Three the Hard Way (18 page)

Meeting Tag’s angry gaze, Justice gave him a reassuring nod, a silent
Let’s do this thing
, just the way they’d done when they were kids, play-fighting in the woods near their houses.

Tag nodded back, and then Ender and two guys Justice only knew from seeing them around ACRO’s massive grounds guided them along the tree line.

Ender’s voice was grave as he spoke to Devlin. “There are more Itor bastards than we anticipated,” he growled. “They dropped from a fucking cargo plane and are coming in two waves. Second on snowmobiles.”

They eased behind a huge fallen log propped on a rock face, providing excellent shelter from both the wind and Itor bullets.

“Justice, Tag,” Dev said. “You two stay with me when the first wave hits. You’re more useful here than out there when the second wave comes.”

“Yes, sir,” Justice said. Tag ground his teeth, but at least he didn’t call Dev an asshole.

It was dark out, but the glowing full moon and undulating ribbon of illumination from the aurora borealis provided just enough light to see. Not that Dev needed light—he read situations like this because he was a precog. He’d once explained to Justice that he could actually see what was about to happen, like it was on a TV screen in front of him. So even during the years when Devlin had been blind, he’d been able to guide himself using his second-sight vision—he called it remote viewing—that way.

Suddenly, the sound of a chopper broke the stillness. Two seconds later, the forest exploded with noise—gunfire, shouts, screams. Justice spotted a figure to the right, went down on one knee, and took the bastard out with three shots, center mass.

A brilliant explosion and a flash of heat blasted them backward. Justice slammed into something hard behind him . . . a tree? Didn’t matter. The helo above was dropping fucking bombs on them.

The thing banked hard, and Justice’s gut dropped into his snow boots. The chopper was loaded heavy with missiles.

And they were aimed at the cabin.

Well, this wasn’t unexpected at all.

The two ACRO agents who’d brought Ian into the cellar, where there was no other door or window to the outside, had put him in chains made especially for strong Excedos.

Which meant he wasn’t getting out of them anytime soon. But even though he probably could’ve run rings around these men, he didn’t.

He’d suck it the fuck up and be respectful.

To a point. The ever-present headache was starting to intensify, which meant that his patience was very soon going to be very limited.

He glanced between the two agents. “Do you have enough men to fight Itor?”

One of the ACRO agents—a guy named Gus—smirked. “You going to help us fight, Itor-boy?”

“Go fuck yourself. And I don’t work for Itor.”

“Anymore, right?” Gus asked. “That’s what they all say.”

“I’m sure,” Ian muttered.

And then it got quiet upstairs, the kind of silence that made Ian wary. He stood slowly, not wanting the chains to make noise or to freak out the ACRO agents, and he noticed they’d gone completely still. And all three of them were staring up at the cellar door like they were expecting the end of the world.

And fuck, Ian hated it that Taggart and Justice were up there. They were capable. He knew that. But his protective nature had kicked into high gear. To not be able to actively help his men . . . “This is the worst part.”

Gus glanced at him with a frown but didn’t say anything. Then all hell broke loose above them.

This was a clusterfuck.

Thick smoke choked the air, the ground shook, and the deafening noises left Justice disoriented and scrambling to stay on his feet. “Tag! The helo!” Somehow he managed to yell despite the fact that his heart was lodged in his throat.

“I’ll heat it up!” Tag yelled back from where he was crouched on the ground. He looked up, his eyes focused on the chopper. “Justice, don’t let it gain altitude!”

Bracing one hand against a tree for support, Justice engaged his magnetic gift. Power skittered over his skin, an electric tingle that began in his fingertips and spread to his toes and scalp. Gaze fixed on the helicopter’s black belly, he pictured himself taking the entire machine in his fist and dragging it toward him.

The bird pitched hard as the pilot attempted to compensate for the sudden force that was trying to reel it in. A searing, agonizing tugging sensation wrapped around Justice’s rib cage, cutting off his breath and driving him to his knees.

“I can’t . . . hold it . . . for long.”

“Hold on, buddy . . . Hold . . . on.” Tag’s voice was strained as he focused on the helo, his body trembling, his panting breaths freezing in the air.

The helicopter pitched again, but then it rolled, bucking like a bull trying to throw its rider. But the glow of hot metal spreading toward the gas tank was about to end all of that—

“Take cover!” Tag yelled.

Justice didn’t hesitate. He hit Tag in a tackle and took him to the snow as the massive boom shattered the air. The ground rumbled, heat scorched them, and bits of debris rained down, punching through the deep snow. Steam rose up from the blackened snow craters, the hiss of hot metal the only sound in the stunned forest.

A shot rang out, and it was on again.

Beneath Justice, Tag cursed and spit snow. “I could have hit the ground all by myself, you know,” he muttered.

“That’s no fun.” He gave Tag a discreet—and hard—pinch on the ass as he pushed off the other man. He didn’t wait around to flirt; Itor agents on snowmobiles were tearing up the forest, some of the riders firing weapons, while others
were
weapons.

One hurled a fireball at an ACRO agent who barely avoided being toasted by engaging his super speed, and another was wielding some sort of electrical whips extending from the tips of his fingers.

