After several long beats of silence, she said, “I’m out of time. I’m with the guys that attacked Marcus and Leah. They’re mercenaries but won’t tell me who they work for.”
“Defion?”
“No. They would’ve known me and probably would have killed me on sight. These guys think I’m interested in joining them for the right price.”
The back of Ian’s neck prickled with warning. “Are you?”
Another pause. Again, he heard the muffled sound of male voices in the background and started to lose his patience. “Mercedes, listen to me. Trading Defion for another merc group won’t solve your problems.”
“You did it,” she whispered.
“You side with them, you’ll end up dead.”
“So I should side with you?”
“HORNET wouldn’t accept you. You helped kill one of our guys.”
“I didn’t help—”
“Nah, you slept with Sebastian Haly after he made the kill. Gave him a nice congratulations fuck. Aren’t you a saint.”
“You fuck.” Her anger seethed over the connection. “I hate you.”
“Feeling’s mutual, babe.”
“I’m not trading one for the other.” Her voice vibrated with emotion. “According to Leah, Xander is alive and these bastards know where he is.” She hung up.
Ian stared at the phone for a long moment. Alexander Cabot, a.k.a. Xander, Mercedes’s younger brother, was alive? He’d dropped off the grid more than a year ago after trying to leave Defion. The thing was, with Defion, once you were in, you didn’t get out. Ian being the one exception, but he was a special case. Harrison Stead didn’t like loose ends, and Ian thought for sure Defion would have tracked Xander down by now and given him the Sebastian Haly treatment, leaving him dead in some remote place for the carrion eaters to pick apart. If Xander had managed to stay alive this long, it was with the help of someone worse than Harrison Stead.
Jesus. At this rate, Mercedes was going to get herself killed.
He pocketed his phone and looked down at the two dogs sprawled out at his feet. Tank had taken an instant liking to Remy’s dog, Ginger. He lay with his head pillowed on her side. Both of their tails thumped when Ian looked at them.
He knelt and rubbed a hand over each of their heads. “Should I go to the bosses about that call?”
Tank gave a soft woof that Ian took as a no. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
Ginger gazed over at Tank, then up at him with soft brown eyes that seemed to say, You two are idiots. This will come back to bite you.
“And you know a thing or two about biting, don’t you, sweetheart?” He’d found her at the local pound, where she’d been sent after biting her owner, who had been in the process of beating the shit out of his wife. The wife didn’t press charges and the husband sent Ginger off to be euthanized. After learning her backstory and seeing how good she was at taking direction, Ian had known she’d be a perfect addition to HORNET. Unlike Remy, the gold German Shepard was a good trainee, a fast learner. She was good at finding remains—a handy skill to add to HORNET’s repertoire, since Tank excelled at drugs and chemical scents. The two made a great team.
As Ian straightened, he saw his trainee blow up again. Both dogs gave a huff of exasperation.
“Yeah, I know,” he muttered and pressed a palm to his twitching eye.
It wasn’t just Mercedes’s neck on the line here. At this rate, they were all fucked.
…
Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
There were only a handful of flights from Sumba each day, and Marcus booked them the first off the island the next morning. That meant staying on the island overnight while mercenaries searched for them, but it couldn’t be helped. He reserved them a room at the overpriced resort under fake names and spent the whole night pacing the room, hoping like hell this wouldn’t play out like the clusterfuck on Martinique that had taken Danny’s life.
He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until they touched down at the airport in Bali. Bigger island and more people equaled easier to hide.
“I don’t think we were followed.” He said it out loud as much to assure himself as Leah. “Do you have your phone?”
“Why?”
“I need to call the team.”
“No.”
“Leah, we don’t have clothes, we don’t have ID, we’re short on money. Unless you want to sleep on the street until we figure out what the hell’s happening, we need their help. We need their resources.”
After a mulish second, she dragged her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and slapped it into his hand.
He didn’t blame her for her reluctance. In her eyes, HORNET was just as responsible for Danny’s death as the man who pulled the trigger.
He didn’t have to ask for her code to unlock the thing. Her anniversary—the same code Danny had used on his phone. Because those two were peas in a pod. They were meant to be together. They should still be together. If it wasn’t for him, they still would be.
Once he had the phone unlocked and faced the keypad, his mind went blank, his thumb hovering over the numbers.
Damn. He didn’t want to make this call.
In all honesty, he’d have preferred to keep HORNET out of this. Calling them for help felt too much like crawling back with his tail between his legs, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth to even think about it. But with Mercedes Raya back in the mix and gunmen chasing Leah across the globe, what choice did he have? This wasn’t something he could handle on his own.
Instead of calling Gabe or Quinn, he punched in Eric “Harvard” Physick’s number. The kid was the safest bet. He’d find them a place to stay here in Denpasar the fastest, and he wouldn’t condemn Marcus for his many mistakes.
The phone rang a handful of times. Marcus checked the time on the airport monitor and winced. It was the middle of the night in Wyoming. What if Harvard didn’t answer? He’d have to call Gabe or Quinn. Or maybe he could go straight to Tucker Quentin. Tuc would be the one footing the bill, after all.
Just as he was about to end the call, Harvard answered with a groggy, “Hello?”
“Harvard—”
“Holy shit!” He sounded wide awake now. “Marcus, where the hell are you?”
Marcus spotted a tall man dressed in black coming their way. Could be nothing. Was probably nothing, but the guy moved like he had some combat training. He wasn’t about to take that chance and grabbed Leah, pulling her into an alcove by the drinking fountain. He pressed her against the wall and used his bigger body to block her from view, since he figured the bad guys knew what she looked like, but it was still debatable whether they knew about him or not. He leaned down as if he was going to kiss her. To any passersby, it’d look like they had stepped out of the flow of foot traffic for a make-out sesh.