Chapter 26 Reed
REED
Fucking hell, my body hurt. I tried to move my toes, but the crushing weight across my chest took precedence.
My already injured shoulder throbbed with a bone-deep ache.
I lifted a hand to rub it and scraped my knuckles on something that felt like wood.
Fuck. I curled my hand around the object that pressed into my chest and forced my eyes open.
Darkness. Everywhere.
Blind or something else?
I put both hands on what felt like a thick wall beam and pushed. Soft light infiltrated the space, causing my eyes to water.
How long had I been knocked out?
Where were Mav and Tarron?
I paused my efforts and strained my ears, listening for Jack or any of his men to come running and take me out.
Nothing. Snowflakes drifted into the tiny opening I’d made.
They landed on my cheek, but I didn’t feel them.
“Okay, man. Time to get out. You can’t feel the snow. Might be getting close to frostbite.” I used Tarron’s most doctorly voice to convince myself to suffer through the pain and raise the beam higher.
It weighed a ton, almost more than I had the strength to lift.
I gritted my teeth, arched my back while digging my heels into the ground, and bucked upward with every bit of my strength.
The beam shifted with a loud creak, and a portion of the wall raised off the ground and my lower half.
Wiggling, cursing, and twisting, I pushed myself up and out.
The beam wobbled as my strength wavered.
I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious.
Long enough my skin had adapted to the temperature.
My lips cracked and bled when I bared my teeth and pushed harder against the wall.
With my head free, I took the time to look around, double-checking that Jack and his men had left.
Debris littered the ground all around me.
I’d been in the house when it exploded.
Mav had sent me back to check on Tarron while he held off the men around front.
The blast blew me backward, past the wall, then dropped the wall on top of me.
It came back in fits and starts. The boom. The sense of weightlessness. Then the pain and a feeling of smothering.
They’d left me for dead. Either they couldn’t find me, or they’d assumed the blast did their dirty work for them. Almost.
I shimmied my way free of the wall and dropped it, covering the notch where I’d landed perfectly to be protected from the wall crashing on top of me.
I worked my arms up and down, then around in circles.
My feet were numb, and I stumbled a few times before the blood circulated enough to cause an eruption of pins and needles in my extremities.
I ran toward where Tarron had fallen.
Fear held me by the throat. He’d fallen like a rock.
I’d never seen Tarron drop like that.
Neither he nor Mav came looking for me.
The thought threatened to steal all hope.
If they were alive, they’d have come looking for me. Maybe they were trapped too.
I found the spot where Tarron had fallen.
Limbs from the nearby trees covered the area, along with lighter pieces of the cabin.
The blast had happened in the front, leaving most of the rear of the structure standing.
That alone kept Tarron from being obliterated…if he had survived the gunshot.
Fucking Jack Wilson. My jaw ached from holding it so tight. I was going to kill him. Slowly.
I put all my fear and anger to work. Sweat gathered under my arms and across my forehead. I should slow down. It wasn’t good to sweat in this kind of cold. Fuck it. Fuck everything.
My brothers needed me.
I tossed aside branches and debris at a furious pace. My lungs burned.
My shoulder throbbed.
And I worked with the fury of a madman until I uncovered Tarron’s lifeless body.
I hit my knees and rested my head on his chest.
My hands were almost numb and torn to hell from working without gloves, but I pressed my fingers to his neck and stuck the back of my wrist beneath his nose.
Between all three, I should be able to discern if he was breathing, if his heart beat.
Blood roared in my ears, and I closed my eyes to concentrate and steady my panic.
A flutter of a heartbeat drummed. His pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips.
The slightest hint of breath brushed my wrist. “That’s what I’m talking about.” I pushed upright and tore off the rest of the mess covering him.
A quick search of his body revealed a gunshot wound high on his left side.
I yanked my personal medical kit from my leg pocket and flipped it open. “You’re an insufferable son of a bitch, but you have good ideas sometimes. Like this.”
I grabbed all the gauze from my pack and pressed it to the wound. “Never would have carried a kit if you hadn’t harped about it for months.”
“You gave in easier than I thought.” Tarron’s eyelids flickered. His mouth pinched white, pain bracketing his mouth as he came to full awareness. “Shit. That hurts. That’s good. Means I’m still alive.”
“You had us worried for a minute.” So worried my hands shook when I tried to press harder on his makeshift bandage.
“Mav and Payton?” Tarron sat bolt upright, hissed an expletive, and craned his neck to look behind him. He took in the obliterated cabin. “What happened?”
“They blew the place to shit. Dad and Payton were on their way to the car. Mav had the mercenaries pinned down around front.” I stopped there.
We could see straight through the cabin from here.
There was no front of the cabin anymore.
A few timbers stuck upright around the backside, the remnants of the blast looking like rotten teeth.
“I’ll live.” Tarron took over holding the wad of gauze to his ribs. He held up his other hand. “Help me up.”
