Beau (The Mavericks Book 4) Read online

  With all the weapons stashed, he quickly moved in to intercept the second man. On his way, he tapped out a message to Asher, letting him know he had taken one down. Asher responded with having taken one of his down too—that was three total down, and ten minutes later it was four.

  Beau quickly picked up the first man, brought him over, and dropped him beside the second man. That’s when he heard sounds coming toward him. He slipped behind a tree and watched, then stepped out and glared at Danica as she limped her way toward him.

  Instead of backing down, she shoved her face in his and said, “Thirty-two minutes.”

  “In what direction were you supposed to go in that case?”

  “Hell, no way am I taking off cross-country alone,” she snapped. “With any luck, I’ll end up landing right back in the middle of the compound again. My safest place was at your side. And I’m not a fool.” Then she glanced at the two men and winced. “I guess I should be happy you left them alive, huh?”

  “Not really,” he said, “they’re dead weight. Better they were dead, and we wouldn’t have to pick them up later,” he said with a touch of callousness.

  “Right. And, if they were dead, they would bring in predators. And I suspect that was more of your intent.”

  He chuckled. “Only if there’s blood,” he said. “If it’s a bloodless death, I really wouldn’t give a damn. I could break their necks,” he said, studying her with interest.

  She frowned at him. “Killing in battle is one thing. They’re defenseless right now.”

  “Exactly. But we have three more men to get.”

  “There were seven,” she said. “Did you learn math?”

  “Asher has taken out two.”

  “Where are the other three?” she asked. “You could go find them, and I could stay here with these guys.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s a good idea.”

  She reached down, pulled a handgun from the stash of weapons, and said with a smile, “Now this one I can handle.” She motioned at the long guns on the ground. “Those I don’t even know how to load.”

  “They’re all loaded,” he said drily. “In the case of these guys, point and shoot,” he said, “and watch out for a kickback because, once you start, it doesn’t really slow down.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Go,” she said. “Just remember to come back for me. I’ll stay here. Even if they wake up, I’ll be fine.”

  He nodded and took one last look at her. She smiled up at him cheerfully, and, realizing she really was okay, he disappeared.

  Chapter 8

  Danica watched him go and let her smile fall away. At least she’d fooled him. There was absolutely nothing secure about sitting here with two tied up idiots like these men, but it felt much better to know that they were tied up and that she was the one holding the weapon. Something about being in control for the first time made her feel like she would survive this.

  She desperately wanted Beau to be with her, but no way could she let that happen and have those cult gunmen out there finding her, Beau, or Asher. Besides, she was still worried about the women being prepped for the transport vehicle. She really hoped that roadblocks would be set up somewhere along the line. But what if the kidnappers had planes? She’d have to ask Beau about that.

  Dawn would arrive all too soon here. That was the thing about Alaska that Beau had told her; the nighttime here was short, even in the spring and summer seasons. Soon enough, once the transport time arrived, the place could be crawling with probably twenty more men from the cult. And then what were she and Beau and Asher supposed to do? She had absolutely no illusions that women from the cult would be any less of a problem than the menfolk. Once they felt threatened in any way, they would be just as bad as the men. Maybe even worse.

  And Danica wasn’t sure what had happened to Nania, and, considering what Beau had suggested, Danica knew she couldn’t trust Nania either. It was one thing if the two of them were victims and escaping together. But now? Danica certainly understood that Nania had been crying her heart out, and Danica had believed Nania’s torment at the time. But what if there was something else to it? Danica hated her suspicions, but, once started, it was pretty impossible to ignore.

  She sat as silently as she could, watching the two bound men breathe. She was hidden up against the tree so that, even if somebody came upon them accidentally, she should get the drop on them. She didn’t know if she would be capable of shooting them though. She didn’t have to shoot to kill, but she instinctively knew what Beau would say. If you point that gun at someone, it means it’s bad news, and that means you need to take them out first.

  And that would be the problem, since she’d never shot anyone before.

  She leaned her head back, wishing she had a phone to tell her father where she was. That she was alive and thinking of him. She didn’t have very many people who she would call friends. No current boyfriend. And the last one had been much less of a boyfriend than more of a casual date-night partner. When they both realized neither were planning on committing to each other, they’d split up to find something better. Well, that was college for you. At least they’d split before each had sampled a dozen others.

  She was late attending college because she’d gone to work for ten years before she enrolled to get her degree. She hadn’t really regretted it, but it made everybody who she went to college with seem so much younger. They were mostly just out of high school and seemed decades younger than she was. Nothing like life experience to make you grow up quickly.

