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by Maya Banks
He hated to give his father credit for anything. He was a selfish bastard who thought only of himself, and yet he’d done Ari a great kindness by sending her to Gavin and Ginger Rochester, because at least there, she was loved. Truly and deeply adored. Had his own father agreed to raise her, she would have grown up isolated and lonely, always an outsider.
“Our father has so much blood on his hands,” Caleb said in a flat voice. “I’m ashamed to share his blood—the blood of others. I’d give anything not to.”
Beau nodded grimly, unsure that he could put to voice his own thoughts without becoming utterly enraged, and right now he needed a clear head if they were going to ward off an outright attack on his home. Ari’s home. Her place was with him, whether she realized it or accepted it yet or not.
“His sins are not your own, Caleb,” Eliza said gently. “You’ve done much to atone for his crimes. No one can fault you for what he did. The choices he made when you were just a child. It’s what you did later that counts. And you did the right thing. You and Beau chose the right path, not only for yourselves, but for your younger siblings as well.”
She directed her statement as much toward Beau as she did to Caleb, but Beau was too lost in his own agonizing thoughts and realizations to pay any heed to her words.
How much more of this shit could Ari take?
Her parents who weren’t exactly her parents had been kidnapped, her birth mother had been tortured and eventually murdered and now her biological father had met the same fate. No doubt because he’d called to warn Beau, and the men responsible for Ari’s surrogacy had retaliated swiftly and viciously the instant her biological father had risked discovery by contacting Beau.
Who were these people to have such a vast, all-knowing network? The kind of technology they possessed was not civilian. Hell, it wasn’t even recognized military for that matter. They knew too much. They were too patient. Too exacting. And they hadn’t acted blindly the moment they wrested information on her whereabouts from her biological mother.
No, they’d waited, biding their time for the right moment to strike, and Beau would bet everything he owned that the video leaking was the very last thing the people hunting her had wanted. With her powers going public, or at least speculation about her powers, the men plotting to get their hands on Ari had been forced to speed up their timeline.
Beau doubted her parents would have even been targeted, because the more people involved, the more room for error. It would have far better suited their purposes to simply take Ari when she—and her parents—least expected, leaving Gavin powerless to help her. And to ensure her cooperation, they would have simply pulled a few surveillance feeds showing her they knew who her parents were and how to find them and that if she didn’t cooperate they’d die.
Ari would have given in without hesitation.
“Why leave him here?” Isaac asked, a worried expression tugging on his face. “I don’t get it. They’re sending a message but why? They’re here. We’re outnumbered. Why not just take us all out, grab Ari and make a run for it.”
Everyone exchanged instant looks of “oh shit.”
Beau broke into a run before anyone could say anything further. “Get back to the house. Now!”
A thunderous boom sounded and echoed through the night air. Everyone dropped to the ground, instinctively covering themselves as the earth shook and rumbled beneath them.
“Fuck this shit,” Zack said, fury lacing his voice. “I’ve goddamn had about enough of this BS. It’s time to take those assholes out and cover them up with six feet of dirt. Pansy-ass motherfuckers preying on women.”
“It’s like fucking Armageddon,” Capshaw muttered. “I’m ready to cap these bastards. Light them up and send them straight to hell.”
Yeah, well, so was Beau, though he didn’t even make the effort to say anything. His sole focus was on Ari and the fact that the explosives had gone off directly in the vicinity of the house.
Fuck!
Ari and Ramie were alone and vulnerable in that house, safe room or no.
“It was a goddamn diversion,” Beau yelled as he scrambled back to his feet. “They knew the body would distract us momentarily. The note was just intended to let us know what they’re capable of. Or maybe they thought we’d be scared and actually back off.”
“What they’re capable of is fucking themselves,” Eliza snarled. “And I’ll back off when I have their goddamn balls.”
“Down girl,” Dane murmured, though Beau noticed his lips were in a thin line, suppressing his chuckle.
Eliza was one vicious woman when on a mission. Beau admired that about her.
