Shock Waves (25 page)

“Bring her here,” Jorak barked, and Ethan twisted to see the guards pushing Brenna toward them. She walked with her head high and her shoulders straight, looking achingly beautiful despite the ugliness unfolding around her. Ethan saw no fear in her eyes, only a calm acceptance that ripped at his gut.

Jorak held out his hand, and immediately one of the guards placed a black semiautomatic into his palm. “Now she pays.”

Dark spots clouded Ethan’s vision. He struggled to see, to breathe. To think. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. “Wait,” he gritted out, twisting beneath Jorak’s foot. “The person you’ve been searching for, the reason you brought me here, is on that helicopter.” He tried to suck in air, got hot sand instead. “Kill her and you’ll never have the answers you want.”

Jorak narrowed his eyes. “Do I strike you as a fool?”

“No,” Ethan said, fighting for control. His whole life, damn it. Practically his whole life he’d masked his emotions,
stretched tape
over the gaping cracks through which volatility wanted to seep. Now everything he’d learned betrayed him. “You strike me as a man who’s waited a long time for answers.”

Jorak’s mouth flattened to a hard line. He stared down at Ethan a long moment, then lifted his foot, but kept the gun trained on his chest.

Ethan got to his knees first, then pushed up to his feet. Brenna was so close now, so close he swore he could almost smell the musky scent that had intoxicated him during the long hours of the night. So close the semiautomatic would blow her away. There were no emotions on her face, only a trickle of scratches, mud, and a red spot on her neck, from where he’d loved her a little too intensely.

They urge—the
need—
to
touch staggered him. Somehow he squelched the hot surge of emotion and focused on the Black Hawk, where two heavily armed men in fatigues emerged
through
an open door. Two men he’d been plotting with for months. Two men he trusted with his life.

And with the life of the woman he loved.

Hawk Monroe stepped into the sand first. His strong, Viking face was a stony mask, betraying none of the driving emotion he normally wore for the world. Behind him, Sandro Vellenti reached back into the helicopter, then urged a third figure into view. Slight. Dressed in all black. Hooded.

Anticipation drummed through Ethan, hot and hard and ridiculously sweet. This. God, this was the moment he’d been waiting for, hungering for, craving for over five long years. He’d planned it so meticulously…

His two future brothers-in-law, men trained for combat but driven by honor and loyalty, escorted the hooded figure across the glowing sand, the naked morning sun burning down on all of them. The seagulls had returned, dipped gracefully behind the trio. The wind whipped sand into a frenzy.

Twenty-five feet away, Hawk and Sandro stopped.

From out of nowhere, more of Jorak’s men swarmed the trio, all heavily armed, ready to shoot.

Ethan squinted against the sun and met Sandro’s eyes, gave a silent nod of his head, and the other man, a former special forces operative, pulled the black hood from the figure’s head.

Long, silky blond hair whipped in the breeze. Her skin was soft, like peaches, he’d always thought, but her eyes, eyes that had once shone with friendship and hope and love, burned hot.

And Jorak … the man she’d pledged to honor and love for all the days of her life, dropped to his knees.

Chapter 14

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E
than wanted to feel satisfaction. He wanted to feel the sweet kiss of triumph. But standing beneath the glare of the hot Yucatan sun, watching the complete lack of emotion on Allison’s face, he felt only the bitter tug of regret.

Once this woman had been like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Bright. Vibrant. Full of life. But Jorak Zhukov had changed that. Snuffed it out forever.

He looked at the man now, looked at him kneeling in the sand, staring at Allison through stricken eyes as if she were a cruel apparition, and knew it was time.

“A trade,” he said coldly. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this. He hadn’t wanted to involve Ally. But she’d insisted, said it was the only way. “A woman for a woman.”

* * *

Brenna forced herself not to move. Not to make a sound. Not to reveal a single sliver of the shock screaming through her. This, dear God. This. This was what she’d been seeing for weeks now. Ethan on the beach, the woman in the distance. The dress was wrong, but everything else was excruciatingly right.

Allison was alive. She’d survived.

She was the woman for whom Ethan would give his life.

The wind whipped hot sand against Brenna’s face, but still she stood, and still she watched. It
was
like viewing a movie, a hated, disgusting movie. A movie to which she knew the ending, despite how many times, how many ways, she’d tried to rewrite the final scene. Her heart ached as she watched Ethan standing there, the raw emotion on his face as he looked toward
Allison.

The burning hatred as he focused on the man who’d betrayed them all.

She wanted to touch him. The need burned like a physical pain. It was the ultimate irony. She who had spent a lifetime avoiding human contact, now craved it with a single-mindedness that stunned her.

Because she knew. She’d felt Ethan’s pain. She’d experienced this moment with him in her dreams over and over and over. She knew how hard his heart pounded. She knew the violent kick of adrenaline. She’d felt the unbendable will, the determination to do whatever it took, even give his own life, to keep the woman he loved safe.

