Forged in Ash (48 page)

Wolf didn’t join the volley of gunfire.

Had he taken rounds too?

Rawls was splayed facedown on the thick carpet of pine needles, half over the guy he’d been stripping of equipment. He didn’t move as Cosky rolled him over.

Cosky flinched at the sight of him. Accepted the rush of horror.

Rawls’s head and chest were soaked with blood. He didn’t check for a pulse before lifting him over his shoulder. Just grabbed him and ran.

But Jesus Christ…he didn’t hear even a whisper of breath coming from Rawls’s limp body. He told himself the constant shooting, as Zane and Mac covered his return, was masking his buddy’s breathing.

But he couldn’t quite make himself believe it.

His blood an icy lump in his veins, he raced for the nearest tree, which was several up from the tree Kait waited in.

As he laid Rawls’s limp body down, shots broke out again in their shooter’s direction. Then silence.

“Clear!” Wolf shouted.

Thank Christ.

Cosky’s hands shook as he stripped the night vision device off and pressed his fingers to Rawls’s neck. He couldn’t find a pulse.

Zane and Mac appeared by his side.

“Is he alive?” Zane asked, the question hitting the air like a bullet. Quick and fast.

Without waiting for Cosky’s reply, the two men dropped their rifles and ripped their shirts off, balling them into compression pads. Zane dropped to the ground as Cosky shifted his fingers, and pressed down again, praying for a pulse.

Please. Please. Please.

Come on, buddy. Come on.

Kait suddenly dropped to her knees beside Rawls’s still figure.

“Which is the worse wound?” she asked urgently.

“Chest,” Zane said, sounding breathless and hopeful as he shifted out of her way.

A weak flutter pulsed against Cosky’s fingers, and his breath exploded in relief. “I got a pulse.”

It was barely there. But it was a pulse.

“Goddamn it, get her out of the way,” Mac roared, bending and reaching down. Zane shoved him back.

“Cosky,” Kait said, her hands pressing down hard on Rawls chest. “I need you.”

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Cosky ran shaking fingers through his hair.

They weren’t talking about a simple healing. The parking lot in front of Kait’s complex flashed through his mind. Her white face and limp body as she collapsed to the ground.

“Cosky,” Kait said. Calmly. Clearly. “He’ll die without it.”

The decision was made without even thinking. He dropped to his knees and covered Kait’s hands.

One.

Come on, damn it. Come on.

Two.

Please.

At three, the heat flared.

Cosky closed his eyes. Swearing softly in relief.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Mac asked.

“Trying to save his life,” Wolf said from behind them.

The heat exploded as the channel opened. Their hands got hotter and hotter. At the seven-second mark, Cosky hesitated, started to release his grip.

“No,” Kait said. “I’m fine. We need to go longer.”

At ten seconds, sweat started flowing.

At fifteen seconds, there was a collective breath being exhaled from the crowd watching above.

“What…?” Faith said, her voice awed. “They’re glowing.”

At twenty seconds, the burn in his hands was close to unbearable; he gritted his teeth and rode it out. Watching Kait closely, he hoped like hell he was judging the effort she was expending correctly and wasn’t letting her fry herself.

Even in the darkness, he could see the red in her face and hands. And Christ, she
was
glowing. An ethereal silver glow emanated from her entire body. But she wasn’t the only one glowing. So was Rawls. That same silver glow cocooned his body.

Was he glowing too?

He didn’t have the breath to ask.

The glow wasn’t static, he realized slowly. It seemed to be shivering, or pulsing.

At forty seconds, Kait’s breath grew choppy and labored.

They couldn’t chance anymore. This had to be enough. He released his hold on Kait’s hand and within seconds the white glow surrounding her diminished.

He relaxed, realizing he had concrete evidence he’d broken the channel.

She continued pressing down, but the white shimmer surrounding her was fading with each second.

Vaguely aware of the shocked circle of people ringing him, he reached for Rawls’s neck; but his fingers were so swollen and raw, he couldn’t feel Rawls’s skin, let alone a pulse.

“Zane,” he wheezed, his breathing raspy and thick. “Check for a pulse.”

