Break the Day - Lara Adrian Page 0,53
care for him.
It was too much. He had taken too much from her, not just at her wrist tonight, but from the moment he first met her.
Now this. The connection he would have to her for as long as either of them lived.
Fuck.
Angrily, he forced himself to release her, sweeping his tongue over the twin punctures and sealing them closed.
He sat up, taking a quick inventory of himself. Beneath the healing light of Devony’s blood, he still hurt like hell. His skin still felt as if it were being stripped off him with a hot knife, but he was breathing. He was alive.
Thanks to Devony, he was alive.
Remorse clawed at him. Not because he didn’t want her gift, but because of the regret she would bear once she realized he didn’t deserve it.
Scowling, he glanced at her. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Her expression faltered a bit. Some of the bright intensity of her emotions dimmed in the face of his stony response.
He couldn’t help it. Guilt sank its talons into him as she stared at him in the silence of the vehicle.
The best way he knew how to ensure her gift wasn’t wasted on him was to do everything in his power to see her family avenged and Opus Nostrum destroyed. He wasn’t going to rest until it was done.
“Slide over,” he said, already opening the passenger door. “I’ll drive now.”
He hoofed it around to the other side and climbed in. They were a few miles out from the center of Boston. Rafe sped back toward the drop location.
He was all but certain the few minutes’ detour while he came back online had probably given Cruz ample time to transfer the crates to LaSalle or whoever was actually at the other end of the supply-and-demand chain. So, he couldn’t have been more pleased to see the delivery truck still parked at Atlantic Wharf.
Except . . . something wasn’t right.
“Rafe,” Devony murmured from beside him.
“Yeah. I know.” There was no activity near the truck. When he saw the massive hole punched through the windshield, he arched a brow at Devony.
She gave him a flat look. “I should’ve killed Cruz while I had his throat in my fist.”
Rafe parked the sedan in front of the other vehicle. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay here.”
“Like hell I will.”
She jumped out with him and together they approached the truck. They both smelled blood long before they saw the bodies of Cruz, Fish, and Ocho. All three had been shot execution-style.
The corpses were cold. Whoever had done the killings had been gone for some time.
And all of the crates of liquid UV were missing.
“Oh, my God,” Devony murmured. “Do you think LaSalle double-crossed them?”
Rafe shook his head. “I don’t know. Fish said the crates belonged to an arms dealer. Apparently, LaSalle’s contact needed someone to play middleman.”
“Expendables,” Devony guessed.
Rafe nodded. “Yeah, but this seems more professional than payback from a local gun runner. I’ve seen this kind of carnage before. A few months ago in Montreal, after an Opus death squad took out a pharmaceutical tycoon and his entire estate.”
“There’s LaSalle’s yacht,” she said, pointing toward the marina. Light glowed from the windows of the massive white vessel docked at the end of a long pier. “He’s still here.”
Rafe didn’t like the look of it. Or the smell. If the area around the truck reeked of death, LaSalle’s yacht carried the stench of a slaughterhouse.
“Opus’s assassins have been here too,” he muttered.
He didn’t like the idea of Devony approaching the yacht alongside him, but she’d already demonstrated that she wasn’t the type of partner to take a backseat when faced with danger.
And thank God for that earlier tonight.
His skin still felt like hell, but it didn’t slow him down as they crept up on LaSalle’s vessel and cautiously boarded it.
The place was silent except for the chatter of a sports telecast blaring from somewhere in the main cabin. Armed bodyguards had been shot at point-blank range in the head. Crew members had suffered similar fates, some with their throats slashed. Rafe moved quickly through the cabin, his ear trained to the faint rasp of fading breaths and the slowing tick of a dying heart.
“It’s LaSalle,” Devony said.
The man lay in the main salon of the yacht with several other of his crew. Blood painted everything, including the large-screen TV on the other side of the luxurious living space.
Rafe hunkered down next to Judah LaSalle. “Tell me who you’re working for.”
All he got was a