Captive Heart (17 page)

Jack …

The cold violence in that voice cut Jack worse than any blade.

His chest ached. His lungs burned. Sweat plastered his T-shirt to his chest as his father’s voice punched through the motionless air.

“We can still work this out, boy. You’re only seventeen. You don’t know everything yet.”

Jack threw himself around a corner in the massive casino vault, scraping his jeans on a wooden crate. He had to get away from that voice. Had to find a place to hide. Concrete floors. Metal walls. He stumbled past stacks of locked metal boxes, costumes on mannequins, sculptures, paintings—nothing big enough to hide inside. Nothing safe enough to hide behind. His heart beat so loud and fast he knew his father could hear it, and his mother’s Luger shook in his hand.

“There’s no way out of here, Jack.” His father switched to a friendly voice. “You’re my only son. You don’t have to run from me.”

Lie
.

Jack barreled into a dead end and edged behind the vault’s last wall, shoulders to metal, still shaking. His breath came so hard his father could probably track every rattle and wheeze.

Have to take care of him. For Mom. For Ginger
. He had to get them out of this, because Ginger was talking to the feds and Mom was probably talking and Jack knew—
knew
—what his father would do. Jack had watched what his father did to his own sister, Jack’s aunt, after she talked, right here in this vault. He had seen it last year, and he wished he hadn’t.

“Jack.” Dino Amore, known to the bosses who hired him as “The Hand,” sounded less friendly now. Dino never left evidence and he never missed a target, and he’d made enough money by killing people to buy this little off-the-boardwalk casino in Atlantic City. After Jack saw his father shoot his aunt in the head, he’d been listening to his father’s calls, spying on his father’s meetings, trying to find anything he could turn over to the feds to get his father arrested and put away forever. He’d read FBI transcripts from other calls and meetings, and he knew the truth. His father loved nobody. His father loved nothing. Jack and Ginger and their mother—they were just social cover for The Hand and the dangerous crew who did his bidding. And now, with all the increased pressure from the feds, The Hand’s family had become inconvenient and dangerous.

“Do you want to know where they are, boy? Your mother and your sister? Show yourself. Talk to me and I’ll take you to them.”

God. Tears jumped to Jack’s eyes.
Are they already dead? How did he find them?
Jack felt like something was standing on his heart. He couldn’t stop sweating, and the Luger in his hand wouldn’t stop shaking.

No way his father had found Mom and Ginger. Jack had hidden them too well. The FBI—they’d already be picking them up at the location Jack had given, saving them, getting them out of Atlantic City and away from New Jersey and The Hand and his men, forever.

“It took balls to call me, Jack.” The Hand switched tones again, this time sounding like he did when he really, really wanted Jack to agree with him. “To tell me the truth about what you know, what you plan to do. I know you want to let me change your mind. Why’d you set up this meeting if you didn’t want to talk to me?”

Because as long as you’re alive, Mom and Ginger won’t be safe. Your little crew might look for them, but they won’t find a thing. You—you’d never stop
.

That’s why Jack planned to kill his father, to hit the worst hit man in New Jersey mob history, but now that the asshole was almost here next to him, almost face-to-face—

He’s my father
.

Jack lowered the Luger and held it against his right leg.

The hand that clamped on Jack’s left arm felt like solid iron. Cruel grip. Bruising, down to the bone. Was that emotion in his father’s frozen black eyes? The vault lighting and total panic played havoc with Jack’s senses. Was his father’s smile loving—or triumphant?

The cold barrel of the Heckler and Koch 9-millimeter against Jack’s temple gave a firm answer to that question.

The Hand held his gun on his left, but that didn’t matter. He could shoot either way, and he was deadly at any range, much less point-blank. “Where are they, boy?”

Jack drew a sudden breath. His eyes focused on the concrete wall a few feet in front of him, on the draped paintings leaning against that wall.

He doesn’t know where they are. Mom and Ginger are still safe. I’ll die, but they’ll be free
.

