Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) (11 page)

8:10 p.m.…

Regrets were like chickens. They always came home to roost. And right now, Bran’s chicken coop was full.

Hiding behind the old gunpowder magazine house inside the parade grounds in the center of the fort, he regretted not making it clear to Maddy weeks ago that he wasn’t the kind of guy she should set her cap on. He regretted letting her think there was more to their relationship than there was or ever could be. And he regretted that he was continuing to foster that belief, that
hope
, every damn time she got near him. Because despite his best intentions, he just couldn’t keep his stupid hands to himself.

One look from her pretty eyes, one touch of her soft hands, one taste of her sweet lips, and he was a goner. Just done.
Finito
. He forgot all the reasons why he shouldn’t be with her, all the reasons why he
couldn’t
be with her, because the monster inside him took over. And it had only three goals: claim, conquer, consummate.

“We better find those girls fast,” Mason murmured, interrupting Bran’s pity party. Which was just as well. It wasn’t like Bran was having a good time there anyway. “Or Bran and I are going to run out of clothes.”

Bran was aiming his weapon at the interior of the curtain wall behind them. The fort was basically a hexagonal-shaped, two-tiered wall that surrounded a patch of land called the parade grounds. The latter had been the site of the soldiers’ and officers’ quarters and a few other small buildings. From the outside, the fort looked like a two-story brick wall dotted by small embrasures. But from the inside, you could see the curtain wall was actually made up of a double tier of arched rooms called casemates.

So many places to hide behind and fire from
, Bran thought, giving the line of casemates a slow, deliberate scan through his scope. A battlefield survey, it was called. A move used when everything was important, every nuance and shadow of grave concern because everything could be either threat or salvation.

The operator in him didn’t like his position, exposed on one side to all those yawning casemates. Especially since his backup was busy whipping his gray T-shirt over his head and handing it to Maddy, momentarily unable to help him keep watch.

“Sorry,” Maddy whispered. “I think I lost Bran’s tank top somewhere in the cistern.” She hooked the neck hole of Mason’s wet T-shirt over her head, effectively covering her hair.

“So what are we looking at when we step out from behind this gunpowder magazine?” Mason whispered, quickly rearming himself.

“Let me just take a quick gander and get my bearin’s,” she said, darting a fast look around the edge of the building before ducking back and flattening herself against the cool brick wall. The light of the moon and stars, when paired with the soft glow of the spotlights outside, was enough to make everything visible if not perfectly clear.

And bringing her along.
That was
another
of his regrets. Because she shouldn’t be turkey-peeking around corners in an attempt to guess where armed men might be hiding. She shouldn’t be smack-dab in the middle of a situation that could very easily go pear-shaped. She shouldn’t be seconds away from potentially finding herself staring down the wrong end of a gun.

Even though she’s probably used to it by now.

And that was another thing. Was it just him? Or did trouble seem to follow her around like a yappy little lapdog?

“So,” she whispered, unaware of his thoughts, “to our left is the cistern. We know the girls aren’t there, so no use checkin’. Directly in front of us will be the little house they used as the officers’ quarters. That’s a possibility. But there are a lot of windows and doors, which I would think means it’d be hard to defend. It wouldn’t be my first choice of hideouts. Across the parade grounds is another gunpowder magazine house. We’ll probably need to scout that. It’ll be tricky, though. It has that weird openin’ I was tellin’ y’all about. To the left of the magazine house are the ruins of the soldiers’ barracks. They wouldn’t make very good hidin’ spots. We can probably skip them.”

She took a breath from her long, impressive list. Obviously, she hadn’t been kidding when she said she’d done her due diligence before coming here.

“Honestly,” she continued, “if it were me wantin’ to find a defensible position where I could corral two teenagers, I’d choose that far north casemate. From there you can see across the parade grounds to the bridge and anyone enterin’ the fort. It’s protected on three sides by thick walls, which means the only worry is the openin’.”

“Get a load of General fuckin’ Patton here.” There was a fair bit of respect in Mason’s tone. “
Now
are you glad we brought her along?”

Bran opened his mouth to say,
Hell no!
But before he could, Maddy whispered, “Let me check one more thing.” She darted her head around the corner again. But this time, she didn’t immediately pull back. Instead, she went stock-still.

Bran chanced taking his eyes off his sights and the arched holes of the dark casemates to dart her a quick glance. “What is it,” he demanded, maybe a little too loudly. All the hairs on his body were waving around like semaphore flags, warning him of impending danger. “What’d’ya see?”

Now
Maddy jerked back, flattening herself against the bricks. “The men.” Bran’s ears caught the panic in her voice. And when she turned to him, her eyes were wide and unblinking. “They’re crossin’ the parade grounds and headed our way.” She lifted trembling fingers to her lips. “Alone! What did they do with the girls?”

* * *

8:13 p.m.…

“Get inside the magazine house.” Bran barked the order and it was a verbal slap. Then there was the heat in his eyes. It was enough to set Maddy’s soul ablaze.

Death and destruction.
She’d been trying to find the right words to describe that particular look that sometimes came over his face, and it suddenly occurred to her. He was death and destruction personified.

Oh no. No, no, no…

“You can’t kill them,” she whispered desperately. The way he moved closer to the corner of the gunpowder magazine house told her he wasn’t paying her a lick of attention. “Bran,” she whispered, grabbing his forearm. “You can’t kill them.”

“No?” He lifted his weapon. It effectively jerked his arm from her grasp. “Watch me.”

