Authors: Kathi S. Barton
“I won nothing. And neither did you if you think so. You have any idea what this cost us? Me, my sons? We are not the kind of people who pull guns on each other. We are supportive, loving, and have each other’s backs. And we love each other.” Lauren felt the tears she’d not shed in years fill her eyes while this woman, a complete stranger, put her in her place. “What are you going to do about this, Lauren? You are the only one that can fix it.”
Reaching to Victoria, she begged her to come. When she appeared in the room beside her bed, Lauren stood up. It was hard; she was still in a great deal of pain despite having the help she’d had. Nodding once to the vampire, she looked at Bea.
“Nothing. Not a damned thing. I didn’t ask for this, and I have no intentions of being the mate to an arrogant ass that means less to me than I do to myself.” Victoria wrapped her arms around her and Lauren continued. “You had no right to do this to me any more than he did coming in here telling me that I was stupid when I saved his fucking ass.”
Bea might have spoken, but Lauren no longer cared. She wanted out, now, and when she squeezed Victoria’s hand, they were no longer standing in the bedroom but in Victoria’s home. The home of a very old and very wealthy vamp that was laughing at her.
“You have really fucked up this time, my friend.” Lauren only sat down on the sofa that was close to her. “Yes, ma’am. Fucked up royally.”
Lauren was pretty sure she was right. But for now she was safe, and so were they. Because, despite the fact that the man thought she was going to be his mate, there were people after her, and bringing the monsters to their doorstep would get them all killed.
~~~
Colin tried his best not to speak, because he knew that once he opened his mouth, he’d spew things that he could never take back. So while his mother sat on the couch and sobbed, Colin tried to think what the hell he’d done to deserve this.
“Son?” Colin looked at his dad. “You have to go and find her. The way she left, your mother is very upset and I don’t care for that at all. Do you know this vampire that took her?”
“I’m sorry she upset you, Mom. I truly am.” His mom looked at him and frowned. “I’ll train her to not speak to you that way again. She’ll apologize as well. I won’t have her treating you like that.”
His mom stood up and so did he. Colin towered over her, yet he felt small and helpless around her. When she slapped him, jerking his head around with a loud snapping sound, he stared at her with his mouth open as she drew back to do it again.
“You did this. You started this. She was right when she said that you had no…. What were you thinking, going in there and making a complete ass of yourself?” He started to speak but she cut him off with her hand up again. “Say one more word about training her and I will not be responsible for what I do to you. My goodness, Colin, what century do you think this is? Train her? She’s not a dog or a child. We moved her here without her permission. We invaded her life. You treated her…I’m not sure what you thought you were doing, but going in there like you were some…like some…asshole, just as she called you, will not work either. Train her? Oh son, you’ll be lucky if she ever comes here again.”
“She was nasty to you.” His mom said no more so than she’d been to her. “How do you figure that? She was all defensive as soon as we got there.”
“She’s military. And in the event that you missed it, she saved your life. And those of the rest of the staff in that hospital. You made it sound as if she’d been out for a Sunday stroll and spontaneously started bleeding for no other reason than to make you mad. Do you have any idea what happened to her over there? Or your brother, for that matter? Who, I might add, has said he won’t return here so long as you’re here. You’ve managed in less than ten minutes to not only alienate your mate, but your brother too.” He told her no one knew what happened over there, no one would tell them anything. “I do. Most of it anyway. As does your father. What Hawkins couldn’t tell us, we got when we talked to Mr. Phillips. He gave us a great deal of information too. But as I remember, you were too busy being on the phone when he was talking to us.”
“I’m trying to save a business, mine and Larson’s. And what did you expect me to do, simply hang up on him whenever we were not given any information that was helpful?” She only stared at him, that look in her eyes that told him he was in too deep to back out of it now. “Mom, what happened over there? Please tell me.”