He stopped shaking and tried to yank his arm free from his father’s grip. His father held fast.

The Hand didn’t fire. Instead, he smiled. “Balls, like I said.” He lowered his pistol, but not all the way. His fingers dug into Jack’s skin. “These people you think you’re friendly with, they’ve been confusing you. Ginger and your mom, too. Take me to them. We’ll work this out.”

For about three seconds, Jack wanted to believe him. He wanted to pretend he’d never heard his aunt gurgling as she died with his father’s bullet in her brain, that he’d never seen his father wrap her in a rug and carry her out like so much trash. Nobody had ever found her body.

Nobody would ever find his.

The world seemed to narrow to a few feet in a casino vault. Jack’s senses spun to high alert.

Maybe it was the flash of brutal glee in the bastard’s eye. Maybe Jack saw his father’s shoulder flex as he raised the 9-millimeter.

Jack shot his father in the face, just below his left eye.

The Hand’s bullet hit Jack in the side.

Jack fell, screaming and digging at the fiery, painful wound.

The Hand died on his feet before he ever fell, looking truly surprised, and—

Jack was back in Afghanistan. Back at the sweltering, blood-soaked mouth of the Valley of the Gods. He could smell the cat-piss stench of Rakshasa demons everywhere, only this time, he knew what they were. He knew the fuckers had killed his men.

He knew they were coming for him just like The Hand. He was losing everything all over again. His family, his home. There was nothing. He had nothing. He
was
nothing. The life in him died. The will to live snuffed out. He gripped his weapon and stared at the swirling sand at the valley’s entrance.

He wanted only one thing now. Blood for blood. He wanted killing and he wanted death and he wanted …

Something else.

His grip on the hot stock loosened, and the rifle’s tip dipped.

He wanted …

Someone else.

For a few seconds, his hands seemed different. Older. Maybe stronger. No sunburn.

“Blackjack.”

The nickname punched into his awareness. His men used to call him that, in the war. But his men were dead. Most of them. John Cole had made it, and the few guys he’d held back with him from that expedition into the Valley of the Gods—Duncan Sharp and some younger guys. And back at operations, Saul and Cal would be waiting for him to check in, wouldn’t they?

God, I fucked this up. It’s over, and I fucked it up completely, just like Atlantic City
.

Jack hadn’t died in that vault, but he’d lost his last name, his past, his home, and the mother and sister who’d gone into the federal witness protection program. Splitting the family was safer than sending them all together, and Jack was just a few months from adulthood. He’d already enlisted, so three months after The Hand died, with his shiny new Blackmore identity and credentials, Jack walked into basic training, an education, a career, and a destiny that finally seemed sterling and planned—until Afghanistan.

He felt like his guts were sliding out of his body, and the taste of sand and sweat filled his mouth.

He turned his head, glanced away from the valley, and saw a light that looked nothing like the ball-scorching sun he dealt with every day. Blue light, soft and cool, like the inside of a building. Maybe like water.

Andy
.

His eyes flew open. “Did I get her out?”

He grabbed the first arm he saw. Saul. Saul with his tattoos and his long ponytail and his dark, worried eyes. “You carried her out, man. She’s good. She’s cool. Better than you.”

Damn, this place stank like antiseptic and cleanser. Cotton sheets didn’t feel too bad, but the mattress felt like something from a cheap motel.

Hospital bed. Needles in one arm. Bandages—neck, arm, leg. Jack took stock of himself on autopilot, registering John Cole’s big square face and Duncan Sharp’s hometown-boy mug a few feet from him. Duncan and John were standing side by side at the foot of his bed.

“You got old,” he told them both. “And Saul, you got weird. I was …” He stopped himself, not sure what to call it, so he just said, “Dreaming.”

Saul waited until Jack let him go, then nodded once, gazing across Jack and out the hospital room’s only window. “We all go back to the Valley now and then.”

