Yeah. That would’ve definitely severed Matt’s spine and killed him. The smell of burned metal filled the air. Nausea filled Jory’s gut. He couldn’t go out like that. If he came close, he’d use a gun. He’d have to.
Matt turned his head. “Am I done?”
“Wait.” Laney grabbed thread and quickly sewed him up. “You’re good.”
He turned and jumped from the table to grab her in a huge hug.
She sniffled against his chest.
Jory stood, so much emotion in him he thought he might explode.
Matt released Laney and leaped for him, grabbing him. “You did it. You fucking did it.”
Jory hugged him. “We all did it.” Matt was saved. Thank God.
For now, he forced a smile. “You’re next, Nate. Hop up.” God, hopefully Nate’s chip was damaged less than Matt’s. He’d figured getting the codes would be the tough part, but each cut into their backs was an invitation for death to attack.
He turned back to his computer and quickly linked to Nate’s chip. “Seven hours and fifty-five minutes. It’s on the exact same timer as Matt’s. They must’ve set them all to detonate at the same time.”
Figured. He could see the commander finding irony there.
Jory shook off thoughts of the evil bastard. Time to save his brothers. He glanced over at Piper, who had sat back down at her computer.
She’d paled again. For once, her fingers were silent on the keyboard.
“Piper?” he asked.
She swallowed. Tears filled her eyes. “I, ah, wrote a program that will identify any signals sent out from any device in the room. It finally just kicked into gear.”
Yeah. Made sense. Even though the chips weren’t sending out signals, they still had a frequency. “So you found the frequencies?”
“Yes.” She swallowed.
The rock always in his gut expanded. He stood and walked around to view her screen. After ignoring computers and cell phones, he could make out signatures. Two very strong and one weak.
“Damn it.” He ran a hand through his hair.
She nodded and pointed to the weaker light. “Your chip, Jory. We can’t reach it, but it’s active. I’d hoped when it was damaged it had just shut down. Stupid.” She craned her neck to see his screen, and her voice cracked hard enough to fill the room with despair. “You have seven hours and fifty-four minutes until your chip detonates.”
He nodded. “Let’s get the chips out of Nate and Shane. One thing at a time.” His solar plexus clenched as if hit with a medicine ball, hurting deep. He’d known somehow that he wouldn’t make it out of this, but he’d had a goal, and as soon as Nate and Shane lived through this, he could relax and enjoy what little time he had left with the one woman he’d never thought to find.
His.
Piper glared at the computer screen, desperation tasting like sulfur in her mouth. She couldn’t connect. No matter what she did, she hadn’t found a way to connect to Jory’s chip.
They’d taken out Nate and Shane’s chips, and both had been dinged and dented enough that the procedures had been nerve-wracking. But they’d done it.
Afterward, they’d double-checked the kids to make sure they hadn’t been tagged yet. They hadn’t.
Now she’d spent another four hours logging in code in the computer with no damn luck.
Jory sighed next to her at the computer console. “Okay. What are we missing?”
Matt groaned. “There has to be something we can do.” He sat in front of yet another computer that wasn’t helping. Shane and Nate perched on chairs, waiting. For anything. All soldier hard, all emitting fury at their inability to do anything. The men were doers, and the tension in the room was choking Piper.
She leaned back and stretched her aching neck, her mind spinning uselessly. “We can’t connect wirelessly.” She halted. Waited a minute. Her heart stopped for a second. “We can’t connect wirelessly.”
“You’re repeating yourself,” Jory said, his gaze still on his screen.
She jumped from her chair and ran to the bowls sitting on the hospital bed. Holding her breath, she reached for Matt’s chip.
Jory instantly halted her hand. She hadn’t even heard him move.
“Be careful,” he said. “The blades will slice your fingers.”
“I know.” She gulped down fear at what they’d do to his spine. Gingerly, she grasped Matt’s deployed chip with two fingers and lifted it to the light. One way and then the other.
Matt appeared at her side. “What?”
She peered closer, and fire bloomed in her stomach. Nerves set to life. She gasped. “Look. There’s an indent in one end.”
