Cameron knew he was trembling just as much from fear as from the cold. He swallowed thickly, tasting blood, and he glanced at Blake fearfully. Blake was watching him, and when Cameron met his eyes, Blake merely shook his head dejectedly. They were bait, pure and simple. Bait for a fish that had already been caught.
“I found Smith and Wesson,” Blake finally murmured to Cameron with a nod of his head to the corner of the office.
Cameron’s eyes trailed to the corner to see a large cage, filled and covered with blankets to protect it from the cold of the warehouse.
Through a part in two of the blankets, Cameron could clearly see long, orange fur. As if on cue, a low, throaty meow emitted from the cage, followed by another.
“He may not come for you two,” Lancaster told them grimly as he stood in the doorway with his back to them. “But he won’t leave those beasts behind,” he wagered with confidence.
“How did you find them? Where were they?” Cameron blurted.
“Preston had them,” Lancaster answered after a moment of thought. “He was easier to find than Julian,” he explained.
“Yeah?” Blake asked wryly. “Funny that, since Julian’s
dead
!” he shouted in frustration.
“Where Preston is, Julian isn’t far behind. I found Preston,”
Lancaster continued as if he hadn’t heard Blake’s words. “I followed him. I tried to kill him, but the fucker got away,” he practically snarled.
“But I did find the cats.”
“How did you know about them?” Cameron questioned. “Are they okay?” he asked worriedly, his mind grasping for something to think about that didn’t include any form of death.
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“They’re fine,” Lancaster answered as he rubbed at the scratches on his cheek. “I was with Julian when he first found them,” he added as he turned around and cocked his head at Cameron and Blake. “Found them in a ditch one night. So tiny they still had blue eyes. Had to be bottle-fed. Julian saw their ears as we were driving by. He stopped in the middle of a goddamned multimillion-pound arms deal to rescue those damn cats,” he said with a sigh. “Did not make our buyer happy,”
he mused. “Those cats were the reason we had to leave Ireland. It was almost worth it to watch him feed them,” he mused distantly.
Blake snorted in apparent amusement, and he was shaking his head when Cameron looked back at him. “At least we know he never changed anything but his name,” he muttered.
Cameron’s throat tightened as he thought of Julian. There seemed to be two entirely different people inside the man he had called his lover. Lancaster and Blake both talked about a killer, a man who was brutal and relentless and possibly downright cruel. They spoke of him with both respect for his abilities and perhaps a hint of fear of what he might have been capable of doing.
But Cameron had seen a different man. A man who was afraid of handling Cameron’s puppies because they were so tiny. A man who enjoyed pretending he couldn’t tie his tie correctly because he liked to have Cameron do it for him. A man who loved those two damn cats so much, who loved
him
so much it nearly destroyed him when Cameron stupidly pushed him away.
“You really think he’s still alive?” Cameron found himself asking Lancaster hopefully. “Do you know for sure?” he asked in a whisper.
“I haven’t seen him,” Lancaster answered honestly, a smile pulling at his lips. “But I’ve felt his eyes on me,” he claimed confidently.
“Haven’t you?” he asked tauntingly, obviously knowing the answer was no.
IT SEEMED like they sat in that office forever before there was a sound that echoed in the warehouse. Lancaster was immediately standing once more, tense and coiled as he peered out into the darkness.
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“Not exactly high ground,” Blake chastised in a wry tone. “Only light in the damn place, and you’re sitting in front of it,” he said with a cluck of his tongue. “If that’s Preston out there, you’re dead already.
He was a sniper before he took to driving that Lexus, you know.”
“I’m well aware of the type of people Julian surrounds himself with,” Lancaster murmured in response. He didn’t sound at all nervous.
In fact, he sounded almost excited. “Julian won’t let him shoot me.
He’s got unfinished business to tend to first.”
“Damnit!” Blake exclaimed suddenly. “Julian is dead!” he shouted again, his voice nearly cracking with the pain of saying it. “We watched him die!”
“Did you, now?” Lancaster asked in a soft, distracted voice as his eyes scanned the warehouse. He looked like a ferret, low and tense and twitchy. “You sure about that?” he murmured with an obvious smile.
“You saw him bleeding. You saw him taken away in an ambulance.
