66. Utah

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

utah

I was annoyed that he was as quick as he was. Otherwise, I would’ve cracked New Jersey with the truck door when I swung it open to get out.

“Only two of them walking around by the barn. From what I could see, three more around the outside of the house. Two others out by Kyle’s,” he whispered. I went to the back door of the truck while he spoke so I could start gathering my own shit to get ready.

“Utah,” Triss whispered. She nodded toward the front bumper of my truck when I looked at her. Memphis was standing in front of the truck, staring up at the glow from the fire in the distance.

I was as fast as possible about getting my gear hooked to my belt so I could meet Memphis at the front of the truck. I stepped right into her line of sight so she could see only me.

“I started an arson war,” she choked out. “Why did we ever leave him alone? Why did we ever think we could include other?—”

I covered her mouth another fucking time and shook my head at her.

“We get Indy out, sugar. That’s what we’re going to focus on right now. The rest of it doesn’t matter. You can think about it all you want later. But right now , all we need to do is get him out of there.”

Her eyes glistened with a million tears that wanted so badly to pour down her face. She swallowed hard instead and nodded back at me. I took my hand from her mouth to pull the gun from my waistband. I grabbed her hand and placed the grip in it. She was shaking her head by the time she’d looked back up at me. I wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and leaned down to put my forehead against hers.

“You will stay alive tonight, Memphis. I don’t care what that means for anyone else out here. You hear me?”

“Oh, neat. Fuck the rest of us then,” Triss grumbled.

“You hush,” Jersey snapped at her.

Memphis tried to turn her head to look at the other two, but I shifted my hold down to the back of her neck to keep her right where she was, looking up at me.

“Do you hear me, Syn?” I repeated.

“Yes, sir.”

“My good girl.”

“Alright, lover boy,” Jersey hissed impatiently.

“Oh, it’s okay to interrupt when they annoy you ?” Triss asked.

“It’s okay for me to do whatever the fuck I want,” he said.

I kissed Memphis on the tip of her nose before I let her go.

“Keep an eye on his phone’s location, boss lady. Get me in as close as possible to where they are,” Jersey said to Memphis while he walked by us. “Keep me updated on what you can see from out here. Don’t let Triss anywhere near the house until we know we have the outside cleared.”

“Watch your back, Retirement,” I nodded at Triss when I walked by her too.

She giggled. “I think I might actually be some off breed of cockroach. I seem to just survive everything.”

I paused to look back at her for that comment and couldn’t think beyond all the times Indy liked to tell me that I couldn’t be killed.

“Keep up, slick,” Jersey called from a few rows ahead of me into the corn.

“Do we know what happened?” I whispered while I followed the world’s most frustrating soul.

“No. He said Nevada showed up, and the next thing they knew the house was burning.”

“She showed up ,” I repeated. “Did she show up amicably?”

“He let her into the house either way. Whether she brought the rest of them, or they just happened to figure out who to follow, I’ve got some less than amicable things to say to her now.”

We both paused in the last few rows of that field to kneel down and take in the nightmare of a sight in front of us. We didn’t have the full view of the house because of the barn, but it was devastating all the same. It wasn’t even my house. My memories weren’t stored in there. What remained of my life wasn’t kept hidden in those walls.

I glanced at that most frustrating soul as quickly as I could without him noticing, but he didn’t seem even the least bit bothered by what was happening in front of us.

I imagined losing your wife and child probably changed the perspective on how it felt to lose belongings or property.

“You can be quiet enough to do this?” he asked.

For the first time in all the months I’d been having to deal with this guy, I let myself wonder for a second who he believed he was talking to. I knew enough of his background to know what he was capable of here tonight. Asking me that question meant he either knew absolutely nothing about my background, or that he did know it and simply still believed that I was incompetent.

“I got your big ass out the last time you needed saving,” I whispered and shrugged.

“I was already halfway out on my own, punk.”

“Which one are you taking, old man?”

“I’ll go left. Meet me around the front and we’ll get the other two out by the guesthouse. Memphis,” he whispered and paused. “Let Kyle know when we’re close to the house and he’ll post up in a window.”

He nodded at me and I nodded right back before he turned to creep his way further down the field so he’d have more of a straight shot at his man once we left the cover of the corn.

I couldn’t wait for New Jersey to be ready to move. I would’ve missed my chance to catch my own on the side of the barn, out of sight from the others who would’ve been closer to the house. I could only wait until both men had their backs mostly to me and hope that New Jersey would be quick enough in case his man heard or spotted me.

