Charged

I scrambled to my feet with my weapon clutched in both my hands and made a quick sweep of the room. The guy I hit was out cold and the guy I shot was lying on the floor clutching his leg as blood pumped steadily out of the hole I put there. I made my way over to him and kicked his gun to the side. I cocked my head as I looked at him and asked, “How many more?”

He looked up at me with glazed eyes as his pallor turned from white to gray. I may have hit his femoral artery with my shot, but I didn’t have time to feel bad about that. I nudged him with the toe of my boot and asked again, “How many more of you are in the house?”

His head lolled to the side as his eyes drifted closed and I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer from him any time soon. I swore under my breath and pressed my back to the wall so I could make my way down the hallway towards the front of the house while being as small of a target as possible. I couldn’t believe I missed this … but I did. I was operating on instinct and years of training. It felt good to be doing something, anything, that felt useful and purposeful again. I needed the charge. I needed the threat, and like Rome said, that was seriously no way to live the life I was lucky to still have. I so easily could have been one of my fallen brothers that didn’t even get a chance at anything more.

When I got to the end of the hallway, I caught sight of a reflection in the glass of one of the pictures Darcy had hung on the wall. Brite was on the floor on his side and his hands were tied behind his back. He wasn’t moving but that could be because there was a man in a dark suit, also reflected in the distorted image, who had a nasty-looking revolver pointed at Darcy where she sat crying on the couch.

“Fuck me.” The situation took on a whole other level of seriousness when it wasn’t insurgents taking hostages, but thugs threatening an innocent family. I wasn’t sure which was worse but I knew I couldn’t stand by and let Darcy and Brite get hurt any more than they already were.

“I heard the commotion from the back of the house and my spotter out front hasn’t radioed in. I know you’re there and if you don’t want this pretty lady’s brains splattered all over the couch you’ll throw your gun out so I can see it and then get your ass in here.”

I swore again, this time loud enough that he could hear me. I never liked to give up my weapon, but in this case I didn’t really have much of a choice. I threw the gun down and kicked it across the floor so that it went skidding well into the living room. I shook my head at how quickly things had gone south and lifted my hands up in front of me in the international gesture of surrender as I rounded the corner. I glanced down at Brite and was instantly relieved to see the man’s massive chest moving up and down in even breaths. His eyes were open and furious as he gazed at me with blood dripping down his face from a wicked-looking gash that ran the length of his forehead. I knew the badass biker wouldn’t go down without a fight.

The man with the gun shook his head back at me and gave me a grin that made my skin crawl. “I can’t believe you actually tossed the gun away. That’s an amateur move and I’m gonna make sure the girl pays for not following orders.”

I heard Brite growl from his position on the floor and Darcy started crying harder.

I dropped my hands so that they were hanging loosely at my hips and lifted my brows up at the cocky intruder. “No, an amateur move is bringing a single weapon into an unknown situation with an unknown number of hostiles.”

Before he could fire off the shot that I knew was coming as his finger twitched on the trigger, I pulled out the other pistol I had stashed behind my back and fired first. I hit the guy in the shoulder and the gun he was holding fell uselessly to the ground. I hurried across the room and tackled the man to the floor before he could regain his wits about him and reach for the weapon again. I punched him in the face hard enough that I heard my knuckles crack. He gurgled a trickle of blood out of the side of his mouth, and let out a pitiful little moan. Satisfied he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, I climbed to my feet and asked Darcy where I could find some rope to tie all the intruders up with.

She was a blubbery mess and couldn’t respond but Brite barked out that he had a whole stash of zip-ties in the garage. I made short work of the guy in the back hallway and bypassed the one that I was pretty sure had bled out. When I jerked the guy’s arm with the bullet hole in it he screamed in agony and called me a lot of really colorful names. By the time I had them all situated, Rome burst through the front door followed by a pretty redheaded woman dressed in police blues.

They both gave pause as they took in the bloody but handled situation as Rome visibly shook himself back into action as he made his way over to Brite to work on getting him free.

“I’m calling this in. Ask the guy that’s still conscious if he knows where the guys that grabbed Avett are going.”

The redheaded cop disappeared back out the front door while she was talking into the radio pinned to her shoulder.

Brite leaped to his feet and went to work untying his lady. His dark eyes shifted between us with an intensity only a person that had been to war or a parent that had a child in danger could manifest.

“I need to call Quaid. He might know where she would take them. I have to get her back.”

Rome put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and told him solemnly, “We will. There isn’t any other option.” Brite nodded and started frantically poking at the phone that he had clutched in his hand.

Rome turned to me with narrowed eyes and asked in a voice so low that only I could hear him, “You really fucking miss this?”