23
It looked like a game from where Jill stood with her face pressed up against the warm bulletproof glass overlooking the parking lot which looked like some medieval battlefield or a futuristic scene of the apocalypse.
She’d gasped as the three unmanned drones came screaming out of the sky like thunderbolts, each crashing into one of the remaining black SUVs, the vehicles exploding as the fuel in their gas tanks ignited on impact.
Six or seven of Romeo’s men were killed on impact, the shrapnel from the blast ripping through their bodies with shocking speed. Jill’s heart lurched, but she couldn’t stop watching, found herself clawing at the glass when she saw the four Darkwater men charge out from separate doors, all of them running with long easy strides, handguns spitting fire as they weaved through the smoke and shrapnel, picking off Romeo’s men with deadly accurate shots to the head.
Jill’s gaze was fixed on Jack, and her breath caught each time someone pointed a gun in his direction. But Jack moved like a ghost in the night, his muscular body gliding with the grace of a tiger, his aim steady and true, each shot finding its target in the head of an enemy, the crash of bullet into skull sending little puffs of dark red mist into the night air that added a sickeningly surreal vividness to the scene.
The last man dropped dead ten feet in front of Jack, a gaping crater where Jack’s bullet had exited the back of the man”s skull.
Jack stopped his advance, swept his gaze and his gun in all directions, checking to see if his military brothers needed help.
They didn’t.
An eerie stillness fell across the battlefield.
Broken bodies were strewn haphazardly, interspersed with pieces of flaming wreckage, like a gruesome work of modern art.
“Give it a minute,” said Benson quietly from behind them. “Let them do their jobs and make sure it’s clear.”
Jill nodded, wiping her nose which was running from the smoke in the room. It was getting hard to breathe, but they were almost home free now. Jill could wait another couple of minutes, couldn’t she?
No, she couldn’t.
Now Jill gasped when she saw movement around the back of one of the burning SUVs. She moved along the glass window to get a better angle, then shrieked when she realized what she was looking at.
“He’s got Nina!” Jill blinked in horrified disbelief, hoping to heaven that she was hallucinating, that it wasn’t really Nina being dragged to her feet by Romeo. She rubbed her eyes and looked harder. It was Romeo Carmine, no mistake about it. He was charred and bloody, but alive and upright, holding a gun to Nina’s head, using her shivering shuddering body as a human shield as he yelled something to Jack and the others, who were closing in on him in a tightening semi-circle, each of them aiming squarely at his head—which was terrifyingly close to Nina’s head. “No! Don’t shoot! That’s Nina! Ohmygod, tell them not to shoot, somebody! I’m . . . I’m coming!”
Jill turned from the window and suddenly she was running through the smoky room, frantically looking for the door. Behind her Benson was shouting for her to stop, Fay was running after her, Paige and Nancy were calling her name, telling her that the guys down there were Special Forces veterans trained to handle hostage situations and she was only going to complicate things by going down there.
But Jill didn’t stop. She could barely see through the smoke, was wheezing and sputtering by the time she found the door and yanked it open, stumbling out into the smoky corridor. Somehow she found the stairs, grabbing the railing and guiding herself down to the main floor. Behind her Fay was calling her name, but Jill couldn’t hear a thing except for poor Nina’s hysterical shrieks.
“Nina, I’m here!” Jill tore out through the first open door she found, running barefoot down the unfinished concrete stairs, across the gravel lining the sidewalk, over the rough cold asphalt, past the bewildered Hogan and the cursing Keller, scampering past Ice, ignoring Jack’s shouts ordering her to get back behind him.
Jill stopped now, panting and gasping as the cold night air opened up her lungs, sending fresh oxygen to her starving brain, clearing her vision so she could see everything in startling crispness.
And the first thing she saw was Romeo Carmine’s gun now pointed at her forehead instead of Nina’s, his shrapnel-scarred face twisted in a savage grin. In her frantic desire to get to Nina, Jill had run past Jack and the other guys and was now blocking their aim at Romeo’s head.
Which was exactly what Jill wanted.
Because Jill sensed that Benson was perfectly capable of giving the order to take the shot, regardless of the risk to Nina. Jack would not follow that order, but the other guys might. Jill didn’t know much about Benson, but if he was willing to sacrifice himself and his own team to keep this whole mess under wraps and protect that guy Kaiser’s job, Benson surely wouldn’t hesitate to add Nina to the list of casualties.
