Shattered Valor (32 page)

She ducked out of the way as a dark hole appeared where the light had just been. He slumped to the ground. Eden ran over to the Suburban, intending to grab Mandy and get her to safety, but the other man put the vehicle in gear and started driving forward.

She jumped inside. Someone on her comm unit cursed.
“Get your heads down. Get down now, Eden!”
Mandy still looked dazed. A bruise was blooming across her forehead, framing a cut that was bleeding freely. Dozens of little nicks across her cheek and nose had begun to bleed. She didn’t move. Eden grabbed her and pushed her to the floor beneath her. “We’re down. We’re down,” she said into her comm unit.

A terrible crash sounded as the back window shattered. The SUV veered wildly. The guy was leaning on the horn, sending its loud scream into the night. They slammed into the pole of a streetlight, coming to a violent stop.

Sirens were sounding. Mandy was crying. “Hush,” Eden tried to comfort her. “It’s over. We’re going to be okay. We’re all right, Mandy.” Mandy lifted her head. “How hurt are you? Were you shot?” Eden asked.

Mandy shook her head and tried to rise, but Eden held her down. There was an active conversation going on between Rocco and Kit with a situation update, but no one was talking to them. She didn’t know what to do or if the danger had passed. She hoped there were no others out there. The town did not need a full-on gun battle.

Someone opened the driver’s door. Eden and Mandy cringed, but Val’s voice said the driver was dead. Rocco opened the back door. Eden helped Mandy up. Rocco lifted her out of the car, running his hands all over her face, neck, shoulders, and chest.

Eden sat on the seat and put her head between her knees. She wanted to throw up. She was shaking. Her head was throbbing. What had just happened made no sense. Who were those guys?

“Hey,” Ty asked as he knelt at her door. “Are you hurt?”

She looked up and tried to answer him, but she couldn’t find her voice to say the words. She shook her head. He reached over and cupped the side of her face, his expression filled with regret and guilt and anger.

“I have to check Tank.” She started to push past him, but saw that he had Tank on a leash. She slid out of the car and hit her knees in front of her dog. He was sitting on his haunches, panting as he watched her. She ran her hands all over him, but found no surface injuries. She hugged Tank. After a minute, she looked up to see Ty watching them.

Pushing to her feet, she faced him. “You stopped to get him before coming to me.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. He shook his head. “It was bone-headed, I know. I just thought—”

“You knew exactly what I needed. I wouldn’t have relaxed until I saw him. He seems okay.”

“He’s limping. He may have hurt a knee or his hip.”

Eden wrapped her arms around Ty and leaned her head against his shoulder. “What happened, Ty? Who were those guys?”

“I don’t know. Owen might be able to tell us. Or his FBI friends.”

The sirens stopped, but lights were flashing, the blue and red colors flaring and fading in and out in time with her aching head. A deputy got out of the car but stayed hunched behind his cruiser’s door.

“Shit,” Ty cursed under his breath. He handed Tank’s leash to her, then led her back to the SUV he and the guys had parked behind the kidnappers’ vehicle. He had her sit in the backseat. He lifted the back hatch and retrieved a blanket.

“Hold it! Hold it right there! Nobody moves!” Deputy Jerry Whitcomb shouted, pointing a pistol in the relative direction of Ty and Rocco.

“Jesus, put that thing down,” Ty shouted at him. “You’re gonna squeeze off a bullet accidentally and kill someone.” Ty didn’t stop as he walked up to Mandy and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.

“I’m the law, here, Bladen. Not you. Do what I fucking tell you.”

“I’m putting a blanket on Mandy, then Rocco’s going to let her sit in our car. It’s all good. No one’s going to make any sudden movements.”

“Okay. You can move her.” He watched Rocco help Mandy to the back of their SUV. “Now get back up here, Rocco. Hand over your weapons, one at a time.”

Val looked at Ty. “What’s with Deputy Fife? He forget who we are?”

“Do it now,” Jerry demanded, “or I will start shooting. You,” he nodded at Val, “put your weapons down on the hood of that SUV.”

