Blue Moon II ~ This is Reality (12 page)

“You don’t help others. You two work alone,” Call said with conviction.

“Worked. Past tense.” He walked up to them slowly and turned in a full circle. His hood still low on his face, they couldn’t see his eyes. Could only see his mouth moving. No one knew him, no one could get close enough to remove his hood. He was a ghost. No legal name. No identity. No allies. No alliances. A myth. An invader of nightmares. A true assassin. He was the Alpha and the Beastmasters knew it. If they were half past scared, they should’ve been a quarter to terrified.

“It was Omega.” Call stepped in front of his men but still kept his distance from him.

“Yes.”

“You know where he’s holding Backhander,” Hawk growled, slid the hammer back on his Glock, and flew toward him. Aimed to press that barrel to his forehead. Alpha sidestepped Hawk’s quick advance and in two rapid moves rid him of his weapon. In Hawk’s stunned awareness that he was now disarmed in front of the world’s deadliest man, Alpha flew back and connected his boot with Hawk’s chest, propelling him backward several feet before snapping back upright without missing a breath.

The others quickly moved into their attack formation.

“I’m not here to fight you,” he said, his rough voice calm. “I will return what belongs to you, but Omega is mine to deal with. After I return Backhander to you safe and unharmed, he will be dealt with according to the order. I advise you to stay out of this.”

“Fuck you! You can’t be trusted and neither can Omega. You’re his partner!” Hawk yelled.

“Was,” he said stiffly.

“Why should we trust you, Alpha?” Call stepped in front of Hawk, who was still fuming.

“Because I too, am enjoying calmer days. There comes a time when you have to stop fighting and killing.” Alpha approached Call slowly, staring the intense man directly in his marred face. Impressed by Call's bravado and his strong company. “Am I right, Commander?”

Call instructed his team to lower their weapons, all of them still eyeing Alpha with curiosity. No one had ever been this close to him, and lived.

“You were hunted by the government for years. No one has ever caught or even spoken to you. You’re taking an awfully big risk, coming into a secured room full of SEALS and DEA agents. Why come out into the open now?”

“I’ve stayed away for the same reason you keep that knife sheathed at your side, Commander… it’s too dangerous to be left out.”

Call lifted his arm, looking at the supposedly concealed 10-inch Magnum blade and gazed back at the dark man with barely contained rage simmering in those brown eyes.

Hawk began to pace again, his eyes clenched in concentration. Alpha was sure he was trying to receive a vision. Eventually he would. So he needed to move fast.

“Whether Omega turns Backhander over or not I will find him and I’ll kill him. He’s a terrorist in my country,” Hawk spat the words as he spoke them. He looked disgusted to even be in the same room with Alpha. But Alpha had never been an enemy of this country.

Alpha took a couple of measured steps toward Hawk and he could see the colors swimming in those all-seeing eyes. He could see Hawk watching his mouth tighten on the portion of face that he could see and Alpha spoke low, his voice as deadly as his skills. “He has honor to me. I will return your precious boy to you, Hawk. You’ll have to trust me for no other reason but because I told you to.”

Hawk snarled, “Not good enough.”

“Is this good enough?” Alpha stepped back and removed his dark hood from over his head, revealing a gorgeous man for all of them to see. Thick black hair fell back with his hood, stopping at his neck. Dark eyes thickly outlined with black kohl liner watched their stunned faces. The naturally tanned skin looked like a face you wanted to stroke when you kissed his full lips. Viper wasted no time snapping a couple of pictures. Alpha didn’t blink. That was him giving them something over him. Giving them his own trust. His face could be entered in the national database for every law enforcement and governmental agency in the world if he didn’t follow through on his guarantee. “But understand. I do this and you stand down and let me go after Omega alone. Hawk, I will bring him to you in forty-eight hours.”

“No. It’s already been twenty-eight. He’ll have traded Pierce by then,” Hawk said to Call, his eyes pleading with his Commander.

Call put his hand up and stared at the hooded man. “You need two days? I doubt that.”

“I am moved by your appreciation of my skills, Call. But, I need to get to Omega first. There’ll be men that I’ll have to eliminate before I can reach him. Once I have him, I’ll bring him to your home, Hawk. Be there.”

“No. Bring him here,” Hawk demanded.

“I’m not coming back here. The rest of your team will be back by then. If you want him, be at your house to receive him.”

“And he’s just going to let you take Pierce from him?” Hawk looked at him disbelievingly. He didn’t bother asking the stealthy man how he knew where Hawk’s private residence was. It wasn’t important right now.

“I don’t need to explain anything more to you.” Alpha’s gravelly voice elevated. “I’m your only real chance to get him back. Even if you are able to get your emotions under control long enough to receive a vision, you’ll never be able to get close to Omega. He’s too fast.”

“But you can get to him.”

“Yes, because I’m faster.” Alpha turned to leave, slinging his hood back up over his head.

Chapter Thirteen

PIERCE

Pierce’s head fell forward before he jerked it back up again. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but he knew it’d been over twenty-four hours since he'd been taken. He was exhausted and hungry but he refused to sleep or eat. The extremely intimidating man – who told Pierce to refer to him as ‘O’ – had him closed in a small room with no windows to see outside, but he did have a view through the clear door into a larger room where O sat with his back to Pierce watching a couple of monitors. It looked like images of the city. Pierce tried to determine if the images were surveillance of the task force's location or if the guy was looking for something else. He knew they were still in Virginia because the ride was only a couple hours at most. O put a blindfold over Pierce’s eyes and put his helmet back on after forty-five minutes of riding.

