“Chaya, join her.” She could feel it now, that veil of complete emotionlessness. The hardening of the shields around her soul, the determination to kill rather than be killed or have those she was protecting killed.
“You join her.” Chaya’s tone was identical.
There was no way she was going to be able to convince her mother to get in that safe room.
“If they hit, once Bliss is secure, get to my room,” Chaya told her. “We have a reasonably safe exit from the house.”
Angel’s finger slid to the trigger.
The walls were secured against most incoming gunfire, but not the windows. They’d try to shock with taking the windows out first, then they’d come through the door. If they’d been watching the house as she suspected then they knew the kitchen was the central gathering point of the house.
“Pull back to the hall,” Angel told her. “Once they hit, it’s going to be hard and fast. I can’t pull Ethan or Duke up on the comms. We have to be as close as possible. Go.”
Angel kept her eyes on the sunlit beauty outside them, feeling the waves of ugly maliciousness coming their way. They weren’t just after Bliss now; they were after vengeance.
Staying low, Chaya moved across the kitchen, heading for the hall. Once she passed behind her, Angel went to the floor and quickly crawled past the window.
She’d just come to her feet when it came, and it didn’t start with gunfire.
“Go!” she screamed as the grenade tore through the window and shades first.
She threw herself across the room, taking Chaya down and dragging her into the hall a second before it exploded.
They were both on their feet, grabbed Bliss, and within a heartbeat had her at the safe room. Chaya hit the palm pad and they waited what seemed forever for the door to pop open.
Angel pushed Bliss inside, and just as she went to pull back felt the force of the shove at her back that sent her toppling inside the room with her sister.
“No. No.” Scrambling to her feet she found herself staring at the steel door as it locked in place, securing her with Bliss, leaving her mother out there, alone. “Damn you, no!” The scream was one of anguish as she threw herself at the door, her fists hitting it, knees weakening as she realized how easily she’d let herself be fooled by her mother.
“I didn’t see that coming.” Bliss sounded as shocked as Angel did. “I should have. I really should have, Angel. But I didn’t see that coming.”
Angel should have seen it coming, too. She was sloppy. She’d been too confident, too concerned with protecting Bliss.
She closed her eyes and slid to the floor, allowing the rifle to rest against the carpet as she leaned against the door.
She’d failed. . . .
She was only barely aware of Dawg’s voice coming through the communications setup on the wall or Bliss’s quick responses. The teenager wasn’t crying, but her voice was strained and hoarse with fear. Dawg was assuring they were coming. Just minutes away. Just minutes away . . .
And Angel was locked in a room with no exit until others arrived. Her mother was out there, possibly alone, facing only God knew what without backup. And Duke was out there. He hadn’t answered her tap. He’d be expecting her to cover his ass and she wouldn’t be in place.
She’d failed both of them. . . .
TWENTY-ONE
Chaya could hear the back door shattering as she slid into her bedroom and locked the heavy door carefully. The wooden look of the steel door wasn’t as heavy as the one on the safe room, but it would give her a minute.
She could hear gunfire outside, shouted voices, both English and Russian, and her only thought was to reach Natches.
He should have been at the house before the attack. He and Duke were supposed to pull back to the house if they saw a threat. And they hadn’t pulled back. There hadn’t been so much as a warning that anything was coming before that damned grenade was launched into the kitchen.
Running across the bedroom she paused only long enough to check outside the window for a threat before throwing the shade open and unlocking it. She was pushing the lower frame up when the first thump against the door reached her.
The door was stronger than most, but it would only take a few good hard kicks to bust past the reinforced doorframe. Natches had built the house for security, but not for a sustained force.
Another crash against the door and she heard the warning crack of the doorframe. She didn’t hesitate.
She jumped through the window, throwing herself to the ground before rolling and coming to her feet.
The blast that sounded stopped her in her tracks and sent her stumbling back a step or two rather than pushing off into a run.
She felt the bullet slam into her chest in a distant, hazy sort of way.
There was no pain.
She’d always imagined there would be pain, an agony unlike anything she’d known. Instead, it was just a rather distant ache as all the strength seemed to flow out of her body.
She looked down, saw the quickly spreading scarlet stain on the front of her once pristine white shirt as she felt her knees hit the dirt.
Slow motion.
How completely cliché, but everything was moving in slow motion.
Lifting her eyes she stared across the yard to the tall, dark-haired male that stood just inside the natural fence. Ice-blue eyes stared at her with hatred, a deep scar cutting across his cheek, the gun in his hand pointing to her head, his finger on the trigger. It wasn’t enough to shoot her in the heart, she guessed; he was going to put a bullet in her brain as well.
She’d never imagined she’d die like this.
The shot that echoed through her senses didn’t even cause her to flinch as she waited for the blow. Instead, she watched as the side of his head just exploded. Blood, flesh, and brain matter flew in all directions as the body was thrown backward.
“Natches . . .” She whispered his name, the weakness that swept through her legs now spreading through her body as she felt herself swaying on her knees. “Natches . . .”
Her talisman. Her soul.
