Played by Cara Dee

Five

“All right, here we go.” Darius came out of the cabin with the two carriers he’d ordered and eyed the largest one. According to the measurements they’d taken, it would be big enough for Jayden, but it was difficult not to have some doubts.

“You sure you don’t want me to take Jayden?” Gray asked.

Darius nodded and then squinted skyward. It was going to rain soon. “I need the training.” And Jayden was heavier.

Dante stepped out of the woods, wiping sweat off his forehead, and jumped over the stream. Darius was behind in comparison. All week, he’d watched his buddy from New York building an obstacle course that would impress a Navy SEAL. Sure, Darius had helped out plenty, but it was becoming abundantly clear that he was losing his edge. Now, some fifty feet into the forest, they had it all. Pipe crawl, trenches, tire flip in rough terrain, log throwing, mud crawl, and a rope wall. Only, it wasn’t a wall as much as it was a rope attached to a branchless tree.

“So where’s this Coho Pass you’re talking about?” Dante asked.

Gray nodded toward the north. “Past that valley. Highest peak in the area.”

Darius got down on one knee to attach their gear pouches to the carriers. First aid, food, water—dinner and some basic shit he didn’t wanna go without when he was in the middle of nowhere.

“And you’re gonna run all the way with the kids on your backs?” Dante let out a low whistle.

Jayden and Justin stood to the side and watched in silence, equally excited about their trek. They thought it was going to be hilarious. An adventure. One that would put Darius to the test.

“Yeah, so don’t wait up,” he grunted and rose from the ground. He and Gray were dressed similarly in hiking pants, boots, and long-sleeved tees that blended in well with the colors of the woods. The boys, however, had donned orange safety vests over their windbreakers. At the end of September, essentially everything was game in their area, and Darius wasn’t taking any chances with hunters all around.

“Let’s get you seated first, Jayden,” Gray said.

Darius adjusted his clothes, then took a knee again. Gray helped Jayden into the carrier before sliding the shoulder straps over Darius’s arms. Shit, this was gonna be the workout from hell. Counting both Jayden and their gear, Darius had nearly seventy pounds strapped to his back.

Christ.

He stood up with a grunt once more and attached the straps over his chest and hips. In the meantime, Gray fastened the straps on his back, most importantly the ones underneath Jayden’s legs so they wouldn’t be in the way when Darius began running.

“How’s that feel?” Gray asked. “Are they too tight?”

“No, it’s comfy,” Jayden replied happily. “It’s like a chair. Can I say giddy-up?”

Darius and Dante barked out a laugh.

“I’m sure he’d love that,” Gray chuckled.

Soon enough, both boys were comfortable in their carriers. Justin’s even had a retractable roof that would keep him shielded from wind and rain. Unfortunately, that one didn’t come in Jayden’s size.

“It’s cozy.” Justin smiled, all giddiness, and rested his cheek on Gray’s back.

Alicia, who’d flown up for a couple of days, left the guest cabin to see them off and to call Darius the ever-reliable workhorse.

There was nothing to say in response, because what Darius really wanted to do was throw himself onto the couch with the boys and a bag of chips and watch some documentary. Maybe they’d have homemade pizza for dinner. Or bacon cheeseburgers. But no, they were gonna run up a fucking mountain, away from hiking trails, and eat sandwiches for dinner in the rain.

He’d gotten a bit comfortable lately…

“Let’s go before my man rethinks this whole thing.” Gray smirked at him knowingly.

Darius suppressed a sigh and followed the knucklehead across the stream and toward the tree line. He wasn’t gonna bitch. Not about this. He needed the workout—more so than Gray did. A lot was at stake.

Starting tomorrow, he’d do the obstacle course several times a day, conveniently when Dante was going home again. In other words, no one would be around to watch Darius perform like an out-of-shape paper pusher.

“By the way, Dante and I will treat ourselves to burgers at the steakhouse you recommended, Gray!” Alicia hollered.

Darius groaned internally and picked up the pace, and Gray laughed.

