Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (30 page)

He turned it on via his app. “Go,” he said.

“You got incoming.”

He looked over to the window. It was still light outside. He saw a few guys coming up the path to Hope’s yard. “Right. Thanks.” He looked at Hope. “Get dressed. We’ve got company.” He stepped into his jeans. “I’ll talk to them in the living room. You can join us or stay in here. If you come out, be damn sure you’ve got your game face on.”

Hope’s eyes got huge. She was a strong, determined, and brave woman, but he had to always remember she wasn’t trained for the world she’d entered. He was damned impressed with how she’d handled herself so far.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Pete walked into Hope’s living room without knocking. Max closed Hope’s door and faced the WKB leader. “S’up?”

“Lion’s back.”

“Good.”

“Where was he?”

Max shrugged. “I’ll ask him.”

Pete looked away and paced the length of the little room. Max slouched by the door to the kitchen. Pete stopped in front of him. Something drew him into the kitchen. He saw the bags of food from Rosa's and lifted one of the aluminum lids.

“You were in town?”

Max gave him a slow smile. “Yeah. You want some?”

“Why haven’t you eaten?”

“Been a little busy.” He bent and picked up Hope’s discarded shirt. “You’re keeping me from my two favorite things. My woman and my dinner. How about you get to the point?”

Pete looked at him, his eyes going narrow. “There’s something about you, Mad Dog. I think you’re one of the few I can trust.”

Max didn’t react to that. Half the time, people meant the opposite of what they said.
 

“I need you to stay on top of what’s going down with Lion. He and I are the only ones receiving direct communication from King. I don’t like it. I don’t know why King talks to Lion.” He looked at Max. “That’s what I want to know. What the fuck does he think he’s doing with—or getting from—the kid?”

“That it?”

Pete met Max’s eyes and shook his head. “I want you to take the kid out.”

“Before or after I find out what he’s up to?”

Pete waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Get what you can from him, then get rid of him.”

“You know King will backfill him. How are you going to explain his death?”

“Make it look like an accident. Make it look like his boys turned on him. I don’t care. I want him gone.”

“Okay. I’ll take care of it.”

Hope quietly shut the door to the bedroom. She was shaking inside. Mads had just agreed to kill her brother. Agreed to do it with the same level of ambivalence as if he were choosing between Coke and Pepsi.
 

She moved back into the room, gathering up her clothes so she could dress. She had to return to her original plan for getting Lion out. Tonight, she was going to sneak out and warn him. God, she hoped he would believe her. She had to get them far, far away from the sick world closing in about them.
 

Mads was not someone she could trust. Period. No more waffling. She’d act her part, then get her and her brother out of dodge. She’d just fastened her bra when Mads knocked then opened her door.

“He’s gone. Want to eat?”
 

He watched while she stepped into her jeans and pulled a tee over her head. The fear in her belly left no room for an appetite, but she had a part to play, for just a little while longer. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

In the kitchen, she watched him dish out their food, putting a huge portion on her plate. She didn’t say anything about it, just took it to the table. He brought their glasses over and topped them off with fresh Chianti. Hope reached for her wine, feeling brittle enough to break. She swirled the dark red liquid around the sides of her glass, wishing things were different.

How long she played with her glass, she wasn’t certain. When she looked over at Mads, he was leaning back in his seat, his plate untouched, his hazel eyes stormy. “What’s on your mind, princess?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh. The room’s about thirty degrees cooler than it was a half-hour ago.”

Hope looked at him, really looked at him. “I heard your conversation with Pete.”

“Did you?”

“You’re going to kill my brother.”

He didn’t blink, didn’t move. His face tightened, and a muscle started a tic in his jaw. “I don’t take orders from Pete.”

“You said you’d do it.”

He picked up his fork and twisted it to get a bite of pasta. “You judge me, but you don’t know me at all.”

“I don’t. Not at all. I only know that you terrify me.”

He looked over at her. And nodded. “Likewise.”

She blinked, wondering at that statement. She frightened him? “What do you mean?”