“Okay. I’m doing it.” Val held one hand up as he set his M-16 on the hood. He drew a Beretta out from a shoulder harness. Took a sawed-off shotgun from a back holster. Pulled another Beretta from the back waist of his pants. Drew a Derringer from the front waist of his pants. Pulled a knife from the right thigh holster. Pulled a third Beretta from the right thigh holster. Bent over and pulled Ka-Bar knife from an ankle holster.

“That everything, Val?” Ty asked. “Thought you had three knives.”

“Oh. Right.” Val pulled a thong from around his neck, drawing out a final sheath. He put that knife on the hood as well.

“Now you,” Jerry pointed at Ty.

Ty set his Beretta and knife on the hood. “That’s it for me.”

“And you, Rocco.”

“Really, Barney?” Val complained. “It’s a pain in the ass sorting this shit out. How about he sets his on your hood?”

“He can set them next to yours. And he better do it right now.”

As Rocco moved forward, Val stepped back, keeping his body in front of the SUV where Eden and Mandy were.

“Quit moving! Stand still.” Jerry waved the gun back and forth between Rocco and Val.

A crowd was forming behind the deputy, keeping a block back. The deputy sent a quick look over his shoulder. “Hells bells. Get out of here you people! This ain’t a safe place for onlookers. Go on. Go back to bed. We’ll be off the streets soon. Stay away from your windows!”

Val laughed. “Yeah, ’cause we might turn to vapor and get you. What the hell, Fife?”

“You shut up.” Jerry tossed over a pair of handcuffs. “Put those on you and Rocco.”

“Oh, bad choice,” Val warned. “That leaves Blade, the most dangerous of us three, loose.”

“We could toss a coin,” Ty suggested. “Heads, it’s you and Rocco. Tails it’s me and Rocco.”

“Maybe two out of three. Got a quarter?” Val asked Ty.

A squad car pulled up behind the patrol car. The sheriff got out and slammed his door shut. “Holster your gun, Deputy,” he snarled at Jerry as he walked past him. “We don’t need to make this situation any worse than it is. Go do some crowd control.” He walked straight up to Rocco, sparing a single disbelieving look at the weapons laid across the hood of the SUV.

The sheriff stopped when there wasn’t an inch between his face and Rocco’s, then let loose a barrage of fury. “What the fuck’s going on, Silas? A goddamned gunfight in my town? My goddamned town! This ain’t a shooting range for your war games—”

A chill swept over Eden as she watched Rocco’s response to the sheriff. His shoulders visibly relaxed. His face went utterly still. His breathing became even. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she imagined his pupils were dilating. She knew that posturing. It was deadly in the world of dogs, the calm before the storm, the fake before the feint. All they needed tonight was for Rocco to assault the sheriff.

“Val, get Rocco!” she hissed, knowing her comm unit would pass the warning to the team.

Val stepped up to them and caught Rocco in a sideways hug, Pinning his arms to his side as he turned him away from the sheriff. “Hold on there, sheriff,” Val suggested. “The bosses are here. You can unload on them.” Two more vehicles pulled to a stop in front of the gangbangers’ SUV.

Eden folded her legs in front of her. She chewed on the cuff of her hoodie. Owen and Kit got out of one of the SUVs as a couple of men she’d never seen before got out of the other. All four of them walked past Jerry, past the sheriff, and went to the SUV with two dead kidnappers. They were looking at the men and having a conversation, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.

She looked at Mandy, who wore the blanket wrapped up covering half of her face. “You doing okay, Mandy?”

“What just happened, Eden? Who were those guys who attacked us?”

“I don’t know. I asked Ty, but he didn’t either.”

The sheriff joined the men gathered around the kidnappers’ vehicle. The men had shut off their comm units, so Eden couldn’t even catch bits of their conversation via the radio. She had no idea what was being said, but from the sheriff’s rigid posturing and his wild hand gestures, she guessed he didn’t like what he was hearing.

After a minute, the guys stepped over to their weapons and put them back in their various holsters and sheaths. Ty came over and lifted Tank to the floor of the cargo area. He closed the hatch, then walked around and got into the driver seat. Val sat in the front passenger seat. Rocco got in next to Mandy. He pulled her into his arms.

