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Guess that’s where we would always differ from those born into this life: Dare and Kieran, Johnny and even Libby. The heaviness weighing down those of us who had been brought in didn’t seem to haunt the lifers—at least, not the same way.
Maybe because it was already in their blood. Passed down from one generation of damaged souls to another.
For me? This? All that adrenaline, excitement, and humor narrowed into a hyper-focused peace that had worried me in the military. When the Borellos first found us and started using us, I’d realized with a sickening clarity that I was made for this dark world I never imagined seeing.
You set me free in a battle, and I’m gone. Moving through the space with quick, knowing steps. Finding ways through barriers as if they were never there. Marking people as I go—wherever they may be hiding—calling out some for Maverick while taking the others for myself until the current threat to whatever peace we were searching for was gone.
Tonight was different. Easier.
There were no barriers once Maverick and I were outside, and all those KSGs were standing in plain sight, neon masks lighting up the dark like pretty little targets.
Maverick tapped my shoulder, and I was fucking gone.
Moving across the lawn with a lethality I’d accepted long ago. And even if I hadn’t, I would’ve made peace with what I was doing tonight because, as I’d been saying from the beginning, this was personal.
To our family.
To me.
And I refused to let them have what they wanted.
With a steadying exhale, I gave two gentle squeezes of the trigger, dropping the first neon mask of the night. Letting the KSG gathered in random clumps and uneven lines know we’d met their challenge. Giving them our position.
But by the time shouts erupted and return fire started blindly going off around the estate, I’d already dropped two other masks beside the first and had veered right, knowing Maverick would’ve gone left.
I heard him. I knew in the short, rhythmic bursts that sounded so distant that he was fine.
But all I could see was my path. All I could feel was the hard, steady beating of my heart and the familiar weight in my hands. All I could focus on was the next and the next and the next.
Stop them from getting in.
Stop them from getting to her.
“Ho-oly shit,” I ground out, nearly choking over the words as that steady beating of my heart faltered into a panicked sort of frenzy at the close call. “What the fuck? I almost shot you.”
“Don’t,” Kieran said in that gruff way of his as he continued looking around as if he were listening for something.
“Then don’t pop up right in front of me like a scary-as-shit jack-in-the-box.”
Kieran’s glare settled on me for only a moment before sliding past again as he informed me, “KSG at the back are taken care of.”
I nodded as my attention continued pulling to the tree line behind him. “Makes it easier when the people you’re up against meet fights head-on.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, my body suddenly restless, when Kieran grunted in affirmation. “Hey, did they only have guns back there?”
“What?”
“The KSG in the back,” I clarified. “Did they only have guns?”
Kieran’s brow furrowed as if he were just now realizing what I had.
KSG had and used guns. We all did. But they’d always proudly boasted they killed with a more personal touch...personal being that psychotic brutality. But anything that could be swung or had some kind of power source behind it—like drills and chainsaws—was more their style.
“I only saw guns,” I told Kieran.
Kieran’s sharp gaze cut to me before he turned and stalked to the closest cluster of bodies. But just as I started following him, I heard the softest sound of grass being shifted and turned, rifle up and aimed at the cop.
“Why?” I demanded as I lowered the rifle. “Fucking why would you walk up behind me like a goddamn ghost?”
“I’m walking,” Jentry shot back just as defensively.
