7. Easton
Easton
The image of Gwen, wide-eyed in that jumpsuit and bound like a hostage, keeps flashing like strobes behind my eyelids as I search the hangar, looking for something to use to kill twenty-plus people.
Every instinct in me wanted to run, grab her, and never let go. But she had a Glock and a bolt-action rifle aimed her way. I never would have made it in time.
I dump tools onto the bench and sort through them, searching for something to bludgeon someone to death. Hammer is my best bet. My hands go still when I realize I have eyes on me.
Zoey walks into the hangar, taking cautious steps as if I’m radioactive. Might as well be. My fuse is beyond lit, and I’m about to go get a whole lot of blood on my hands. Anything to save her. To hear her voice again. To see her light up the world just by existing.
“You know?” The question comes out small and nervous, which isn’t the norm for her.
“Yeah. I. Know.” I punctuate each word, furious and frustrated and ready to blow.
She lowers the hood of her red rain jacket and continues her slow approach. “I don’t understand what she’s doing here.”
“Neither do I,” I seethe. “But I couldn’t help her.” I press a hand over my heart as it tries to escape my chest. I can’t calm my mind, pulse, or body. The bourbon stopped numbing me the second I set eyes on Gwen. A burst of adrenaline is now hissing through my veins.
“You did the right thing. We have to think our way through this.”
“Think?” I bark out a dark laugh. “No.” I close the space between us in two quick strides. “Only kill. We kill our way through this.” I fling my hat to the floor and rake my hands through my hair.
“We can’t exactly burn the place down to get to her.”
“The idea of setting something on fire did cross my mind.” Like Jezebel and her death squad. That’d be a good start. “You understand what that woman will do to her, right?”
“She didn’t take her to the cabin.”
“But that doesn’t mean she won’t—”
“She’s in building B.” She folds her arms over her chest, breathing normally compared to my out-of-control everything. “In an interrogation room. The only one with Wi-Fi. Room nineteen. I assume Jezebel needs something cyber-related from her.”
I shut my eyes for a second, trying to get a grip to do what Zoey suggested. Think. Because I’m truly operating in “kill first and ask questions later” mode. “How, dammit? How did they get her? And what are the chances she’s brought here? To where we are?”
Maybe if I hadn’t walked away from Gwen last month, she wouldn’t have been taken?
My eyes flash open at the memory of Wyatt’s trident tracker charm. “Her bracelet. She never takes it off. Wyatt and Falcon have to be en route here now.”
“Jezebel is thorough. She’d never let Gwen come to this island wearing jewelry. She’s probably in that jumpsuit because she was stripped of everything.”
Stripped.
My stomach knots. I’m going to be sick. If those fuckers put their hands on her . . .
“Jezebel wouldn’t let her wear anything that could double as a tracker.
She wouldn’t take the chance.” She opens her palms to the hangar like a reminder.
“She doesn’t even allow surveillance cameras here.
Nothing that can be hacked or tracked. You know that.
” She lifts her jacket to show the old Motorola radio attached to her hip.
“Hell, only a few of us are even allowed to carry these.”
I force my jaw to unclench and scan the hangar again, ensuring we’re still alone. “We have to go to her. Now.”
She lifts her chin toward my bench. “You find an M4 hiding in that toolbox? Because there are currently twenty-three armed men, plus Jezebel, on-site. And I clocked eight of them between room nineteen and the exit.” She pauses to let that news sink in.
Eight or eighty, doesn’t matter. I’ll be going after her no matter what.
“Jezebel says I’m finally going to meet the boss. She wants me to come with you. She moved up the timeline. We fly out in two hours.”
I scoff. “If you think for one damn minute I’m going to wait until the flight—”
“I’ve already run the odds. Almost every path leads to—”
“Hell?” I grunt.
“Our demise.”
“You said almost every path . . .” I dig a stick of gum from my pocket as my gaze drifts to the jet I’ve spent weeks flying, its metal skin gleaming under the floodlights. I toss my gum wrapper in the bin and walk over and set my fingers against the aluminum flank.
“I’m pretty sure she plans to kill us once she gets what she wants from Gwen. Kill her, too.”
“Are you saying Jezebel knows who we really are?” I turn toward her, finding her crouching to pick up my hat.
“I think so. Why else would Jezebel have told me right in front of Gwen to have sex with you?”
The blood rushes from my face. “She what?”
“She knows us well enough to realize the thought of us having sex would upset Gwen.”
Now isn’t the time to tell her Gwen doesn’t care who I’m sleeping with, but . . .
I take my hat from her, squeezing the brim between my palms. “Why are we still walking around free, then?”
“I don’t get that part.” She blows out a deep breath.
“Unless she assumes we’ll wait to make our escape with Gwen.
Attempt a controlled crash to escape. But she’ll probably have the plane rigged to go down before we have a chance.
I wouldn’t put it past her to sacrifice her own men to take us all out. ”
The crash from August makes an immediate return to my mind. No way am I going down again. “Yeah, well, waiting isn’t something we’ll be doing. Not a fucking chance.”
I scan the hangar again, wishing I could pull off some MacGyver shit with what I have in here, but my mind is too black and white for that kind of out-of-the-box thinking.
“Why not just put two in our heads now? Why go to the trouble with a crash? Some type of setup?”
“All I know is we’re still alive. As to why? My guess is as good as yours.” She tilts her head in the direction of the complex where building B is located. “Gwen’s strong. She’ll hold out.”
“Jezebel’s creative in getting people to do what she wants.
Every minute counts here.” I put my hat back on, forward facing.
“We go now. No time to think and plan. No strategizing. Just fucking go.” I start for my bench, but she secures her hand around my arm, and I stop.
“If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.
” I glance over at her. “I get it. It’s dangerous. But you won’t be stopping me.”
She leans in closer, studying me. “How much more did you drink while you were in here?”
“Consider me sobered up the second I set eyes on Gwen in this hellhole.”
Her brows tighten for a second, then she releases her hold of me. “Fine. We’ll move in silently and fast before they know we’re coming. We get her out of the room first and pick off everyone on the way out. We go by foot to our safe house.”
We already have a preplanned emergency escape route. A contingency for ourselves if our covers are ever blown. That plan was never meant to involve killing everyone first for it to work, though.
“This op, this mission, has always been about this moment. We just didn’t know it until now,” I say steadily.
“Whether we’ve been played from the beginning because your source set us up .
. . or it’s fate we’re in the right place at the right time, I don’t know.
” I curl my fingers into my palms as a chill rolls down my back, reminding me of the lash marks there.
Marks I couldn’t give two shits about at this point.
Bring on the pain. Fuck it. “We’re getting her out alive and untouched, am I clear? ”
She’s quiet for a few seconds before murmuring, “And here I thought you were fresh out of faith. Looks like you’re now asking me to have some.”