Christ, let the forty seconds have been enough.

He waited with tense muscles and a knot in his chest for Zane’s report.

“We’ve got a pulse,” Zane announced after a moment. Another couple of seconds passed and then—“It’s getting stronger.”

Kait continued pressing down, but the glow surrounding her had faded to a haze. Ten seconds later, the haze looked like more of a smoky film.

And then it was gone.

Cosky dropped to his ass, leaned forward, and caught Kait around the waist, dragging her into his arms. She felt hot—way too hot, and wet as hell—but her breathing was already returning to normal.

Amy knelt next to Rawls’s still body and struggled to work the blood-soaked T-shirt up over his torso. Zane dropped down beside her and lifted Rawls up. Cosky closed his eyes—sweet relief flowing at the rise and fall of Rawls’s chest.

The memory of that still chest and feeble pulse was an icy shadow in his memory.

He turned to Kait, feeling her forehead. She was too hot. Damn it, they needed ice, or something cold to get her temperature down.

She pressed her body against him. “I’m fine.”

She wasn’t fine; she was too fucking hot. Worried, he scanned the crowd of faces above him, but Wolf was missing.

While they didn’t have ice, they did have an alpine lake on hand; if he could get her down into the water, they could probably cool her off.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, Wolf appeared beside him, handing him a cold, wet T-shirt. He gave a second one to Amy, who went to work wiping down Rawls’s bloody chest.

Cosky gently bathed Kait’s forehead, rolled her sleeves up as far as they would go, and bathed her arms, then worked the cold, wet cloth beneath her sweatshirt and bathed her abdomen and chest.

She signed, cuddling into him, and he kissed the top of her head.

“He’s not bleeding anymore,” Amy announced, her voice thick with disbelief. She paused and shook her head, the T-shirt still in her hands. “In fact, I can’t even find any wounds.”

“How the fuck…” Mac’s voice trailed off.

Cosky’s lips twitched. It was the first time Cosky could ever recall hearing the commander at such a complete and utter loss for words.

A long silence fell.

And then Wolf cleared his throat. “Looks like we’ve inherited a chopper. Anyone know how to fly?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

T
HREE DAYS LATER
, Jillian settled onto an emerald swath of grass above a meandering stream. Drawing her knees to her chest, she stared down the steep bank. The water below was so calm and clear she could see the rocks and tree roots that studded the gravel bed. Every so often, a flash of silver would catch her eye as small fish darted from nook to cranny.

This new haven Wolf had brought them to was similar to his log cabin in some respects. Not so much in others. Rather than a lodge-style home, their current hideout consisted of one huge room full of well-worn sofas and leather chairs, a sturdy dining room table, and a gigantic, well-stocked kitchen. It was surrounded by a loose cluster of rustic cabins—some with one bedroom, some with two, some with three.

Cosky, Zane, Mac, and Rawls had shared one until Zane’s fiancée had arrived, after which they’d moved into a smaller one. Amy and Faith shared another. She and Wolf a third. Kait had taken the smallest, although Jillian suspected from the way Kait and Cosky couldn’t keep their eyes or hands off each other, she wouldn’t be alone in that cabin much longer.

Like the ashes of Wolf’s beautiful log home, this hidey-hole was deep in the mountains, surrounded by forests, only this time in Washington State, nestled in foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

Their flight from the burning cabin remained a haze in her mind. She vaguely remembered Wolf calling someone and a hard-faced man, with cropped black hair and the eyes of a raptor, arriving in a battered pickup. There’d been hurried moments while he and Wolf had scanned the helicopter from stem to stern with blinking handheld devices and used pliers or knives to pull or snip. Only slowly had it dawned on her they were checking the helicopter for bugs, or GPS tracking devices, or whatever. After their rectangular devices stopped blinking, everyone climbed into the belly of the beast and the black-haired stranger had flown them here.

He’d returned later with Zane’s fiancée, Beth, bags of clothes, and boxes of food before disappearing for good.

The clear water of the stream below her feet beckoned, but she didn’t move. The bank was too high to dangle her feet in that pristine purity, and it took too much effort to slide down and climb back up.

