Taken By Terror by Lolita Lopez
Chapter Five
Not liking the odds if this rescue party was hostile, Terror was on his feet before the first man appeared above them. Dozens more appeared, all of them armed to the teeth. He moved in front of Maisie and Lethal, and his hand twitched near his holstered sidearm. He exchanged a tense glance with Grim as Vicious strode to the front of their small group. As the highest-ranking man among them, he had naturally assumed the leadership role.
A grizzled old man stepped forward at the top of the ravine. A faded gray knit cap barely contained his wild white hair, and his unkempt beard flared around his face. Although old, he stood tall and strong and moved with the ease of a younger man. His angry gaze moved from Vicious to Grim to Terror and then to Lethal still unconscious on the forest floor. With a growl, he called out, “Euphamie Beulah Ryderwood, I should have known you would be at the center of all this ruckus!” He looked behind him and then back at her. With exasperation, he said, “You blew up half my mountain!”
“Sorry, Pa. Next time I’m being chased by a band of murderous assholes, I’ll be sure to ask ‘em real nice if they’ll stop.”
“Language, Euphamie,” her father growled. “And a little less sass, missy.”
“Yes, Pa,” she grumbled.
“Sir,” Vicious called out, “I apologize for all the trouble that we have caused, but one of my men is hurt badly. He needs medical care as quickly as possible.”
The old man squinted. “You’re that general, aren’t ya?”
Vicious went rigid at being identified so easily. “I am a general, sir.”
“Your picture is in a deck of playing cards we took off a Splinter who thought he’d trespass on my mountain,” the old man explained. He glanced Terror’s way and pointed with a finger missing its first knuckle. “That one there with the one eye, too.”
“I’d like to see that deck of cards,” Vicious said, his hackles raised at the realization there were likely bounties on their heads.
“I’m sure you would,” the old man replied. He looked to the men on his right and left. “Dale, Oat, let’s get their man loaded up on one of the MTVs. Get Joonie on the radio. Make sure she knows we’re coming so she can get the infirmary ready.”
The two men nodded and sprang into action, one of them coming down the ravine with the practiced footwork of a mountain man and the other running out of sight, probably to get their vehicle meant for mountain terrain.
“Who is the girl?”
Euphamie took a protective step to the right to protect Maisie. “She escaped the camp before it got swept away.”
“Uh-huh,” her father said skeptically. “She must be something special if she has sky men rescuing her and Splinters trying to capture her.” He looked up toward the darkening sky and then back down at his daughter. “Your friends have safe passage and protection on this mountain until sunrise.”
“Much appreciated, sir,” Vicious replied gratefully. “Once I’m back on our ship, I can arrange for whatever price you deem fair to be paid.”
“I don’t want your damn money,” the old man spat.
“There must be something that we can give you to show our appreciation for your help,” Vicious insisted.
“There might be,” the old man replied cryptically. With a whistle, he gained the attention of his small army. “Let’s load up and head out. We’re running out of daylight, and these storms are about to get worse.”
"My other brothers,” Euphamie explained as men started coming down the steep sides of the ravine. “Otis,” she gestured to the man kneeling next to Maisie and examining Lethal. “Dale is the one who ran to get the MTV. That’s Munro,” she pointed to the one in an orange cap, “and that’s Cotton. “Our two oldest brothers are back at the compound,” she added. “Vern and Clem.”
Any other time, Terror would have marveled at so large a family. Six sons were almost unheard of in his world. It took so long to earn the necessary valor points to Grab a mate and their lives were so dangerous that very few men ever sired more than two children. To have six sons would be an incredible boon.
Vicious had moved closer to supervise the movement of Lethal to a makeshift backboard. Terror left Maisie with Euphamie to go find Grim who had clambered up the ravine. It didn’t take him long to locate the assassin. He was picking through the bodies of the Splinters who had chased them this far.
“Looks like seven,” Grim said as he rifled through the pockets of tactical pants on a pair of gruesomely separated legs. “I counted fourteen legs,” he clarified. “Or, at least, I think they were legs.”
Terror grimaced at the gore surrounding them. The explosions had ripped a line through the woods, leaving behind a jagged crater and destroyed bodies. “We should get as many fingerprints and facial scans as possible. And any unspent rounds,” he added, thinking of the new bullet design that had hit Lethal. “We need to see how close they are to a wide deployment of those prongs.”
Grim held up a magazine and flicked one of the cartridges from it. He held it up in the dying light and the hazy rainfall. “Feels strange,” he said, rolling it between his fingers. “Unbalanced. Heavy at the back. Too light at the front.”
“Probably why only of them hit their mark.” Terror took the unfired round from Grim and examined it. He concurred with Grim’s analysis. It was imbalanced.
“We might have a problem with your girl,” Grim remarked as Terror handed back the round. “Under all that grime, she’s a beauty. She gets cleaned up and those men in the rescue party get a good look at her?” Grim shook his head. “We may have to fight our way out at sunrise.”
Terror’s eye twitched. Grim wasn’t wrong about the probability of the men wanting Maisie. “She’s the mission. Whatever the cost, we have to get her back to the Valiant.”
