Chapter Eight
Zinc had been prepared to cut a swath through the population of New York to find Sarah if necessary when she failed to appear at the hotel. He’d had about another minute in him of waiting and then he would have gone to her handler’s apartment, held a gun to his head, and demanded answers. Orders or no orders.
He tried to listen over the pounding of his heart as his gaze roamed her body for signs of obvious trauma other than her shaved head. She seemed okay. Tired, sweaty, and her pupils were a little more dilated than he would have liked. Most likely she needed food, rest, and more than a single day without trauma to cool her.
A tracker? Why the fuck hadn’t the thought occurred to him? It was how they’d found her in the first place. She’d had to shave her head to run away. His hands tingled and he knew he had to calm. There was no one for him to go and kill.
“Zach.” Her voice wavered. “I think I’m a little spent.”
“Come on, beautiful.” He took her hand. “Let’s make you comfortable.”
She laughed, a small sad sound. “Not at the moment, not beautiful.”
He stopped moving to stare. “Don’t you dare say that. Hair or no hair. I don’t give a shit. You are the most beautiful creature the world ever created. Insult yourself again and fuck our roles, I’m putting you over my knee.”
Her face brightened and some of the wariness left her eyes. “I thought asses were off limits.”
“Only mine.”
His head pounded and he pushed the pain away. There was no time for his headache shit. She needed him and…
A knock sounded at the door, and Sarah grabbed his arms. “It’s them. The guys following me. I’m so sorry. They must know you killed my handler and they’re after you. I led them here.”
She wasn’t being coherent. “I didn’t kill anyone. Plans have altered.” Although he might need to kill someone to know he’d done something to make her traumatic day better for her. She should never have been left alone. He was a big fucking idiot. “And those guys wouldn’t knock. The announcement is our backup. Do me a favor, stand in the corner, in case.”
No more taking chances. He pulled out his gun as he approached the door. He’d not ordered any room service and it was too late for the maids. So it was either his backup, finally arriving, or someone really had picked the wrong night to go to the wrong room. He was shooting first, asking later.
He looked in the peephole and closed his eyes. Chrome had to be kidding. He’d sent two men, one of them was Platinum, a trained sniper and a good choice, the other was black, blue and bandaged Adam-Fucking-Steele. What had Chrome been thinking sending her brother there with all the emotion of their reunion plaguing everything and his own issues with the man?
“I can hear you breathing.” Steele banged on the door again. “I’m not going away so you can open it or I’m going to take out my gun…”
Behind him Platinum shook his head, and Zinc opened the door. “Steele. Platinum. Won’t you come in?” He extended his hand to welcome them into the room.
“Adam.” Sarah gasped behind him, her hands coming to her mouth. He took a deep breath. Whatever his issues with her brother were he wasn’t going to spoil their reunion moment.
“Sarah.” Steele paused as he looked at her across the room. “Jesus, what happened to you? What did those fuckers do?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I could say the same thing, but I know who did that to you.”
Zinc nodded to Platinum. “Let’s go, I don’t know, somewhere.”
The thing about the sniper was he didn’t talk if he didn’t have to. So how the other guy had managed to find a woman and at some point father a child was beyond Zinc. Didn’t women want to talk? Sarah certainly did.
Platinum nodded as they walked into the hall. Zinc checked to make sure his keycard was still in his pocket before he shut the door behind him.
“How’s it going?” Zach leaned against the wall.
“Good.” Platinum rocked back and forth on his heels to his toes. “You done being a jackass?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He was being a bit of a jerk. Whether or not he was able to adjust his attitude yet he wasn’t exactly sure.
Plat shook his head. “We fucking missed you. Like pain.”
Zach didn’t want to talk about his years away from them. Maybe not ever. “Look at you forming sentences.”
The sniper grinned. “Miracles do happen.”
***
Sarah moved before she knew she was going to. In a rush of momentum, she threw her arms around her big brother’s neck. He caught her, and for a second neither spoke.