Their plan, though hastily put together in light of the fact they’d had less than five minutes to come up with one, had been to fan out from the house and then come back together from different directions so they could take out as many targets as possible before launching a full-scale frontal attack.
But the single most and only important directive the entire team had been given was to keep intruders away from the house. Take the fight to them. Protect Ramie and Ari at all costs.
“We don’t split up,” Beau commanded as they ran for the back entrance to the house. “For God’s sake, don’t get separated from the group and make it even easier to pick you off.”
Always cool under fire. Unwavering. Solid. Stony and rigid. Yeah, right. He was a hot mess because he knew this was bad. The worst possible outcome, one they clearly hadn’t seen coming. Goddamn it!
There was no gunfire. No ducking for cover. The night had gone eerily silent where before it had been ablaze with gunfire and explosions and yet not a single shot had come close to them.
It had been nothing more than a fucking distraction.
He was at full sprint when he hit the veranda and nearly tore the door off its hinges in his haste to get inside. To Ari.
They pounded into the house, guns up, spreading out as they cleared each room in a direct route to the safe room. The only place they could be assured the women were safe because they sure as hell couldn’t risk allowing them out of the house. But now Beau knew that somehow, the safe room had been breached and the unthinkable had occurred.
When they reached the still closed door of the safe room, Caleb’s face drew into an expression of confusion. With shaking hands, he punched in the security code, cursing when, in his haste, he failed to enter the correct code on the first attempt.
Zack merely shoved him out of the way and punched in the right code. The door slid open and they rushed straight into the bowels of hell.
The entire room was in disarray. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, which meant the bastards had gained entry from the attic, through the goddamn roof. The room was hazy from dust and the remnants of smoke swirling erratically. The gaping hole was large enough for a damn elephant to fit through. They would be lucky if the explosion hadn’t killed one or both women, because to force entry into the safe room, regardless of direction, it would take a hell of a lot of explosives.
“Ramie!” Caleb shouted hoarsely. “Ari!”
Caleb’s cry was echoed by Beau’s own as he yelled for Ari.
And then they saw Ramie, huddled in the far corner, her knees drawn to her chest, a vacant look in her eyes. Her pupils were dilated and her stare fixed forward unseeingly as she rocked back and forth in obvious distress.
“Dear God,” Caleb whispered as he rushed to kneel beside his wife.
Beau searched the room furiously as the smoke and haze began to clear through the now-open door, his gaze catching the rope ladder dangling through the opening in the ceiling. Already, Zack was nimbly scaling upward, pistol in one hand, rifle slung over one shoulder from a strap, securely holding it in place. Dane scrambled up behind him to provide cover, and all Beau could do was stare numbly at the wreckage of the safe room, absorbing the knowledge that he’d utterly failed to protect the woman he loved with his entire heart and soul.
Rage. Sorrow. Horror so paralyzing that he literall
y couldn’t breathe. He was bombarded by pain. So much pain. Terrified for Ari and what she was enduring even now. Knowing she’d trusted him. Had put her faith in him. And how frightened and alone she must feel, realizing he’d failed her.
Slowly he turned, knowing the only answers lay with Ramie, who was clearly in a stupor as Caleb touched her, talking to her in urgent tones, trying to bring her back from whatever hell she had descended into.
Tears streaked silently down her face, and like Caleb, Beau knelt on her other side, biting his lip to keep from demanding the answers he so desperately wanted—needed.
“Ramie, baby, talk to me,” Caleb pleaded. “What happened? Are you all right? You’re scaring me. Please, please, come back to me.”
Slowly her head turned in his direction, eyes dull and lifeless as yet more tears slid in endless streaks down her cheeks.
“He touched me,” she whispered, then looked away from Caleb, resuming her rocking. He touched me.”
She chanted it over and over, and cold rage froze Caleb’s eyes into hard ice chips. His jaw was locked in fury, and gently, as though she were the most precious, fragile thing in the world, he pulled her toward him, carefully wrapping his arms around her. He closed his eyes, seemingly losing the battle over his own emotions. Tears of rage, fury . . . grief . . . trailed down his face, carving raw, anguished trails.