Grim pocketed the magazine and searched another pocket. “Then what’s the plan once we get her on the ship?” He moved to another lump of flesh and a torn uniform to search for intel. “You and I both know how this goes once she’s in custody. Savage isn’t going to care that she saved your life. She’s a Splinter. You know what that means.”
“Let me worry about that.” Terror didn’t want to drag Grim into what was likely to be a career-ending move. He had come after Maisie knowing that repaying his debt to her would require hard decisions, but they were his decisions to make. If he had to go on the run with her, Terror needed to know men like Grim and Pierce and Torment remained behind to step up and fill his void.
Not wasting anymore of the remaining daylight, Terror moved from body to body, scanning whatever was left of each man’s fingerprints and face. It would be nice to cross some more names off their known Splinter database. They would need to send a mop-up crew to the ledge where the ambush had occurred to recover more evidence.
If the Splinters don’t come back first...
Rustling footsteps caught his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder to see one of Euphamie’s brothers helping Maisie to the top of the ravine. Cotton. That was his name. He had a mop of pale hair and an easy boyish grin. When he started to sign to Maisie, Terror felt his gut clench in the ugliest way. The flare of jealousy shamed him, and he silently chastised himself for his weakness.
“Y’all ready?” Euphamie walked out of the trees and stopped near her brother and Maisie. “Your general went ahead on the MTV with my brothers and your wounded man. They’ll reach the compound and Joonie’s infirmary soon. She’ll be able to patch him up and keep him alive until you can get him back to your ship.”
“She’s a doctor?” Terror asked, surprised that a woman on this planet had that sort of education.
“She’s a surgeon, actually. She was a colony girl,” Euphamie explained, signing as she spoke so Maisie would be able to follow the conversation. “She came here to offer medical care and vaccines, met Clem and never left. She’s got a small clinic in our compound. Another doctor came to join her and some nurses, too. One of the nurses is married to our brother Otis.”
Cotton silently signed something to Maisie that made her laugh. The sound was so pure and unadulterated, and he felt something flutter to life in his chest. His mouth twitched with amusement, and he wondered when he had last laughed like that. Just as quickly, that warm feeling went cold as he realized it was this other man, a stranger, who had made her laugh.
“We should go,” Euphamie said and flicked on a flashlight. “With the cloud cover and no moonlight, it’s going to be dark as fuck out here soon.”
She wasn’t wrong. He waited for Grim to join Maisie and the two siblings on their trek to the vehicles waiting for them. Following close behind, he remained alert, listening through the constant drip and spatter of rain for any strange noises. The likelihood of a second wave of Splinter forces or their government goons descending on the mountain were high.
When he reached the idling vehicles, there was only one space left in the vehicle driven by Cotton, and it was right beside Maisie in the rear seat. He hopped in and let out a relieved sigh to finally be off his aching feet. His socks were soaking wet, and he expected to find blisters once he got his filthy boots off. He wouldn’t have a chance to take them off for a while, though. He needed to find a radio with enough signal to hit the secret channels that were monitored by the Shadow Force. The sooner they got off this mountain, the better.
The vehicle lurched forward, and they began the slow and bumpy descent down the mountain, first through a muddy mess of tracks and then onto a cleared driving trail lined with gravel. A particularly rough dip caused Maisie to lift out of her seat, and she banged against him on the way down. He reached out to steady her, and then—in a moment of weakness that shamed him—he grabbed her hand and held onto it.
He could feel her curious stare through the darkness. Instead of shaking off his hand, she turned her wrist and wiggled her fingers until they were interlaced with his. Unable to help himself, he looked at her, all the while wishing there was even a hint of moonlight. He wanted to see her eyes. He wanted to see her lush mouth and her high cheekbones. He wanted to be closer to her, closer than he had ever been allowed while captive in the mines.
As if reading his mind, she moved fractionally closer. Her gaze flicked to the front seat of the vehicle where Euphamie and Cotton sat in silence, the brother focused on the trail ahead and the huntress looking through the open window into the dark woods surrounding them. Assured they weren’t being watched, she moved even closer, scooting across the bench seat until their legs were touching. He could feel the heat of her through his damp tactical pants, and her other hand settled on top of his.
When she placed her head against his shoulder, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. She seemed perfectly content to rest against him and hold his hand. He stared down at her, wondering how she could unsettle him so easily with such an innocent gesture. He felt more alive with her right now than he had in years. His heart beat wildly in his chest, and his mouth went dry as he let himself imagine that what she wanted from him was more than comfort.
Stop.
You can’t.
You know what’s going to happen once she’s back on the Valiant.
Yes. He did. The same thing he had done to so many other assets-slash-prisoners.
The same thing he had done to Naya.
His stomach rolled with disgust as he finally truly understood how his actions had hurt others. He had done those things and made those decisions believing fully in the reasons behind them. He was doing his duty. He was protecting his people. He was advancing the war effort. He was chipping away at the Splinter cells and their command structure to finally end the war.
But this time it was more personal.
This time he actually cared.