“Listen…”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to explain. I’ve had it all from Zach. I grasp it. There were lots of reasons the last three years happened. Some of them are mind blowing. The only thing that matters is you’re alive.”
A tear slipped from her eye and she wiped it away. If she let those flow, another would follow and a big snotty mess would happen. A big mess she did not need.
She pulled back. “I hear you’re in love.”
“I.” He shook his head before he nodded. “She’s excited to meet you. Sorry, talking with you is so surreal.”
Sarah nodded. “Good word.”
“Tell me what’s been happening.” Adam took a step away. “Who did that to your hair? Are you okay? How badly are you hurt?”
She opened her mouth and spit out the story. Well, almost all of it. There were certain parts her big brother never needed to hear. Ever. The tying Zach part was going to stay neatly tucked away and between the two of them.
***
Zach gave them ten minutes. It was all he could tolerate. His head was pounding harder, he and Platinum had done the catch-up thing as much as either of them would, and he needed to see Sarah again. The look on her face when she’d come through the door, what she’d had to do to her hair, and then Adam showing, he had to make sure she was okay.
He banged on the door before he opened it and strode in. Sarah and Adam both turned to look when he and Platinum entered. Sarah looked okay. There was some color back to her cheeks and she had a smile formed on her face. He took a deep breath. She was so strong.
Sarah walked toward him. “I’m going to give you two a little time. Come on, Platinum, you and I are going to get to know each other.” She breezed by him, stroking his arm as she passed. Platinum raised his eyebrows and then followed her back out to the hall.
“Sarah, honey, that’s not necessary.” The last thing he wanted was time with Adam. They weren’t going to sing kumbaya. There was nothing to say.
She blatantly ignored him and spoke to Plat instead. “Tell me, do you have a name other than Platinum?”
“Couple of them.”
The door closed behind them with a click, and he steeled his shoulders. If he managed to make it out of the room without breaking the furniture in frustration, he’d consider himself lucky.
“The other day, before you put me in the hospital, you said something to me. A question. Want to ask it again?” Adam’s face was unreadable. It wasn’t because of the bandages, either. He’d hidden behind the military mask they all wore when on a mission, which threatened to take a left turn into seriously fucked.
“Why bother? You didn’t answer it then. Why not?”
“Jeez-us, Zach. Passive aggressive was never your style. You pulled off your fucking mask and it was like looking at a ghost. I couldn’t speak. Why the fuck else would I have not answered you?”
Zinc shrugged. “Maybe there was nothing to say.”
“There’s fuck lots to say, you ass.” Adam stalked toward him. Up close Adam looked even worse. Who had let him come on this mission? “Ask me again.”
“Should you be out of the hospital?” Maybe he could send Adam home.
“Fuck you. Ask it again.”
Zach’s temper rose, and the throbbing headache, which had been a dull ache, surged to life as if it wanted to take him to the ground. He wouldn’t fall apart, couldn’t let it win right then. Gritting his teeth, he found the words again. “Why did you leave me there for them to collect me? To take my body? To destroy everything in my life I ever gave two shits about?”
“Because I fucked up. The world was coming down around me. You were dead. There were bullets flying everywhere. Titanium’s whole team was dead. Tungsten. Gold. All I could think about was getting the rest of them home. And I left you and you were dead and I beat myself about it every day after. You know what? I’m not sorry. Because you’re alive. So whatever circumstances took place so you could pull off your hood and beat me, then fuck yeah, great. You’re here. I’d do it again.”
Zach’s whole body went numb. He opened and closed his mouth several times because there were no words to say to adequately express, well, anything. “I had to watch you for three years…”
“Yeah.” Adam nodded, running a hand through his hair. “That’s some fucked shit. No words. And if I could kill Titanium for keeping you from us, I’d do it. Believe me, brother, I would. We need him. The whole operation, Elite Metal, it goes FUBAR without him. And he is the reason you’re still here so there’s that, too.”
Zach walked to the window. Time Square flashed bright lights outside. He’d been watching them for hours, although he could barely see them from the blur of everything around him thanks to the migraine he couldn’t avoid for too much longer. “I did die that night. Three months in a coma, I awoke a shell of my former self. I’ve got shit to deal with, which basically makes me useless.”
