Page 187 of The Wild Charge

Anotherthunk.

Fox risked peeking around the shield and for the first time all evening, his stomach jumped not with alarm, but with excitement.

The door to the thirty-seventh floor was still propped open, and, as Fox watched, a figure emerged from it, head and shoulders taller than the men who’d been firing at them. A flash of yellow, the handle of a sledgehammer, and then a guard’s face got caved in with a sickening crunch. The big man with the hammer kicked the body over the rail, into free fall, and spun to take out the man to his right in similar fashion. In a handful of seconds, every guard was down, only a few of them so much as twitching.

Dressed in black tactical gear and helmet, rather than his usual denim and flannel, there was still no mistaking Mercy Lécuyer as he pushed his goggles up and beamed down at them.

“Bonjour!” he called. “Did you guys know there’s a whole other staircase on the other side of the building? Luis was oh so helpful in offering me all the door codes before I gagged him.”

Despite the pain in his hand, and the exhaustion weighing him down like a lead blanket, Fox dropped the shield and scrounged up a smile. “I could kiss you on the mouth,” he called back in French.

“Aw, shucks. But later. Where’s the rest of you guys?”

~*~

Tenny came to two realizations on the slow, shuffling trip down to the thirty-eighth floor.

One: there was no way Reese could make it all the way down barefoot and in his underwear. He needed shoes, and clothes, and, preferably, body armor.

Second: there was a dead body about his size waiting for them on said thirty-eighth floor.

He could smell death as they pushed through the door and into the droning-bulb quiet of the room where Reese’s brothers had attacked him. The metallic tang of blood; the very real stink of voided bowels.

Tenny urged Reese down into a chair, noting with alarm the way he swayed and nearly fell off of it, lip bitten against the pain of even that much movement. “Hold on. We’ve gotta get you something to wear.”

Reese turned his head, blearily surveying the space. “From where?”

“Just…hold on.”

He went around behind the stacked furniture and found Jax’s body where it had fallen, slumped sideways, arms outflung, his head a gaping horror show.

The pants were a no-go, given the whole voided bowel situation, but Tenny crouched down and tugged off his boots and socks. Wrestled him out of his flak vest and tactical jacket. Everything smelled of sweat and gore, but it would have to do.

He gathered it up, ready to stand, when he saw movement from theotherbody. Grayson lifted his head with a groan, wincing as he craned his neck around, hissing when he tried to move his bound wrists and the still-sluggishly bleeding wound at his shoulder made that painful and impossible.

Tenny shifted his bundle to his bad arm and drew his gun. He had Reese, now; no weakness remained for the younger lookalike.

Grayson spotted him, eyes going wide. “Wait! Wait, wait–”

“You killed him,” Reese rasped out, and Tenny snapped his gaze up to find Reese standing with hands braced on the desk top, halfway to collapsing. His one-eyed gaze was fixed on Jax, his bruised face expressionless.

“Devin did, actually,” Tenny said, pulse thumping in his ears. “But I would have, yeah.”

Reese nodded, once, and turned to Grayson, huddled and shivering on the floor, tears pooling in his eyes.

“Please. Please, I don’t – I didn’t want any of this. I can help you. But I – I don’t want…” His gaze skated toward his brother, and then away again, eyes pressing closed.

Either he was a wonderful actor…

Or a terrified teenager.

Tenny thought putting a bullet in him regardless was the safe bet.

But Reese caught his gaze and said, “We’ll take him with us.”

It was an effort to keep his voice calm. “Baby, you’re beat to shit. There’s a chance you aren’t thinking this through logically.”

Even with one eye swollen shut, Reese’s face settled into that mulish expression Tenny had come to expect when he said something over the top or disingenuous.

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