Absolution (34 page)
Authors: Kaylea Cross
Kaylea Cross
strength was failing. The sodden clothes were like a heavy hand pressing her back into the water.
“H-help!” she cried, choking on another mouthful of water when her head dipped beneath the low waves. Flailing weakly, she broke through the surface once more but knew she didn’t have the strength to stay afloat. Despair swamped her. Was she going to drown after all? She fought back a sob.
Luke
. She’d failed to detonate the bomb, and now he would die getting Tehrazzi.
And she would be dead before him. Sometime in the next few minutes.
Emily turned onto her side and tried to pull her exhausted body through the water. The numbness spread up her arms and legs, her breaths frantic and choppy. She could literally feel the life draining out of her weakened body. The rhythmic pump of her limbs turned to uncoordinated thrashing as she lost control of her muscles. The water closed in over her head again, a frigid, dark embrace pulling her down toward her death. And it wasn’t peaceful at all. Not like the stories she’d read about by people that had almost drowned. She wasn’t calm and filled with warmth. This was terrifying.
Panic flooded her, sharp and vicious as the blackness took hold. Her eyes bulged, fingers ripping at the water like claws. She couldn’t let it get into her mouth and nose this time. If she did, it would be the last breath she ever took. Arms and legs thrashing, she made one last ditch attempt at getting to the surface. Desperate to live.
Strong hands grabbed her. A muscled arm closed around her ribs, and then she shot upward.
Rocketing toward the surface.
Luke, she thought blearily, fighting to stay conscious. He’d come in after her. Her head and shoulders exploded through the surface. Her starved lungs sucked in a tiny amount of air between 278
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wracking coughs. The arm around her never wavered in its hold.
“Just lie still,” a male voice shouted to her. Not Luke. She jackknifed in his hold, choking and sputtering. The arm around her ribs tightened and began towing her backward. When she finally got her first full breath of air, her head fell back against a hard shoulder. “You’re okay.”
Rhys. Of course it was Rhys.
Emily was too cold and weak to help him when they finally reached the boat. He heaved her over the side and climbed in after her, rolling her onto her back. She blinked up at his shadowy face.
Rivulets of water poured off his tall frame, splashing around her on the deck.
“I need to get these clothes off you,” he said, voice calm and full of authority as he stripped her down and wrapped her in a towel. All she could do was lay there and shiver, a million questions racing through her brain. His chilled fingers pressed against the side of her throat to take her pulse. It felt sluggish even to her.
Her teeth were chattering, lips so cold she could barely move them. “L-Luke,” she mumbled. “W-where—”
“I’ll have you ashore in a few minutes.” Rhys ignored her question and stepped over her to fire up the engine.
Emily rolled to her side and weakly pushed up on an elbow, barely able to hold her head up. “Luke,”
she repeated. Where was he?
Rhys didn’t look at her as he turned the boat around and made for the dock. “He asked me to get you clear. The sooner I drop you off, the sooner I can go back and help him.”
Go back? “G-go b-back wh-where?”
“To Tehrazzi.”
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Beneath the waves, Luke slid through the water like a knife toward his target. This far under the surface it was quiet and still. The claustrophobia normally caused by the blackness never came. The water was his second home. Working beneath the surface in the dark, he was in his element as he sliced beneath Tehrazzi’s boat and came up soundlessly on its starboard side.
Breaching the surface, he barely made a ripple and reached for the side edge when he heard Emily’s scream a second before she splashed into the water.
His whole body tightened, wanting to dive under and save her, but he couldn’t. If Tehrazzi saw him, they’d all die. Em was a strong swimmer. He knew Rhys would already be in the water going after her. Luke had this one chance to get Tehrazzi and make sure Emily got clear. He wasn’t going to let her down again.
Locking his jaw, he gripped the edge of the boat.
As Tehrazzi fired up the engine, Luke threw one leg over the lip, flipping over the side when Tehrazzi opened up the throttle. Driven by pure instinct, Luke lunged at him. Tehrazzi turned his head at the last second, a flare of surprise registering in his expression as he pivoted, knocking the throttle back.
The bow plunged down and Luke hit him straight in the chest, the abrupt stop adding to his momentum.