Frowning, she stared at the water.

When would this numbness wear off?

When would life be worth the effort again?

Although this place did help. There was something soothing about the smoke-laced mountain air, and the sounds…the sounds surrounding her were so tranquil: the whisper of wind through the forest canopy, the haunting, mournful whistle of the small brown-and-white birds flitting about in the trees.

She didn’t hear Wolf’s approach. His feet were too silent for that. One moment she was alone on the bank, and the next he was sitting down beside her.

They sat in silence for a handful of moments.

“Do you regret it,
netee
?” he asked finally, his velvet voice curious.

Without thought, she raised her hands and held them, palms in front of her face. Even now, days later, she expected to see blood.

Which was strange, because there hadn’t been much blood.

“No,” she said.

And she didn’t regret taking that bastard’s life. Her babies had deserved that much.

But she’d expected something…an easing inside her. Some lift to the pain. Perhaps a lessening of the numbness.

Except, she didn’t feel any different.

No difference at all.

Well, maybe a little…The numbness, while familiar, was stronger. It blanketed the rage, and doused the vengeance.

“Do you think it will get better once all of those bastards are gone?” she asked without looking at him, because she was afraid she already knew the answer.

“No,” he said simply.

And she knew he was right, because even if she rid every last one of them from this earth, it wouldn’t bring her babies back.

The arm he wrapped around her shoulders was warm, secure, comforting.

“You’re ready to answer their questions now,” Wolf said, his black eyes certain.

How did he know?

But she dismissed the question. He seemed to know a lot about her he shouldn’t. Like what she was feeling, when she needed to eat even though she wasn’t hungry, the way she cried in her sleep.

Or how killing a monster hadn’t dulled the grief, or filled the emptiness.

And then there were the things he’d known before her.

Like her brother had been one of the monsters.

The realization had crept in slowly, spurred by flashes of memory. The surplus of cash and weapons she’d seen in his safe. The huge paydays he’d receive after months of being away—enough to pay off her house or buy her a car. The way she could never call him—because he was traveling in a foreign country—so he’d always called her. His razor-sharp reflexes. It had been a standing joke not to startle her brother because he’d react instinctively with a chop to the throat or a punch to the face. But mostly she remembered the icy emptiness that would slip in and out of his eyes.

The iciness she’d tried not to see. Refused to acknowledge.

God, she’d been such a fool.

“He loved us,” she said as Russ’s smiling, tanned face took root in her mind.

She didn’t doubt that for a second, although she wondered about other things. Like his generosity. How much of his support had been generated by guilt?

“I’m sure he did,
nebii’o’oo
.” Wolf said. “You wouldn’t have been taken if he hadn’t.”

She frowned, digesting that.

“They took us to use against him?” she asked, a flash of rage streaking through the emptiness as the
why
finally fell into place. “What did they want him to do?”

Wolf frowned, a cold, predatory mask slipping across his face. “We’ll ask them, when we find them.”

So Russ had been responsible, in a roundabout way, for what had happened to her, to the children. Sorrow mixed with the rage. It must have killed him to know he’d brought such monsters into her life—that he’d put her and the kids in danger.

But it wasn’t long before the sorrow died. And the numbness hardened again.

If she was right, he’d brought grief into her life once before, but that slip hadn’t stopped him from continuing on the same murderous path and bringing it back into her life again.

“Steve, my husband, was Russ’s best friend,” she said out loud, giving voice to her fear. “They went through basic training together, joined the same Ranger regiment, and started up a security consulting firm after they bailed on the military.” Wolf, she noticed, was sitting very still, his head cocked, listening. She didn’t look at him. “He was killed four years ago.” She swallowed hard and forced herself to continue. “Russ said it was a car bomb. In Turkey. While they were setting up security for a private corporation.”

Wolf’s arm tightened around her shoulder. “Did you see any documentation?”

His voice was incredibly gentle.

She shook her head. “Russ handled everything. The paperwork. The insurance…” Her voice trailed off. She forced the next words out. “Do you think he started doing, whatever he was doing, after Steve died?”