Chapter 22

Ryder couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't function. Not Langley. The thought unlocked his muscles and he scrambled across the distance to her side. Rowland had beaten him there and had his T-shirt off, using it to apply pressure to the wound. Thigh. Fuck, there was blood. Too much blood.

"Artery?" he asked, barely able to choke the word out.

"Don't think so. Blood's the wrong color, and there's not enough of it."

Taking a deep breath, he plastered a reassuring expression on his face and turned to Langley. Her pallor scared the shit out of him. "How're you doing, hellcat?"

She tried a smile, it was lopsided and didn't look convincing. "I've been better, thanks." The smile faded. "It burns."

"Yeah," he agreed, unable to find more words. Instead, he ran the backs of his fingers lightly across her cheek. He couldn't lose her. He couldn't fucking lose her. Ryder shifted his attention back to Rowland, but what he saw didn't reassure him. "You got a tourniquet?" he asked quietly.

"At the house," Stony said. "Check your vest. See what the mercs are carrying."

He quickly ran through every pocket of the vest. "Nothing medical," he reported. If only he hadn't left his damn pack behind in the tunnels. Ryder's gut clenched. Hemorrhage was the leading cause of death on the battlefield. That truth froze him again, and he had to fight the haze filling his head.

"The cops should be here soon," Ryder said. "They'll have a life flight helicopter and we have an open area directly behind us." He was talking out loud, trying to reassure himself, but Rowland didn't know that.

"Civilians aren't landing while there's shooting going on."

"Fuck." And who knew how long the police would need to lock down the scene? It might take longer than Langley had. The Golden Hour. That's what Griff called it. The window when a person's odds of survival were the best provided they got to a hospital and a doctor.

"Ski, we're not on a time out. You better fucking watch or they'll walk right in here."

Stony was right, but damn it to hell, he didn't want to leave Langley. Reluctantly, he focused his attention on their perimeter. "Right now," he muttered thickly, "I wish to hell you were Griff."

"Right now," Stony said without looking up, "I wish to hell I had Griff's gear and those magical clotting supplies he carries."

Gunfire echoed, telling him that one of his buddies was out there, helping them. He also noticed one other thing. "There's no more fire coming from the slope," Ryder said as he patrolled. The bastard could have picked them off easily if he remained up there.

"Almost certain I hit him. I think that barrage of bullets we took was reflex as he went down."

"Define almost certain ," Ryder ordered.

"I'm putting it at ninety percent I got a kill shot."

He grunted. That left four—three bastards and the fucking traitor. Ryder caught motion out of the corner of his eye and fired at it. At least one merc was trying to gain the slope. He would have seen how successful his teammate had been at shooting inside their defensive position from that location. There was no way to stop them from going high, not indefinitely, and once they realized Ryder was the only one keeping their position secure, they'd be totally fucked.

He glanced back at Langley, but her eyes were closed, her lips pressed tightly together. The golden hour. Every minute counted. Every second.

No way was he standing around, waiting for the police to arrive and secure the scene. Langley didn't have that kind of time. The men coming weren't LAPD or NYPD or from some other major city. How much training did the locals have for a situation like this?

But Ryder did have the training—and he had an ally out there.

Four against two. He liked those odds.

Decision made, Ryder loaded up with magazines. It was unlikely he'd need as much ammo as he was taking, but he wasn't going to be caught short. Getting out without drawing fire wouldn't be hard. He could slip out of the boulders the same way that merc had nearly entered earlier. The bushes should conceal him long enough to get him clear unnoticed.

Crouching beside Langley, he reached out and squeezed her hand. "Keep fighting, hellcat. Help's coming." She returned his squeeze, choking him up until he shook it off.

Quietly, so only Stony could hear, Ryder said, " Take care of her. I'm going to make sure a helicopter will land."

Rowland glanced up briefly, nodded, and said, "Good hunting."

Ryder took a last look at Langley. Her eyes remained closed, but her brow was furrowed and her frown was fierce. She was fighting. His mission now was to get her the help she needed. ASAP.

He squeezed through the gap, and staying low, crept past the body of the merc he'd dropped earlier. He paused when he reached the edge of the thicket and took a deep breath. It had been eluding him, but he needed to find his battle calm, and to do that, he'd have to push his hellcat out of his mind. Not easy.

