“Tell me who is backing you, and we’ll talk,” I reply.
“I fucking can’t.”
“I can make you,” I say conversationally. I wasn’t lying when I told Cassie I didn’t torture people. I don’t, generally. This piece of shit, though, he’s working with someone else, and that puts everything Andrius and I have planned moving forward into jeopardy.
“Nothing you can do to me would be worse than what they will do to me. You can’t make me talk. But I can go back to them and let them know we’ve struck a deal.”
“You want me to work with you, after you came for what’s mine?” I say incredulously. “You know what? I have people all up in your life right now. I’ll find out. I don’t need you.”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” He laughs. “You do need me because you need an intermediary with them, trust me. You don’t want these fuckers coming after you ever.”
“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you,” I tell him. “This is for Cassie, and for Andrius’ broken nose.” I fire off a rapid round dead center into his chest.
He goes down fast and hard. Blood spills from his mouth, and he gurgles and he tries to speak. I turn my attention to Marcus. He’s bleeding heavily.
“You need to hold on; I’m calling the paramedics,” I tell him.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m dead anyway. Aram’s backers will figure out I betrayed him if I’m the only man of his to survive.”
“You’re not fucking dying on my watch,” I tell him as Andrius joins us.
Bohdan gets out of the truck and walks toward us. Out of the corner of my eye movement registers. I whip my head around to see the trunk of the front car pop open and two men rear up, semi-automatic weapons in hand.
Everything slows, the way it does in war when you have to make a split second decision. Bohdan reaches for his pistol. Andrius raises the M16 he’s holding, and I grab my gun. I aim at the men, haphazard as it is, and fire. I can’t tell if it’s me or Andrius who hits the first one, but he screams and falls out of the car onto the ground. Bohdan hits the second right between his eyes.
“Fuck me, how many men did he bring?” I ask Marcus.
“He figured out I’d betrayed him when the floodlights came on, and before I could do anything about it, he’d gutted me like a pig,” he says.
I look at the knife wound, gingerly lifting his t-shirt and see it is much worse than Cassie’s was.
“Feel sick, cold,” he says.
“Paramedics are on their way,” Alexei informs me as he walks to us.
“Good because Marcus needs one and so does Luka.”
“Luka?” Liam has joined us and stares up at the house.
“He’s going to be okay, but some grenade fragments got him. Lower legs, not enough to do any real damage, but he’ll need cleaning up.”
“Fuck!” Liam races into the house, and I turn to Marcus.
“In about five minutes an ambulance is going to be here to take you to the hospital. Are you sure this is cleared with British Intelligence, or someone else very highly placed, because in about ten minutes, this place is going to be crawling with police.”
“It’s covered,” he gasps. “On their way now. No trouble for you.”
Some of Aram’s men are still alive. Their pained groans fill the night air.
Andrius looks at me, and I get what he’s thinking. It’s cold as fuck, but if we let them live, they’ll only be a danger to us going forward. I nod once, and he does in return, then he goes to the men, and one by one puts bullets in them. He puts more in them than is needed, and I remember him saying he wants to put the fear of God into our enemies.
War. Sooner or later, if you fight, you’re going to lose. The only good war is no war at all.
I’ve finally come to understand how true those words are now that I have something in my life that means everything to me.
Cassie. I think of her in the basement and want to be with her. I won’t leave Marcus, though. Not until he’s being assessed by the paramedics. Never leave a man in the field.
Once he’s safely on his way to the hospital, and this mess is cleaned up, I’m going to get my