It’d seemed like a great idea at first. A way to include the kids in the training and turn it into a family outing, as Gray had said.

The idea had lost its shine now.

Jayden and Justin were highly entertained, though. As soon as they were on the other side of the fence that lined the property, they started running, and the boys cracked up. It was basically a roller-coaster ride for them. A bumpy one that took them over sticks and stones, down into pits and shallow streams, up on slanted boulders.

Gray had once told Darius that he and Abel used to do the run in under two hours—one way—which was more than impressive. Most people needed half a day to make their way up the mountain. Today, Darius estimated they’d need maybe three and a half hours going up, then one hour and some change going down. But in Gray and Abel’s favor, they’d run half the way along hiking trails—and without kids on their backs.

Gray took a big leap from a boulder to a moss-covered log, causing Justin to go, “Wooo!”

Darius clenched his jaw, feeling old as fuck, and ran between the two obstacles instead.

He’d long since become winded to the point where he couldn’t speak properly, and now his thighs were burning and protesting too. They hadn’t even been at it a full hour yet.

“You okay back there?” Gray called.

Oh, shut up.

“We’re great,” Darius lied.

He glanced up toward the trees. They were almost through the valley, and they had nothing but uphill ahead of them. The only silver lining on the radar was the hiking trail they’d intercept soon. If the estimates were correct, they’d get approximately forty-five minutes on the trail before they went into the bush again.

* * *

The fun eventually tapered off for the boys. Darius had been prepared for them to get motion sickness, but that didn’t happen. Justin actually fell asleep, and Jayden asked random questions here and there about everything and nothing. It was a struggle to answer the boy, because Darius was so out of breath that he was practically wheezing.

Other than a few brief water breaks, they didn’t stop.

Darius was ready to keel over and die.

“Almost there,” Gray panted, some fifteen feet ahead.

They jogged past an old rest stop with a fire pit, an outhouse that hadn’t been used in decades, and a sign that’d rusted over completely. Holy fuck, how Darius needed to sit his ass down.

“Look!” Jayden exclaimed. “By the sign, Darius—it’s those leaves!”

Darius just barely managed to throw a quick glance at the greenery around the sign. “Yeah.” He swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “Tell me what you know about them.” Because frankly, he wasn’t sure if Jayden was talking about the ferns, the raspberry plants, or what.

“They’re called, um… Broadleaf something,” Jayden said. “They grow around houses and stuff.”

Oh, those. Yeah. “What else?” Darius panted.

“You can make fishing lines with them,” Jayden went on. “And um, they’re medicine. Like, for insect bites?”

Darius nodded once and jumped across a stream that hadn’t seen water in ages. “They—they have rough fibers. That’s why—fuck—you can make fishing lines and sutures. Correct—they reduce swelling.” He sucked in a breath. “I can show you how to make a poultice this weekend.”

No matter how tired he was, he couldn’t bring himself to close the topic entirely. He was too stoked about Jayden’s interest in learning these things. One of the books they’d given him for his birthday was about nature’s own pharmacy.

“Final stretch!” Gray announced. “Let’s gun it!”

Darius remembered why he wasn’t fond of young people now. They should stick to their own crowd on LinkedIn.

He pushed, though. He pushed himself to the max and picked up the pace, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. His heart raced, his lungs burned, sweat poured. He jumped over a tree trunk and slipped between two trees, chasing a sense of accomplishment in Gray’s footsteps, and Jayden rooted for them. He hooted and hollered, the little goof, and drowned out the sound of Darius’s heavy breathing.

The underbrush crunched and rustled with each step. Freedom was right up ahead, where the trees parted, where a slice of civilization was ready to meet them. It’d been a while since Darius had been up here, but he had plenty of memories. Ethan, Avery, and he would hike up here sometimes and have dinner at the restaurant, one that could only be reached if you made the trek. It was a large one-story log cabin that served mediocre food, yet it tasted like five-star cuisine after walking all the way up the mountain.

The restaurant was closed now. Dusk was upon them, and the mountain was clearing of people.

