Chapter Twenty-Eight

Shane followed Everlee. There were only four guest rooms. The scene in each was the same. Two queen beds. Six bloody murder scenes in all. Looked like Astor had delivered cold-blooded headshots while the men she'd hired to do her dirty work slept. The shredded pillows at the headboards now held blood, brain matter, and bone fragments. There were no signs of resistance, not even in the shared bedrooms. Which begged the question: Why hadn't any these guys reacted once they'd heard shooting? Silencers were never as quiet as Hollywood portrayed. Had Astor drugged or poisoned them? That'd explain a lot.

Like Everlee, Shane snapped photo after photo. Of the rooms. The pillows. The blood splatter on walls and headboards. The darkening blood smears down the hall. By the time he and Everlee were back in the main room, his heart was pounding pretty hard. Quite frankly, the entire suite stunk to hell and the scene was beyond gruesome. But he was more worried about Ev than himself.

He'd seen worse than these carefully orchestrated executions during his deployments overseas. You put in enough hours in third-world countries, and it was a given. Most Americans, especially those loud-mouthed talking heads who'd never seen a second of combat, would be horrified at what most military members saw every day. The filth. The squalor. The physical abuse. Hell, the first time Shane had seen a small boy whipping his sad little donkey to make it walk, when its poor feet were lifted in the air by the over-sized weight of the cart it was trying desperately to pull, had been a huge wake-up call. There really was no place like home and when he wasn't in America, he was powerless to stop any kind of abuse. The poor were just as wicked and as cruel as the wealthy. There was no EPA, ASPCA, Family Services, or women's shelters. No compassion for elderly. No empathy for handicapped. No justice. Just gawddamned money. And pain. Yeah, always plenty of pain.

But Everlee hadn't been exposed to any of that, and there simply was no way to train a grunt how to react to their first kill or death scene. The Corps hadn't developed any how-to manuals to teach a guy or gal how to process the internal shock from violent, visceral imagery. You could talk to yourself all you wanted, but seeing truly was believing. Only then did you understand what walking through Hell meant, how it smelled and what it looked like. What Astor had done to her men was right up there with the atrocities committed during public executions in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Everlee had panicked at first sight, and for a few moments after she'd so skillfully kicked in the door, Shane had fully expected she'd bolt. But she hadn't. She hesitated, but she'd stood her ground, and that said a lot. Everlee might be brash and in-your-face ready to fight, but she was also disciplined enough to control her emotions and finish the job. Even when it was uglier than sin.

But that flinch and the fear in her eyes when he'd taken hold of her helmet, that was something else again. She'd nearly freaked and he needed to know why. He'd held her before. Hell, they'd made love like rabbits back at Smoke's place. Yet he'd startled her now? Why? Had Butch slapped her around? Abused her? Punched her? Shane made it his next mission to find out.

"I can't believe she killed her guys," Everlee whispered once they were both back in the white room. "All of them."

That quietly spoken statement sounded as if it came from a little girl. Why was she staring at the bodies? Why was she standing over the closest vic, looking down at him like she knew him? Which Shane doubted. Something tremendously heartbreaking was going on inside Everlee's head. One moment she'd seemed able to overcome the senselessness of this gruesome discovery, but the next—

"In c-c-cold blood… Her own m-m-men..." Her voice had grown breathier, too. "All six of them. Err, seven, if you include the guy back at the barn, and I think we should. She's s-s-sick."

Little Rock's police department would be there within minutes. He'd given dispatch the basic details of the multiple murder scene, his name and TEAM badge number, as well as the identification number on his official FBI orders. He'd explained what authority he and Everlee'd had to enter the penthouse and go after Astor. Had also provided TEAM HQ's main phone number if Little Rock's police chief wanted to speak with Alex. He'd answered all dispatch's terse questions. And now they waited.

While Everlee stood over that one body, Shane cleared the rest of the rooms, something he should've done as soon as they'd breached entry. He'd barely put his gloved hand on the closet doorknob behind the entry door when—

"Don't kill her yet! She's mine!" Tuesday yelled from the open entry, where Heston stood at her back. She held a SIG P365, a slim 9-millimeter pocket pistol that fit her small right hand perfectly. Her stance was spot on, her feet spread, one foot behind the other for stability, the heel of her shooting hand cupped like a lover in her left palm.

