you’ll just hafta trust me,” Bran said.
“Fuck that,” the tyrant spat. “And fuck you.”
“Oh, eh.” Bran laughed. “Not even on your birthday, sunshine.”
“We’re not giving you our weapons, asshole,” the tyrant snarled.
“What we have here,” Bran said, and Maddy silently finished the sentence with him, “is a failure to communicate.” Cool Hand Luke.
“I could drop you where you stand,” Dustin the Tyrant warned.
“I’d so like to see you try,” Bran answered with a feral-sounding snort.
Maddy wanted to scream her head off. Enough with the dick-measurin’ contest, you idiots!
But she didn’t scream. In fact nobody screamed. Not a word was spoken. Not a breath was taken. The island itself seemed to be holding perfectly still, waiting, anticipating. She couldn’t see the moon from inside the gunpowder magazine house, but she knew it was shining down on the men, a watchful spectator of events to come.
Finally, Bran said, “Look, I’m being magnanimous here and giving you two choices. You can drop your weapons, tell us where you’ve stashed the girls, and leave this island alive and well. Or you can keep your weapons, keep your secrets, and leave this island in a body bag. I’m happy either way.”
“You seem to be miscountin’ again,” the Southerner piped up. “There’s three of us and only one of you.”
“Man, you seriously need to get your eyes checked.” Mason’s low voice rumbled from the opposite direction. Maddy reckoned he’d skirted around the other side of the magazine house to come up behind the bad guys. He and Bran were quite a pair. And, boy howdy, she was glad they were on her side.
“Shit,” the third guy cursed, probably after having glanced over his shoulder to find Mason taking aim at his head.
Yessiree, boys, Maddy thought with a savage, frantic sort of glee. That’s what you might call bein’ stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bran being the rock and Mason being the hard place, of course.
“Don’t try it,” Bran rumbled. His voice had all the gravity and solemnity of someone speaking at a funeral.
Try what? Oh! She so wanted to peek her head out and see what the heckfire was going on.
“I’m serious,” Bran continued. “I won’t hesitate to turn you into an organ donor. There’s a real shortage of assholes lately, so I hear.”
And Maddy suddenly had the distinct urge not only to peek her head out, but to march out there and wring Bran’s neck. He was baiting them. Egging them on almost as if he wanted a reason to—BOOM! The sound of a shot echoed around the fort and inside the magazine house like an exploding cannonball. She was pretty sure her heart exploded right along with it.
Chapter 12
8:15 p.m.…
The guy with the bad knee is a grade-A, double-D douche canoe.
That was the thought that spun through Mason’s brain when the fuckface squeezed off a shot that flew by Bran’s head and stuck in the brick corner of the old gunpowder magazine house.
Bran returned fire without flinching. Two shots. Both hit Bad Knee center mass, dropping the man in under two seconds.
Mason sighted down his barrel as he readied himself to take out the remaining masked men. But they took one look at their buddy and tossed their rifles to the ground.
Now, not every decision Mason had ever made in the midst of a gun battle was one of moral clarity. But this one was. There was no way he could justify shooting two unarmed men.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” the one who sounded like he should be skinning squirrels and sipping sweet tea on a porch swing yelled when Bran swung the business end of his M4 in his direction. “We’re unarmed!” He and his pal threw their hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!”
Should’ve given that advice to your buddy, fucknuts.
“Dustin!” Southern Boy shouted, glancing at his squirming friend who was flat on his back, writhing and clutching at the wounds in his chest.
“Forget it,” Mason told him. “He’s a dead man. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
When Bran aimed to kill, he didn’t miss. It was just one of the many things Mason loved about his brother-in-arms.
“Damnit!” the third guy screamed. “I didn’t sign up for any of this shit. It was supposed to be an easy snatch-and-grab. It was supposed to be—”
“Shut up!” Southern Boy snarled.
“Screw you, Luke!”
“Why don’t you both shut the fuck up,” Mason grumbled, having heard enough. An easy snatch-and-grab? So this had been about kidnapping.
“I’d listen to him if I were you,” Bran said, skirting around