Like lightning, Luke’s right hand lashed out to grip the detonator in Tehrazzi’s fingers before he could let go. They crashed against the dashboard and for an instant Tehrazzi sagged forward with a grunt of 280
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pain. Luke took a blow to the kidney and blocked another, clamping down with cruel force on his adversary’s fingers.
The familiar green eyes boring into his were full of fanatical glee. And relief that it was finally about to end between them.
Luke strained to keep Tehrazzi’s thumb pressed down tight on the lever. In the distance he heard the sound of a motor starting up, and the hollow ache in his chest receded. Em was safe. Rhys had her, would take her to shore. Luke’s arm trembled with the effort of keeping Tehrazzi’s arm and hand still. Just a little longer. He only had to hold it a minute longer until Em was well clear. Then it didn’t matter.
Except he didn’t want her to see him die.
He didn’t want to leave her again. Needed to be with her.
Tehrazzi’s lips peeled back from his teeth with an animal snarl. The bastard was fucking strong, juiced by the thought of his impending martyrdom and taking Luke in the process. He jerked his wrist, nearly breaking Luke’s hold. Luke felt his fingers slipping. Beads of sweat broke out over his chilled skin. He was soaked with cold seawater but he didn’t feel it. Inside he was raging hot. And lethally pissed off. At one time, Tehrazzi had been like a son to him. Following him like a fucking shadow with worshipful puppy dog eyes in the bleak Afghan mountain camps. Doing everything he was told, and anything to please his teacher. The slightest amount of praise Luke gave him lit the teenager’s lean face with a brilliant smile. So desperate for approval and guidance that Luke had ached for the kid.
He had gone out of his way to protect and train him, thinking it would help Tehrazzi survive when Luke inevitably got pulled out by the CIA. Instead, he’d created a monster, and it had finally come down 281
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to this. Hand to hand, locked in a death struggle.
The teacher and the student. Once almost as close as father and son, now facing each other in mortal combat.
Luke growled low in his throat, pouring all his strength into holding onto Tehrazzi’s hand, his left crushing his opponent’s right wrist as it moved down and back toward his waistband and the pistol Tehrazzi had tucked in it. Shit. Luke’s knife sheath dug into the quivering muscles of his right calf, the weapon so close but completely out of reach. If he let go of Tehrazzi’s right wrist for even a split second, he was a dead man. Tehrazzi was too fast for Luke to be able to snag the knife and get a clean stab in before he got shot. And Tehrazzi knew it. The taunting gleam in his eyes said so. The bastard was certain of his victory.
Then a malicious smile twisted Tehrazzi’s lips.
“I let your wife live,” he ground out in Arabic, forcing Luke’s white-knuckled hand toward the gun inch by agonizing inch despite his full resistance. “She is a woman of God.”
Luke didn’t respond, just kept his gaze pinned on Tehrazzi’s, fighting with all he had to hold on.
His muscles burned with the effort, locked against Tehrazzi’s unrelenting strength. The tendons beneath his fingers flexed as Tehrazzi’s fingers opened, reaching for the gun, shifting around the grip. Fuck, he couldn’t hold him, Luke realized. His resistance was futile against the inexorable movement of Tehrazzi’s arm as it crept upward. The muzzle of the pistol raised infinitesimally. Up, up.
Turning toward him.
Luke’s heart pumped so hard it felt like it might burst. His muscles tightened to the point of pain, determined to hold that gun away from him.
“She suffers,” the bastard continued, raising the pistol despite Luke’s steely grip. “Her body and 282
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soul.”
Luke clenched his jaw until he thought his teeth would shatter, trying to ignore the words. Every muscle in his body quivered, struggling to break the stalemate. He could not let up. Had to find a way to disarm him and still hold on to the detonator.
As he glared up at Tehrazzi, those green eyes flashed with hatred and then a shocking vulnerability. “You left us both.”
The accusation hung between them, and the truth of it hit Luke in the heart like a red-hot knife.
And finally he truly understood his enemy’s motivation. Betrayal. That’s what his note had said on Davis’s stiffening body. This had all been about perceived betrayal. All of it. Tehrazzi blamed him for the hardships he’d suffered after the CIA had pulled Luke and the others out after the Afghan-Russian war. Luke had suspected it as a cause, but had never guessed it was the whole motivation for Tehrazzi turning to radical Islam.
