Unbreakable: A Section 8 Novel (A Section Eight Novel) (10 page)

Instead of answering, Gunner got up and threw the chair across the room. It slammed into the wall and Jem said, “Dude, this place is rented. I want my security deposit back.”

“Rented? From what—Interrogations R Us?” Gunner asked.

“Something like that. You know, that’s not a ba
d side business.” Jem rubbed his chin and Avery shook her head.

“We’ll get right on that, Jem.”

“Sarcasm. There’s a new one,” Jem muttered. “We don’t have to pay for another full day if we vacate in the next couple of hours. Think you can pull it together before that, Gunner?”

“I’m still going to kill you.”

“You had your chance. Do you know I broke you in less than two days? Christ, I would’ve lasted weeks,” Jem said.

“Because your pain sensors are all fucked up,” Gunner pointed out.

“Just jealous. But I do I have a question, G,” Jem said.

“You did not just call me G.”

“Did. Anyway . . .” Jem leaned forward on his elbows on the table. “Why not just kill the motherfucker and be done with it?”

“Landon’s got a lot of enemies, but a hell of a lot more associates who make a hell of a lot of money with him. Taking him down would put an entirely new bounty on my head.”

“How about giving him over to the CIA?”

“Guy’s bulletproof. Other people, like me, do the dirty work. If I kill him, I might as well kill myself.”

Avery grabbed his shoulder. “Bullshit. Don’t say that.”

“He’s going to start looking for me. I have to keep working for him.”

“Until we find a way to kill you,” Jem finished.

“That won’t work a second time.”

“It has to. So either you die or Landon does. Personally, I’d take Landon out, but hey, what do I know?”

Gunner fisted his hands on the table. “He’ll turn me in to the CIA if I try anything. He’s got more on me than anything you’ve got in that folder.”

Jem stood. “We’ve got shit to figure out.”

Gunner nodded. “Let me make contact with Landon first.”

Jem pulled Gunner’s phone from his pocket. “You already have. I bought you a week and then he expects you in Bali.”

“I’ve got a place,” Gunner told them. “Can’t risk flying, though, unless you’ve got a private plane I don’t know about.”

“I’ve still got several favors to call in, but I’d rather use them when we’re closer to desperate,” Jem said. “You two drive. I’ll fly. Let me see if anyone’s got my trail.”

“I don’t want you going alone.”

“With my luck, I won’t be.”

A
very held him the entire way up the narrow stairs to the small apartment above the interrogation room like she was afraid he would disappear.

He wanted to tell her that she’d brought this shit and everything that came along with it on herself, lock, stock and barrel, and they would need all the luck they could get. Instead, he let her help him, because he was beyond thinking. He needed to clean up and get her out of here.

He pushed into the shower she ran for him, let the hot water soak his sore muscles while she packed her things and brought him clothes. His clothes, from his house, he noted, then turned his face back under the spray for a while. Washed James away, as if it could be that easy to wash so much bad down the drain.

Avery was watching him and he was grateful she didn’t join him. Not yet. It was too soon, everything too raw. When he finally emerged from the shower, he dried himself briskly and dressed. Ate some takeout she’d brought in for him too. Let her dress his split lip and a cut across his eyebrow. She dealt with the cuts around his wrists and ankles too, cleaning and dressing them gently like she was trying to make up for hurting him.

He didn’t bother to tell her he’d deserved every second of it, and she didn’t even know the worst of it.

“You still want me? On your team, in your life, after how many times I’ve fucked up?”

“Yes.”

Yes
. So simple. No reservations.

She brushed some hair out of his eyes. “You have to stop punishing yourself. You’ve made up for what you’ve done so many times over. You can’t control things that weren’t your fault.”

“I made choices.”

“You made the best choices you could at the time. I hate that Landon used us to force your hand.”

“He knew what would work.” He paused. “You haven’t told the others.”

“No.”

“I don’t want Grace to know . . . to feel like she’s responsible. Because she’s not.”

“Gunner, we all feel responsible.”

“I didn’t have to go to the island,” he told her. “I chose that. I knew. Didn’t care, because saving her, Dare, Darius . . . it was important to you. And you’d already lost so much.”

“Then don’t make me lose you. Not when we just started.”

He didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded. And her arms wound around him. Hugging him. Healing him. Welcoming him home.

Within the hour, they were in a truck with bulletproofing and tinted windows. Avery pushed him into the passenger’s side and he didn’t argue. He was bruised and sore and he gulped down some ibuprofen.

“Jem was doing it out of love. You know that, right?” she asked as she tried to leave on a song that sounded like a cat wailing. “Hey, I love that song. It’s Fiona Apple.”

“It’s depressing.” He found some classic rock, AC/DC, then rubbed his ribs. “Asshole you claim loves me tried to waterboard me,” he sniffed.

