CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Let me get this straight,” Eric interrupted only because he wanted to rub it in. “You wanted Shea because you thought she invented dynamic energy displacement? That was why you had your Abdul-Mutaal knock-off assassinate her friends? The ones who actually invented it? How stupid are you?”

“Discovered it,” Grover corrected. “Phoenix and Gordie actually dis—”

“Shut up!” Carlson roared, the lines of his face rigid with frustration.

Murphy chuckled. “Well, I’ll be dogged. You two are a couple of flaming jack-holes. Don’t you check your sources, Carlson?”

“I did,” he hissed, his pallor a little on the deathly side of pale.

Shea’s fingernails still tapped at her keyboard, and the one thing that had been made irrefutably clear. She had not only the means and the motive—she now had all the power.

Eric wrapped a steadying arm around her waist without taking eyes off his target. She needed to know she was not alone. He planted a quick whisper kiss to her cheek. “I’ve got your six, babe. Do what you have to do.”

The poor thing shivered despite the hold she had over Carlson, but her voice rang out as clear as the 4pm closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange bell. “Your chip is a fraud.”

Damned if Carlson didn’t get paler. All that rich-boy-on-the-block cockiness evaporated. He took a step back, shaking his head. Blinking.

Shea kept going. “I cracked your code, Mr. Carlson. You buried a level-eight replicating worm in it, didn’t you? That’s why Murphy can’t reach Alex or… or anyone else in the United States. But I’ve got news for you. Right now, Interpol’s looking for you. They want to question you about the blackout that took out the eastern power grid in the United States, half of Canada, and Quebec today. They’ve tracked the blackout to your chip.”

“How do you know that?” He challenged.

Shea stuck her chin at him. “I just told you. I cracked your chip. Isn’t that what you always wanted? One Nation. One Network. One World? That’s what’s at the other end of this little plastic ENTER key. Your whole world,” she ground out.

Carlson’s eyes hit the dirt. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and snapped, “Move out,” to Grover and his goons.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Shea took a full step forward, away from Eric and out of her comfort zone. “You don’t get to walk away from this, Mr. Carlson. Not today. You killed my friends. You and Grover paid that Abdul-Mutaal look-alike to drown me.” Her shoulders shook with fright while Eric’s heart swelled with pride. “I found everything I needed to know about you on the World Wide Web. I didn’t even need to hack your personal accounts for that.”

Jordan exhaled a hearty, “Damn, she’s good,” from Eric’s right.

Shea drilled Carlson. “Were you there when your hired-killer was drowning me? Were you there when Gordie begged for mercy while your assassin cut his fingers off?” Her voice wrapped to a high pitch. “Do you know Phoenix cried when your evil minion flogged him within an inch of his life? Ask me how I know this, Mr. Carlson! Ask me how I know that you murdered your first wife?!”

Holy shit! didn’t begin to describe the jolt to Eric’s heart. His sweetheart had just taken a scary turn toward becoming one of those evil minions who thought they could take over the world. “Shea,” he whispered, needing to reel her in before this attack of hers blew up in her pretty face. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I do,” she answered with a stomp of her bare foot. “I really do. I ran from my problems once, but I’m not running anymore. He killed her, Eric, and she was pregnant! He killed his unborn baby!”

Man, this twisted nightmare just kept getting worse and worse. Shea still suffered from losing her own little girl. The murder of this unborn child was now the last straw that just might push her over the edge.

Eric could tell Shea was crying by the wretched crack in her voice, and because he knew his woman, he stopped being her hero, and he let her take the lead. This was her show, her decision point to make. He wouldn’t betray her trust by offering one solitary excuse why Carlson should be allowed to live. Eric couldn’t honestly think of one, not after how Phoenix and Gordie had suffered. But everything—his heart, her life, and their future—was on the line. If this plan of hers backfired…?

“I can’t lose you again, baby,” Eric murmured out of the corner of his mouth, praying Carlson couldn’t hear him, but that Shea would understand what he hadn’t said. Don’t get yourself killed trying to end Carlson. The man isn’t worth it.

“Wh-what are you going to do?” Carlson asked, like he didn’t already know.

She cleared her throat, her eyes on her target. “I’m transferring every last penny out of your accounts—all of your accounts—to people who really need it.”

His hands come up. “No, stop—”

“Too late!” she shrieked, the tip of her dainty index finger hovering at a ninety-degree angle over the ENTER key. “I hate everything you stand for. You’re nothing but another Hitler in disguise. A Pol Pot! You’re a disease, and you know what happens to diseases?”

“No!” He took a step forward. “Wait. Jesus Christ, don’t do it! I’ll make you rich—”

Eric stepped to Shea’s side, his finger snug in the curve of that trigger. “Don’t come any closer.”

“I don’t want money!” she shrieked, her neck stretched forward as if she needed Carlson to know that a lowly woman had bested him. “You’ve got nothing I want because You. Are. Nothing!”

Carlson’s shoulders stiffened. “At least think about it, Shea, I mean, Mrs. Reynolds. Come on, be reasonable,” he couched his words in despair even as his shoulders lifted like a little boy who was still working to get his way. “Think what you and I—”

With a toss of her shorn locks, Shea took a deep breath, her spine straight, her beautiful neck erect, and her head held high. Yeah, this was so going to happen. Eric couldn’t have been prouder—or more worried.

“Viruses,” she said quietly, the hate and anger suddenly under control. “Viruses that cause disease get eradicated, Mr. Carlson. Something bigger and better comes along, and Mother Nature wipes them out.”