“We were ambushed. And I just found out why the nursing staff was gone. They were told there was an active shooter on our floor and they were escorted out. Those men had orders to kill anyone left on the floor. That would have included you, Colin.” They all turned when Hawkins made his presence known. “But as for why we were there? There were nineteen of us when we went in, counting both me and Lauren. Two new blood that we picked up on the way over too. As soon as we hit the ground, we knew that we were fucked. Not only were we dropped sixteen miles from the place, but we were also dropped in the middle of a place so hostile that we were lucky to have only lost one man on the way in. And the amount of personnel…army there made us realize that we had been brought in for no reason. But as a matter of fact, we were there to be killed.”
“Where?” Hawkins didn’t answer him. He wasn’t sure he would have except that he did finally say that it was classified. “Why were you there then? I mean, other than what you just told us?”
“A building needed to be secured for a reason I can’t talk about. To be honest, I’m not sure what we were doing there. I don’t want to think they brought us there to kill us, but…. We weren’t normally the ones that went in to secure empty buildings, but we were told to do it, and rather than just ignoring it, we made our way to where they told us. We’re the ones that go in after it’s cleared to do the actual job. The army just loves to give orders that seem to make no sense. But the orders came in twenty-four hours after we were given the okay for R&R.” He asked him if he was coming home on his rest and relaxation leave. “I was. All of us were. It was only going to be for ten days, but we’d been on for sixteen months. We were all looking forward to it.”
“What is it you do over there, Hawkins? I’m assuming you can at least tell us that.” Hawkins shook his head at his dad. “What can you tell us then, damn it?”
“We entered the building. Lauren, my commanding officer and the best in the army, said that we were to go in pairs. It was her and me together. We usually went by seniority, and I was always paired with the newer recruits. But since we, she and I, were going in first, she wanted the best with her. That was her words, not mine. As we moved through the lower part of the building, both of us knew that we weren’t alone; her, by whatever ability she has that makes her scary intuitive, and me because I could smell them. Just as we were halted at the bottom of a staircase, one of our men, Jacobs, moved to go through the doorway into the next room. The blast took him out. Both Lauren and I were covered in his blood as the bomb exploded. His partner…we’re not even sure what happened to him, only that we know he was killed as well.” Colin sat down, his legs weak with the newfound knowledge of how dangerous his brother’s job was. “Lauren and I moved as a unit, which is how we normally do things, and took out six of the men stationed all around us in seconds. It was then that we knew…that we knew who was firing on us. Two of our men were down, headshots…nothing we could do but move on. Three more were shot just as we took out four more of their guys. We were surrounded. And we knew in that moment that we were set up, and that we more than likely weren’t going to make it out alive.”
Colin watched Hawkins as he relived what had gone down. His mom held onto their dad, and even he looked a little frightened at what they were hearing for the first time. At least Colin was.
“I was shot in the arm, Lauren twice in her leg, but that was not the extent of our injuries. We’d both been hit by bombs going off. Some shrapnel hit both of us badly. She didn’t stop, didn’t even pause as we moved on, and blood stained the floors as we took out two more together. Grenades were thrown at us, taking out four more of our team. Three of them were shifters and didn’t stand a chance with the carnage that happened to them. Lauren moved on, took out three more as she ordered me to stay back, take care of the wounded, and undress the dead.” Colin asked him what that meant. “Dog tags. We took one set and left the other with the bodies. Fat fucking lot of good it did us to leave the bodies behind. When they blew the building, there was nothing left for us to send home.”
Colin had heard that. That most of the dead they had been unable to retrieve. He’d not thought of what that had meant until now. Nor how lucky they all were that Hawkins and Lauren were even here.
“By the time I caught up with Lauren, I’d been shot twice more. Nothing serious this time thanks to being a cat, but she’d been hurt too. In the chest. And six more of our men were gone. We were down to seven then. Two of them were wounded more than we were and weren’t going to make it out. Dragging them to the doorway to get them out of the building and hopefully to safer grounds, we heard the jets coming in.” Hawkins said nothing as he sat there, his face washed with pain. Not just of his body, which had pretty much healed when he’d been able to shift, but at the loss of his friends and comrades as well. “Three seconds, no more after we heard them, she ordered me out. I tried to argue with her that it was unsafe for her to remain, but she said that I had to pull the others, even if it was only their bodies, out. She even said that if I got hurt…she said if I got hurt….”