"Tuesday, shush. Put your weapon down," Shane scolded. "Just me and Ev in here."

"Oh, sorry. Yeah. I-I know. I see that." She aimed her pistol at the floor and jerked her gaze off the murder scene at his backdrop.

"Couldn't keep her away?" Shane asked Heston.

"Not after the murder scene you guys transmitted. Thought you'd need help. Extra hands, you know." The charming Hispanic was gone. Heston's sharp, brown eyes were grim and his lips were thin, tight lines. He leveled the .45 caliber, full-auto SIG 1922 Emperor Scorpion pistol in his right hand down at the floor.

Shane admitted, "Just finishing what I should've done earlier."

Heston's pistol came back up. "You're just now clearing the place?"

"Yeah. Things went to hell as soon as we B Heston's hand was firm under Shane's elbow. They were both holding him steady. The two male EMTs who'd come with Kaminski were fast, just as good as she was. Shane was impressed. By then, there were two IVs in Everlee's arm, one clear with saline, the other dark red with…

"O Negative, universal donor," the one male EMT told Shane while he wrapped a warm blanket over and under Everlee, preparing her for transport. "I figured you were military, that you'd understand how urgent her condition is. We work with the local hospital. We're their Life Flight crew, which is why we carry blood. Most EMTs don't. Trust me, your friend here is in good hands."

"She's not my friend—" Shane swallowed hard, afraid if he said anything more, he'd break down. She's my everything.

"Which hospital are you taking her to?" Heston asked the medics.

Shane didn't hear the answer. He was too busy watching the room behind Heston fill with police officers and the coroner maybe, if that's who the white-haired guy attending Astor's dead body was. A couple gurneys. Several black body bags. He swallowed hard at the carnage in this ugly, crowded space. At sweet Everlee in the middle of it. At the somber backdrop and the stifling darkness of Death around her. Hell couldn't look any worse.

Shane managed to tell Medic Kaminski, "Wherever you take her, I go too." Please don't fight me on that. I can't let you just take her away like you did last time, not again. Not this time!

She gave him a quick smile full of perfect white teeth. "You bet you are, darlin'. We always have room for one more in our chopper. We ready?" she asked the EMT who'd told Shane about the O Negative.

"Ready to transport as soon as you are, Dot."

"We should go now," Shane ordered. "Hurry."

She shot him a kind, motherly smile. Just like Kelsey might have if she'd been there. It was that same kind of graciousness and open generosity. Lifting to her feet, Kaminski pulled off her blue latex gloves and held a clean hand out for Shane. "Like the gentleman said, we need to hurry," she told her EMT buddies. "And you are definitely coming with me, Shane Hayes, so I can dress the hole in your arm."

Shane looked down at his arm. He'd forgotten he'd been shot, too. The pain hadn't set in yet, too much adrenaline. Too much worry. But there stood Tuesday, at his side, pressing a clump of that same chemically-treated gauze to the bullshit wound on his biceps. Man, she'd even cut his shirt sleeve, and for some dumb reason, his eyes filled with blurry tears. That was the real Tuesday, the much-maligned woman standing there, helping out when she could've run and never been seen again. Judging by the tall policeman at her left, the guy with the clipboard under his arm, she'd been answering questions, explaining, and probably defending Everlee and Heston, hopefully herself, and— me.

"Come to the hospital with us?" Shane asked, needing his friends with him more than he'd ever thought he would.

"Well, of course, silly." The bright smile in her eyes was real and genuine and so much like the Tuesday he'd come to know.

"Get going," Heston cut in. "We'll join you later. Got to move the helo so Life Flight can land close enough to transport Ev. Guess they had to land across the street because I parked up top. My bad."

Shane nodded. "Okay. Whatever. I'll be with Ev."

"Where else would you be?" Tuesday asked, her green eyes tender and so damned pretty. "Now go. We'll join you as soon as we can."

Shane thanked them both, then turned and again told Kaminski, "Hurry."

The mission wasn't over yet. Everlee still had to live.