She didn’t want to leave him. She wasn’t ready to leave him. Life with him was always filled with so much laughter and unexpected adventure. And they’d promised each other they’d live to be old enough to torture their great-grandchildren.
She was breaking her promise.
She didn’t want to leave Bliss or Angel.
She’d only just found her baby. . . .
She could hear more gunfire, hear Natches screaming her name, his voice broken, his arms catching her as she began to topple to the ground.
She stared up at him as he laid her back gently, horror, stark, agonizing pain contorting his face as tears began to fall from emerald eyes.
“No! No! Don’t you do this to me!” he screamed, his face enraged, his eyes like green fire. “Don’t you leave me. Don’t you dare.”
She lifted her hand to touch the tears falling from his eyes. They were so hot, and she was so cold.
“I love you . . . so much. . . .” she whispered, fighting to breathe.
It hurt now. Oh God, it hurt so bad now.
Something pushed against her chest, someone. But she couldn’t look away from her wild man, the man that held the very depths of her soul.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, touching her face, his fingers so warm and filled with life. “Oh God . . . I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
Agony lanced her chest as hard hands held her down, forced her to stay to the ground when she would have heaved up from the agony.
“Angel . . .” she gasped. “Don’t let her blame herself . . . please. . . .”
Her daughter, both her daughters, they’d blame themselves.
“Bliss . . . make her talk . . . don’t let her hide. . . .” There were so many things she n
eeded to tell him about Bliss.
He had to stop with the convent crap. He had to start listening to their daughter. He had to let her grow up.
There was so much he needed to know, and there was no time.
“No, by God, I won’t do that for you,” he snarled down at her. “You’re giving up. You will not give up on me. If you die, Chaya Mackay, I’ll follow you. They’ll bury me in that fucking box beside you. Right beside you where I belong.”
Panic. Disbelief.
Pain struck at her chest again, nearly stealing her breath forever before she forced it back into her heaving lungs.
“No . . . Bliss . . .” she tried to protest. He couldn’t leave Bliss, too.
And Angel would need him.
Declan . . .
“You’re giving up on her for both of us.” Fury filled his face. “Live or die, you make the choice.”
“Bliss . . . Angel . . .” she gasped, fighting for air, fighting to breathe as she felt a strange, painless lassitude begin to steal over her.
“Make the choice. . . .” He wouldn’t relent; she knew he wouldn’t. He would die with her and she wouldn’t be able to stop him.
“Momma . . .” Angel seemed to just drop to her knees beside Natches, her eyes wide, so filled with horror, with guilt and shame.
No . . . God, no . . .
“I’m so sorry,” Angel whispered, her face white, and for the first time, Chaya saw herself. “Oh God, Momma, please . . . I’m so sorry. . . . Don’t leave me now. . . . Please don’t leave me now.”
So long ago, when Chaya was young and too damned dumb to walk away from the military, she had been Angel. So determined, so filled with a wild rage and fury because so much had been taken away from her. She’d lost her baby, forced herself to walk away from Natches, and all she’d had was the fight.
Her daughter looked just like her at that age, too. The shape of her eyes, the arch of her brow, the curve of her chin. So stubborn and so determined. Her mini-me. Her baby.
“I’m so sorry,” Angel whispered again.
Bliss was screaming in the background, hysterical, her voice broken, begging her.
Chaya felt the tears that escaped her eyes, felt the weakness growing in her body.
“No . . .” Not yet. She couldn’t go yet.
She gasped for air, but there wasn’t enough. She fought to breathe, but it was so cold now, and she couldn’t make her body obey, couldn’t make it work.
Not yet. Oh God, not yet . . .
She couldn’t make herself breathe, but she didn’t feel like she was suffocating. She felt like she was drifting. Just drifting. She wanted to cry out in fear, but everything was so distant, so hazy. She wanted to hold on, she really did. For Natches, for her daughters.
Darkness rolled over her, waves of it, stealing her will, taking her, just taking her away.
Terror washed over her and for a moment, a single heartbreaking moment, she mourned everything she was losing.
She was just . . . gone.
Four hours later
Lexington, Kentucky
Angel stood still, silent. Her back rested against the white wall of the hospital waiting room, her gaze focused on the identical wall across from her. She looked as devastated as he felt, Natches reflected, watching her. Her face stark white, her eyes like storm clouds rolling over the mountains. And she just stood there. In the hours since the chopper Doogan had ordered had deposited them on the hospital roof, just minutes after Life Flight had turned Chaya over to the surgeons and they’d been shown to the waiting room, Angel hadn’t moved.
“Mom’s going to be fine,” Bliss said, not for the first time from where she sat next to him, her head on his chest as he held her against him. “I know she is, Dad.”
But he didn’t know it. For once, he couldn’t look into the future and know for a fact that when the sun rose in the morning, she’d be there with him, if nothing else, somewhere in the world.
Breathing. Living.
There was this cold, aching hole in his heart where his wife had resided since the day he’d pulled her from certain death all those years ago. Even after she’d disappeared on him for five cold, lonely years, he’d felt her there, holding him back from the brink of the dark, murderous fury he knew would have eventually ensnared him.