He forked the food into his mouth, chewed for a second, then said, “Forget it.”

She looked at Mads sitting opposite her and felt a bit as if she were taming a bear to be calm around humans. His legs were spread wide, as if he expected to have to jump up and into action at any moment. He wore no shirt. She remembered the feel of his soft chest hair against her cheek…and the smoothness of his back as his body moved over and in hers.

His jaw had a rough growth of beard; it wasn’t filled in enough to actually form a beard or mustache. His brows had no graceful bend, more a sharp angle downward, giving them a hint of the demonic—an impression the circle of steel in his brow reinforced. His hazel eyes were fringed with thick, dark lashes. His shaggy hair hung in layers above and below his ears, curly and wayward.
 

His lips were lush and rounded, on top and bottom. She looked at the steel loop on one side of his lower lip, remembering how it felt when his mouth was on her body. Oh, and his nose. Nothing delicate there; it was a man’s nose. A warrior’s nose. Straight, wider at the tip; its size suited him perfectly.
 

He chewed with his mouth closed, but under her perusal, his nostrils flared and his eyes hardened. “Keep it up, princess. We’ll go back to your room,” he warned. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Or I can pick another wall to fuck you against.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. Leave it to Mads to prove blushing was still her go-to reaction when things got awkward. And hell. His wall idea sounded good. She dropped her gaze to her plate. They ate the rest of the meal in silence, but their eyes never shut up. Not his and not hers. Looking, wondering, playing
what if
?
 

When he’d cleared his plate, she got up and started putting leftovers away. No doubt Feral would be over to raid her fridge.
 

“Leave the dishes for me.”

She looked at him, surprised he offered. “Okay. I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.”

He nodded at her. “Night.”

She didn’t respond, just left the room the room quickly, because if she lingered, she knew there’d be another wall event in their immediate future. Sex with the man was like crack to her.

When she left the shower, the lights were off in the rest of the house. The bathroom was in a short hallway that led to the bedroom. She peeked around the corner to see what Mads was doing. He was lying on the couch, his arms folded behind his head, his legs crossed at the ankle and hanging off the end of the sofa. Though it was dark, she had a clear sense he was watching her.
 

It had been a blisteringly hot day, and the heat was still trapped in her little house. She’d set a stack of sheets, blankets, and a pillow out on the couch before her shower. He’d tucked the sheet over the sofa and was using the pillow, but the blankets were on the floor.

“Good night, princess,” he grumbled from the couch.

“Night, Mads.”

* * *

She woke sometime later, uncomfortable as her room cooled. Her alarm had sounded. It was time to try to sneak over and warn Lion about Mads. The house was quiet. It had no air conditioning, so she could hear the crickets outside and the distant sound of a breeze in the mountain forest. Ordinarily, those sounds would be peaceful, but right now, the silence in her house was ominous. She couldn’t hear anything from the living room. No snoring. No quiet breathing. Was Mads still out there?

She disentangled herself from her rumpled sheet and tiptoed out to check on him. He wasn’t on the sofa. The bathroom’s door was open and it was empty. The kitchen was empty. The front door was still locked, but she stepped outside anyway to see if his bike was where he’d left it earlier. It was.
 

Back inside the living room, she realized his shoes, boots, and weapons were gone. Her veins turned to ice. God, he wouldn’t have gone after her brother after his poutfest at dinner, would he? She hurriedly dressed in jeans, a black tee, and sneakers. She put her hair in a ponytail, then grabbed her phone and flashlight. She went out through her garage shop, intending to use its back door so she could slip outside in the shadows.
 

Something wasn’t right inside the dark garage. She stopped midway, trying to figure out what set off alarms in her mind. The pit in the garage floor was uncovered. It hadn’t been that way since she first moved in and cleaned it out. She switched on her flashlight and peered over the edge. No one crouched in the shadows. One of the panels that lined one long side of the pit was loosened and set aside.