“Not until we know what they did with the girls,” she pleaded. It was a tiny island, but there were lots of places to squirrel away two teenagers—or hide their bodies.
No. No, don’t even think about that! They’re not dead. They
can’t be dead!
“Bran, listen to me. We need to—”

“I won’t ask you again, Maddy.” He briefly met her eyes, and she found herself backing away from him. She wasn’t sure why. Bran would never hurt her. But in that moment, instinct took over. Like a gazelle darting away from a recently fed lion, there was no real danger, but the urge to flee was there nonetheless.

He narrowed his eyes. In the dim light, she thought she saw a strange emotion flicker across his face. He almost looked…
anguished
. But then his expression changed, morphing back into that whole death-and-destruction. “Get in the magazine house. Now!” he hissed.

He didn’t wait for her to comply. He grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the open doorway, shoving her inside—not cruelly, but not very gently either. For the first time in her life, she understood how the term
man
handling came about. He was a man. And he was definitely handling her.

“But if it’s
me
they want,” she insisted, “I could offer myself up, and then maybe they’ll tell us where—”

“Stay.” He pointed a long, blunt finger so close to her nose that she went cross-eyed trying to focus on it.

Now, normally Maddy would come back with some wiseass remark along the lines of
Hey, bucko! In case the lack of pointed ears didn’t give me away, I’m not a German shepherd.
But she was too scared to be her usual sarcastic self. Scared of what had happened to the girls. Scared of what was about to happen to Bran and Mason in the next couple of minutes.

When Bran turned and darted out of the magazine house, there was a part of her that longed to follow him. The part of her that hated, loathed, and utterly despised being reduced to the little woman who sat in the corner painting her toenails. But the
other
part of her, the far smaller yet far wiser part of her, piped up and told her she had no business interfering in whatever they planned to do.

She glanced around the dark interior of the structure, looking for something. She didn’t know what. Anything. Something she could use to help. Something she could use to defend herself if all hell broke loose and somehow those three masked men managed to get past the two Navy SEALs—
heaven forbid
. But there was nothing. Just a small, dark room that smelled of old mortar, damp bricks, and dirt.

Wait. There!

Her eyes adjusted and she spied a shadow in the corner. It was long and thin and propped against the wall.

Scurrying over, she discovered it was an old piece of driftwood about three feet long. It was dry and cracked, but it felt sturdy enough to survive one or two good whacks upside the heads of the bad guys, should she need to use it that way. The tip was sharp. Stake-sharp. It could be used that way too. And even though it was ridiculous—you didn’t bring a knife to a gunfight, much less a brittle piece of driftwood—she felt better once she was armed.

Then she heard it…

The quiet
clink
of metal against metal. The muted
crunch
of boots on dirt.

The bad guys.

Maddy held her breath and pressed back against the brick wall beside the door. The old mortar was cool, and for a moment her mind drifted to the men who had fired the bricks and laid them. They were all dead now, left to the pages of history books. Their testament to life was a decaying ruin in the middle of nowhere. But at least they
had
a testament.

What would
her
testament be?

Please, not the deaths of two innocent girls, Lord. Please!

She turned her head and strained her ears so hard it was a wonder she didn’t burst an eardrum. More boots on uneven earth. A hissed exchange of words she couldn’t make out. The sound of someone tripping and cursing.

They were close.

“Damnit, Dustin,” one of the men, the one with the Southern drawl, said. “That bum knee of yours is a problem. Rory should’ve never let you come on this job.”

Who is Rory? What job?
Her kidnapping?

“Fuck you, Luke. Just cover me for a second.” It was the tyrant talking. Maddy’s jaw clenched at the same time her fingers tightened around the piece of driftwood. She thought she felt a splinter sink into the pad of her thumb, but couldn’t be sure. Not with her attention eagle-eye focused on the men and their whispered conversation.

Well, it was focused on that and the distinct
lack
of sound coming from either Bran or Mason. Their silence was unsettling.

The Angel of Death comes on silent wings…

It was a line from a poem she’d read somewhere. But never had it made as much sense as it did in this moment.

But the girls!
she wanted to yell.
We need to know about the girls!
Instead, she bit her bottom lip, welcoming the pain that grounded her.

Tick-tock
went her internal clock.
Lub-dub
went her thundering heart.
Drip-drop
went a bead of sweat from her temple to her shoulder.

Jesus Christ and all his followers! What’s happenin’ out there?

She didn’t have long to wait for the answer.

“This whole thing is shot to shit,” Luke of the Southern accent griped.

“No, it’s
not
,” Dustin the Tyrant insisted. “Just because those two meatheads decided to hole up in the ranger’s station instead of trying to rescue the girls, that doesn’t mean we can’t still do the job.” There he went again, using that word.
Job.
“We just have to get to the boat and—Fuck!” he yelled, causing Maddy to jump. Then his voice dropped to an angry grumble. “Something told me I might be staring down the black hole of your gun again before this night was over.”

“Tit for tat, dicksmack, since I recall you pointing that SCAR-L at me on the beach.”
Bran.
“Where are the girls?” he demanded.

Maddy stopped breathing as she waited on the answer. Her stomach knotted like someone twisting a wet towel until the fabric screamed with the strain.

“How the hell did y’all get in here?” Southern Accent Luke demanded. “We been watchin’ the entryway—”

“Where are the girls?” Bran’s voice held a world of menace.

“We didn’t hurt them,” the one called Dustin said.

“Good,” Bran answered. “Then toss your weapons my way and tell me where they are.”

For a second, none of the men responded. Finally, the Southerner said, “Once we do that, what’s stoppin’ ya from lightin’ us up?”

“Guess 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.