And now, he couldn’t feel her there.
He couldn’t have imagined ever feeling this alone in his life. Even as a boy suffering beneath his father’s abuses, he hadn’t felt so adrift in the world.
He tightened his arms around Bliss, wondering how the hell he could go on if he lost his heart. If death stole her from him, how could he bear it? How could he go on for his daughter and still function?
He didn’t think he could. Not even for the child he knew would depend on him.
“Dad? You need coffee or anything?” Declan asked from the seat next to him.
Declan. He’d been a half-wild kid born of an American serviceman and Afghani mother killed a few years after his birth. Orphaned, he’d been watching half-starved goats when he’d seen a helicopter land in a small Taliban encampment where a pretty blonde had been carried, kicking and screaming, into a stone building. He’d immediately used the radio a soldier at one of the bases had given him and sent out an SOS. Natches had been only a few miles away, and he’d been curious.
“Dad?” Declan’s voice firmed when Natches didn’t answer him.
He shook his head. He didn’t want coffee. He wanted Chaya to hang on, to live. If nothing else, for him.
“You made me live when I lost Beth, and for a while I think I hated you for that. . . .” Her words drifted through his mind, the memory of her brown eyes filled with so much love and with so much loss as they lay together in his bed, wrapped around each other, warming each other.
“I loved you. I love you forever, Chay.” He stared into her eyes, giving her the only thing he had, himself.
A hint of confusion touched her expression. “You whispered that in my dreams.”
“I whispered that into the darkness.” He sighed as he held her to his heart. “No matter where it found me. I sent it to you a thousand times a day. God, Chaya, every breath I took was a thought of you. . . .”
“Mom’s going to be okay,” Bliss repeated. “You’ll see, Dad.”
Her voice was hoarse from her screams that morning. She’d fought Dawg like a wild thing, screaming for her mother, for him. And Natches hadn’t been able to comfort her, just as he hadn’t been able to keep Chaya with him.
“Come on, Sister Mary Bliss.” Declan rose to his feet, his voice gentle as he teased her. “Let’s go get a donut and a soda.”
Declan had a weakness for donuts and sodas. Keeping that boy’s teeth from rotting out had been a full-time job when he first came to them, Natches remembered. Chaya had fussed at the boy, took him to the dentist, and when they’d put braces on him she’d sympathized and fussed some more.
She had made him her son. She had mothered him, loved him, and when he asked her why, she’d told him it was because he was her son. Did she need any other reason?
And that night, she’d cried for the daughter she’d lost.
“I’ll be back, Dad,” Bliss promised, pushing from his hold and getting to her feet.
“Bliss.” He caught her hand when she would have walked away and left him.
“Yeah, Daddy?” Her eyes, so like his, but her strong, independent spirit was so like her mother’s.
“I would never send you away from me,” he told her, suddenly desperate that she understand that. “You know that, don’t you? I couldn’t do that to myself, or to you and your mother. Tell me you know that.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “I know that, Daddy,” she whispered, her gaze moving to where Angel stood so still, so silent. And so alone. Suddenly Bliss threw her arms around his neck i
n a tight hug. “I don’t care if I’m fifty, Daddy, I still want you to pick me up and rock me when I hurt. Promise me you will.”
He had to close his eyes, swamped with emotion, uncertain how to hold it back. “I promise, baby.” He kissed her brow gently. “I promise.”
Pulling away from him, she glanced at her sister again then rushed off with Declan, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
“Who held my baby when she cried?” Chaya sobbed in his arms, Duke’s file scattered on the floor where she’d thrown it in rage before he’d caught her to him. “Who rocked my baby, Natches?”
His head jerked up, certain he heard her, heard her whisper, her pain drifting around him.
He shook his head at the illusion and looked over at Angel again.
Duke had pushed her into the helicopter with him, Bliss, and Declan even as she reached for him, cried out for him. He’d promised to be there for her as quick as he could and told her to wait for him, as though he expected her to run off as she had before when she had to face the loss of someone she loved. Or something.
He’d reported that Tracker had told him that Angel had disappeared for a week when she was fifteen after the war dog that led her to their hut the night of the explosion died. No one could find her, and when she’d come back to the farm they owned, she refused to tell anyone where she had been.
Leaning forward, elbows propped on his knees, Natches wiped his hands down his face and stared at her again.
Like a sentinel standing there, staring straight ahead, waiting for a blow.
Until Duke, he doubted anyone had held Angel. He doubted she let anyone hold her, even as a child. And he doubted anyone had insisted on doing so.
“Who rocked my baby, Natches?” Chaya’s sobs echoed inside him.
If by some cruel twist of fate he lost the woman that held his soul, then when he met her again in the afterlife, he wanted her to know someone had cared enough about her child to rock her.
Getting to his feet, he didn’t question the impulse that had him striding to her or the instinct that assured him this was something that not just Angel needed, but something Chaya needed as well. And maybe it was something he needed.