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He takes out the guy who shot me with a single headshot, then mows down the three other mercs who were in formation with him.
I suck in a wheezing breath, forcing air into my lungs as I scan our surroundings. We’re too vulnerable here. We have to move. We have to—
“Riley!” he shouts, swinging his weapon around to cover me from the other side as an upper floor window is abruptly flung open.
All the breath I just fought so hard for rushes right back out of me as a body is hurled through it a moment later. It lands in the middle of the lawn with a sickening crunch, and I realize in a flash who it is.
Austin McKenna.
The gaping bullet hole between his sightless eyes makes it obvious that it wasn’t the fall that killed him.
All around us, the fighting pauses as Reapers and McKenna’s people alike stare in stunned silence at the corpse sprawled on the lawn. Maddoc stands in the window, his blood-streaked face a stone mask as he stares down at the body of his enemy, then looks around, scanning the chaos and destruction.
“McKenna is dead,” he finally calls out, his voice carrying to all of us. “For those of you who are here because he was paying you to fight, you can stay and die for a dead man, or you can stand down and the Reapers will pay you double whatever West Point promised.”
The mercenaries shift uneasily, glancing at each other as they mutter amongst themselves about the offer. I hold my breath, the air thick with tension as everyone waits to see whether or not they’ll back off.
Finally, one of them spits on the ground, lowering his weapon. “Not like we’ll be able to extract payment from a corpse,” he says in a gravelly voice, walking up and nudging Austin’s body with the toe of his boot. He looks up at Maddoc in the window. “How do we know you’re good for it?”
Even from here, I can see Maddoc’s jaw tighten. “I’m a Reaper.”
The merc locks gazes with Maddoc for a tense moment, then makes some kind of hand gesture that has his men slowly start to melt away, one by one, covering each other as they go.
The surviving West Point gang members immediately start cursing them out, shouting threats after the mercenaries as they silently retreat.
“What the fuck!” one of them shouts, shooting to his feet from behind the bed of a truck near the curb. He points his weapon at a group of retreating mercenaries. “Boss already paid you good money! You fucking pussies! You can’t—”
Gunfire from one of the Reapers near the house splits the air, shutting him the fuck up. He dives back down for cover, but the tide has totally turned against West Point, and the surviving members all seem to realize it at once. Every fucking one of them who can still move makes a break for it, Reapers helping route them out of the house and hurry them along with a deafening spray of bullets that tears the ever-loving fuck out of the neighborhood as they go.
I add some lead of my own, running out of bullets long before I run out of rage.
“It’s over,” Logan says, reaching out to lower my gun arm when the trigger keeps clicking. He glances around, then nods at me, giving me that tiny smile of his. “There are no more threats here, wildcat. But we’ve got to move. We need to clean up the mess here and get out.”
I swallow hard, really looking around for the first time. The aftermath is exactly the kind of thing likely to draw the attention The Six keep warning us about, but Austin is dead and Dante is alive, so it was worth it.
Logan wraps an arm around me, leading me away from cover, toward the house. Despite having just told me there were no more threats, he keeps a wary eye out, reminding me that we’re still in the heart of West Point’s territory.
“Logan,” I blurt, my heart suddenly in my throat again as I realize I don’t actually have confirmation that all the men I care about are okay. “Danteisalive, right? Maddoc would have—”
“He did,” he cuts me off, his wary alertness replaced for a split second by a smile so blinding I have to blink. Then his usual mask drops back into place, and he nudges me forward. “He’s right there.”
My breath hitches, and I shove my way past a couple of Reapers just as Maddoc and Dante step out of the front door.
A low rumble of approval comes from the surrounding Reapers, but I’ve got eyes only for Dante.
He looks like shit.
Maddoc is basically holding him up, and Dante honestly looks more like a creature stitched together from blood and bruises than a man.
It makes my heart ache.
It also makes me want just one more fucking bullet, so I can put another one into Austin’s corpse.
I rush up the stairs and then stop, needing to reach for him but not wanting to add to his pain. He gives me a little half grin that reassures me, the vibrant green a little dulled but still potent enough to make my breath catch.
“Princess,” he mumbles as Logan comes up behind me and Maddoc addresses the crowd, gathering them around. “We got the fucker.”
Fierce pride swells in my chest. Damn fucking right we did.