Gray broke through the tree line first, quickly followed by Darius, who couldn’t fucking believe he’d made it. Nausea crawled up his throat, and it took all his strength to keep going. He aimed for the group of picnic tables where he could unfasten Jayden.

Jesus Christ, he was gonna throw up.

“You did it!” Jayden cheered.

Darius came to a stop at a table and leaned back against the end of it, and Jayden quickly unstrapped his legs while Darius took care of the straps over his chest and hips. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. He sucked in rapid breaths and blinked past the black spots filling his vision. Then he pressed two fingers against the side of his neck and wondered if this was it. He was ready to fucking go.

As soon as he was free from the carrier, he bent over and pressed his hands on his thighs. Jayden crawled out of the harness and jumped down from the table. Then Gray reached them, and he hurriedly removed his watch for some reason.

“I wanna check something.” He breathed heavily and grabbed Darius’s wrist, strapping the watch on him. Darius didn’t care. He just focused on forcing air into his lungs and—fuck. Nope. He had to throw up.

With Gray’s watch on his wrist, Darius held up a finger, silently telling the kid to wait, and then he stalked off toward the row of outhouses some fifty feet away. Once he was behind them, he didn’t even have to stick his fingers down his throat. He emptied his stomach in the high grass.

That took care of most of the nausea.

Returning to the tables was the strangest sensation. Part of him felt like he was floating because he wasn’t lugging around seventy extra pounds. The other part of him was ready to collapse. His knees were just waiting for the green light before they caved.

“You okay?” Gray asked.

Darius inclined his head and opened a side pocket on the carrier to get a bottle of water.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Gray stopped him. He’d removed his own carrier too, and Justin was seated at the table, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I know you’re old-school and that you love to talk shit about modern things, but for once, you’re going to obey me and listen to science.”

Darius tossed the man a quick frown before he slumped down across from Justin. His thighs felt like they had their own heartbeat, and it fucking hurt. They throbbed and tensed up, unclenched, and spasmed.

Gray produced two bottles and set them in front of Darius. “Water with rehydration supplements and your favorite, blue Gatorade.”

Yeah, this was definitely shit Darius didn’t like. “If you start talking about electrolytes again, we’re breaking up.”

Gray grinned, all flushed cheeks and amusement.

Without an ounce of energy to argue, Darius drank from both bottles. Jayden and Justin hadn’t spent the past three hours running up a mountain, so they went off to explore after Gray told them to stay where he could see them.

“Let me check your pulse again.” Gray sat down next to Darius and grabbed his wrist. “I get that you feel half dead, but it’ll pass soon. Your recovery time is pretty remarkable.”

“For someone my age,” Darius muttered into the bottle.

“No. Not at all, baby. You’re plain fit.” Gray paused. “I wanted to do this for a reason. I’ve noticed lately that you feel…I don’t know, like you can’t keep up anymore. But I don’t know a single fucking soul who can do Coho Pass with a nine-year-old attached to their back. Especially not in…” He tilted the watch to read the screen. “In three hours and fourteen minutes.”

Keep going.

Darius needed to hear this. Gray had a way of getting through to him—unlike anyone else, really.

He chugged the rest of the water and then let out a long breath.

The sky blanketed the area in an eerie glow. The clouds were dark and angry, having only unleashed some drizzle and showers so far, but there was a sliver along the horizon that burned orange.

They were almost alone, except for a handful of people down the hill, heading toward the tramway. Oh, the tramway…

“We’re taking the tramway down,” he said. “When’s the last departure?”

Gray smiled. “We have an hour. I already checked.”

Thank fuck. There wasn’t a chance in hell Darius could make it down on foot.

He side-eyed Gray. “You knew I wasn’t gonna make it the whole way.”

Gray snorted and grabbed another bottle of water from his pack. “I knew we weren’t gonna make it the whole way. Remember that the round-trip was your idea.”

Darius scoffed a little but said nothing else. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t been this tired in…Christ, he couldn’t be sure. His legs were jelly. His mind was numb and reluctant to function at all. He felt shaky and still a bit nauseated.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, wiping away perspiration, and blew out a breath. At least his pulse was returning to normal.

