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I hold my breath while I wait. Ghost is absolutely still again, his gun hand unwavering. Is he getting new intel through his earpiece? Is everyone okay up there? Or are there more coming? Someone must've heard the gunshots.
I don't let my breath out until Ghost's shoulders relax and he sticks his gun into his belt. He gets up, collects his other knife, then wipes both of them off on the pants of one of the soldiers. The knives disappear wherever he keeps them hidden on himself, and then he finally looks at me. There's pain in his eyes. Regret? Not over killing them, but that I had to see it.
"Are you okay?" I whisper, knowing they didn't have a chance to physically hurt him. But that's not what I'm worried about.
He lets out a slow breath, then nods. "Fine. You?"
“Been better, but I didn’t throw up this time.”
“Shit, I’m not sure if I’m proud of you for being so practical or pissed that I’m even thinking that.”
I give him a shaky grin. I might be a little green around the edges but we’re alive. "Go with proud, because the other ship has already sailed. What about the others? How did they get all the way down here? Are Tex and Riot…?"
"They're fine." He taps the earpiece as he comes closer. Just the briefest of pauses as he looks at me, and then he unlocks the door to let me out.
I throw myself around him, not caring that there's blood on his jacket and a little on his cheek. I need to hold him, touch him, know that he's whole… and to let him know that he hasn't scared me away. I accept the darkness in him, even if he doesn't. A short sob escapes me, and then his arms are around me too, pulling me in close. When we come upstairs, there’s a line of bodies. They're all dressed in black and masked. With the Outlaw Sons knowing they were coming, they didn't stand a chance.
"Jessica!" Riot pushes through to us. Ghost still has his arms around me, but Riot grabs my head and kisses me like he thought he'd never see me again. I'm so shocked, it takes me a second to start kissing him back. He's okay. And then Tex is there too, jumping in as soon as Riot backs up, and I get another kiss. It's nice. It's life, celebrating that we pulled through without getting hurt.
Hellfire comes over, followed by a couple of grizzly looking bikers I don’t know yet. "Nice work," Hellfire says. "Barely a scratch, and twelve bogeys down. Any trouble downstairs?"
Ghost shakes his head. "None. Not convinced that Kane got his money's worth with these guys."
Or maybe they didn't count on there being a freaking ninja biker waiting for them down there.
"Hey, Boss. Kept one alive for ya." Between Poe and Sinner, there's a guy in black with his helmet and mask removed. They're as much keeping him up as they are making sure he doesn't get away. His hair is buzzed short, but the little he has is soaked with drying blood from an oozing wound on his scalp. His eyes look a little unfocused and his face is heavily bruised.
It's hard not to feel sympathy, even knowing that he and the others were coming in here to steal me and Anne away. On the other hand, I doubt he would have had any compunctions about blowing away Riot, Tex or Ghost. That thought hardens my heart pretty darn quick.
Poe holds out a little electronic device that looks kind of like a phone. "He had this. He was hanging back a little, and we figured he was the contact man. Either that, or so chickenshit that he hid in the bushes as soon as he got here. If we hadn't been waiting for them, we'd probably never spotted this fucker."
They shove the man forward, and he drops to his knees in front of us, catching himself against the pavement with his hands.
Hellfire takes the device and looks at it. Up close, it seems more like a pager, but who has those anymore?
Skyhigh takes a look. "Narrow band comms unit. Good for communicating if you don't want anyone intercepting. I was taking them apart and putting them back together back in my deployment days." Ghost nods like he recognizes it. With his background, he's probably used them before.
"How's it work?" Hellfire asks, his growl threatening. I wonder if the guy on the ground is with it enough to understand he’s a dead man.
"This one looks text based. Probably encodes it on the way. Silent and more accurate than voice. Might require a code, though." Skyhigh takes the unit from Hellfire and examines it closer. He nudges a button, and a screen comes on, so low contrast it's almost invisible, even in the darkness.
Ghost kneels in front of the last of the attackers and grabs his chin to force him to look up. "You’ve got two options, friend.Quick and painless, or real long, real slow and the worst fucking agony you've felt in your whole damn life. How much loyalty is that money worth when you know you'll never see any of it?" The ice in his voice doesn't just give me chills. Even a couple of the Outlaw Sons look a little uncomfortable with how easily he makes the threat. Killing in the heat of battle is very different from the promise of torture.
The man's eyes clear up, like his body just channeled every drop of adrenaline in his body towards this new threat. I don't know how much he understood but definitely enough that his face contorts in terror. "What do you want from me?"
"Give me the code word."
The man looks around at the glowering Outlaw Sons surrounding him, his expression resigned. There's no mercy to be found here. "Quick?"
"You won't feel a fucking thing."
He nods. I don't see how he can meet his obvious fate that calmly, but I guess you have to be a certain type of person to get into this kind of business at all. "Spoiled brat. Two words," he says.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me," growls Riot. Tex just chuckles.
Ghost nabs the comms unit from Skyhigh, and types on the little screen. I peek over his arm to read.
Target acquired and removed from premises. Mission successful. Spoiled brat.