He broke down then, sobbing hard, and Colin got up to hug him. As the rest of his story poured out, Colin knew that he had to find Lauren, if for no other reason than to thank her for what she’d done for them.
“She told me if I got hurt or killed, she’d have to tell my family. The family that she’d heard so much about over the years that she felt like she knew them as well as I did. And telling them…having to tell them that I was killed in the line of duty would be harder for her than anything she’d ever have to do again.” Colin held him tighter after that. But Hawkins pulled away and looked at him. “I was standing there, debating whether or not to leave her, when the bomb exploded beside her. She was flying through the air, her body bloodied and broken, when I felt the shrapnel hit me everywhere. I had been standing there, right next to her, not seconds before. Had she not sent me away, ordered me to do as she fucking said, I’d be dead. Right now, I’d not even be enough to bury, and she saved me. And you made me pull my weapon on her because you’re an ass.”
Hawkins left them then. Just, without another word, moved out of the room and then out of the house. Colin heard the car start—the one of Larson’s that Hawkins had been using since he’d been able to drive again—and the muffler was loud. As the gravel sprayed against the house Colin sat down, realizing that he had really fucked up this time.
“You know this vampire?” Colin told his dad that he didn’t. “Then I would suggest you find out what you can. Because whether or not you care about what you did to her, your brother won’t forgive easily for what you made him do today.”
“I don’t forgive me well either, Dad.” He looked at his father then, tears staining his face. “I’m a monster. I have always been one.”
“Not a monster, no. But the oldest, and for some reason you’ve had it in your head that it’s your way or the wrong way. I tried my best to temper that with humor, but it never stuck.” Colin said nothing, thinking of all the times when his dad had joked about a simple mistake he’d made, and Colin only being pissed at how stupid he thought his father was. All along, his dad had been brilliant and tried to teach him the same things.
“Do you know how to get in touch with Phillips? Maybe he can help me.” His dad only shook his head. “Then who do I have to beg to make this right?”
“Make it right for who?” He asked his mom what she meant. “You’re willing to fix this, and I’m glad, but who are you working to fix this for? You have a mate that would just as soon shoot you as to look at you, a brother that can’t stand to be in the same room with you, and your parents that feel like failures for the way you’ve treated them both. Or for you, Colin, because you don’t like being in the wrong?”
“For all of us. I was wrong. And I’m going to…I don’t know what I’m going to do to make it up to the people that I love, but I feel that I have to start with Lauren. She’s going to…I failed her far worse than you think you did me. Which, you didn’t. You tried, but I was too pig headed to see it until now.” His mom said he’d get no arguments from her. “I’m sorry. I promise you, I’ll take care of this, all of it.”
“You’d better, son. You won’t get another chance at this. Not just with your brother, but your mate as well.” He nodded at his dad as he stood up. “Lauren’s parents live around here somewhere. Don’t know them, but then we don’t really socialize that much anymore. Burcher. I think they have a farm not far from Parker.”
Colin decided to start there. Perhaps they’d know where Victoria took Lauren. He wondered, too, about Lauren’s parents. He hoped that they’d give him a chance if Lauren had spoken to them since he’d made a total ass of himself.
Chapter 4
Lauren was walking—working up to running as gently as she could without hurting more—around the open field when she saw the big cat standing in the way. It had been a long time since she’d seen either of her parents as a cat, or Pete for that matter, but they sure were bigger than she remembered. This male was more than likely Pete, as he was bigger than their dad. She wondered fleetingly if she should have been afraid, but only smiled at the silly thought.
“You scared me.” He stood there and she started to walk again. “Just so you know, I’ve got men on the property today fixing the last of the flooring in the house. So if you see them, don’t scare them off. It was hard enough getting them to come out here on such short notice.”
Pete loped alongside her as she tried to walk a little faster. It was hard at first, getting her body to move again, but once she was going the stiffness would usually work its way out. She told him this as they moved down the path that she’d been working on.