Jory took it and studied the chip. “I’ll be damned.”
Matt grabbed one of the other bowls. “An indent? Oh God.”
She nodded. “Yes. We can’t connect wirelessly, but there’s a port built into the device. Just like any electrical device. Phone, camera, you name it. We can connect manually.” Hope filled her chest. They could do this.
Jory shook his head. “We don’t have the right cord. We can’t even see inside to find the right configuration.”
They’d done a great job of building a cap to partially shield the port, so there was no way to get the configuration. Sadistic bastards.
Matt grabbed the chip, set it on the wood floor, and stomped on it. Then he picked it up. “Now we do.”
Piper glanced over his shoulder. No, they didn’t. Whatever the configuration inside the port was destroyed when the port was opened or exposed. “We can’t create an attachment if we don’t know what it needs to attach to—how many prongs should be there.” They were so damn close, she wanted to scream. Loud and with frustration.
Matt nodded. “You’re right.” He glanced at his watch, and in a microsecond, he turned into the formidable soldier she’d first thought him to be. “Here’s the plan. We have one hour to detail an attack, one hour to say good-bye to loved ones, and then one hour to reach Utah. We fight with no mercy, get to the infirmary, and then we have approximately thirty minutes to take out the chip.”
Piper’s breath stopped. Plain and simple, she stopped breathing. “Thirty minutes?”
Matt nodded. “If we plug in, we only need a few seconds, right?”
Jory shook his head. “Absolutely not. We are not putting all of us right where the commander wants us. Not for me.”
“We’re going.” Matt nodded to Shane and Nate. “Right?”
“Yes,” Nate said.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Shane said, determination filling his eyes.
Jory shook his head. “No. Hell, we don’t even know where the correct cord is. There might not even be one.”
“Oh, there is one.” Matt turned and loped toward the stairs. “You know the commander has one somewhere.”
“He won’t tell us where it is,” Jory argued.
Matt turned back, all semblance of the good-natured brother gone. “Oh. He fucking will.”
Piper shivered at the tone and backed away a step.
Nate and Shane followed Matt up the stairs, leaving Jory and Piper alone.
She reached out and ran a hand down his arm. “You’d do the same for them,” she said quietly.
“I know.” He stared at the now empty stairwell, his chest vibrating. “But I can’t let them go.”
She was pretty sure nothing would stop them. “I’m going, too.”
“Hell no.” He turned on her, grabbing her arms. “No way.”
“Yes.” She leaned up and kissed his whiskered chin. “If you’re on the table, I’m needed on the computer. Just in case. You know it.”
He shook his head. “I won’t put you in danger like that.”
“Thank you for caring.” She recognized the order for what it covered. “But I’m needed.” For once, she was going to give all for a man. One who might not even live through the next day. “I’m all in, Jory Dean.”
The scrape of furniture over wood floors echoed down the staircas
e.
“Damn it.” Jory took her hand and led the way upstairs to where Matt directed the boys in widening the table for several leaves and more chairs. It easily fit the fourteen people now in the room. Nate wheeled in an old-fashioned white board with markers.
Jory shook his head. “We are not doing this.”
Matt focused on Chance, who was sitting between his brothers at the far end of the table. “We need the layout of the Utah compound.”
Chance lifted his chin. “I’m going with you.”
“No.” Matt shook his head. “This mission is for brothers aged eighteen and over.”
“You need me.” Chance met his gaze head-on. “I know the place better than anybody.”
The ex-senator reached out a gnarled hand and patted Chance’s. “Just give the info to the boys. That’ll be a big help.”
Chance slowly turned his head to meet the senator’s gaze. “Um, thanks, sir.”
“Jim. Grandpop Jim.” The senator patted his hand again. “I’m grandpop around here, so get used to it.”
On the far side of Chance, Wade leaned over to see past his brother. “We’ve never had a grandpop.” Hope filled his dazed eyes.
“Two.” Earl spoke up from next to a tousled-looking Rachel. “The senator and I make a great team, and I’m a grandpop, too.” He scrambled in his pocket and drew out several pieces of butterscotch candy to push across the table. “See?”