“I’m sure he’ll make it up to you.”

He leaned his head back and let the easy rhythm of the truck moving fast on the highway lull him into thinking everything was going to be all right.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked quietly after they were a couple of hours into the trip. She’d gotten them fast food at a rest stop, but that was the only break they’d taken. Couldn’t afford to be out in the open, not at all.

“Everything.” Because it was easy to let it all overwhelm him. He realized he’d lost count of how many jobs he’d done. There’d been no point in counting them. After he’d left Avery in the hotel, he’d completely immersed himself into James’s old life and hadn’t looked back. He had zero contact with anyone or anything from his old life. He hadn’t kept an e-mail address or a phone number. Nothing to tempt him or make him think or wish he could’ve held on to something.

After a couple of months of carrying out orders, he’d stopped thinking or dreaming about Avery. In fact, he’d stopped dreaming at all. Dead inside was the only thing that would work.

None of the new jobs were as bad as the one that had nearly broken him all those years ago. But that didn’t mean one wouldn’t be. If Landon asked, he’d do it, because even though he was dead inside, he remembered the stakes.

He knew Landon was waiting for him to be dead enough inside so he wouldn’t remember those stakes. And he knew what Landon would ask him to do, eventually.

Could he?

He guessed that remained to be seen.

“I meant what I said, about us both running from things. About starting over. I know it’s hard—” she said tentatively.

“Do you know what it’s like to live a lie?” he interrupted. “When you ran, it was toward family. You started over, but you were still you. I’ve been living a lie since I was twelve, in one way or another. Gunner was who Josie wanted me to be.”

He paused then, and she said, “I know about Josie, Gunner. Billie told me some . . . and then . . . Jem and I met with Mike and Andy.”

“Fuck me,” he muttered. That’s how she and Jem had tracked him. It made sense now.

“I hear what you’re saying. So show me who you are.”

“It’s that simple?”

“For me, yes.” She paused. “Do you think I don’t know you’re capable of violence? You always were. Dare, Jem, Key . . . they’re far from saints. So am I.”

“What you did was avenge your mom’s death. I was never able to do that for Josie.”

“Until now,” she reminded him.

“You really have no idea who you’re up against.”

“I do have some idea. He can’t be worse than Powell.”

He was, in a different way, though. “Landon was a tough taskmaster, but it was better than living with Powell
any day of the week.”

“What about your mom, Gunner? Mike and Andy didn’t know much about her. They said you barely mentioned her.”

“I still try to keep her life and death covert, the way she would’ve wanted it. She was killed when I was twelve. She was an SAS operative and she and Powell crossed paths a few times. I came out of a very brief affair. But she had no other family, didn’t want me to have no one if she died. A lot of people never knew what Powell was like, even those who were supposed to be close with him.”

There wasn’t anything she could really say to make it better, but he gave her credit for trying when she said, “You made it out.”

“I guess I did. Lot of backtracking along the way, though. I don’t know what the hell she’d think of me. Of what I’ve done.” He paused. “But anything good I’ve been able to make out of the bad situations Landon put me in . . . well, that was because of her.”

Planning the jobs was intense. Each one took anywhere from two to four months of meticulous research. Figuring out the trafficker’s next move, predicting his next job. Buying intel without getting him suspicious. Sometimes even infiltrating the inner circle and working a job for them was the only way to get close enough. And sometimes, if it wasn’t safe for the women and children Gunner would be looking to save, he would be forced to let an opportunity pass and wait for a prime one.

Because if he couldn’t save them from the traffickers outright, he wouldn’t risk killing them in an explosion meant for the real criminal. He was painstaking. Brutal. An avenging angel. It was the only way he could justify the greater good.

His mother would say that sometimes in order to do good you had to do bad.

His mother was always so conflicted. Couldn’t have been more right. She’d been teaching him lessons, as if she was desperate for him to understand why she did the work she did.

He hadn’t understood the full extent until Landon gave him her files. She’d been an SAS-sanctioned assassin, a top spy with a shooter’s eye. One of the best there was, one of the best they’d ever had. Even without knowing what she did, he’d learned how to move quietly and stealthily, like a ghost. It was part technique and part genetics, that ability to move though a crowd and no matter how tall or attractive you were, not to be noticed.

She’d done it every day of their lives and somehow pulled him into that magic circle of space. Being with her was exciting. Comforting. How she’d balanced that kind of work and motherhood was summed up by what she told him every time she’d tucked him in and left for work.

“Going to make the world a safer place for you, James,” she’d say to him before she went out on a job, even before he had any idea what she did for a living.

He’d done his best over the years to honor her sentiment. “I think she’d hate what I was doing.”

“You’re wrong. I think she’d completely understand. Everything you’ve done was to keep doing good. If you weren’t under Landon’s protection . . .”