  She’d been living on her own, working and paying her own bills for a long time now, and, at twenty-nine, she was just about to interview for a decent job. She frowned at that because the interview was supposed to be a week later on Tuesday, and she had no idea what day of the week it was. If she didn’t show, that would shoot her options right down the drain. She wasn’t even sure she really wanted the job, but it was a job, and she needed to find a way to keep working, preferably in her field, which this job was. With it, she would continue to develop a portfolio of skills so she’d get another and better job.

  She was in marketing, and somehow the appeal for marketing had lost some of its luster as she’d gone through the program. She loved data; she loved ad sets and CPCs—costs per clicks—and working out what was making money and what wasn’t. Testing, split testing, A/B testing—it was all up her alley. But most people wanted her to do a ton of other stuff to go with it. She wasn’t sure she was up for that. As for starting her own business, she had no idea what her options were. Still, at least now she had options.

  When she’d woken up in that damn cell, shivers had immediately racked her spine as she tried to push back the horrifying feelings of coming to, just to find out she had been tied up and was alone in that horrible, dug-out space. She couldn’t even imagine what that place was like in wintertime. Had they really kept people in those holes long-term? What about when the skies opened up? The place would be nothing but mud for days. She was grateful for the dry weather, but that brought up a whole different story—fire hazards.

  These last few years, with climate change, the weather had been so much more extreme in so many parts of the world. She didn’t know if fires were as big an issue in Alaska as they were in California, but if they were … This ground was completely overwhelmed with deadfall and brush that snapped like twigs every time she shifted. Dead leaves were everywhere. It’s not like you could come through and clean it out, but surely somebody should do something. Once a fire raged through here, it would take out everything and cleanse the earth for another decade to come, which, of course, is what fire was meant for originally—a cleansing process to clean up the earth and to give space and life to new growth.

  But once humanity had encroached on Mother Nature, stopping the natural fire season, everything changed. Now when fires started, man did everything they could to put them out, but too often it didn’t work as well as they wanted it to. They should have been doing controlled burns, but,
in a place like Alaska, there were just too many millions of acres to control.

  She tried to work her mind into multitudes of subjects to keep from thinking about what Beau was doing and how long he’d been gone this time. The last time he’d said twenty minutes, thirty on the outside, but this time he hadn’t even bothered to give her a time frame. She had the stopwatch looped around her arm a couple times, still ticking down, and laid the handgun loosely in her lap and leaned her head against the bark and closed her eyes. Sounds amplified when her eyes were closed. She heard a twig off to the left, and immediately her gut twisted. There was a hoo-hoo sound off to the right, and she realized an owl was out here too. Of course he needed to eat as well as anybody.

  Birds twittered in the weird half-light of these predawn morning hours. She could see but not clearly, while the shadows still blended with trees, and other predators searched the area looking for their next meal. She didn’t think she was in any danger here from animals; she was more concerned about two-legged predators.

  She checked Beau’s stopwatch and realized Beau had been gone for exactly seventeen minutes. Groaning silently, she sat back, knowing he could be at least another thirteen, maybe even twice as long. That wouldn’t go so well for her. She wanted him back, and she wanted him back now.

  Just then she heard a hard thump, definitely man-made. She leaned forward ever-so-slightly to look to the right, but there was just no way to see through the shrubs and the dense brush everywhere. It wasn’t a footstep she heard next but more of a broken branch. She frowned and tucked her knees up closer to her chest, hiding deeper against the tree. The only way to get any smaller was if she straightened and flattened herself against the trunk. Would that help, or would that make it worse? She still had two trussed-up cult men here. Were they drawing in people, or were they drawing in animal predators?

  She swallowed hard, closed her eyes, and did something she hadn’t done in a long time.

  She prayed.

  With one more down, Beau waited until he could see where the other two were. He wanted to take them all out. Asher was on his way toward him, and, as soon as they could do a clean sweep, they wanted to pile all the men together and send a GPS location to the law enforcement authorities gathering to raid the compound. But, with sixty people here, the law would need more than a full-on SWAT team, considering the number of weapons that these cult men had. And that would take time.

  Plus the locals didn’t have as much access to extra personnel as they did down south, in the rest of the states making up the good ol’ USA. Alaska had a much thinner population, and, although they shared the same problems with crime, maybe even more so considering how far north they were, and, with Alaska’s unemployment rate, it would take pretty much all the manpower the cops could dredge up to take care of this place.

  Beau melted into the background and waited and soon heard an owl. Two hoots and then a single one. He answered Asher’s call with a corresponding one of his own, and suddenly Asher appeared, carrying one of the cult men on his shoulder. Seeing one on the ground near Beau, Asher dropped his man and said, “We’ll have to try to collect these guys later,” he said.

  “I was just thinking that,” Beau said. “We can take them back to where Danica is. She’s with two of the others.”

  “Mine are on the far side,” Asher said. “I think we’ll leave them there for now. But I want that seventh man. He was carrying hand grenades.”