Wade slowly nodded and then elbowed Chance in the ribs. Chance nodded, frowning. With a happy grin, Wade then took a piece of candy.
Jory cleared his throat. “I think I’ve lost control here. Listen, everybody—”
Rachel reached for a piece of candy. “I think I’m more of a Nana Rachel than a Grandma Rachel.” She unwrapped a piece and focused on the kids. “What do you think?”
Kyle cleared his throat, his green eyes sizzling. “We get to stay?”
“Of course. We’re family,” Rachel said, glancing around the table for anybody to disagree.
Matt cleared his throat. “Listen up, gang. We’re all family, and after we save Jory’s as—I mean butt, then we’re staying put. Building houses, hanging out, doing normal family shit people do. Nobody is going anywhere else—and we’ll live happily ever fucking after. Freaking. Happily freaking after.”
Piper bit back a grin. The crude words said with such impatience settled the kids as nothing else could have. Wade took another piece of candy—this time without waiting for Chance’s permission.
And that… that was family.
Kyle smiled at Rachel. “I like Nana Rachel.”
Rachel clapped her hands. “Excellent. Nana Rachel it is. I paint, you know.”
Audrey pushed back from the table, her hand clapping over her mouth. Nate was instantly by her side, helping her up. Turning, she ran for the back.
Rachel wrinkled her nose in a purely sympathetic gesture and stood. “Morning sickness sucks.” She nodded at Jory. “Grab me a ginger ale, would you?”
Jory paused and then slowly, deliberately opened the fridge and fetched a soda can to hand to Rachel. With a murmured “thanks,” she hustled out of the room.
Earl stood. “I’ll go help.”
The senator stood. “I should probably help, too. She likes people to make her laugh when she’s down, so we should be funny.”
The two men disappeared down the hallway.
Piper tried to enjoy the moment, but so much tension emanated from her lover that she found it difficult to breathe.
Jory cleared his throat. “Matt? I’d like to speak with you and Shane. Alone.”
Matt turned. “Let’s go back downstairs and plan. I’m not sure how, but I believe I’ve lost control of this briefing.” He leaned down and planted a loud kiss on Laney’s mouth. “I’ll be back up in forty-five minutes to fight with you about your going into the battlefield. By the way. You’re not.” He pivoted and headed downstairs.
Piper opened her mouth to speak, and one look from Jory froze the words on her tongue. Scary, badass soldier back in serious form.
“Give me forty-five minutes,” he asked. Well. He kind of asked.
“Fine.” She turned to Josie and the boys. “How about we dish up something interesting for dinner?”
Wade’s eyes widened. “I’m always hungry.”
Jory gave her a half hug. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER
27
JORY WAITED UNTIL Nate joined them downstairs in the computer room, carrying the white board. They sat in top-of-the-line leather chairs, the four of them, everyone quiet.
Matt leaned forward. “Go ahead.”
“I can’t ask you to risk your lives. To give up what you’ve found.” Jory shook his head. “It’s too much—” He paused. With his senses, he could hear a heartbeat on the stairs.
Matt turned his head toward the sound. “Chance? If you’re going to join us, do it. Please.”
Chance loped down the stairs. “I, ah, thought I should join in.” He kept his chin up and his voice level, but his heart beat hard enough Jory wanted to wince.
Matt kicked a chair the kid’s way. “Have a seat.”
Relief. It poured out of the kid. “I need to go on the mission. To end this. Please.”
Jory rubbed his chin. “Nobody is going.”
Nate set his elbows on his knees. “I have no problem knocking your ass out and throwing you on a helicopter, Jory. Just let me know if that’s the path here. If not, shut the hell up and use that freaky brain to keep us safe.”
“My brain isn’t freaky,” Jory muttered.
“We need you.” Shane spoke softly and straight-up. “The last two years, not knowing if you were alive or dead.” His voice cracked on the end. “We fucking need you.”
He might as well have hit Jory in the chest with a sledgehammer. “No—” Jory began.