“Bastards,” Justice growled. Throwing out his hand, he sent his own gift at the electric-whip guy’s snowmobile as it sped toward the cabin’s clearing. The thing veered hard to the right and collided with a tree. At the same time, another snowmobile crashed, and Justice looked over to see Tag with a self-satisfied smirk.

They joined forces, working in tandem to take out more snowmobiles and riders as the other ACRO agents engaged Itor.

For fun, Justice sent one snowmobile into a collision with an Itor agent, and then he and Tag crashed two head-on.

“It’s like a fucking video game,” Justice yelled at Tag.

Grinning, Tag flicked his wrist, and the last snowmobile flipped into the air, dumping its driver in a heap in the snow. ACRO agents swarmed the guy, and soon he joined a handful of other Itor survivors in restraints near the shed.

Eventually, only a few lone shots rang out, punctuated by groans and shouts for help from the injured and dying. Justice and Tag helped round everyone up, bringing them inside the cabin, where uninjured ACRO agents with medical experience tended to the wounded.

“Ian is a trained medic.” Tag grabbed Dev’s arm, and Justice groaned. Tag was going to push the guy too far, and probably sooner than later. “Did you hear me, dammit? He’s a medic. He can help.”

For a long time, Dev stared at Tag, measuring him from head to toe.

“Dev,” Justice pleaded, fighting the adrenaline that rushed through his body from the fighting and subsequent victory. “Please. He deserves a chance to prove himself.”

Dev jerked his chin at the basement hatch. “Go. And good job tonight.”

Yeah. Good job. Justice should be thrilled. They’d defeated the bad guys, and while there were a lot of injured men being cared for in the cabin or being evacced immediately in the most critical cases, there were no casualties. At least, not on ACRO’s side. But something niggled at him. The expression on Dev’s face earlier, when they’d been discussing Ian . . . Justice would bet his left nut that his boss was keeping something from them.

So yep, they’d won the battle. But he had a feeling the fight was not yet over.

The quieter of the two ACRO agents babysitting Ian checked his phone and looked over at his buddy, Gus. “Devlin needs me. Hang here with him.”

“Great.”

“It’s no picnic for me either,” Ian said brightly as the agent raced up the stairs and slammed through the doorway. His humor fled though, as fear for Justice and Tag settled into the pit of his stomach. “Care to share what’s happening?”

Before Gus could reply, Justice’s voice drifted down the stairs, and Ian nearly sagged with relief. “Dev said to let Ian up—we need a medic!”

“Now, asshole,” Tag shouted, and Ian snorted. So Tag.

Gus frowned, but he checked his phone and must’ve gotten the confirmation he needed because he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a key. “Don’t fuck this up.”

“I don’t plan on it.” Ian watched him unlock one cuff, and then they both froze as a boom rattled the shelves and rows of supplies stacked along the walls, sending cans of soup and bottles of water crashing to the floor.

“What the fu—” Gus cut off as the wall in front of them exploded outward.

Wood, stone, and dust pelted them, but the real danger was the Itor agent who crashed through the opening. In an instant, Justice was looking down the barrel of a pistol.

Son of a bitch!

The bastard fired even as Ian shoved Gus down and moved out of the way himself, encumbered by the chains but free enough to put on a burst of speed and avoid a bullet to the brain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement through the wall opening the trigger-happy Itor dick had emerged from, and shit, more agents were storming through what appeared to be an ancient, narrow tunnel.

Tag, you should have studied the damned building plans
.

Two more agents burst in and Gus was up, rushing to fight the first one. Real quick, it became obvious that Gus was an Excedo—with a single punch to the chest, he knocked the agent into the back wall hard enough to displace a section of stonework and likely kill the guy.

Ian didn’t have time to celebrate. One of the newcomers came at him, the sleeves of his jacket peeled back enough to reveal his secret weapon: venomous barbs.

Not. Good.

Heart pounding, Ian hurled himself at the guy and used the chain still connected to his wrist as a weapon. With an angry shout, he wrapped it around the guy’s neck before he could shoot off venom from his barbs. The barbed agent grunted as Ian yanked the chain to cut off his air. The Itor bastard struggled hard, one hand going for the chain at his throat, the other flailing wildly behind him as he tried to stick Ian with the tip of his poison barb.

Holy shit, was this idiot ever going to go down?

“Help . . .” Gus’s voice was a tortured whisper from behind him. Ian cranked his head around to see the ACRO agent standing, unnaturally still, near the staircase, his eyes wide with panic.

The remaining Itor guy was stalking toward him, knife in hand, but his real weapon was the hypnotic ability he was using to hold Gus immobile.

Summoning every last drop of strength he had, Ian slammed poison-boy to the ground hard enough that he was never getting up and charged the hypnotist. Speed was his blessing in this case—he moved too fast for the guy to get a bead on him, but for some reason, for all his speed, he suddenly felt like he was moving in slow motion. Still, his slow motion was twice as fast as a normal human, and he managed not only to disarm the enemy, but to slice his neck open with his own damned knife. Fucking satisfying as hell.