He visualized a helicopter landing, paramedics stabilizing Langley. That would only happen if he got his shit together. Another deep breath and he found the zone.

Shooting in the distance helped him pinpoint at least one of the bastards. He knew another was trying to climb the slope. That gave him a second location. Merc number two posed the most immediate threat to Langley, so that was who he'd take down first.

Using the surrounding cover, Ryder made it to the place where he'd seen the bastard. There were a few drops of blood on a rock embedded in the dirt. Injured. Good, that gave Ryder an advantage.

The drops were few and far between, but the dude wasn't being particularly careful and wasn't hard to follow. Any idiot could read sign, the trick was interpreting it and using it to form a picture to anticipate what the guy might do next. To Ryder, it appeared as if the bastard was going wide. That would allow him to climb the hillside out of range from the boulders, and then move across to shoot into the stones. Like hell.

Ryder picked up his pace. He wanted to catch the man low and not waste time chasing him up the incline.

It only took a few minutes before he lost cover. There were no bushes or stones, not for yards. In the distance, he saw another large grouping of boulders.

Taking a long look around, he decided the area was clear. He could take his chances in the open. He studied the boulders in the distance. Could the asshole be hiding there, waiting to pick him off?

Did the fucker know Ryder had left the protective circle? He moved silently, not wanting to alert the guy if he was nearby.

It didn't take long to realize that the merc had the same idea about cover because his blood trail led directly to the stones. Ryder paused, listened, and then peered around the last boulder.

The bullet clipped the rock next to his head.

Ryder ducked back behind the stone. Another inch…

He'd found his man, but somehow Ryder had tipped off his presence. Swinging out around the boulder, he squeezed off some rounds a few feet past where he'd seen the man. Logic said he'd be working his way to come around the other side of the rocks and that's where Ryder shot.

He'd assumed right.

A bullet caught the merc's shoulder, spun him partway around. Ryder fired a few more times until the guy fell.

Cautiously, he approached, but the man stayed down. When he reached him, Ryder didn't bother to check for a pulse. The bastard wasn't getting up again, not with half his head missing.

Three enemy remaining.

Returning to the cover of the boulders, Ryder listened, trying to pick up more gunfire. Nothing. He wished to fuck his weapon had a suppressor, but all he could do was hope that Harper and the other two believed it was their own man firing at the stones. He needed the element of surprise.

The quiet lingered. Had his ally gone down?

Ryder decided to head back from where he'd heard the gunshots earlier. He could track the sons of bitches from there.

He was nearly to that point when more gunfire sounded. Relief threatened to destroy his calm, but Ryder fought until it receded. His friend remained healthy enough to shoot and he was keeping those fuckers busy so Stony could tend to Langley without interruption.

As he grew closer to the location, he nearly fell over a mercenary, his body hidden by the thick collection of bushes Ryder was wending his way through. The man stared unseeing into the sky. To be safe, he checked for a pulse, but didn't find one. He hadn't expected to. That meant there were only two left.

Harper and the traitor. The most dangerous of the adversaries. He hoped to hell he could tell the difference between friend and foe before taking a bullet.

As he silently edged his way closer to the shooting, Ryder considered things. His hellcat hadn't cried out when she'd been hit. That made it unlikely the bastards were aware of what had happened. Without that knowledge, Harp would assume that Ryder and Stony would stay close to Langley.

And if she'd remained uninjured, he would have been right.

If he were Harper, he'd work with the traitor to remove Ryder's ally from the situation. Then, with no outside interference, one of the men would go high to get an angle to take out Ryder and Stony. The other would wait till it was clear, then go in the circle to grab Langley.

That meant he could generally predict where Harper and the traitor were without hearing another shot.

If Harper was playing it as Ryder thought he would. That was a fucking big if.

Running through a few more scenarios, Ryder decided the original strategy was the most likely. Harper was a big proponent of keeping it simple, and every other plan would be much more complicated, time consuming, and have a greater chance of failure.

Scenario one was the best choice.

Ryder shifted his angle slightly. He wanted Harper. No matter which of his two friends had sold him out, Harp was the man in charge.

He slowed further as he grew close to where he expected to find the bastards.

