firefight with fucking blanks!” She waves her blood-smeared knife at me. “You were trying to kill my brother.”
My wife stares me down. It’s the same look she gave me when I first saw her walking down the aisle. But in a bloodied T-shirt and jeans instead of a gorgeous white dress.
I don’t blink, and I don’t deny it.
“It was to protect you,” I say.
“Just like locking me up was to protect me?” There’s more murder in her eyes.
“Yes.” And I’d do it again.
It’s as if she heard the last part out loud. The murder in her eyes flickers out. Her face slackens. Suddenly I want her anger back, her violence back. Even if it’s directed at me. I can’t handle how she’s looking at me now. Like I’ve shattered every hope she’s ever kindled.
The tip of her knife quivers, still pointed in my direction. When she lowers it to her side, my heart sinks with it.
It’s a gesture of defeat.
Of her having given up.
“Cora,” I beg. “I love you. All I want is for you to be safe.”
“Fuck you, Brady,” she says quietly. She closes her knife, then tucks it into her pocket. There’s a cruel finality in the gesture. “You don’t know what love is.”
With her eyes hopelessly dull, she doesn’t look away from my face. She reaches for her Claddagh ring. I’m torn brutally apart by the simple motion of her slipping it from her finger.
Whatever was left of me drains away as my wife drops her hands to her sides. She doesn’t throw the ring at me. She just lets it fall from her fingers. It plinks twice on the tile, then clatters to a stop. A pin drop in our doomed silence.
She turns away, finished with me.
With a glance to her brother, she jerks her head for him to follow. He trots obediently behind her as she walks out of our home. I hear their footsteps down the stairwell, the foreign sound of Cora defeated.
She’s given up on us.