She also knew what came next. And that’s why she’d run from the decaying hotel. That’s why she’d made enough noise for Jorak’s men to find her. That’s why she stood there now, still as a statue, waiting.

The future isn’t etched in stone. It’s fluid, ever changing. Something to be cherished, not feared.

Chest tight, throat burning, eyes stinging from the hot spray of sand, Brenna watched Jorak hiss out a low breath and stagger to his feet, walk toward his wife as though pulled by an invisible rope. The slim woman, once blue-blood beautiful, now ravaged by a ferocity that came only through betrayal, watched him approach, her expression never revealing a hint of any of the emotion Brenna sensed churning beneath the placid surface. Not the contempt. Not the rage. Not the love that had long since twisted into fragments of hatred.

“Allison,” Jorak muttered, and reached for her. She stepped from between the two stone-faced men and let her husband put a hand to her face, let him push the hair from her cheek.

And Brenna shivered. She knew what that man’s touch brought. She knew what it revealed. What he’d done.

“I thought—” he began in a thick voice, but Allison cut him off.

“I know,” she said, and finally, Brenna caught the first betrayal of emotion in her steely eyes. “But it was all a lie.”

Jorak’s hand slid to cradle her cheek. “The child?”

“A boy,” she whispered. “I buried him next to Mama.”

From her vantage point twenty-five feet away, Brenna saw the revelation hit Jorak like a powerful physical blow. He swayed, but Allison reached out to steady him.

Brenna slid her gaze to Ethan, saw him make eye contact with the man with the dark blond hair pulled into a ponytail, then the fierce looking man with the olive skin and midnight eyes. It was all fleeting, fast, and within a heartbeat she noticed four heavily armed agents slipping from behind the big black helicopter to fan across the beach.

“They put me into witness protection,” Allison told her husband in a voice that no longer shimmied with enthusiasm, but rasped from what sounded like damaged vocal cords.

Jorak swore hotly. “I never knew—”

“There’s no way you could have.” The wind slapped against her outfit of all black, smearing the cotton fabric against the outline of her body.

Brenna braced herself, but nothing prepared her for Ethan to turn to her, the hot, edgy look in his normally penetrating eyes. He seemed to be telling her something, something urgent, but though she sensed the importance, she didn’t understand.

“Dimetri,” Allison said, breaking the moment, “I’ve dreamed of this moment for years.”

Confusion doused Brenna, confusion at the purr of the other woman’s voice, a stark cont
rast
to
the
glitter to her eyes. “Hungered.” Then she pulled the gun.

And Brenna knew.

But Jorak didn’t seem to understand. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He just kept staring into the eyes of the woman he’d
betrayed
in the most heinous ways imaginable, to whom he’d
lied, almost gotten killed.

Two of Jorak’s men saw, though, and they surged closer, shouted in warning. But still Jorak didn’t move.

Allison lifted the semiautomatic, pointed it at his chest. “Dreamed of justice,” she amended. “Dreamed of making you pay.”

One of the guards charged, but Jorak waved him away. “No!”

“It was me,” Allison said, and the last hideous piece clicked into place. All the emotion, the pain, the contempt Brenna sensed had festered for seven long years, bubbled over. “I was the informant. I was the one who discovered your double life, your deception.” Her lips lifted into what could only be called a snarl. “I was the one who went to Ethan.”

Brenna’s heart staggered at the revelation. The irony. This woman, this woman he loved, whose death he sought to
avenge,
was in fact the one he’d been hunting, had wanted to kill, since the night his lies had caught up with him.

The one he blamed for her death, rather than blaming himself.

“It’s time,” she said, and pulled back the trigger.

Jorak staggered back, but her shot was never fired. One of the guards tackled her from behind, and all hell broke loose. Jorak roared to his feet and turned toward Ethan, lifted his MP-5N and fired.

Brenna didn’t stop to think.

The future isn’t etched in stone.

She didn’t stop to decide.

It’s fluid, ever changing.

There really was no choice to make. Not anymore. Not when every thought she’d had for the past two weeks, every hot, aching breath she’d drawn, every beat of her heart, every shock wave, had all propelled her toward this moment. This man.

Something to be cherished, not feared.

She lunged.

* * *

One second stretched, snapped, broke into a fractured life
time. A lifetime that had begun with a phone call in the dead of night, a lifetime that had taken on new meaning when she stepped from behind the sycamore tree. A lifetime that had forced him to look into mirrors, see truths, experience feelings, for the first damn time.

Peripherally, Ethan saw Sandro running, heard Sandro shouting, but the impact never came. Not of the bullet. Only of the woman, the weight of her soft body against his. He staggered back and fell. She collapsed on top of him.