“Nah.”
What? Zach whirled around. “Oh, you think you know? You’ve been aware of my living for a little over a week.”
“You crashed a plane successfully in the Atlantic Ocean. The Zach I knew was amazing, only I gotta tell you, I don’t think you’d have done it before. We’d be fishing you and my sister out of the ocean.”
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t crash it. I bailed out.”
“Semantics.”
Was it possible? Whatever. He wasn’t going to deal with word choice. “One thing you should know.”
Adam crossed his arms over his chest. “What?”
“Your sister and I? We’re together. The whole unsaid rule about leaving her alone? Long gone.”
Steele raised his eyebrows and his jaw clenched. “You’re sleeping with my sister?”
“Totally am.”
His old friend huffed loudly. “Did you screw with her to be even with me over something? Fuck with my sister as a dick move?”
Zinc’s numbness passed immediately and a red-hot rage the likes of which he had only felt the last time he beat Steele’s face threatened to consume him again. “I’m not that kind of scum.”
“I was willing to forgive you for the beating. The sleeping with my sister? I basically want to pound you into the ground.”
Zinc stepped toward him, knowing the move was aggressive, knowing what it would do. “I dare you to try. And insinuate I would ever hurt your sister again and I’ll make my first pounding on you look as though it was a walk in the park.”
The door swung open and Sarah stepped into the room. She groaned loudly. “Is the drama necessary? You both missed each other. Tremendously. You thought he was dead. You thought he should have someone known you were alive or he should have taken your body so you didn’t have to watch him move on with life in silence. Ultimately, you missed each other. So hug it out instead of the theatrics, please.”
Hug? Not likely. Adam shifted his posture, and as much as he no longer looked as though he was going to hit him, he didn’t seem to want to embrace either. Thankfully.
They’d never been exactly touchy-feely guys.
“And if you do hit him, Adam. Not in the face. He has headaches. If you make them worse, I’m going to knee you in the balls.”
The shot to his kidney caught him by surprise. Adam had always been able to swing—hard.
***
Steele’s intel, which came direct from his woman, told him Sarah’s handler, whose real name was Fredrick Jacobs presently—it had changed three times as far as the records went, sometimes altered by the CIA, sometimes not—was seriously in debt. To the tune of three million dollars. To Nevada gangsters.
They’d expected to only run into him, a little smash and grab the bad guy. Only, they’d found him meeting in his apartment with the men who took Sarah off the street. Or at least it seemed he was. Through the open window, Sarah identified a guy who looked familiar. They’d not been able to acquire an adequate headcount. Four guys had grabbed her. With the addition of Fredrick, the number should have made five if they were all there.
They’d hit the bad guy jackpot. And they had the van to manage a bigger job. Though it was taking hours longer. The hot noon sun hit Zach’s head akin to a baking oven.
“Targets located. Confirmed?” Plat’s voice spoke over the microphone in Zinc’s ears.
Zach sat on a bench a distance away, pretending to look at his cellphone.
Steele answered before he could, from his local across the street. On the off chance they knew Zach’s face. It had made sense to put Steele closer. “I count four.”
He raised his head at Steele’s words. “There should be five.” He spoke low.
“Confirm, Zinc. Only four. That’s my visual, too.” Platinum sounded no more than a whisper in his ear.
He would love to answer, except his eyes had blurred. Everything around him had an aura and the auras had started to blend together into a giant ball of he couldn’t see fucking shit.
“I can’t.” He cleared his throat. “Repeat, I can’t see it.”
His head throbbed as though someone had taken a chainsaw and wanted to separate his skull from the inside out. His headaches had never taken him out of a mission before. He’d always managed. What the fuck was going on?
“They’re crossing the street.” Steele sounded annoyed. “Confirm the four so Plat and I can grab them with the van.”