“Just . . . just go away,” Jill stammered to Romeo, the words sounding clumsy because her lips were trembling either from fear or the cold—perhaps both, since she was barefoot in a short dress with no underwear. “Let Nina go and we’ll let you go.”
“Like hell we will,” came Benson’s voice from behind her. “But that doesn’t mean you have to die tonight, Romeo—which you absolutely will if you keep pointing your weapon at Jack’s woman.” He chuckled dryly. “Give it up, Romeo. Hell, you don’t even have a vehicle to escape in. And the truth is, you might be safer hanging with us for a bit. Someone besides us wants very much for you to die tonight, and that makes me want to keep you alive for now. So toss the gun, release the girl, get down on your knees, just like you mafia guys do in church on Sundays. Come on. It’s cold out here. And not very safe, with all these planes dropping out of the damn sky. Do you trust Miss IMG not to drop a fucking weather satellite on our heads just to see us go splat?”
“Wait, what?” Romeo tilted his head to the left to get a look at Benson. “That was the IMG bitch who crashed the drones into my vehicles? It wasn’t you calling your contacts in the NSA or CIA or Air Force or whatever?”
“You see?” said Benson, strolling languidly past Jill, drawing Romeo’s attention along with him. “We’re both just flies in someone else’s spiderweb. Now let go of the girl.”
Jill felt movement behind her now, and before she realized what was happening, Jack had grabbed her by the waist and pulled her out of the line of fire, planting his big body squarely in front of her.
But not before giving her a look that was a strange mix of scolding and admiration, similar to when he’d called her recklessly loyal, dangerously selfless.
And completely his.
Suddenly the cold chill of fear left her, and she shuddered in warm relief behind Jack’s body. She peered cautiously past his shoulder to give Nina a reassuring smile, but Nina’s eyes were glazed and her body was almost limp as Romeo held her from behind. After the day Nina had just had, Jill wasn’t surprised. Nina was close to passing out, but it was better than being hysterical and twitchy with a gun pressed to her head.
“I’m not an idiot, Benson.” Romeo shook his head, slowly backing away from Benson, dragging Nina’s almost limp body with him. “You didn’t call the cops or feds or any backup. That means you want to keep this whole scene quiet, clean it up just like you spooks do with your cover-ups. And that means I’m a dead man if I surrender to you.” He shook his head again. “Get me a car and I’ll drop this junkie bitch off at a gas station or rest stop once I’m far enough away from you.”
Benson sighed. “You’ll never be far enough away from Miss IMG, though. You don’t stand a chance against her and you damn well know it.”
Romeo hesitated. “You know who she is? I’m pretty sure she knows you.”
Benson shrugged noncommittally. “Drop the gun and we’ll talk about it.”
“She doesn’t want me as bad as she wants you, Benson. She set this whole thing up to get to you,” Romeo sneered. “Said she wants to see you burn in hell like the demon you are.”
Benson chuckled nonchalantly. “Well, that narrows it down to about three hundred people from my past.” He sighed, sending a frosty cloud of breath into the cold air. “All right, Romeo, looks like we have a stalemate. Ordinarily I’d have ordered Keller to take the shot anyway, hostage or not. But you’re lucky that Miss Jill pre-empted that part of my plan.” He glanced back at Jill, flashed her a wink that Jill thought was somewhat grudging, like she’d read the old coyote right and actually gotten the jump on him, saved Nina’s life by risking her own. “Fine. You want a car? We’ll get you a car. Someone get him a car, please.”
“I’ll do it,” came Nancy’s voice from somewhere behind Jill.
Nancy trudged off towards the other side of the parking lot, where several black Jeep Liberties were parked in a perfectly straight line. Jill watched her go. It seemed like Nancy was taking her time.
Perhaps stalling for time.
Like maybe Nancy was in tune with the universe tonight, calling forth all its convenient coincidences.
Jill turned back to Romeo and Nina, her gaze drifting past them and then stopping abruptly.
There was movement on the ground amongst the wreckage of the nearest SUV.
Squinting in the darkness, Jill realized it was a person crawling on the ground. She was about to warn Jack when she saw who it was.
Kay Steffen.
Bloodied and bruised, burned and scarred, a piece of tattered duct-tape on her cheek, a fragment of a broken plastic tie around one of her wrists.
And murder in her eyes.
“You son of a bitch,” Kay screamed as she struggled to her feet and threw herself at Romeo from behind. “I’ll fucking kill you for touching me, you filthy piece of—”
Kay’s sentence remained unfinished as Romeo spun around in wild surprise, hitting her in the face with the muzzle of his gun. Kay went staggering backwards, swaying and turning and going down hard onto the asphalt.