Jack’s awareness cranked around slowly, but wound itself tighter and tighter until everything lined itself up again and he could settle on the only thing that mattered. “Andy?”

He looked straight at John Cole, then at Duncan, who said, “You’ve been out three days, and she’s a Sibyl. Can’t even tell she got shot.”

Jack was beginning to realize he felt like he’d been chewed up by something with teeth the size of freight cars. “You shitting me? I know they heal fast, but—”

“She’s fine,” Saul said. “I swear on my brother’s life.”

“I lost track of—I thought I was—that we were back in—” Jack couldn’t say it. Closed his eyes and tried to erase Atlantic City and Afghanistan from his mind’s slate completely. He remembered seeing Andy had been shot. He remembered picking her up, trying to get her out of the alley. But it was a bloody, foggy haze. “Did I embarrass myself?”

“You got a little turned around about where was where and what war you were fighting,” Saul said, “but I think you did yourself proud by the lady.”

Jack opened his eyes, and the white of the hospital walls felt blinding.

“I
know
you did yourself proud,” John said. “Asshole. Always have to be the hero, don’t you?”

They were being too nice to him. Now Jack was positive he’d let everything go to shit. Everything he owned hurt like a bitch, and now he was getting sick to his stomach, wondering if Andy really was okay.

Motion at the door caught his eye, and he recognized Bela Sharp in street clothes—jeans and a stylish tank. Camille Cole was with her, also wearing jeans, red hair dusting the shoulders of her yellow shirt. Behind them came Dio Allard and a little bit of wind.

Bela and Camille went to their husbands and gave Jack friendly smiles, but Dio stopped at the hospital room door and just glared at him. She had pulled her blond hair back so severely that her gray eyes tilted up at the corners. Made her look twice as mean.

“Talk,” she said, and the wind in the room blew so hard Jack’s IV pole rattled. “Say something so I can go back to the townhouse and tell her you’re awake and fine. It’s the only way I’ll be able to keep her still and resting.”

“Awake and fine,” Jack reported even though he thought his right shoulder might bust off his body and crack into pieces. His chest, gut, and arms looked like somebody had covered him with bruise tattoos.

Dio gave him a once-over, then something that looked almost—but not quite—like a smile, and she left without saying a word to anybody. Air seemed to be sucked out of the room behind her, and Saul said, “That woman’s got amazing energy.”

“You have no idea.” Bela sounded like she wanted to groan, but Camille laughed a little, enough to loosen the mood in the room.

Jack had a flash of memory—Dio roaring into the alley, riding a tornado and dropping out of the sky like a knife-throwing Harpy. She might be the world’s meanest air Sibyl, like Andy kept saying, but she was damned useful in a fight. He wished he could pull off a trick like that tornado. He found himself glad she was the one heading back to check on Andy. Hell, it was probably taking five or six Sibyls just to keep Andy contained in the brownstone. She’d want to be out hunting the assholes who’d fired on the Jeep.

Maybe she’d want to come here. See me
.

That was pushing his luck.

But he remembered kissing her, he remembered her kissing him back, a million years ago before all the bullets started flying.

“We had six big bastards shooting at us,” he told Duncan, John, Saul, Bela, and Camille. “MAC-10s. A planned attack. They took out our tires to be sure we crashed in an alley, then they came at us from both sides. Riana Lowell’s gonna be pissed about her Jeep. Looks like somebody took a can opener to it.”

“Riana’s out for blood,” Bela confirmed, “but not yours. Andy says the gunmen looked human?”

“Yeah, but off. Not quite right.” Jack tried to lift his arms to give proportions, but stopped when pain jagged through his chest. “Shoulders were too big, and they ate bullets like candy—heart, head, it didn’t matter. I slowed them down by aiming for their eyes.”

Camille pointed at the tiled floor. “Andy tried to shoot through their ankles. Low man wins and all that.”

“Is she really okay?” Jack addressed the question to Bela, because he figured that, as the head of the fighting group, she’d be most likely to tell him the truth.