“Why do you have to push yourself so hard, Dare? When I suggested this run, I thought for sure you’d say it was too much. It is too much.”

So he’d wanted to test Darius?

The answer was easy and came from an old Army general that Jake had looked up to. “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

Gray gave him a wary look. “Are you worried?”

“Not really.” Not about himself anyway. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with Gray’s task during the operation yet, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t be satisfied unless the knucklehead stayed at home with the kids while Darius and the others took care of Alfred Lange. “But that’s because I won’t head into battle unprepared.” He squeezed Gray’s knee. “This operation will be different—despite that getting you off the yacht resulted in combat. In Vegas, we know there will be resistance. Every buyer will have their own security. It’s a bigger event. Countless factors we can’t predict. We don’t even have blueprints of the compound—or confirmation that there is a compound. We have a list of educated guesses.” He paused to empty the bottle of Gatorade. It tasted of chemicals, but he had to admit it was working. He felt less shaky. “Before I boarded the yacht in Florida, I spent two days studying the blueprints and making detailed plans with Ryan. He went aboard before me to ensure I had the means to defend myself in several scenarios. We won’t have that now.”

Gray chewed on the inside of his cheek and glanced over at the boys. It looked like they were inspecting something on the ground. Knowing Jayden, it was a critter or a worm.

“So what we can do is make sure we’re ready for anything,” Darius finished. “We’ll train so we can push our bodies past the limits. We’ll become our own intelligence and artillery.”

Gray hummed and covered Darius’s hand with his own.

“Your cousins are getting more info, though, right?”

Yeah, Casey and Boone had definitely come through, and they were far from done. “We’re learning new things every day, thanks to them.”

That brightened Gray’s mood a little. “Tell me about them?”

Oh, where to begin…? Darius chuckled. “They’re punks. They’ve got a soft spot for family—loyal to a fault—but that’s where it ends. As far as I know, they’ve never held an honest job for the sake of it. Only to cover up the shady shit they pull on the side.”

Gray’s brows lifted.

“They’re small-scale hustlers, basically,” he went on. “With the stickiest fingers in Nevada.”

“Damn. Did not see that coming. I thought all Quinns were genetically programmed to be superheroes.”

Darius laughed. Technically, Casey and Boone weren’t Quinns. Ma had been born as an O’Sullivan, and it was her sister who’d brought Boone into the world. Then she’d adopted Casey, the son of an old friend who’d overdosed.

Six years ago, Casey and Boone had gone through a similar situation when a friend of theirs had died, leaving behind a toddler for the brothers to raise as their own. And even though the girl wasn’t technically Darius’s niece, he was her uncle Darius, and she was pretty fucking badass. If he was allowed to play favorites, she snatched that title by a mile.

“You hungry?” Gray wondered. “I thought we could eat our sandwiches and then make the last tram.”

“Good plan.”

* * *

Once the sky opened, it seemed it didn’t wanna close.

Two days later, it was still pouring down.

Darius and Gray had the day off and used it to work out while the boys were in school.

“Go!” Darius started the stopwatch again, and Gray was off. By now, their clothes were covered in mud, sweat, and rain. Hell, their bodies too. They took turns completing the obstacle course in the woods, timing each other, spurring each other on, and creating new obstacles.

Today, they got serious with target practice.

Darius had spent the morning climbing trees and attaching targets to the bark, everything from colorful tags and stickers to old clothes and soda cans.

Before Gray reached the tree with the rope, Darius yelled out, “Sprite can, two o’clock!”

Gray immediately pulled the gun from the base of his spine and aimed. As soon as he spotted the right soda can, he pulled the trigger twice.

He missed the mark but hit the tree. He was getting better.

“Step it up, knucklehead,” Darius warned. The kid tended to slow down whenever he missed, adding several seconds to his time.

Gray cursed and started pulling himself up by the rope.

Darius eyed the next possible target, approximately fifteen feet away. “Purple sticker behind you!”