Guilt jolted through his rage, momentarily weakening him. “I had no choice,” he bit out, sweating and straining. God, he’d caused all this. So much suffering and rage and pain. So much death.
But he could end it here and now. He still had that power.
His death grip on Tehrazzi’s fingers eased a fraction. He could end this so easily. All he had to do was let go. Release the pressure on Tehrazzi’s hand and less than a heartbeat later they’d go up in a ball of fire together. His sacrifice would be his last act of penance, a chance at absolution for all his sins.
Tehrazzi would never take another life again.
But a picture of Emily’s face swam before his eyes. Green eyes so similar to Tehrazzi’s held his, but they were soft, and filled with tears of desperate hope. Of love. So much love it hurt to breathe.
Hold
on
, she begged him in his mind, her voice so real he 283
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could hear it.
Please hold on
.
I need you
.
In that moment Luke knew he couldn’t desert her again. Not by choice. She wouldn’t make it without him. He knew her too well. Without him she’d stop fighting. That couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t
let
that happen.
The only way he would leave her to face the future alone this time would be through death. And he wasn’t going there without giving everything he had first.
Iron resolve swept through him, giving him a renewed surge of strength. Luke forced Tehrazzi’s arm down with a throttled growl, using his whole body to put more power into it. All the while he kept his other hand curled over Tehrazzi’s on the lever, the relentless pressure turned his bloodless fingers numb.
Sweat trickled down Tehrazzi’s face, the muscles in his cheeks twitching. Time seemed to stop. The pistol stayed where it was, hovering at waist level, muzzle pointed away from them both. Locked in a lethal standstill of life and death combat between their iron grips.
They both panted hard, chests heaving like bellows. No chance they were both walking away from this. Luke could see the deadly intent in Tehrazzi’s eyes. He was more than ready to die and go to paradise to be with Allah. But Luke had unfinished business here on earth. “Not going...with...you,” he ground out.
“Yes, you are,” Tehrazzi snarled. “And your death…will mean
nothing
.” A low laugh rumbled in his chest. “Others are waiting…to carry on the…jihad I’ve waged.”
Luke knew it was true.
“It’s Allah’s...will.”
“Last...chance,” he bit out.
Holding his gaze in defiance, Tehrazzi began 284
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praying, the eerie Arabic monotone raking over Luke’s skin with icy fingers. He knew the prayer by heart. A martyr’s prayer. And Tehrazzi followed it up by reciting, “Allah-uh-aqbar...Allah-uh-aqbar...”
God is great
. A death chant. Over and over.
Luke’s hand shook on Tehrazzi’s forearm. His grip slipped. Muscles gave way. He dug down for his remaining strength, but the gun came up regardless.
Slowly, inexorably. Turning toward him. Closer with every heartbeat. The fingers gripping Tehrazzi’s wrist loosened.
No. You won’t let go, Hutchinson. SEALs don’t
quit and they don’t give in.
He had only seconds left until Tehrazzi gained the leverage he needed to twist the gun up and shoot him. Refusing to give up, Luke gathered his remaining strength and spun, risking letting go of Tehrazzi’s gun arm for a split second before ramming him back against the dashboard with the full force of his body, simultaneously grabbing the trigger with his left hand. His other seized Tehrazzi’s right wrist, twisting the muzzle down and away.
Tehrazzi’s outraged cry rang in his ears and Luke pushed back with all the strength in his legs, mashing his spine into Tehrazzi’s chest. Crushing him against the dashboard. The hard edge of the explosive vest dug into Luke’s back. He glanced at their left hands, locked around the detonator. Luke couldn’t feel his fingers, but he was still holding on.
His shoulder and arm muscles burned with the strain. Tiring fast.
Running out of time. Can’t hold on much
longer...
And still the gun came up. Shit, he couldn’t hold it anymore. Couldn’t stop it no matter how hard he tried. Up, up it inched, the muscles in their arms bulging, shaking. Luke stared at the little black hole 285
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at the end of the muzzle as it cleared his waist.
Seconds now. That’s all he had left.
His arm slipped. His heart missed a beat, eyes riveted on the muzzle of the pistol as it swung up toward his chest.
****