Zach would love to comply and anger at his inability to do so made the whole thing so much fucking worse. “Not going to happen. My eyes have gone.” The other Ghosts would have known what he meant when Zach said that. It dawned on him that perhaps Steele and Plat wouldn’t. “Head injury from the explosion. Flare. I’m out. Repeat, I can’t do it.”
He stood. The best thing he could do was move out of the way.
“Roger that,” Plat responded. “I’m fairly certain, although I can’t use my scope out here in the open in Manhattan. There are four. I think. Sarah, bring the van around the corner. Steele and I will take the four who are here.”
“Got it. No further people leaving the building. I’d say we have four. Total of four.”
And Zach was totally useless. He wanted to throw something, only what would he pick? His hands shook and nausea formed in the pit of his stomach. Having gone through pain and recovery enough, he knew he was minutes away from puking.
Not enough time to hoof it back to the hotel room.
A screeching of tires in the distance caught his attention and a blurry view of a van in the distance told him the mission was taking place, with absolutely no help from him. He hurried across the street. If he was going to puke, he’d do it in a garbage can.
“Zach? You okay?” Sarah’s voice over the microphone. “We’re still missing the man with the tattoo. The fellow who was outside the shop yesterday.”
Horns honked, making his headache situation worse. The taste of metal filled his mouth. God, it was going to be a bad migraine. Gritting his teeth, he crossed the street.
“Get out of here, Sarah. You managed to kidnap four guys off the street. Don’t worry about the fifth.” He clenched his hands in frustration. What was the point of being there if he couldn’t help? His fucking head. His broken, worthless body. Goddamn son of a bitch.
“Steele and Plat have it covered. They’re taking off. We’ll meet them at the airport. I’m coming to you.”
“No.” He groaned, finally getting to the garbage can right in time. Everything he’d eaten for breakfast came back, and when he raised his head it was to find both Sarah and a group of strangers staring at him, the later in disgust.
Sarah brushed his hair off his forehead. “Bad?”
“I can’t believe I had to bail out.” His vision had cleared a bit, it usually did if he puked, but not the pain. “And before you ask, I took the fucking pills.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t going to question you, love.”
“I don’t need to be babied either.” Bad enough he’d blown his role today. He got to live with looking at pity in the eyes of the woman he was sleeping with.
“Zach…”
He shook his head. Whatever she was going to say…
Zinc caught a glimpse of the guy—the man with the tattoo on his face—the same second the guy saw Sarah. Unlike them, the kidnapper seemingly had no worries about getting caught on the street. He raised a gun.
Things moved slow and fast at the same time. Zinc had only known another day in his whole life where the same strangeness of time took place and that had been Operation Phoenix, when he’d died. He couldn’t think, only react.
With an abrupt shove, he knocked Sarah onto the street as he shouted into his microphone to Steele about the gun. He might have made sense, he might not have. The bullet missed its target. Sarah was safe.
It was a full thirty seconds before he realized it struck him instead.
“We’re coming.” Steele’s voice screamed in his ear. He could hardly hear it. The gunman was still there. He had his weapon raised and he was going to shoot again. Zinc couldn’t reach his own gun, which was jammed in his pants, but he could reach Sarah’s. She’d stuck the weapon in her back under her jacket. He pulled it out, and before the man could fire again, Zach laid a shot right between his eyes.
“Zach.” Sarah screamed from beneath him, finally getting out from under him. He dropped the gun, and she grabbed it. Women on the street were screaming and it wouldn’t be long until there were authorities involved.
Sarah was pale, her eye huge. He wasn’t in pain, and as he placed his hand over the bullet wound in his gut, he knew his lack of agony was a very bad sign.
“What did you do?” Her voice wobbled before she placed her hand over his bleeding insides.
“Sarah. Stop. Look at me.” He didn’t have long. “I told you. I wasn’t going to die in an explosion.”
She gasped, her mouth quivering. “You aren’t going to die period.”