I gave him my good arm, and with a lot of grunting and swearing, we got him on his feet. “You look like shit.”
He’d lost the last of his color when he stood, and he slumped forward, his hand on his knee, for several seconds. “Right back ‘atcha.” He straightened by degrees. “We need to find everyone else.” He took a step, wobbled, then locked his jaw and kept going.
“Never been prouder of you, man.” I kicked some debris out of his way so he didn’t have to climb over it.
“Don’t get sentimental on me now.” Tarron tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough.
He pressed his other hand to his ribs and winced. “Damn. Have to keep an eye out for pneumonia. Might have cracked a rib or two.”
He tipped his head toward me. “You know you’re going to have to take this bullet out of me, right? Finally get to pay me back.”
“Can’t wait.” I made a show of clapping and rubbing my hands together. In truth, terror spiked through me.
We limped and staggered our way to the front of the cabin. I pointed. “Dad’s car is missing.”
“You should go check for prints. Make sure he got Payton out. You’d be able to tell that versus them kidnapping her again, right?”
“Are you kidding? You’re talking to the best tracker in the world.” I patted my chest. “Maverick first.” I couldn’t explain the way my entire body pitched toward the last place I’d seen Maverick.
All I knew was that if Payton had been kidnapped, we needed Mav. We’d track the bastards down again and take her back. Together.
Tarron nodded. “Where do we start?”
I eyed the ground.
Tracks littered the entire front lawn, crisscrossing and doubling around until they made a giant mess that would take me hours to work through.
Thank God I didn’t need to.
All I needed was one set of prints. I found them exactly where I expected.
Mav’s favorite boot brand had soles that made a unique imprint I’d learned to read during our first mission together.
I pointed. “He was heading that way.” Toward the woods. Toward danger. Because of course he’d run into danger after sending me away. He’d not been thinking straight since Jack fired at Tarron.
“Lead the way.” Tarron cursed when he tried to take a step and went sideways.
I grabbed his arm. “You can sit down.”
“I’ll rest when I’m dead. And I’m not dead yet.” He grinned. “It’ll take more than Jack fucking Wilson to take me out.”
“Amen, brother.” I made sure he’d regained his balance and let go to follow Maverick’s tracks. I spotted him three steps later. “Fuck.”
Mav lay sprawled face-first on the ground. His arms were stretched out above his head, his legs splayed at odd angles.
Tarron ran ahead of me. “Don’t move him. Let me take a look first.”
The force of the blast had lifted him off the ground too.
His tracks stopped several feet away from where he’d landed.
Unlike me and Tarron, he’d been spared from the debris. But he hadn’t been spared Jack’s wrath.
Blood soaked his gray shirt and puddled beneath him, turning the snow crimson. “That’s a lot of blood.”
Tarron shot me a look. “Might not be as much as you think. The blood mixed with snow. Makes it look worse than it is.”
“You’re talking out of your ass. We both know that’s a shitload of blood.” It felt good to curse and rant.
Tarron lifted Mav’s shirt. “Shot from behind. Close range.”
I scanned the area. “Jack.” I pointed at the tracks leading up to Mav. “I recognize his steps. He snuck up and shot Mav in the back while he was unconscious. Fucking, backstabbing coward.” I kicked the snow and dropped into a crouch. “Is he alive?”
“Give me a minute.” Tarron ran his hands up and down Mav’s legs. “I need him rolled over, but I want to make sure he doesn’t have any paralyzing injuries.”
“We have to roll him over anyway. We’re out here by ourselves.” I pointed out the sat phone crushed beside Mav’s shoulders. “With no way to contact anyone. Whatever we do, it’s just the three of us.”
“I hear you.” Tarron continued his assessment, then nodded. “Okay. Careful.”
We worked together, each of us using one arm, and rolled Mav onto his back.
Eyes closed, snow covering his face, and blood leaking from one side of his mouth, he looked deader than the time we’d hauled him from the water.
My heart withered when Tarron sucked air through his teeth and shook his head. He pressed his fingers to Mav’s neck and closed his eyes.
“Don’t be dead.” I poked Mav in the chest. “Don’t you dare die on us now. I won’t have it, you hear me? You’re not kicking the bucket when we’ve finally found happiness.”
“Reed,” Tarron whispered my name in that admonishing way of his. “I need to concentrate.”
“Want me to slap him a couple times? CPR? You brought him back once. You can do it again.” I couldn’t imagine a life without these two men in it. We were a unit, brothers in arms and a family.
Mav’s pale face rivaled Tarron’s. The wound on his back had torn through his body but not emerged through his front.
“What if he shot him with a hollow point?” I’d seen the damage those bullets did. We used them sometimes, but not often.
“He didn’t.” Tarron’s head snapped up.
But he wouldn’t know unless he got in there and fished out the bullet.
If it were a hollow point, Mav’s insides would be shredded.
He rested on the brink of death.
From the way Tarron searched frantically for a pulse, he might be dead already.