“Motherf—” Gray growled. He was halfway up the tree and had to trap the rope between his feet and hold himself up with only one hand. He trembled a bit but was strong enough to pull it off and aim his gun at the same time.

The crack of the gunshot thundered through the air, and he fucking got it.

“Good job—keep going!” Darius kept an eye on the stopwatch. He was impressed. The sticker hadn’t been larger than a silver dollar.

They were at it for hours, only pausing once to eat lunch.

Hard work paid off, and it was incredible to witness Gray’s transformation. He was so determined to get better. The more it hurt, the harder he concentrated. He shut the world out and followed Darius’s instructions to a T. When you see a target, sink into the focus. Listen to the surroundings but see only the mark. The biggest difference was in how Gray adapted to locate the target faster. If someone yelled at you, it was easy to get overwhelmed and anxious about the possible danger nearby. But Gray managed to close off. Darius barked out the mark, and Gray pushed every other word in his vocabulary out of his head and quickly scanned the area until the command matched the visual. It took several seconds off the search, and it improved his aim too.

And Gray still wasn’t satisfied.

“Go!”

It was Darius’s turn. He bolted and jumped over three tree trunks, then dove into the mud crawl underneath a grid of barbed wire.

“Yellow sticker, five o’clock!” Gray yelled.

Darius rolled onto his side, grabbed his gun, and found the yellow sticker high up on a tree. He fired twice, both bullets hitting the mark. There wasn’t much yellow left, having already taken a couple of hits.

A few minutes later, he jumped down after completing a climb, and he crouched down to lift a big-ass tractor tire.

“Coke can, straight ahead! Green tag, one o’clock!”

Darius grunted and dropped the tire again, lifted his gun, and took out both marks within a couple seconds. Adrenaline pumped through his system. He’d stopped feeling the cuts and scrapes. The mud and rain didn’t register either. He saw the obstacles, and he saw the targets.

He completed the course in seventeen minutes, a new record, and he hadn’t missed a single mark.

He blew out a harsh breath at the end of the course and peered up at the sky. Heavy rain fell down his face. It was a moment where war and peace coexisted in his heart in perfect harmony. He was a trained killer. He had blood on his hands. Yet, there was serenity in being prepared to protect the ones he loved and fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

A tree branch cracked somewhere behind him, and he glanced back to see Gray walking over to him.

Neither said anything at first. Gray gathered Darius’s hands in his and turned his palms skyward. Blood mingled with the mud, slowly getting washed away by the raindrops, revealing rope burns and cuts.

“You’re magnificent to watch, you know that?” Gray said quietly.

“So are you.” Darius brushed his knuckles over Gray’s cheek.

Gray shook his head. “I know I’m not supposed to compare myself with you, but I can’t help it.”

It would be easy to give him the same lecture as many times before, though it wouldn’t be right. Not anymore, because Darius was struggling with the same damn thing.

“You’re not alone.” It was time to fess up. “The other day, when we did Coho Pass—Christ, I felt useless. I kept thinking about how quickly you and Abel do the run.”

Fuckin’ Abel.

“Yeah, that’s dumb.” Gray slid him a little smile. “Those aren’t even the same circumstances.”

Darius chuckled under his breath. “That’s just one of many things.” As soon as those words were out, he wanted to shut the hell up. It was one thing to confess that he felt inadequate sometimes too—a whole other to realize this was the perfect time to admit that his insecurities ran a lot deeper. It wasn’t really about performance when push came to shove. It was this irrational need to assert their relationship and write it in stone.

“What many things?” Gray asked, puzzled.

Fuck. Darius opened his mouth to respond, without knowing what the fuck to say, but closed it when he shifted where he stood. He was soaked through. The conversation was already going to be uncomfortable—no need to make it worse.

“Can we shelve this for later? We need to shower before we pick up the boys, and Ally wants to talk to us after dinner.”

Gray frowned but nodded. “I won’t forget, though. We’re gonna talk.”

Yeah, yeah, they were gonna talk. And Darius would look like an ass.