Either way, I didn’t have time to worry about how Jersey was going to handle the situation. I crept through the open space between the field and the back of the barn until I was close enough to break out into a dead sprint.

He never had time to make a sound between me covering his mouth and dragging the knife through the front of his neck to give him a new and disgusting, out-of-place smile. I kept my hand over his mouth and helped him fall to the ground a little more quietly before I dragged his barely alive body back further behind the barn just to keep him out of sight as long as possible. I glanced toward the other side to spot New Jersey leaving the body of his man on that end of the barn.

No part of me would ever grasp how that old motherfucker moved as quickly as he did. I rolled my eyes for no one to even see before working my way around the front of the barn to meet him there. I followed him in absolute silence toward the guesthouse that had been permanently transformed into Kyle’s house. The front door had been kicked in and there was a flickering glow coming from the inside to tell us that this one was on fire inside too.

The sound of glass shattering from the other side of the house caught both of our attention. New Jersey nodded for me to go to the right again and he turned to go left immediately. There was no sneaking up on these two though. I was standing face-to-face with both of them before I even made it around the other side of the house. I tossed my knife into the air to grab it by the blade and threw it at the chest of the man who was reaching for his own weapon. I hoped the scream that came out of him would bring Jersey back this direction a little faster, because everyone around the main house probably would’ve heard it too. There was no undoing it and no turning back at that point so I pulled my own gun and dropped to a knee to fire two rounds into the second man. And the responding gunfire from the main house had me right back on my feet and sprinting to the other side of the guesthouse, where Jersey was already waiting with his gun pulled. I ducked down behind him to breathe in deeply and try to prepare myself for the shit he was about to give me for blowing our cover, but it never came.

“Tell Kyle we need him now, boss lady,” New Jersey said, not bothering to whisper anymore. I watched his shoulders drop and he hung his head back for a second. “Yes, Memphis. Your precious smitten kitten is fine. He’s right here behind me.”

I tried not to laugh. I really did. The gunfire from the house had just paused while they tried to locate us again. Laughing would’ve given us away in an instant. This really wasn’t the time to be finding anything funny either.

“Have Kyle do something, boss lady. Anything. I need a distraction,” New Jersey said. He turned to look at me. “To the little shed by the fire pit. Wait for the M4 shots.”

“M4? Christ,” I mumbled. These big ass Marines weren’t messing around. The rifle shots were unmistakable either way, and we were both sprinting closer to the glow of the house fire in hopes of reaching the shed before the other men came out from their cover.

As soon as we reached the shed, Jersey pressed himself against the building to lean around the corner with his gun raised. From where I was behind him, I could just barely see the left half of someone hiding behind the far side of the attached garage. Jersey fired one round.

And it was followed up with no reaction at all from the man who was hiding. Jersey stood perfectly upright in disbelief himself.

“Did you… miss ?” I asked and almost choked on that attempt not to laugh. “Might be losing a step in your advanced age, man. Want me to do it?”

“I haven’t lost shit,” he hissed. “I just look before I take those steps these days, slick.”

“So, what? You missed on purpose ?” I asked and absolutely laughed that time.

That laugh gave us away, and the gunfire started again with tiny chunks of the wood siding flying as they hit the shed next to us.

“Just get down before you get dead,” he snapped. “I don’t want to have to explain to Memphis that we both made it in and back out alright just for me to have to break you face as soon as we were safe.”

“She does love my face.”

“Kid. I swear to god.”

He waited for their shooting to die down another time. At this point, we were all pinned down right where we were again with Kyle watching from the house to prevent them from moving and them knowing where we were to keep us from moving.

“I need constant cover fire,” Jersey said. “I’m just going to rush him. We can get in to the garage from that side. We’ll still have to deal with the other two if we don’t spot them on the way in. But we just need to get ours out before the house collapses.”

He waited for Kyle’s rifle to make itself known again before he just stepped out from behind the shed like he didn’t have a care in the world. I jumped out to fall in step right behind him. Memphis might not forgive him if he actually busted my face, but she would absolutely hate me if I let that giant asshole get killed out here tonight.

New Jersey had the man in front of us gunned down before he ever saw either of us coming. And instinct dropped us both into a take fucking cover crouch at the sound of another unexpected rifle shot from the house. The body that thudded to the ground behind us had both of us instantly a little more concerned about who we might be up against if neither of us realized he was there. Jersey offered a gracious head nod toward whichever second story window Kyle had decided to call home.

“One left out here somewhere,” he said. “Everybody needs to be aware of that when we’re trying to get back out.”