He frowned. “Hear yourself? Suddenly you’re a Landon fan.”

“I’m a Gunner’s mom fan,” she said.

“Her name was Yolanda. She was awesome, Avery. She made me know we could do what we do and still have kids. She always protected me. She thought putting me with Powell, and giving me a trust fund he knew nothing about that I could access through a lawyer myself, would make me okay.”

“Guess we were both raised by strong moms.”

“Yeah. She traveled everywhere, but every single summer, we’d spend three months at the beach. All different places and she was there twenty-four-seven. I wasn’t in one place long enough for traditional school, but she homeschooled me. And she taught me shit. And she loved me. And that’s what I remember the most. She loved me.”

“I’m glad you have those memories.”

“Me too.”

“What I’m not understanding is your loyalty to Landon.”

“I didn’t say I understood it.”

“You believe that he didn’t kill Josie?”

“Why wouldn’t he admit it? He’s got me by the balls. Wouldn’t telling me he’s taken away someone I loved and trying to kill me keep me in line?”

“You’d think.” She stared at him. “Gunner, if he didn’t kill Josie, then who did? And if he didn’t try to kill me or Billie . . .”

And with that, suddenly they had two problems on their hands. And both were poised to bite them on the ass hard if they didn’t run, either straight into danger, guns blazing, or far, far away.

•   •   •

S
everal hours later, Avery pulled the car up a long, hidden drive toward a pretty, sprawling house in Tennessee set on acres of land.

He obviously hired someone to look after it, because the landscaping and the inside of the house were spotless.

It was also hard-wired with security to rival Gunner’s place in New Orleans.

“I’m cautious,” was all he said when he caught her looking. Her heart tugged a little when he said that, and she put a hand on his shoulder as he punched in some codes and alarmed the place around them.

They were in their own little bubble now, a fortress where they could presumably relax and try to regain some of the ground they might’ve lost.

“Jem’s flight took off. No issues, according to him,” she said after checking her phone.

He snorted. “Bullshit. With Jem, there are always complications. He’s a walking issue.”

“He seems to like it that way.”

“It works for him, I guess. Come on, let’s see what I can make us for dinner.”

She followed him into the massive, state-of-the-art kitchen, her stomach suddenly growling for attention.

“I’ve got stuff to make us dinner here. Tomorrow, I’ll bring in fresh supplies.” He rifled through the freezer. “Got steaks. We’ll do rice. Fuck the vegetables.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Jem would arrive tomorrow. If anyone was following him, they’d be off his trail. She was worried about him and her life would always be one big worry from now on. She’d resigned herself to that fact the second she’d decided to go after Gunner and bring him home.

Home.

They were halfway there. “Let me help.”

He snorted. “You don’t cook, remember?”

“I can do . . . things.”

“Yeah, baby, I know all about those things.” His drawl deepened and he patted her on the ass. “You’d better go rest and let me get you fed.”

Her stomach growled in answer.

“Go,” he insisted. Tossed her an apple, which she crunched into as she walked through his house. She didn’t have time for a complete tour, but she walked in and out of each room. She could see why Gunner came here to recover. It was the opposite of the shop in New Orleans. This was pure, masculine comfort. Down-home country, couches and beds that could lull you into the most peaceful easy feeling, and she found herself flipping through an old sketch pad that was next to the big bed.

There were some self-portraits. With the first ones, he hadn’t drawn any tattoos on his neck. But as she got deeper into the sketchbook, they began to emerge. She could see the pattern of his re-creation happening before her eyes.

The final self-portrait in the book showed him from the waist up. He’d had a full sleeve by then. She recognized the specific pattern of twists and turns down his left arm, had spent nights memorizing them, mostly when he wasn’t looking. But it was the one before that, of the woman with the secret smile that had a mouth that looked just like Gunner’s, that held her interest.

She finally put the book down when she smelled the steaks cooking, the scent drifting through the open window. She stripped, went into the big master bath and showered, letting the tension of the past days and the road trip wash away with the hot water. Then she pulled on some comfortable clothes and padded into the kitchen in time to help him set the table.

The scent from the steaks on the grill drifted through the open sliding glass door, and she breathed in deeply. It had been months since she’d had a home-cooked meal. And being cooked for by Gunner was something she feared might never happen again.

But here they were, playing house. Pushing aside everything and everyone else for just a tiny bit of normalcy that they both ultimately deserved. And when they finally sat down at the table, it was hot seasoned steaks and rice and cold beers. Perfection.

“Did your mom cook?” he asked.

“You mean, did she teach me how?” she teased, and he laughed. “She tried, but I had no interest in learning.”

“Why am I not surprised?” he muttered.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“So she ran a business, cooked and cleaned and all that good stuff? Like a real mom?”