Nate went into the office of Iron Rack’s Gym and waited. Kells sat at his desk covered with papers from the previous regime, and Luke stood nearby, handing him documents to sign.
Kells squinted at an invoice. “What’s this for?”
“Wholesale cleaning supplies.” Luke’s eyes widened when he saw Nate. “The other one is for a grocery delivery service. We don’t have time to go food shopping, but we don’t want to live on takeout. It was Nate’s idea.”
While Kells and Luke talked, Nate went to the window and focused on the closed-up T-shirt shop across the street.
“Where are we going to cook?” Kells asked.
“In that galley kitchen on the top floor of the gym,” Luke said.
Nate hid a grimace. He wouldn’t consider that closet with a hot plate and a sink a kitchen.
“Alright.” Kells signed the docs and handed them to Luke. “Remember, I hate broccoli.”
“We know that, sir.” Luke put his papers into a file folder and headed out. “Good luck,” he whispered as he passed Nate.
Nate nodded and moved to the front of Kells’s desk. He stood, while not quite at attention, with his shoulders straight, his hands behind his back.
Kells glanced at Nate, then bent his head over a notebook on his desk. “You missed a staff meeting. A meeting you wrote the agenda for.”
“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again.”
Kells threw down his pen. “Want to tell me why?”
“I took a car this morning.”
To his credit, Kells didn’t slam a hand on the desk. He just watched Nate with his intense gold-speckled brown eyes. “Pete said he and Zack found you unconscious, and you saw Dr. Bennett.”
“Yes. The doc gave me another prescription. But that’s not all. Something else happened.” Nate told Kells about meeting Cassio in the Cemetery of Lost Children as well as Cassio’s demand that he protect Sarah Munro. He left out the part about Cassio working for the Prince. In Nate’s story, Cassio could be one of Nate’s contacts from the club. He ended with “I set up a meeting with Miss Munro.”
Kells went to the window overlooking the street. Instead of using blinds, the previous owner used Jolly Roger flags to cover the lower part of the windows. He fixed his gaze at some unknown thing outside. “You met Miss Munro two weeks ago, before the rest of us arrived?”
“Yes, sir. She helped me with some research that proved crucial to the mission.”
“You trust Cassio?”
Good question. “On this issue, yes.”
Kells faced Nate, his jaw hard and unrelenting. “Does Cassio work for the Prince?”
Nate held his breath in his throat. If he answered yes, the Prince would kill Nate and the entire unit. It wasn’t some idle threat by a no-name gunrunner. This was the Prince. The leader of the deadly Fianna army. Highly trained, soulless men who followed extreme rules in their mission to…well, Nate wasn’t sure what their mission was, but the Fianna didn’t bluff. They stated their intentions with no ambiguity or passive-aggressive bullshit. A situation Nate both admired and feared.
“Nate?”
He met the eyes of his CO, one of the toughest commanders in the Special Forces community. Could Nate lie to Kells? Break the trust of the brotherhood? Could Nate not lie to Kells and put them all in danger?
Pete and Zack appeared in the doorway.
“Sir,” Pete said. “Luke said you wanted to see us?”
“Yes.” Kells sat down again. “Nate told me about Cassio’s demand that Nate protect the historian Sarah Munro.”
Pete and Zack entered yet stayed silent.
“While I would normally consider Nate’s request to protect an innocent woman, and I’d also normally demand more information about this Cassio—” Kells paused. “We have other things to worry about.”
Nate stepped forward. “Sir—”
Kells held up a hand. “I understand your need to help a woman who helped you, but you’re not going to be able to do that because you’re not going to be here.”
“Why?” Pete asked. “Where’s Nate going to be?”
“Nate is returning to the prison hospital in Maine.”
Nate gripped the metal chair in front of him and made sure to inhale and exhale. He’d known his reprieve had been temporary, but he’d hoped for more time. He’d honestly thought he’d get at least another six weeks. If not more.
Zack stood next to Nate, their shoulders touching. But neither Pete nor Zack spoke.
“What about Sarah?” Nate was proud of his voice’s even tone when everything in him wanted to scream at the thought of being forcibly drugged with meds that made his muscles melt and his mind splinter.
“Until we have more intel about Miss Munro and any danger she’s in, we can’t spare a man to watch her.”
Nate sat in the chair, his head beginning that oh-so-familiar pounding.
“How long before Nate leaves?” Zack asked.
“I’ve made arrangements for Nate to be transported on Sunday afternoon.”
“Today is Friday,” Pete said.
“I know,” Kells said.
“How long is he going back for?” Zack asked.
“Seventeen years. Twenty minus the three years he’s already served.”
Nate had spent two years in a POW camp. Three years in the psych ward of the U.S. military’s secret prison hospital. And had been granted two precious months of liberty. He dropped his head and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. Colors danced behind his eyelids. Now he only had two days of freedom left?
“Nate.” Kells’s firm voice made Nate’s head snap up. “Meet Sarah and end this.”
Nate stood on wobbly legs. “Even if it leaves her in danger?”
“Yes,” Kells said. “I want her out of our lives. Today.”
* * *
Etienne Marigny climbed the ladder from the johnboat onto the Brigid and adjusted his stance to the rolling deck. His cousin’s yacht was anchored outside the beautiful-yet-remote Dead Man’s Hammock in Wassaw Sound.
“I need to see him,” Etienne told a crew member who ran over with a towel to clean the muddy footprints he’d left on the deck.
“Mr. Marigny knows you’re here.” The crew member laid out another towel so Etienne could wipe off his boots.
He finished as the Warden came from the stateroom. “How is Remiel?”
“The same.” The Warden marched over in a black hoodie and jeans. “Did you fire shots at the historian and Walker this morning?”
