| |
Elliot opened her mouth. Deacon found himself anticipating whatever she had to say, his body tensing to argue, to convince her, cement their relationship—whatever it was—before this skittish woman had a chance to get away.
The sudden blare of an alarm from the bedroom cut the moment off. Elliot’s eyes went wide. “Code Red!”
And then they were both running for the other room.
The alarm was emanating from Elliot’s comm, a particular blaring pattern that signaled something more than the ghost visits they’d been getting; it signaled someone was hurt. Elliot grabbed for the comm and slipped it into the pocket of a pair of fatigues as she pulled them on. Deacon scooped up his fatigues from the floor beside the bed and dragged them on as he rushed for the hallway. A quick look showed Sydney still in bed, eyes closed—so, not her. Someone else then. He shouldn’t be relieved, but God, he was. He so was.
Elliot hit the stairs before he did, her body now clothed in a tank top as well. The familiar calm of battle settled over him as he followed her down to the first floor. He could hear yelling coming from the vicinity of the kitchen. Dain. Saint. What the fuck was going on?
Elliot grabbed the banister about five steps from the bottom and vaulted over the side, landing on a run without pausing, Deacon on her heels. Their footsteps barely whispered on the hardwood floors as they slammed through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Inside was chaos. Dain was yelling, “Hold him still!” while men struggled with someone on the floor. Deacon paused in the doorway to count heads, figure out who was where. The only person he couldn’t account for was Fionn. And then the thrashing reddish-blond head on the ground registered.
Shit!
Choking back his fear, he pushed around Elliot and through the crowd to kneel next to his best friend. Fionn lay on the hard tile, blood spreading across his gray T-shirt. He thrashed around, fighting the hard hands holding him down, biting out curse after curse as he struggled.
“Motherfuckers! I’m fine, a’right. Let me go.”
“You’re not fine. Settle now, soldier,” Deacon barked.
Fionn went quiet at the familiar authority in Deacon’s voice. It centered Deacon as well, pushing back the fear and anger and despair at the thought of losing another team member and, even more, someone he considered a brother. He wouldn’t lose Fionn, not now.
“Saint, get his shirt off.”
Saint grabbed a pocketknife from his belt while Deacon bent closer, forcing an eyelid open to examine Fionn’s unfocused eyes. Fionn jerked his head, then stilled, his breathing choppy.
“Stab wound,” Saint muttered.
Clear, cold rage rose. “How did this happen?”
“He was supposed to be patrolling close to the house,” Dain said, handing Deacon a wet cloth.
Deacon cleaned away some of the blood to assess the chest wound. Not critical, thank God. The puncture was high on Fionn’s left shoulder, in the hollow beneath the join of collarbone and arm. Not too deep. They’d had ten times worse out in the field without flinching. Fionn would never have passed out or panicked from a wound like this. But his friend’s gaze too disoriented for Deacon’s liking despite the compliance he showed with Deacon’s commands. Compliance in itself was disturbing—Fionn might obey, but not without a smart-ass comment.
“Concussion, I think.” Feeling along the back of Fionn’s skull, he found a lump and a long, thin cut where the skin had been broken open. No cracks in the bone that he could feel, but he’d let a doctor rule that out. He shifted Fionn slightly onto his side to show Dain. “He was hit on the back of the head.”
“We have a doctor on call specifically for JCL. We can get him out here without having to take Fionn to the hospital,” Dain assured him. “Unless there’s someone at GFS you want us to call.”
“Discreet?”
“The most.”
“JCL is closer. Do it.” He tucked one of the dry clothes Saint handed him under Fionn’s head, then used a second as a pad against the still-bleeding stab wound. “How’d you find him?”
“We didn’t,” Dain told him. “He stumbled into the kitchen a few minutes ago.”
“Wound is fresh,” Deacon muttered. “Couldn’t have happened long ago. Anyone do a check?”
“I did,” King said as he walked through the back door to join them. “No sign of an intruder, nothing out of place. Just a patch of bloody grass near the north side of the fence. I did find a trail of white powder at the fence’s base, but no sign of any damage.”
“Did you get a sample?”
King held up a small plastic bag. Deacon could barely see a white substance inside. “Yes.”
“Was there another alarm?”
King jerked his head in a negative.
“Fucking Mansa. How the hell did he get inside without us knowing it?” And then another fear hit him—if Mansa could get inside the fence, could he have also gotten inside the house? He glanced over his shoulder. “Elliot, go get Sydney, bring her down here with us.”
Fionn surged up, catching Deacon off guard, knocking him on his ass as a growl of rage erupted. “No!” Between one second and the next, Fionn had Elliot pinned to the wall, every ounce of his considerable weight seeming to rest on the hand around her throat. Even weaving, he was strong enough to keep her there, but Deacon noticed she didn’t fight his hold. Her breath might be choked off, but her eyes were cool, calculating. Considering.
Deacon moved cautiously to his feet, something inside him going very still. “Fionn?”
From the corner of his eye Deacon saw Dain and Saint move in on either side. He held up a hand. Both men paused.
“Talk to me, Irish!”
Fionn shook his head as if trying to clear it, but again he responded to the command in Deacon’s voice. “She’s a traitor.”