He instinctively rolled, shielded her from the spray of bullets. He would give his life, he knew, his life, to keep her safe. Sandro tossed him a weapon, and then Ethan was firing, his future brother-in-law hunched down beside him. The rapid-fire of gunshots drowned out the squawk of seagulls, the crash of the surf. Smoke swirled on the hot breeze. And still Ethan fired. So did Sandro. So did Hawk. Until there was only quiet.

Ethan coughed against the oppressive smell of gunpowder
and blinked hard, cleared his vision, saw Jorak sprawled on the sand, red pooling around him. Allison was on her knees by his side, the gun loose in her limp hand. All across the beach, federal agents rounded up Jorak’s men.

Finally, at last, it was over.

“It’s okay, now,” Ethan said, turning toward Brenna. Hot words burned his mouth, the sickening reality of what could have happened to her when she’d foolishly thrown her body in front of his. “You can get up—”

But she couldn’t. Not when she lay behind him sprawled in the shimmering white sand, with a sickening smear of red spreading across the white cotton of her sundress.

His heart, pounding rapidly moments before, stopped. Just stopped. He crawled toward her, shouted at Sandro. “We need help!”

“Angel,” he murmured, reaching her and running his hands over her hot, gritty body. The truth staggered him. She’d knowingly thrown her body in front of a bullet. For him. “Why—”

“Had to,” she murmured. Pain glazed her eyes. “T-told you. C-couldn’t let you d-die.”

The broken words slayed him. Quietly. Brutally. She
had
told him. She’d told him that from the very beginning.
I’m here because I couldn’t let you walk into danger without warning you.

God.

The frenzy around him faded to nothingness. He pulled her
in his lap and cradled her against his chest and rocked, just rocked, murmuring nonsensical words as hot sand stung his face and hot moisture burned his eyes.

* * *

He was alive. She could feel him holding her, the warmth and vitality of his body, hear the low pitch of his voice, that thick, rough Virginia drawl that made her blood sing.

Her throat burned with words that wanted to be said, but the effort required too much energy. She’d been holding on long
enough as it was. Holding on forever, it seemed, trying to atone, trying to prove her grandmother hadn’t lied to her.

You were right, she thought as a flash of white blinded her, and then there she was, her granny, not lying in the pool of blood like she’d seen her so many times when she sought only
the solace of sleep, but standing on the front porch in a pink flowered apron with a pitcher of lemonade in her hands. And the smile on her face, bright, welcoming, ethereal, resounded through Brenna like a blast of eternity.

She’d been right, her granny had. The future wasn’t etched in stone. Brenna hadn’t been able to save her mother or the head cheerleader, she hadn’t saved the little boy a monster ripped from his mother’s arms, she hadn’t seen Adam for who he was, and she hadn’t saved her grandmother, Dave’s wife,
God, Dave himself, but finally, at last, she’d come through in the end.

Ethan was safe.

She saw them all then, on her grandmother’s porch in a semicircle of white so bright, so pure it made her heart ache. Her mother and grandmother. The children. Dave and his wife,
arm in arm, smiling, as deeply in love as they’d always been.

And finally, quietly, to the low murmur of Ethan’s voice and the broken thrumming of his heart, the steady rocking, the gentle stroking
of his hand, she let go.

* * *

“She should be awake by now, damn it.”

“She lost a lot of blood. She’ll wake up when it’s time.”

“It’s been four days.”

“I know.” Miranda Carrington looked from the ominously still woman on the bed, the tubes running to and from her slim body, back to her brother, who sat in a chair dragged as close as physical space would allow. “They say she’s going to be okay, though, Eth. You have to remember that.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “She won’t even move. It’s as though she doesn’t want to.”

His sister sighed, reached for his hand. “You won’t do her any good wearing yourself down to nothing.”

“She’s right, you know,” came a soft voice from behind him. “Sooner or later you have to go home and get some rest.”

He twisted to see Elizabeth, who’d entered the room without him even hearing, and love squeezed his heart. His family didn’t even know Brenna, but they’d been standing by his side every minute of every hour since he’d stepped from the military airplane. “Am I being ganged up on?”

Elizabeth’s smile was soft, sympathetic. “Maybe.”

“Definitely,” Miranda corrected. It was dreary outside, a drab fall day, but she lit up the room like a psychedelic light. “Not to be cruel, but frankly you look like hell and we—”

“I don’t give a damn how I look.”

The second the words were out of his mouth, the second he saw her wince, the light in her sparkling eyes dim, he regretted his words. “Ah, hell, Mira, I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth breezed to his side and squatted so that she looked
him in the eye. “A shower and a shave, a nap in your own bed, clean clothes. That’s all we ask.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Miranda volunteered. “In case she wakes up while you’re gone.” She lifted her mobile phone. “I’ll call you before a second can pass.”