“What did they do?” Caleb choked out. “Talk to me, baby. Please. I have to know how to help you.”
Ramie lifted her head but she didn’t look at her husband. Her gaze found Beau, and Beau was gutted by the grief reflected in her gray eyes. Sorrow. Regret. Guilt? Beau’s brow furrowed, and he leaned in closer, seeking to offer his sister-in-law comfort when she seemed on the verge of shattering into a million pieces. A feeling he fully shared and was currently experiencing himself. Only the knowledge that he had to keep it together for Ari quelled the overwhelming despair clutching at his heart.
She seemed to come back from whatever faraway place she’d sheltered herself in, a self-protective measure to escape her horrific reality. God only knew what had happened in this room. The safe room. Beau wanted to level the entire goddamn house. It was cursed. He never should have rebuilt it. It had seen nothing but pain, devastation and loss. And now, yet again, it had failed to be the impenetrable fortress he’d intended. Safe room. He wanted to choke on the irony that the one place Ramie and Ari should have been the safest was in fact where they’d been the most vulnerable.
In his and Caleb’s arrogance—hell, the arrogance of the entire DSS cooperative—they’d assumed that they could leave Ramie and Ari here, untouched. Safe from whatever evil lurked in the shadows that was coming for them. There was simply no such thing as a safe room. It was a naïve, stupid belief to think, no matter the measures they’d taken in its construction, that it would prove indestructible and impossible to compromise. It was a mistake he could well pay for and have to live with the rest of his life.
Ramie’s soulful eyes connected with Beau’s, and he flinched at the stark pain reflected in those stormy eyes.
“They took her. I’m so sorry, Beau. I couldn’t do anything. He touched me. Had his hands on me. And the evil. Oh God, the evil. It was so overpowering. It flooded every part of my soul, and there was nothing I could do to ward it off. I was defenseless,” she said in a broken voice. “And then . . .” She closed her eyes, her face contorted with abject misery. “They told her that she had two choices. Go peacefully with them and they’d spare me and everyone else, or they’d slaughter everyone and take her anyway. But the end result would be the same so it was a matter of whether she wanted to spare our lives. Not her own. Ours.”
Ramie began to weep in earnest, huge, gulping sobs, where before her tears had been silent in her daze. She buried her face in her hands even as Caleb drew her in even closer, nearly crushing her with his strength. Caleb was pale, and he too looked at Beau with so much remorse and . . . pity. It made Beau want to vomit.
“She willingly went so they wouldn’t kill me,” Ramie choked out between heaving sobs. “And there wasn’t a single thing I could do to help her. I was utterly helpless!”
She beat her fisted hand down on her leg, repeating the action until Caleb finally wrapped his hand protectively around hers and brought it to his chest so she wouldn’t harm herself further.
Ramie’s gaze was haunted, a lifetime of regret simmering in her stormy, sorrowful eyes.
“She sacrificed herself for all of us.”
Zack and Dane dropped softly from the ladder, in time to hear Ramie’s whispered statement. Silence fell over the room as everyone absorbed the sheer selflessness of Ari’s act. Discomfort and grim determination were reflected in every single DSS operative. Eliza’s eyes were ablaze with fury. Zack’s features had grown so cold that Beau felt the prickle of chill bumps cascade down his arms.
“They hopped a chopper and were already in the air by the time we got to them,” Dane said quietly. “We couldn’t stop them. We weren’t in time.”
Right that instant the grim reality of just what had occurred hit Beau square in the chest. His knees buckled, and he found himself right back on the floor after rising just seconds earlier when Zack and Dane had reappeared.
A roar shook the room, the sound terrible, much like a wounded, enraged animal who’d lost his mate. Beau dimly registered that it had come from him. An emphatic denial, though he knew every word Ramie had related was truth. Pain like he’d never experienced welled from the depths of his soul, filling his heart with such despair that it overwhelmed him. He couldn’t find his footing and so he knelt there on the floor, numb with terror. Grief. And love so staggering that he was awed that he had the capacity to feel such depth of emotion for another human being.