“A few. For fun.” He’d wanted to take out Walker but hadn’t yet been ordered to kill him. Although it went against Etienne’s instincts, he’d only shot a no harm, no foul warning.
The Warden gripped the railing and stared across the marsh. White egrets skimmed the surface of the water beyond the seagrass. A peaceful sight at odds with the monster below. “I also saw Nate Walker this morning. No wonder the Prince wants to recruit Walker. He reminds me of Rafe Montfort.”
“Both of whom are still alive while Eddie is still dead.” Etienne took an apple out of his jacket pocket and bit into it, using his fist to wipe his chin. The fact that Montfort and Walker were allowed to walk this earth while Etienne’s eighteen-year-old nephew lay in a grave on the Isle of Grace told Etienne everything he needed to know about justice in this world. Simply, there wasn’t any for people like him. People with no power or money or connections.
But since his cousin had arrived in town, the old way of doing things had started to change. By the time his cousin fulfilled his plans, those with power and money and connections would be begging Etienne for mercy. Except there wouldn’t be any. For the first time in his life, he’d go all sans pitié on their asses. He’d teach them not to screw with the Marigny family.
“Eddie died from his own stupidity and pride.” The Warden paused to watch a pelican dive for its breakfast. “Don’t make the same mistake.”
“My nephew died because Walker and Montfort refused to back down from a fight. It wasn’t the kid’s fault.”
The Warden shrugged. “You’ll have your chance to avenge your nephew’s death.”
He pitched the apple core into the water. It bobbed until floating into the marsh grass. “You don’t know that.”
“Remiel promised.” The statement exuded indignation. “Isn’t that enough?”
“For now.” Etienne’s phone buzzed with a text from Remiel, and he headed down to the stateroom. “I just hope my next assignment is to kill Walker.”
Etienne entered the stateroom. Light streamed in from windows, exposing highly polished wood furniture and a carpet woven in intricate floral designs.
His cousin Remiel sat in his leather chair and took a strawberry from a silver bowl on his desk. He bit the berry off its stem and wiped his fingers on a linen napkin.
When Remiel reached for another, Etienne stood at attention. Although his cousin wasn’t especially tall, he was—even by male heterosexual standards—exceptionally handsome. He’d inherited intense blue eyes, black hair, and a strong jaw from his mother’s side of the family. Unlike Etienne who’d inherited the Marigny dark eyes and sharp, beak-like nose that resembled a black crow plague mask. Or so he’d been told.
Remiel ate two more berries before addressing the man tied in the chair on the other side of the desk. “Mr. Pinckney, we have a situation.”
Stuart Pinckney, president of the Bank of Charleston, groaned.
Etienne didn’t understand why Stuart was upset. He was still alive while his cohort was dead. And Etienne should know, since he’d just killed the cohort.
Remiel wiped his hands again and lifted a silver chain with a Saint Michael the Archangel medal. It shone in the sunlight. “Maybe we misunderstood each other, Stuart. Maybe you’re working on the Julian timetable and not the Gregorian calendar?”
Stuart Pinckney shook his head.
Remiel tossed the necklace onto a book. “You know what I want?”
Stuart nodded.
“Good.” Remiel slapped his hands on the desk and stood. “This afternoon one of my men will return you to your bank in Charleston, and you will give him what is mine. Do you agree?”
Stuart struggled with the ropes, and Remiel raised a take-care-of-this eyebrow at Etienne.
He slapped Stuart’s head. Idiot. Was a simple nod too much to ask for? It’s not like he’d been tortured today. And the nub, where Stuart’s left ring finger had been before Remiel cut it off, had stopped bleeding.
Etienne knelt before the banker, who was tied to the chair, his mouth covered with duct tape. His blue-striped seersucker suit and white shirt, which two days ago had been pressed and pleated, were now a wrinkled mess. The most surprising thing was Stuart’s eyes. His bright blues had become shadows of their prior beauty within hours, not days, of beginning the torture. Now Stuart’s nine remaining fingernails dug into the chair arms, leaving behind small half-moon marks in the wood. Remiel would want the chair destroyed.
Etienne had a lot of shit to do today, and dealing with Stuart was the least of his chores. “Just nod, Stuart. It will ensure your wife’s safety.”
Stuart started to cry. Didn’t Stuart realize that as long as he served Remiel, his life had meaning? “Do we have a deal?”
Stuart nodded as the cabin door flung open and banged the wall.
“Sir,” a merc in combat pants with a nine-mil on his hip said. “The banker’s body has been found.”
“Already?” Remiel asked. “By whom?”
“Two old men on the isle.”
“Pops Montfort and Grady Mercer.” Etienne rose. Those old geezers were always up in his family’s business. “We knew this would happen.”
“Not this soon.” Remiel’s voice dropped an octave.
“Sheriff Boudreaux is handling the situation,” the merc added.
“Now the Prince will get the message,” Etienne said. That was the plan, after all.
“Indeed.” Remiel stared at a photo on his desk of a beautiful woman with long red hair before lowering the silver frame until it lay face down on the wood. Maybe so he wouldn’t have to face the condemnation in her green eyes? Etienne and his brothers had always wanted to know about the mysterious woman, but none of them had ever had the courage to ask.
“Cousin.” Remiel spoke as he regarded Stuart’s trembling body. “It’s time to inform Miss Munro about her part in my plan.”
“What about Walker?” Etienne planted his fists on the desk. “The Green Beret needs to suffer for Eddie’s death.”
“Not to worry. Walker is falling in love with the pretty historian.” Remiel glared at Etienne’s fists until he removed them. “And love always causes a man to suffer.”