Luck was on his side—he came up behind the man. An instant later, Ryder recognized Harper. "Drop your weapon," he ordered.

Harper froze. He didn't release the SCAR, but he did raise his hands—and the weapon—over his head before turning slowly to face Ryder. There was nothing except contempt on his face. "The smart move would have been to take me out while you had your chance, but you're such a fucking boy scout.

Ryder ignored the bullshit. "I'm not telling you again. Drop your weapon."

"And if I don't, what are you going to do?"

"Shoot you."

"You don't have the balls to fire at me, Pienkowski."

A menacing voice came from his ten o'clock. "Drop it."

The first thing Ryder saw was the weapon aimed his direction. The second was the man holding it.

Griff.

He'd miscalculated the positions of the two men, and he was going to die because of it.

In the next instant, Griff fired. The bullets went past him.

Motion caught Ryder's eye. Harper was bringing down his SCAR in a hurry. There wasn't time to worry about Griff firing again.

Ryder squeezed off a few rounds, taking Harp down before he could get his weapon in position. He wanted to check on Harper, make sure he wasn't faking it, but Griff was armed and standing there.

"Stay the fuck down," Griff growled. "I don't want to shoot you again. "

It finally penetrated that Griff was looking past him, that the shots earlier had gone off to his side. Ryder turned and things became clearer.

Mako was on the ground, bleeding. He'd always walked softer than anyone else on the team and Ryder hadn't known he was back there. Griff hadn't been trying to kill him—Griff had saved his life…and he'd had to shoot his best friend to do it. Fuck.

"I'm going to check on Harper," he told his buddy. "You can handle Mako?"

"Yeah, I got this."

Ryder nodded, and weapon ready, approached the older man.

Harper hadn't put the plates in his vest, that was apparent from the blood covering his chest. He kicked the SCAR out of reach and then bent down to check for a pulse. There was nothing. Maybe he'd feel something later for the man he used to think of as his mentor, but right now there was only relief.

He dug through the man's pockets, found the cell phone jammer, and turned it off. Ryder hoped that Stony was checking the phone, watching for a signal to call for a medivac.

He headed over to where Mako lay. As he neared, he heard Griff ask, "Why, you motherfucker? Why did you betray us?"

Griff had his pack open and was trying to stop the bleeding, but Ryder could tell Bryce wasn't going to make it. He had no doubt Griff knew it too, but he needed to try to save the friend he'd shot.

"Had no choice," Mako said, voice thready. "Harp blackmailed me."

"Blackmailed you how?" Ryder asked.

Mako's lips curved slightly, but there was no humor there, only self-reproach. His eyes drifted shut. "He knew. I slept with a spy. Didn't realize till too late. Told her too much. Got an army copter shot down. Men died."

Ryder blew out a long breath. Mako had committed treason—an offense that would get him the death penalty—and he'd been saving his own ass by helping to kill Langley.

The sound of a chopper had Ryder looking up. It was landing in back of the boulders where he'd left Langley. Life Flight was on the scene and his hellcat had medical help. She wasn't out of the woods yet, he knew that, but her situation had improved dramatically.

He refocused on Bryce. "Who's after Langley and why?"

"Don't know. Sorry, Ski." Mako's voice was so weak, Ryder almost didn't hear the apology. "Sorry, Griff."

Bryce's body went slack and Griff worked more frantically. "Don't you die. Don't you fucking die, asshole."

As his teammate fought to save his friend, Ryder remembered when they'd been in San Diego, when Bryce had returned from the fast food restaurant and looked pissed. When called on it, he'd said they'd run out of fries. That must have been when Harper had contacted him. No one became furious over onion rings. If Ryder hadn't been so fucking focused on finding that white Impala, he might have questioned that story more closely, and he could have figured out earlier Mako was a traitor, and Langley wouldn't have been hurt.

When Griff went still, Ryder knew Mako had died and that his buddy had accepted there was no chance to revive him. The helicopter took off again and he watched it until it was out of sight. Don't stop fighting, hellcat.

"You gonna be okay, dude?" he asked Griff quietly after a moment.

Before he could answer, a voice ordered, "FBI. Drop your weapons. Hands up."

Ryder did as ordered. The cavalry had arrived, and he was about to get arrested.