Love? He fucking adored her. Worshipped the ground she fucking walked on. Love was a paltry, inadequate word to describe his feelings for Ari. Maybe he’d never truly find the words. But he would not lose her. Couldn’t lose her. Because, even if he could never convey with words all that he held inside him, he would show her. Every single day for the rest of their lives. But his vow was empty, meaningless, because the woman who should be hearing it wasn’t here.
Ramie broke away from Caleb’s hold, though how, Beau wasn’t certain because Caleb had what amounted to a death grip on his wife, as if by merely holding her, he formed a barrier between her and the rest of the world. A barrier to the pain and grief she was experiencing even now.
But Ramie crawled the short distance to where Beau knelt on the floor, his face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking as though . . . He scrubbed at his face, shocked to feel dampness covering his cheeks. He stared down at the wetness on his palms in bewilderment just as Ramie’s much smaller fingers slid over and curled around his.
“I’m so sorry, Beau,” she said in a tortured voice. “I let them take her. I wish I had her powers. God, I wish I had anything but this wretched curse to feel the kind of evil that took her.”
Beau roused himself from his agonizing suffering because this was in no way Ramie’s fault, and he would not allow her to torture herself one second longer. Even as Caleb’s lips pursed to form a protest, Beau held up his hand to his brother, sending him a look that instantly quelled his response.
“This is not your fault,” Beau said fiercely. “It’s mine and only mine. We spoke of moving her, of keeping her on the move constantly, never at one place for too long a time. I had yet to set that into motion. I was arrogant and careless. But maybe . . .” He cast a look of despair in Caleb’s direction, knowing he had no other choice. “Maybe you could help us locate her.”
Ramie was nodding vehemently when Zack broke in.
“No need, man. We injected her with the tracking device, remember? Dane’s already working on getting a bead on her location. I vote we go in, wherever she is, with some serious shock and awe and lay waste to the entire fucking lot of them.”
“Fuck me,” Beau said in frustration as he glanced over to where Dane
was booting up one of computers. He just hoped to fuck it worked after the utter chaos that had occurred. “I can’t even goddamn think straight! Of course! Jesus, how could I have forgotten the one thing I was the most adamant about? The one thing that would give us a chance if exactly what happened tonight occurred.”
“Keep it together, man,” Zack said softly, his eyes brimming with sympathy. “I know well the frustration in not knowing where someone important to you is. I’ve lived it over a decade. But we’ll get your girl back. You can take that to the bank.”
THIRTY
ARI’s eyes slitted open and bright fluorescent lights stabbed her pupils like shards of glass. Wincing, she slammed her eyelids shut once more and emitted a soft moan. Where was she? What had happened?
Her brain was effectively scrambled. Maybe she’d finally had the big one. The super psychic bleed Beau had feared. Or maybe she’d simply had a stroke. But weren’t they essentially one and the same? A stroke was a bleed in the brain, right? Hers just wasn’t the normal kind of bleed most stroke victims incurred. Her mind was so fuzzy that she strained to remember anything at all.
The ache in her head intensified as she tried to focus. To concentrate enough to make sense of her surroundings. Because something wasn’t right.
She couldn’t move.
Her arms and legs were restrained and cold metal surrounded her neck.
Her neck?
Her eyes flew open in alarm and this time she ignored the splintering pain the action caused, and she forced her gaze to her surroundings, panic billowing like a thunderstorm. Oh God, where was she? Was she ensconced in her worst nightmare? And if so, why couldn’t she awaken and seek comfort in Beau’s arms? Her shield against all hurts and fears.
And then the events of the night crashed into her, staggering her and leaving her breathless. Tears stung her eyelids. Were the others even alive? Was Beau alive? Oh God, he couldn’t be dead. No! The men who’d taken her were completely without honor. But she’d known her fate was inevitable once the safe room had been breached. Her only choice was to take a shot that they actually would leave Ramie and the others alone. Content themselves with finally achieving their primary objective. Her.