Ty pulled away from the sheriff, who was still arguing with Owen, Kit, and the two men Eden didn’t know. An ambulance was pulling through the crowd. When it passed, Ty moved through the opening it had made in the onlookers. She watched the gathering townspeople look at their SUV as it moved past, their faces frightened and anxious.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Eden stood in the hot stream of water up in the bathroom of the room she shared with Ty. The shock of what nearly happened tonight was seeping into her nerves. The men who had hit their car thought she took the drugs from the rodeo guy. What would have happened if the guys hadn’t been right behind them? She and Mandy were learning self -defense, but obviously didn’t yet know enough for it to be an instinctive response yet. Especially when the accident had left them so dazed.

The bathroom door opened, and Ty came inside. His eyes were shadowed, his face taut with strain. He was naked. He stepped into the tub but did not reach for her. He leaned against the wall and watched her.

She picked up a ball of green netting and poured a bath gel over it. Before she could start scrubbing herself, Ty reached a hand out. She gave it to him. He made long gentle strokes up and down her arm. Then he washed her collarbone, and chest, her breasts and ribs, her waist. He knelt before her to wash her legs, then straightened to do her other arm. When he was finished with her front, he turned her around and washed her back and bottom.

He reached in front of her to turn off the faucets. She caught his hand, stopping him. She took the ball of netting, poured fresh bath gel on it, and lifted it to his chest. The cuts he’d gotten climbing out of the snake pit were healed, though faint scars still remained. She washed both arms, then knelt before him to wash his genitals. He didn’t take his eyes from her. She felt him lengthening in her hands. She washed his thighs, calves, and feet. Leaning forward, she kissed the reddish scar of his healing bullet wound on his left thigh. She closed her eyes and paused, wishing it continued recovery.

He threaded his hand into her hair. When she looked up at him, there were tears on his face. His nostrils flared.

She slipped her hands up and down his rigid penis. Ty never took his eyes off her. She looked up at him as she slowly mouthed the engorged crown. He didn’t look at what she was doing. Nor did he stop her. She flicked her tongue around the sensitive tip. She pulled him out of her mouth so that she could lick the vein that ran down to his balls.

“Eden, you don’t have to do that.”

She smiled up at him. “Does it feel good?”

“Yes.”

“It feels good to me, too, Ty.” She rubbed his penis on her lips as she spoke. “Let me do this, okay?”

He nodded. She took him into her mouth, moving back and forth on him, palming his balls. He spread his feet, bracing himself. She ran her hand up his thigh, then moved it around to cup one of his tight butt cheeks. He began to pump himself ever so gently into her mouth. She alternately sucked and released him, moving with his rhythm, letting her tongue stroke the turgid underside of him.

“Stand up!” he ordered sharply, grabbing her arms to pull her up to her feet. He leaned her against the wall and lifted her so that he could spread her legs around his waist as he entered her. He moved her hips over him as he stared into her face. His eyes were intense, his teeth clenched. He was pumping hard, banging into her. As soon as her body started to spasm around him, he thrust one more time, his release erupting against hers. It seemed to last a long, wonderful time. And when it was done, the tension completely left his body.

She eased herself back to her feet, feeling unaccountably emotional. She looked away from him. She didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to seem weak when he was so strong. His arms came around her shoulders. Standing naked against his body, she knew, for the first time in her life, what it was to come home. Ty was her home.

After a minute, he reached over and shut off the water. He took the towel she’d set out and dried her. He made a quick pass over his own body, then led her from the bathroom into their bedroom. He turned the covers back on the bed.

“We’ll get the pillows wet,” she warned.

“I don’t care.”

She climbed in and moved over to the middle. The room was dark. The hall outside was quiet. Ty slipped in after her. She turned to face him, and he moved over her. He spread her legs farther apart and settled himself between them. Bracing himself on his elbows, he looked at her face. He stroked her cheek with the tips of his fingers, drawing them down her face, next to her mouth. Over her chin, the center of her throat.