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All he did was let go of every notion of himself he had. Every memory, every thought.
By the time he hit the back porch, he and his blades were one, and he moved through the two guards posted there with silent fury.
The back door was the work of a moment, Nine prowling on silent feet, slashing and dodging his way through the muscle inside the door.
Then the one posted on Cassie.
Blood sprayed, primordial and hot, and at a noise from the front of the shack where the two guards stationed there turned toward the intruder, Nine let both blades fly, each finding its target.
The men hit the floor, and Nine reached for two more knives hidden in his boots, eyes scanning for any threat.
“That’s all of them,” a soft voice called out from the back corner of the shack.
Nine blinked, the voice snapping him back to the present. He turned to find Cassie, tied to a ladder back chair, her backpack and Tex’s camera at her feet.
Nine maneuvered past the dead bodies. “You okay?” he asked, kneeling at her back and slicing through the cords that bound her.
“Fine,” she whispered, looking into his face while he shifted to rub her wrists and hands.
“Good,” his voice was not much more than a growl.
“He said you’d come,” Cassie said, studying his face.
“Who?” Nine asked.
“Tex. He told me to stay alive. That you’d find me.” Her grip on his hands surprised him. He looked up from where he knelt on the floor in front of her. “Thank you,” she said.
“Doing my job,” he answered, watching from the abyss as she looked at him through innocent eyes.
She squeezed his hands and sniffed, “Please take me home.”
*************************
Talon
“I got that,” Talon said, crossing the shack in three strides.
Talon caught Cassie when she swayed, and then he held her when she buried her face in his chest and sobbed.
Talon went with what he’d seen done, having no experience with this kind of thing of his own, and smoothed his hands up and down Cassie’s back while she cried. He figured he must be doing something right when she settled against him. So he kept on.
“Your dad?” he asked when she finally stepped back.
“They took him,” she said.
And before Talon could ask what that meant, Ryder spoke from the doorway.
“Cass,” Ryder called out.
The girl turned from Talon, took off running and jumped, and when Ryder caught her up in a bear hug, Talon felt that slide through his chest and then down into his gut.
And as soon as Cassie clocked Brick stomping through the door, she played a repeat of the same and jumped into his arms too.
Brick held her close and whispered something in her ear, and even though Talon was trucking across the room, he still wasn’t close enough to make it out.
His brothers loved his woman. And they loved her girl too.
His girls.