Deacon swore his heart stuttered to a stop at his friend’s rough words. “What?”
More weaving. “She’s...” He leaned his forehead against the wall, and Deacon took the opportunity to move a few steps closer. Fionn’s eyes were closed, a crease between his brows—pain. “She’s...” His eyes snapped open, his gaze boring into Elliot’s. “He had a message for you. Called you by name. He said to be telling you, ‘Hello, Daughter.’”
Shock hit Deacon like a kick to the gut. “What?”
“‘Hello, Daughter.’ That’s what he said. ‘I won’t kill this one. He’s my gift to you.’”
“Who?” Deacon demanded.
“Mansa.”
But it wasn’t Fionn who said the name. It was Elliot, her voice straining against the force of Fionn’s hold. Deacon’s gaze met hers. For a moment time stopped and the eyes he saw were the soft, shy blue ones reflecting back his pleasure as he’d slid inside her over and over last night. The eyes that had teared up when her climax hit. The eyes that had seemed to hold nothing back as she gave herself over to him just a few short minutes ago in the shower.
And then his vision cleared and he saw the blank slate that she had become.
A traitor. The daughter of the enemy, and he’d trusted her with his child. Trusted her enough to fuck her.
He hadn’t realized he’d hurtled himself toward her until hard hands bit into his arms and shoulders.
“Wait, Deacon.” Dain, intensely quiet, in his ear. “Just wait. There’s an explanation for this, I promise.”
“You knew?” Deacon jerked away from the man. Dain let him go, his gaze dropping to the floor. When it met his again, Deacon could see the mantle of responsibility in it.
“I did.”
Saint made a disbelieving sound at Deacon’s side. A glance told him Elliot’s other team member hadn’t known. King, too, seemed bewildered, his gaze shifting from Elliot to Dain to Deacon without settling on one.
So Dain and Elliot had kept secrets from their own team. “You—”
But he didn’t know what to say. What to think. What to do.
The kitchen door swinging open decided for him. Sydney pushed through, her wide eyes taking in the arguing adults, the blood on Fionn and his half-torn shirt, the brutal hold he had on Elliot. Fear welled up, and Deacon could see her start to shake. “Daddy?”
Before he could respond, Fionn made a surprised noise in the back of his throat, his eyes rolling back in his head, and slid to the floor. Sydney cried out.
Elliot almost beat him to her; Deacon scooped Sydney into his arms just in time. “Keep your goddamn hands off my daughter.” Carrying Sydney’s slight weight, he went to kneel beside Fionn.
“Saint, contact that doc, and tell him to step on it.” Fionn had likely blacked out from the concussion, but Deacon wouldn’t take chances with his friend’s life. Nor was he letting go of his daughter anytime soon. “King, when he’s done, the two of you move him into the library for me.”
“I can help,” Dain said. He got no more than a step closer before Deacon’s glare froze him in place.
“You are getting nowhere near him. You can take your team member and get the hell out of my house before I lose my shit. Ignorance I can forgive,” he said, “but not lying. I asked you if there was anything else I needed to know, and you both assured me there wasn’t.”
Sydney lay quietly against his chest, her tiny hands clutching his bare shoulders. He laid a hand on her back and realized she was shaking. He should get her out of here, get her away, but his options were limited and he had to think about Fionn. For now the safest place for Sydney was in his arms where he could protect her from everything but the anger frothing inside him.
“I can explain, Deacon.”
The resignation in Elliot’s voice told him she held out little hope that he’d let her. She was right.
“Get. Out.”
Saint came to his side. “Doc’s on his way.”
Deacon nodded, never taking his eyes off Dain and Elliot. “Let’s go.”
King and Saint maneuvered Fionn into a fireman’s carry over King’s shoulder. Dain and Elliot watched, unmoving, as they moved toward the door. Deacon knew both men gave their team members a look from the way they flinched. Dain’s lips tightened as Deacon moved past them, Sydney on the hip opposite where they stood.
“You need to let me explain, Deacon.”
Elliot. He pushed open the door, refusing to turn around and meet her eyes. “The time for explanations was five days ago in Jack’s office, Ms. Smith.”
“Even after last night?” she asked quietly, the words barely reaching him. “After what we—”
He rounded on her, and whatever she saw in his eyes shut her up. “Last night was a lie just like everything else about you, I’m sure. I’m done with your lies and with you. Is that clear enough?”
Elliot’s blank expression revealed nothing. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or not—part of him wanted to hurt her, wound her as much as she’d wounded him. Part of him wanted to choke her with his bare hands for putting his child at risk. And part of him, some deep, hidden, traitorous part, searched avidly for any sign of the emotions they’d shared for so few hours in her bed. He wouldn’t give any of those parts freedom.
“Daddy?” Sydney whispered against his neck.
He rubbed a hand across her shoulders, at the same time drilling Elliot with his gaze. “I said, is that clear?”
Elliot’s mouth pinched, then relaxed. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He turned and walked through the door, praying for once that Elliot Smith would do as she was told. Because if he saw her again, got his hands on her, he didn’t know which part of him would win.
He was pretty certain, though, that either way, both of them would not be left standing when it was over.