Kay was out cold, but her attack had accomplished something useful.
It had gotten Romeo to momentarily step clear of Nina.
“Shoot,” whispered Jill urgently from behind Jack, the word popping out of her almost involuntarily, like perhaps she’d been irrevocably altered by the events of the past day, had completely accepted that the man she loved was someone who’d been trained to kill, to visit violence upon violent men to protect those who deserved his protection.
Jack fired twice, the first bullet hitting Romeo in the chest and spinning him around, the second bullet striking him in the side of the head, right above the ear, blowing out part of his skull like a flying toupee.
He was dead before he hit the asphalt, his body slumping down with a sighing swish of silk and skin.
Jill stared in shock, feeling like she’d pulled the trigger by whispering that urgent word. For one poignant moment she thought she understood what it was like to take a life, to commit the ultimate transgression. She felt it deep in her soul, understood in the dark relief of that moment that these warriors of goodness and righteousness gave a little of their souls each time they took a life for their country. These men took on that burden willingly, but it was one hell of a load to carry.
And it was a privilege to help these men carry that emotional load, Jill thought as a rush of exhilarating insight flooded her insides when Jack turned to her and gathered her into his arms like he understood, like he understood that she understood.
“I get it,” she whispered against his chest, smiling when she saw Fay’s knowing gaze directed her way, like Fay was silently welcoming Jill to the sisterhood of Darkwater women—women who understood that they were taking on the psychic burden of being married to men who were warriors just as much as they were husbands and fathers, that the violence would always simmer hot in their molten cores, that the only thing keeping those red-hot cores stable and balanced was the love of a woman who understood what made them tick, what made them special, what made them love as fiercely as they fought. “Oh, Jack, I get it now. I understand what Hogan and Ice meant when they said their wives knew what kind of men they’d married. And I . . . I think I understand what Fay said about being that kind of woman.”
Jack held her tight against his chest, kissed the top of her head, then grinned and raised an eyebrow when Jill looked up at him. “You mean the kind of woman who’s always pregnant with my babies?” he whispered.
Jill frowned up at him. “I don’t think it’s biologically possible to always be pregnant.”
“Sure it is.” Jack patted Jill tenderly on the backside. “It’s a biological fact. Just like it’s a biological fact that butt-sex always gets you pregnant with twins.” He raised his eyebrows innocently when Jill glared at him. “I didn’t tell you that? Well, no matter. Showing is better than telling.”
Jill pushed him away, flashing him a quick smile before turning her full attention to Nina, who was being tended to by Fay while Nancy and Paige worked on reviving Kay Steffen.
Nina was out of it but all right. Jill helped Fay get Nina into the Jeep that Hogan had just driven over to the group. Ice was bringing over another Jeep.
Benson was on the phone with someone. Nancy was saying something to Paige. Keller and Jack were dragging bodies and piling them up in the center of the parking lot. Jill watched in stunned wonder as Keller doused the heap of bodies with flame-accelerant, then tossed a piece of burning wreckage into it, igniting the whole thing like it was totally fine, nothing to see here.
“Um, is that legal?” Jill whispered as Jack walked back to her, slid his arm around her waist, began to lead her to the SUV where Nina was recovering in the backseat.
Jack glanced over at Benson, who was pacing the parking lot and yapping away into the phone. His cane was nowhere to be seen. That limp was nonexistent. Even some of the lines on his face seemed to have cleared up, Jill thought as she and Jack both watched the strange ex-CIA man chatter away like an excited schoolboy, like this was what he lived for, what he was ready to die for.
“John Benson doesn’t operate by the laws of the state,” came Nancy Sullivan’s voice from behind Jill. “He’s got a different rulebook. And so does Darkwater.”
Jill gulped, casting another look at Benson strolling nonchalantly in front of a crackling bonfire of burning bodies. She wanted it to look dark and ominous, terrifying and traumatic. But for some reason it seemed to fit, like things were as they should be, everything in place for the time being, perhaps in place forever.
And I’ve found my place forever, Jill thought as she felt Jack’s arm around her waist, heard the voices of the Darkwater men and women echo around her like ghosts in the shadows.
Shadows which were dark but not from the absence of light.
It was just a different kind of light.
The kind of light that burns from inside.
The kind of light that burns forever.
The light of love.
The Darkwater kind of love.
∞