asshole, too, because as I scan the shadows, I hear Hazel’s voice. “You’re my shadow,” she’s whispering. “Always there, watching over me. Will you always be there, Carlo?”
This has never happened before, a woman intruding on a job. I find I can’t shut her out of my head, so I do the next best thing. I relegate her to a small corner in my mind and give the rest of myself to the job. Maybe that’s what men overseas do, how they get through combat without going crazy thinking about their wife and kids.
No shots have been fired by the time we reach the main bulk of the warehouse.
I hold up a finger, listening. There’s some rustling on the other side of the door. It sounds like footsteps. I’m about to indicate for Ubert to kick the door in while I cover him when—shit—a metal cylinder slides through a hole in a nearby window. It lands with a metal clunk-clunk. I have just enough time to identify it as a flash-bang grenade before it goes off.
Searing white light hits me.
“Down!” I roar, dropping onto my belly, trying to see past the searing glow, trying to listen past the agonizing ringing in my ears.
I hear scuttling feet in front of me and throw myself forward, not wanting to shoot just in case it’s an ally. My body catches the man. Something metal smashes against my bulletproof vest. Ah, handcuffs. These pricks were going to try to kidnap us.
The irony isn’t lost, even as a grim, deadly part of me chuckles maniacally. Big mistake.
The haze is clearing as I grab the handcuffs and pummel them into the man’s throat. Behind us, the gunfight has finally begun. The Irish must’ve had security cameras surrounding the building, hidden ones that didn’t come up on Nario’s sweep. Racing thoughts—kill this man, is Ubert okay, Hazel, Hazel—rush through my head. I ignore them all.
I fight.
The man chokes on the handcuffs. I grab his wrist as he makes to punch me in the face. With a jarring snap, I wrench it upward. Bone cracks. He yelps and his pistol falls to the floor. As the fog clears, I notice he has a clover tattoo under his eye. I grab his shoulders, flip him, wrap my arm around his throat and squeeze so tight the wound on my forearm begins to pulse.
Ubert is on the floor beside me, wrestling in a messy tussle of limbs with an Irishman.
“Go to sleep,” I growl in the man’s ear. “Or die. Your choice.”
He chooses the former option, my choke cutting off the air to his brain. He slumps like a rag doll.
“Lift him up,” I grunt to Ubert.
“Boss,” he pants.
He lets out a roar as he extends his arms, pushing the Irishman into the air. I place a well-aimed kick under his chin. He splutters blood and crashes against the wall. I kick him again, this time in the belly.
“Cuff the other one before he wakes up,” I say, hefting my pistol.
My rifle fell away in the fight. I see that the scope is busted. That really pisses me off.
This Irishman is short and red-haired and really does look like a fucking leprechaun. His eyes stray to the pistol at his hip. “Does that seem like a good idea to you?” I ask him. “Ubert, you good back there?”
“He ain’t going nowhere, boss,” Ubert calls back.
“Good. Come cuff this one, too, before I lose my patience and paint the wall with his insides.”
“Boss. Sounds like one hell of a fight out there.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t miss out.”
“The Elephant never forgets,” the leprechaun grunts. “Remember that, Carlo.”
“All this talk about forgetting, and you expect me to remember?”
The man smiles. I don’t like the look of it one bit. It’s a sadist’s smile. “Does your cripple sister remember? What about your ugly whore of a—Ah!”
The barrel of my pistol catches him across the jaw. A tooth flies from his mouth, landing with an oddly loud ping noise. I stand up as Ubert cuffs his slumped-over body and pick up my rifle. Detaching the sights, I nod at Ubert and then at the door.
“Time for some mayhem.”
“Wouldn’t expect anything less.” Ubert grins. “We’re gonna do these bastards like they—”
He grunts as buckshot takes him in the bulletproof vest. An explosion of glass to the left—two leaping figures from the window—an arm around my throat and I’m being dragged backward, watching as the men descend on Ubert, one of them bringing a knife to his