He was losing a lot of blood, and she was getting covered in it. “You have to go.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
He laughed. “Yes. And I’ve had the goodbye conversation once before with a Steele. Terribly reminiscent. You’re a CIA operative. You can’t explain what happened here to the police.” As if on cue, sirens sounded in the distance. “You can’t be here, Sarah. It’s okay. You need to go.”
“No.”
“If you care about me, you won’t let the last things I think about be worrying about you getting hauled in by the NYPD. Please, baby. Go. I’m asking you. My job is to protect you. Getting you gone is the last thing I can do.”
Her voice trembled. “Zach.”
Damn it, she had to run the fuck out of there.
He took her hand off his stomach and replaced it with his own. It wouldn’t do much good. Only what the hell? “You were seriously the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. I wish I had known when we were young and there was time. If I had to live the last three years to have had a blip of happiness with you, then I’m glad for the whole damn thing.”
Tears slipped from her eyes. She’d not lost it during an abduction, a plane crash, or an attempted second abduction, but for him she cried. Even with her hair shaved and her ill-fitting clothes, she was still the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
“Go. Hurry.”
She nodded, tears streaming unchecked as she reached over and kissed him on the lips. “I think I’ve always been in love with you, Zach.”
“Sweet lady, you saved my heart. Whatever good there is of me in the world fell for you. Try to remember me well.”
She shuddered, and he pushed her off him with his free hand. “Damn it, Sarah. Go. If you love me, then save yourself. Run. Hide. Do what I know you can do. Call your brother. Be safe.”
Sarah pulled back. “I love you.”
Those achingly sweet words filled him with a warmth he shouldn’t be feeling. He leaned back on the ground, closing his eyes to the pain he knew would be coming. She’d gotten away. Sarah was amazing. The cops would never find her.
A wrenching burning started in his stomach and he tried not to cry out. Some helpful bystander shouted something at him. He didn’t answer.
If there was one thing Zach knew well, everyone died alone.
Screeching tires somewhere caught his attention. The sounds around him didn’t matter. The world faded away. Once again.
Sarah couldn’t stop the tears from falling as she rocked back and forth on a park bench in Central Park. She had to look crazy and she didn’t care. Zach had taken a bullet in the gut for her. He had to be dead.
He was dead because of her.
Her hand shook as she stared at the burner phone her brother had given her before they’d left the hotel. It didn’t take incoming calls, allowed the user to make outgoing. For an emergency he’d told her.
In her fog of disbelief she’d not phoned him yet. How much time had passed? It was almost evening.
Zach was dead.
I got the only man I’ve ever loved killed. A sob racked her body.
She should have stayed. Fuck the police. She should have….
A large body plopped next to her and she gasped in surprise for a second before she struggled in the next as the stranger pulled her against him into a hug.
“Relax. It’s me, little sister.”
“Adam.” Her voice broke. “He’s dead. He took a bullet for me. The man with the tattoo, he found us and…”
“He’s not dead. Not yet, anyway.”
“What?” She pulled back. “I saw his bullet wound. I know about these things. His was a fatal injury.”
Adam snorted. “Zinc survived an explosion. Trust me, he should have died. You think something as small as a gut shot is going to kill him? I’m starting to wonder if he’s the bionic man. The doctors have kept him alive, and as we speak, my people are stealing him from the hospital to bring him back home to Texas to recover. There could be complications. Moving him to the medical plane is risky. Fuck, I’d put odds on Zinc living through a bullet wound.”
Was it possible? Her mind was slow, it wasn’t taking in information the way she wanted it to. “He’s still alive.”
“He is.”
She nodded. “How did you find me?”
He pointed to the phone. “Traced it.”
“I thought it was a burner.”
Her brother shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s my burner.”
“Adam.” She stood. “If he’s still alive, you have to do something for me.”
“What?”
“You have to go steal a motorcycle in California and bring it to Texas. Adam, please. I need to be with him, and you need to go steal his bike from that bitch Ally.” She couldn’t be kind right then. Fuck that woman. No way would Sarah be marrying anyone in six months if Zach died and she wasn’t even engaged to him. “She’s got it.”
Her brother grinned. “Actually sounds fun.”