Pierce’s eyes were heavy and gritty from fatigue. He knew Hawk would find him. He’d get a vision of where he was and come in, guns blazing. He just hoped it was before O’s clients came for him. Why the fuck did the Russian’s want him? Sure he’d picked off a couple of the mob’s key players, but so what? There were thousands of them. Maybe they knew what Pierce’s plan was, maybe Pierce had a mole in his team.
Fuck
. He couldn’t think as sharply with no sleep or food for almost two days. Now he was wishing he hadn't stayed up so late the night before their mission.

O stood and came to open Pierce’s door. He was about six feet tall. Looked to be in his early thirties. Lithe and toned. He had smooth dark facial hair, trimmed neatly around his mouth and chin. Not overly muscular but he was fucking strong and fast. He would be a stunningly handsome man if he weren't such an asshole.

When they’d first arrived, as soon as he’d cut Pierce’s zip tie off and released his hands, Pierce drew his hand back and tried to land a hard slap across his face, but the man had reared back, making Pierce swing at nothing but air. The man did it so easily and fast, as if he was bored. He quirked an eyebrow at him in question.

“A backhand, huh? Hence the name, I suppose.” He gripped Pierce’s bicep, leading him into his room. “That's so predictable. Try something like this.” O removed his leather coat and draped it over the one chair in the room and came back to stand in front of Pierce. He gave him a hard frigid glare before taking one step to the left side and swinging his flat hand around, chopping Pierce in his throat so fast that if a person had blinked they’d have missed it. Pierce grabbed his throat with both hands and dropped to his knees, gagging on his own spit, panicking because he couldn't take in a breath. He was violently grabbed by the back of his neck and yanked back up. “That’s an open hand throat strike, Backhander. Can be delivered from either side of your attacker, as opposed to a front on strike.” O informed him casually. Pierce still coughed and hacked as the man explained the move like Pierce was his student at a Dojo. “Flat palm, striking 7mm above the Adam’s apple, that’s the hurt spot. If you hit hard enough you can crush their windpipe. Although the chisel fist is the most effective for that result.”

Pierce’s attacker made a show of curling his fingers into a tight fist, tucking his thumb into his pointer finger. His kept the firm grip on the back of Pierce’s neck so he couldn’t turn and drew his fist back to his ear, knuckles straight forward and aimed at Pierce’s throat. Pierce shook his head ‘no’, a thin sheen of tears forming in his eyes. He tried to say ‘no’ or ‘please’ but he was unable to form a word, his voice gone from the pain of the first strike.

Gray-blue eyes drilled into him before the man dropped his fist. His face was so close to Pierce their noses touched. “That’s your only warning. Don’t you ever try to hit me again. Because the next time my fist flies, I’m going to do some irreversible damage to that pretty face of yours. Do you understand?”

Pierce was sitting on the bed with his back to the wall. He couldn’t lie down or he’d surely fall asleep. Maybe that was the only reason he was still there, because he wouldn’t sleep. Was that what the man was waiting for… or was he waiting for the client? If the Russians got Pierce, he may never be seen alive again. The thought terrified the shit out of him. He’d accomplished a lot in his life, but there was so much more for him to do. He was too young, didn’t want to die like this.

A man the size of a WWF wrestling champion came into the outer room and said a couple of words to O, then turned and looked through the glass at him. He held a plate with a sandwich and had two bottles of water tucked in his elbow.

He came into the room and placed the food on the bed beside Pierce’s leg.

“Eat.” His voice was unusually deep, deeper than Pierce had ever heard before. His accent was Russian. Pierce trembled. They were here. Here to take him from his country. He’d be stored in some cargo ship with god knows what.
Hawk where are you?

“Eat,” he said again, a frown forming on his face. “Now.”

Pierce’s hands and legs shook so hard, they rattled his teeth. No matter what, he wasn’t going to eat that. They could be trying to poison him or get him to digest some kind of truth serum so he could divulge classified information. They could forget it. He’d die first. 

The man walked towards him and yanked him off the bed, slamming Pierce’s body into his. He gripped Pierce’s chin and raised him off the floor. “Stupid,” he growled in his face.

“Put him down,” O snapped at the giant and Pierce was dropped immediately. “He’s not stupid. He’s smarter than I assumed. You can drink the water Backhander if you don’t trust the food. You’ll see the seal is not broken. Killing yourself is not necessary.”

“A reasonably healthy human can go five to six days without water,” Pierce said shakily.

“Why wait so long?” the giant said in a combination of broken English and Russian. Omega had agreed with his client to let one of their enforcers stay with him. He didn’t trust him. Regardless of the fact that Ahtoh was dumb as a box of rocks, he still didn’t let the man have access to any communication devices nor was he allowed to leave.

“He’s waiting long enough for them to save him,” O answered for him.

Both men walked out the door speaking to each other in Russian. Pierce wanted to curl up in a ball and cry until he fell asleep, but he didn’t do either. Tears would cost him fluids he couldn’t spare.

The next day went by in a blur. O never left the room on the other side of Pierce's door . He slept in very small increments, spending most of his time at the computer. Any time Pierce moved within the room, he’d watch him with those cold eyes, like a predator. Evening was falling and Pierce was struggling. This was the greatest test of his strength he had ever faced. Seventy-two hours with no food, water, or sleep. Pierce feared that he couldn’t last another hour, but with each hour that passed he claimed a small victory. He believed Hawk was coming for him, he truly did, he just hoped it wasn’t too late.