* * *
My headlights cut through the darkness like a knife through butter as I approach the two spots of bright yellow beacons amid the trees. My heart is thumping in rhythm to the rumbling of my bike, and I can feel the brothers watching, ready to pounce on our prey all around me. It’s a heady feeling. It makes me feel invincible. Sure, this could be considered dangerous. But with them watching my back it really is not.
So I hardly slow as I reach the end of the dirt road and come into the clearing. The bright floodlights are shining directly into my eyes and all I see are the legs and shadows of the men waiting for me. Five of them are standing in a straight line facing me.
“I’m here, Gazz,” I yell as I turn off the engine and dismount. “Where’s Veronica?”
Only harsh laughter answers me. Gazz’s most likely because there’s a frantic note to it. A note of fear. He’s a coward. That’s why he just started shooting at the truck stop without so much as a, “How do you do?” And that’s why he’s not shooting at me now. Just as Cross predicted. He wants to trade my life for his and the idiot thinks that’s a possibility.
“I knew he’d come,” he says to the men with him, amid chuckles that sound like he’s choking. “You Devils always come running when there’s a woman in trouble involved.”
He says it like it’s a bad thing, a thing to be ashamed of, but I’ve always been kind of proud of that side of what my MC does. It balances out the bad we do nicely, just like my father always said.
“Yeah, whatever,” I say. “So where is she?”
“Grab him,” Gazz yells and the feet around him start kicking up dust as they scramble to obey.
But it’s nothing compared to the dust raised by my own brothers as they come, blowing in like a whooshing storm wind.
The two floodlights go out with a pop and fizzle at the same time, and a sound much like the dying squeal of a pig tells me at least one of the snipers is down too, but most likely both are.
Bright red spots from staring at the floodlights too long are all I really see now so I don’t even bother with my night-vision goggles as I rush towards the spot Gazz was at before the lights went dark.
He’s not there anymore.
“Get them,” I hear him say to someone a little to my left and Veronica’s scream of, “No!” freezes my blood with its desperate terror.
The growls, yells, cries and thumps of battle are raging all around me, but her voice cut through it all like a siren, filling my chest with joy as much as fear. While Gazz used her as bait to lure me here, nothing was actually stopping him from killing her before I got here.
I run towards her scream, fumbling with my night-vision goggles. I manage to put them on just in time to see her kick the knee of the stocky man dragging her towards the tree line with his arm around her throat. He releases her, cursing and groaning, clutching his knee with one hand and raising his gun to point it at her with the other. I reach him before he even has it half the way up.
He goes down under my weight, groaning as the air is knocked out of his lungs. I punch him in the face a few times to make him stop squirming, relieve him of his gun and shoot him in the head. It only takes a couple of moments, two minutes tops.
When I get off the dead guy, Veronica isn’t where I last saw her. She’s trying to run into the thick trees bordering the clearing, but she’s limping, bent double, and going much slower than she wants to be.
I sprint after her. “Veronica, stop. It’s alright. It’s me. You’re safe now.”
She turns to me and falls into my arms, breathing, “Chance. Ariel. My sister…”
She has to pause and take a deep breath.
“What’s the matter? Were you shot? Stabbed?”
She shakes her head at me. “Gazz. He grabbed my sister and dragged her into the trees. I have to save her.”
She pulls away from me, almost falling to her knees as she loses the support of my arms. I catch her just in time.
“I’ll get her back for you,” I say.
Even in the reversed, bright green against black, night-vision colors she looks grateful. And defiant.
“What’s going on?” Edge says carefully beside me. “Is she wounded?”
“I saw her sister dragged away,” Ruin adds breathlessly as he sprints up to us.
“Yeah, and I’m going after them,” I say.
“We all are,” Ruin asserts and Edge grunts his agreement.