One that was driven by Preston, by the way.”
“What?” Cameron blurted in confusion. Blake sat staring at Lancaster’s back stupidly, a look of what might have been hope beginning to form on his face.
“Did you see the doctor who worked on him? Did you see his body after they said he was dead?” Lancaster continued. “No, because they patched him up, hid him in intensive care under a string of false names, and carted him off to somewhere else when he was able to be moved.”
“How do you know this?” Blake asked tentatively.
“It’s my job to know these things,” Lancaster answered softly as he began to relax once more, obviously having decided the noise was nothing. “I traced him as far as I could, but that doctor didn’t know where they’d taken him. I can tell you one thing,” he went on with a cocky grin as he checked his gun for perhaps the fifth time. “Julian Cross did not die the night you thought he did. He lived at least another three weeks, even if he was mostly on his back and immobile. Whether he made it past the move to wherever, I don’t know. The doctor—
before he died mysteriously in a wreck last month—told me that moving him might have killed him,” he said thoughtfully as he spun Warrior’s Cross 279
back and forth slowly in the old chair. “I guess we’ll see,” he crooned happily.
There was a loud bang in the darkness, and Lancaster was once again on his feet, standing in the doorway. He was purposefully silhouetting himself in the dim light, and Cameron couldn’t understand why.
“Julian,” Lancaster said softly into the dark.
“Where are they?” a deep Irish-accented voice suddenly demanded in response.
Cameron gasped when he heard him. Julian’s voice was
shockingly close, seemingly just outside the circle of light cast from the office. It came from everywhere and nowhere, aided by the echoing quality of the cavernous warehouse. It sent chills up Cameron’s already frozen back, and he started shaking even more.
“What, no hello?” Lancaster asked Julian coldly as he remained in the doorway. Then he shook his head and sighed. “Tell me something, Cross. What did you see in this kid that I don’t?”
“This is beyond the bounds,” Julian responded calmly, the disembodied voice low and barely controlled.
Lancaster’s body went rigid. “There’s no out of bounds in this game,” he snarled in return. His head tipped, and he moved his gun to the side, pointing it into the corner. “Make a move and the kitties get it,” he warned in a flat, slightly wry voice.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Julian growled in a low, dangerous voice. Cameron squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that threatened. He had never heard that level of anger in Julian’s voice before, not even that last night at the restaurant. Even so shocked to hear the voice of a dead man, he was frightened by the emotion.
Lancaster’s hand tightened on the gun he held level at the cage in the corner, and then he moved his aim until the gun was trained on Cameron. “Did he really deserve a warrior’s cross, Julian?” he asked in a voice that was close to hurt.
Cameron looked at the gun, his breaths harsh as he trembled and tears blurred his vision.
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The darkness didn’t respond.
Lancaster cocked the gun.
Without a sound of warning, a heavy block of scrap wood flew out of the darkness and smacked against Lancaster’s bicep with a dull thump. Lancaster jerked away from the doorway, and the gun went off, the bullet noisily hitting the concrete near Cameron’s side and ricocheting away as Lancaster grunted in surprise and pain, stumbling back and losing his hold on the weapon, which clattered to the floor.
Blake began to struggle with the zip ties that held him. “Get down, kid,” he grunted as he pushed his metal chair toward the far wall of the office. “Get down and stay down,” he ordered through gritted teeth as he tried to rock his own chair and tip it over.
Lancaster righted himself with a curse and turned to face the doorway as he pulled another gun and aimed it. Cameron gasped when Julian appeared in the doorway. He was dressed all in black, and his angry eyes shone like polished black marble. He was like a ghost, materializing out of the gloom. He stood in the doorway, angry and massive and
alive
.
Lancaster fired, hitting Julian square in the chest. Cameron and Blake both shouted wordlessly, but the shot merely caused Julian to stumble backward. Lancaster stared at him in obvious surprise. Julian smiled slowly as he cocked his head at the man and stepped closer.
“You wore a vest?” Lancaster asked in an offended voice as he lowered his weapon slightly. “Cheater.”
“Next time try the head shot,” Julian advised.
Cameron stared at Julian in utter shock. It didn’t feel real, hearing him. Much less hearing him speak in that beautiful, accented voice.