“Yes,” Matt said quietly. “Growing up, you were the youngest brother, and I know that came with issues. We protected you, and I trained you until you must’ve hated me. I get it. You wanted to save us, to be a badass soldier like you think we were. But you already saved us, Jory. You definitely saved me—all through our childhood.”
No, he hadn’t. Jory shook his head.
“You did. Always made us laugh, always gave us something to hope for.” Nate leaned toward him. “You hid your fears, and you hid your doubts. For us, you tried to be a kid. I get that, and I like that you’re expressing yourself now. Probably because you found Piper.”
A lump formed in Jory’s throat. So big, he didn’t think he’d ever swallow again. And Matt was right. He’d found himself because of Piper. “Right, and you have too much to lose now, Mattie, so I can’t risk you.”
Chance rubbed his eyes. “You guys always so girly?”
Jory burst out laughing. The tension dissipated. Matt shoved at Chance’s chair, rolling him toward Nate. “Smart-ass.”
Chance grinned. Then he quickly sobered. “I know the layout of the facility, and I’ve studied the troops.”
Jory smiled. Smart kid. He eyed his brothers. “I can’t talk you out of going?”
They met his gaze levelly, nobody saying a word. Sometimes there just weren’t any words. “All right.” He sat back, knowing he couldn’t talk them out of the mission. They were his brothers, and they never went in all alone. “We need a good plan, then.”
Chance sighed. “Hate to beat a dead dog, or whatever that expression is, but five of us don’t stand much of a chance against the commander’s troops.”
Jory nodded. “We’ve been out for five years.”
“So?” Chance lifted a shoulder.
Matt scratched his chin. “If you would’ve gotten out, what would you have done?”
“Run hard and fast as far away from the place as I could.” Hollow hopes and killed dreams rode the kid’s strong words.
Nate nodded. “What if you had kill chips embedded in your spine that would detonate in five years?”
Ch
ance rubbed his nose. “Well, hmmm. I guess I’d spend nearly five years preparing for war. Just in case.”
Jory nodded. “Welcome to Sins Security—the company of ex-soldiers we’ve built over the last five years.” He rolled his shoulders. “I guess you’re part owner now. You, Wade, and Kyle.” He turned toward Matt. “Right?”
“Definitely. Every brother gets a share.” Matt kept his voice level.
Chance shot a jerky hand through his hair and sucked in several deep breaths of air. He blinked rapidly, slowing his breathing. A mere moment later, the kid eyed them all, back in control. Tough, wasn’t he? “Great. Let’s go to war,” Chance said.
Four matching sets of gray eyes all focused on Jory. Waiting.
He let his brain go through the problem, and their decision made no sense. So he let go of thinking and opened his heart. They belonged together, and when one was missing, they all hurt. Finally, he gave in. They had to save him as badly as he’d wanted to save them, and he was just as important to the family as anybody else. He mattered. “I get it. Let’s plan for war.”
Nate stood by the board, marker in hand. “We need to diagram the layout first.”
Jory sat back, and within half an hour, they had a plan. It took fifteen minutes to put the first part in action—mainly, they called in their employees. The master plan would be risky and quite possibly involve treason and death.
He was already facing death.
Exactly an hour after starting to plan, they all trooped upstairs.
Matt paused. “One hour, and then we suit up.” He faced Chance. “You’re right about going, and I’m leaving it up to you. But make peace with Wade and Kyle just in case something goes wrong, they’re okay. I’m not taking them—too young.”
Chance nodded. “I don’t want them to go. Neither has killed yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Jory didn’t move and kept his expression blank. As did Matt. “Good,” Matt said, shooting Jory a hard look.
Yeah. He’d killed by Chance’s age, so it shouldn’t surprise him. Yet something in his gut hurt. Bad. They’d have to deal with that if and when they returned. For now, he had to talk to Piper. To tell her what she meant to him.
He found her in his bedroom, staring out the sliding glass door at the darkened sky. For once, the night was clear. Stars dotted the night, showing hope, although midnight and death waited for him mere hours away. He opened the door and gestured her outside into an unseasonably warm night.