  Beau shot him a startled look, and Asher nodded. They both knew that changed the game entirely. Not only did it mean that they were not necessarily safe themselves but it meant that they could be taken out from a distance, and that was not something they wanted to really contemplate.

  Asher held up a hand.

  Beau froze. He strained his hearing to sense whatever Asher had picked up on.

  He motioned behind him.

  Beau’s eyes adjusted to the light as he studied the tall trees in the area. Just then he saw what he thought was an arm. He grabbed Asher and dragged him around the nearest tree. Something dropped and exploded right at his feet.

  The two men were picked up and tossed to the ground, but they were up and moving rapidly. Splitting up, one going left and the other going right, they quickly raced around, coming up on the side of the man who had thrown the grenade, but he was no longer there. He had raced toward the spot where his grenade had landed.

  Beau and Asher came up on either side of him as he stared down at the bodies.

  “Not who you thought they would be, huh?” Asher asked.

  The man froze, his hands instinctively going to his weapons. Asher fired once and took out his gun hand, but the man swore, dropped to his knees, turned around, and fired. Beau took him out with one shot to the head. He collapsed on top of the bodies of his two crew members who he had just blown to crap.

  Walking closer, Beau took one look and realized all three men were dead. As a matter of fact, the first two had been blown to bits. He swore, looked at Asher, and said, “Now this will be a problem.”

  “And fast,” Asher said. “The cult will have to step up their time frame. We’ll have all kinds of predators moving in now.”

  Beau turned and raced toward the two men he’d left with Danica.

  As soon as he arrived, he saw her sitting there, staring up at him, wide-eyed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Her lips trembled. “What did I just hear?” she cried out. “That was horrible.”

  “One man had a hand grenade,” he said, lifting her to her feet and tucking her against his chest.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Are you okay?” Her hands immediately patted down his chest, making sure he was all right.

  He smiled and whispered, “Thank you for caring, but I’m fine.”

  She stepped back, looked up at him, and he saw the tears in the corner of her eyes. He realized once again how much of a shock this all was to somebody like her. She stretched up, threw her arms around his neck, and whispered, “God, I was so scared.”

  He held her close and said, “He ended up killing two of his own men,” he whispered. “Both Asher and I are fine.”

  She swallowed hard and turned to look at the stranger beside him.

  “Asher, meet Danica. Danica, meet Asher.”

  Asher smiled gently and said, “Sorry for the tough few days you’ve had.”

  She nodded and whispered, “Thank you for keeping me safe and helping to rescue the other women.”

  “Speaking of which,” Asher said, “we need to send some messages, and we need to let the others know what just happened.”

  “How does that impact the others?” she asked curiously. She settled against the tree while the two men crouched beside their captives.

  Beau quickly took photos of the two men, while Asher sent other messages. They needed to move up the timeline—to like now.

  Chapter 9

  “What are you telling them?” Danica asked the two men, curious as they sent text after text and made phone call after call.

  “To watch for wiring and grenades,” Beau said briefly. “That changes the entire scenario. It’s quite possible the compound is rigged to blow.”

  Her breath caught in the back of her throat. “That would be terrible.”

  “It would be,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that it’s not all too possible.”

  “I hope not,” she whispered. “A lot of innocent people are in there.”

  “Children,” he said. “And those prisoners. Everybody else, I’m afraid, will have to stand on their own two feet.”

  “Or get blown to smithereens, you mean?” she asked.

  “Think about the cult women,” he said. “I don’t know how many are in that compound, but they’re here of their own free will.”

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “They’re often kept here through fear.”

  “True enough,” he said, “but I’ve also seen cults where the women threw the first stones at us.”

 
; “I was just thinking that too. You know what? As much as we should be afraid of the men here because of their weapons, I think women can be much crueler. Anytime cult women are threatened on the news reports, they can be a whole lot worse than the men.”

  “Good,” Asher said. “You’re keeping your head and understanding the truth about what the cult people are really like. We can’t have you thinking all the women are innocent and need saving. Some will be. Some were victims forced to take a side, but some will be partners in planning and procuring more trafficking victims.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I get that. I just hope that we don’t have to kill more than we need to.”

  “Hopefully we won’t have to kill anymore,” Beau said. “And I’ll have you know that one of their own killed the two men on the ground. Only when he tried to kill Asher did I take him out.”

  “So three dead and four captive?” Her gaze went from Beau to Asher. They were like opposites: one was dark and dangerous-looking, like a devil; the other as light and golden-haired as an angel. So different, and yet, something so very similar about both of them. She took a deep sigh and whispered, “So do I stay here, or what’s next?”

  “We’ll check out more of the compound,” he said. “Do you know where the children are kept?”

  She shook her head. “I only know the prison hole where I was stuck and the one I took Nania from.”