Lancaster raised the gun again, but Julian lunged at him in a movement that was so sudden and fierce that Cameron flinched away from it as well. He had never seen anyone move like that. It was like a lion attacking.
Julian shoved Lancaster into the back wall of the little office, cracking the cheap drywall and sending dust and plaster flying into the air. Cameron tried desperately to tip his own chair over like Blake had Warrior’s Cross 281
told him, but he couldn’t drag his eyes away. The battle between the two men wasn’t graceful like fights he’d seen in movies. It wasn’t precise and silent. It was fast and ugly and chaotic and loud.
Every time a man landed a blow there was a sickening thud of flesh on flesh. It was brutal, making it difficult for Cameron even to listen to, much less watch. He couldn’t believe that the man who’d been so gentle with him was capable of such frightening strength and violence.
Cameron closed his eyes when he felt his chair tipping, and he crashed to the ground with a grunt as pain lanced through his shoulder and arm. He had no sooner hit the ground than he saw Lancaster catch Julian’s arm in mid-swing. He heard the snap of bone breaking as Lancaster put pressure on both sides of Julian’s arm.
Julian didn’t shout in pain; he wrapped his other arm around his opponent and turned them both bodily, picking Lancaster up and swinging him, tossing him through the glass window of the office. The action didn’t even look to have caused him much effort.
There was a crash from the darkness outside, followed by a wordless shout of pain and anger. Julian pulled his own gun and fired repeatedly into the darkness until the chamber clicked empty. He dropped the gun and extracted a long black dagger as he turned on Cameron.
Julian bent over him, grabbing for the arm of the chair and slicing at Cameron’s wrist hastily. He ripped the zip tie away and leaned over Cameron to cut the other one. A shot rang out, and Julian gave a low oomph as he fell into Cameron and rolled slightly.
“How’s that one?” Lancaster called from somewhere in the darkness. “That one work better with that vest?” he spat sarcastically.
Cameron grasped at Julian as the other man lurched against him and the knife went skittering across the floor. He could see the outline of Lancaster’s body moving toward them.
“Julian,” he breathed in warning. “Julian, he’s coming.” He pushed at Julian with his free hand, which came away wet with a stream of blood.
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Julian slid to the floor, his arm bleeding freely and leaving smudges of blood on the concrete as he scrambled for his backup gun.
Lancaster broke into a run, bursting through the office door to knock the weapon out of Julian’s hand. Julian rolled and kicked at his leg, sending Lancaster crashing into the old desk against the wall. He slid to the floor as the desk splintered beneath him.
Julian was on his feet even as Lancaster fell and tried to get back up, and he tackled him as soon as he got to his knees, grappling for the weapon.
As the two men rolled around, Blake writhed in his chair, trying in vain to get loose. His wrists were bleeding from the effort, but he didn’t stop. Cameron turned his chin to try to find the knife in the dim light.
He caught sight of it about five feet away, near the back wall of the office, half-hidden under an old filing cabinet.
He started scooting toward the knife, using his free arm to drag himself and the chair forward, glancing back at the two killers as they fought.
Julian was bigger and stronger than Lancaster, but Julian was wounded and bleeding freely and Lancaster was all wiry muscle and grit. And he played dirty. As Cameron watched, he pulled a knife from a sheath at his ankle and sank it into Julian’s side, sliding the blade under his arm, above the vest he wore. Julian howled in pain, his back arching as he fell to the side. Lancaster pounced him, pinning him to the ground with one hand as he used the other to push the gun they grappled over toward his face. Julian grunted in pain and tried to guide it away with the hand of his broken arm.
“Hit me with a goddamned piece of wood,” Lancaster said through gritted teeth as they struggled.
The gun went off again, causing both men to jerk and roll away from each other in a momentary truce as their ears rang. Cameron pushed himself closer to the knife, reaching for it desperately even as he tried to watch the two men. Lancaster jumped Julian again as Julian contorted, trying to yank the knife out of his side, and he hit him hard across the face with the butt of the gun. Cameron winced and looked away. His fingers just barely slid over the blade of the knife as he heard the solid thump of Lancaster hitting Julian again.