“Mads?” she whispered, but received no answer. She stepped down into the pit and shined her light on the gaping black hole the open panel revealed. It was a narrow portal, not even high enough for a short person to walk through. The thick sheet of spider webs had been torn open. Someone had recently come through there.

She moved her light around and noticed that the room was fairly small, just a short tunnel that led to a flight of stairs.

What in the heck? She took one look at the dangling webs and cringed, knowing she was going to have to go in there. Hunching her shoulders, she inched forward, then hurried down the steps. There was a small landing at the base with a steel door. The door was ajar. She opened it farther and shined her light into the space. There was only a chute that led down. A ladder was embedded in the concrete.

She leaned over and flashed her light down…and down, down, down. What was this hole? An old well? Her light caught on something. Something that moved. Something big, looking up at her about twenty feet down. She startled and almost dropped her flashlight.

“Jesus, Hope,” a familiar voice grumbled. “You’re like a fucking puppy. You follow me everywhere.”

She shined the light near him. “Mads? What are you are doing down there?”

“Spelunking.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“You think we could have this convo in a few hours?”

“No.”

He stepped down another rung. “Suit yourself. Just don’t make any noise, ’kay? It ruins the element of surprise.”

“Who are you surprising?” she asked, but his labored sigh was her only answer. “Never mind. I’m coming down.”

“No, you are not. Go back to bed.” He glared up at her, then she lost sight of him as she shut off her flashlight and tucked it into her front pocket. God alone knew what kind of nasties she was going to pass on her way down; she sure didn’t want to see them.

 
He waited for her to slip down in front of him, using his body and arms as a safety cage around her. “Fuck. Me. I can’t ditch you, can I?”

Hope smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it with her back turned to him. “You’re an ass, Max Cameron.”

“Mm-hmm.” He sighed. He moved a hand from the sidebar to her ribs, pushed it up between her breasts to her throat, spreading his fingers out around her neck as he gently drew her into the curve of his body. He nudged her ponytail aside with his face and growled against her neck, “You have to go back up.”

She drew a long breath to strengthen her resolve. “Nope. I can’t.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“And stay up there with me?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not going back up.”

“I didn’t give you a choice. I have a job to do.”

“Yeah. Kill my brother.”

“I don’t take orders from Pete. I’m working now, my real job, the reason I was here in the first place, before you, before your brother. Besides, I made a vow to you. Remember?”

“I don’t want you out of my sight.”

“Hope”—his voice hardened—“I have something I have to do.”

“If I go back up, I’ll tell them you’re down here.”

“This ain’t a game, sweetheart. Fuck with me, I’ll tie you to these bars and let the spiders get you. And I might or might not remember to come back for you.”

“I’m not afraid of spiders.”

“You lie.”

“And even if you gag me, you know I’ll make enough noise to alert someone who comes into my shop.”

Mads sighed. He held still for a bit, as if deciding what to do with her. “Really? You’re not afraid of spiders?”

“No.”

“Snakes?”

“No.”

“Mice?”

“
No
. Enough, Mads. Let’s do this.”
 

“Fine. Let’s keep going down. Mind how much noise you make. Sound carries in tunnels.” He went down a rung. “I’m right here with you. There’s a door about twenty yards below us.”

“Where does this go?”

“To another tunnel. If things get dicey, you get behind me and duck the hell down.”

“Do you have a spare gun?”

“I never carry spares. I need every one of the ones I have.”

“Okay. We’re just going exploring, right?”

“Hope,” he growled next to her ear, “you jumped into the deep end. Decide right now how well you can swim. You can still get out if you leave now.”

“I’m a great swimmer.”

He moved down a rung, slicing the edge of his hand on a sharp spike protruding from the back of the ladder. “How’s your tetanus shot?”
 

“Current. Why?”

“It’s sharp here. Don’t drag your hands down the bar.”

“You okay?”

“Fine. We’re almost there.”

They got to the bottom and entered the tunnel system. Hope shined her light in both directions down the tunnel. “What is this place?”

“An old missile silo.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Pools of acid.”