Sometimes, it was the little things that mattered the most. The dime-sized pad of Shea’s fingertip hitting the stamp-sized ENTER button on Murphy’s laptop. The fraction of a second for a tiny thing like her to bring a bigger-than-life monster to his knees. Or the wisp of a gasp from her small, compromised lungs when the deed was done. The twitch of despair that contorted Carlson’s brilliant, privileged mug. In the end, it all came down to—One. Little. Tap.

“No, no, no!” Carlson lifted his clenched fists to his temples. “You didn’t!”

But yes, yes, yes. Shea did. By the time Murphy’s laptop fell to the ground at her feet, the deed was done and Carlson was ruined. “There. Now you’re as dead as Gordie and Phoenix,” she told him, her chin still up. “How’s it feel, Mr. Carlson?”

God, don’t taunt the guy now that you’ve poked his eye out. Eric pulled her back into his side, his rifle still aimed for a headshot if Carlson so much as breathed wrong. Without looking, he sought her cheek with his lips. Damn, he was proud of his wife, but scared what might go down next.

Carlson snapped his wrist forward as if tossing an invisible towel into the ring. Grover pivoted to his left, motioning with a sweeping gesture across his neck to his guys. Murphy and Jordan closed ranks with Shea squeezed in tight. It happened too quickly to know precisely which one of them fired first, but HOLY SHIT!

Any gunfire was swiftly overcome when, with a screeching bellow, the five-ton cargo truck pitched up from the ground in a heaving ball of flames. All doors popped open. Black smoke belched out from shattered windows that instantly resembled empty eye sockets. Grover’s men screamed and ran, some of them engulfed in flames. Murphy’s cottage windows blew, too. Eric slammed Shea into his side, protecting her with his body while the wreck spewed whistling, burning shrapnel.

Murphy knocked them both to the ground, covering them with his body as well. Jordan joined the huddle, while Eric tried like hell to maintain a protective barrier over Shea, his elbows locked at the sides of her head to keep the weight of his friends from crushing her.

A tear dripped straight out of his eye and onto her pretty face. It trickled down her cheek, and their gazes locked. This was it, damn it. The end. Between the hail of gunfire, the fireworks, and the shrapnel from that five-ton, it wouldn’t take long before Murphy or Jordan took a hit. Then him. But not Shea.

“I’ve got you, baby,” he ground out. His elbows dug painfully into Murphy’s concrete patio. “I didn’t mean for it to end like this.”

“Me neither.” She reached one hand up between their bodies and wiped her thumb under his eye, cupping his jaw. God, she was a study in peace and calm, her nightmares at last revealed and dealt with. “You’re hurt.”

He shrugged it off. “Yeah, well, it’s been a tough day.”

“You’ve always been my hero, Eric,” she said, her eyes brimming. “I only wish I could love you longer.”

“How about forever?” he asked. Because that was what lay ahead. Death. Then forever. With her and Cheyenne. Except for the dying part, it almost seemed inviting.

More shots rang out. He waited for Murphy or Jordan to flinch from a hit, or for the bullet with his name on it to find its way through them and into his ribs or skull. He kissed his wife one last time, her lips quivering as he stiffened his neck and shoulders to not bump heads with her. He pressed his lips to hers and absorbed the tender flesh one last time. There was no better way to die than protecting her to the bitter end. If this was to be his final moment on earth, it was enough.

“Close your eyes and hold onto me,” he ordered, gritting his teeth. “Even if I get hit, hold your cover until the shooting stops. Let me shield you until the end. Then I want you to live for me, Shea. No matter what, never forget how much I love you, but live, damn it. Find a way to be happy. Go back to that desert island and live.”

“No,” she said, a sob caught in her throat. “I go where you go. That’s the deal.” She pressed her face into the breathing space beneath his chin, her breath warm and moist on his neck. “I’m never leaving you again.”

So be it then. Eric closed his eyes and waited for the end, while Murphy and Jordan still hugged the living shit out of him. Hell had come to Murphy’s quaint little cottage. The groans and shrieks of falling rubble filled the yard. The rancid stench of burning diesel clung to every breath, coating his tongue, until…

All at once—silence—except for the roar of flames from the burning rig, and the groans of a few injured men. Eric didn’t dare hope the shooting was over. When nothing else came except a grumbly, “Damn, girl. Are you finished yet?” from Murphy, Eric pushed out from under his guys.

Lo and behold, Elsa Finnegan stood there with the butt of her rifle on her hip, and an army of three stalwart young men at her six. They had that same devil-may-care glint in their smiling eyes as she did.

God, don’t tell me the IRA just saved my life, Eric thought as he pushed to his feet with Shea plastered to his side. Yet it surely looked as if that was what had gone down. Grover’s men were on the ground, some by fire, some by gunshot. A gray sweater smoldered over a dismembered body. Carlson’s body was indistinguishable in the debris.

“You Americans,” Elsa muttered, her right cheek pinched into a smirk. “Why are you hiding like a bunch of school children? Did I nah tell ye that I have friends in high places?”

Ah, he loved her Irish brogue. Eric would’ve kissed her himself, but Jordan beat him to it. One of her brothers-in-arms belted Murphy’s upper bicep a stiff one. “’Tis a fine barrel of Jamison you’ll be owing your niece for saving yer sorry arse now, Finnegan. Let’s have a go ‘fore she’s done mugging the hired help and drinks ’tall herself.”

Elsa eased out of Jordan’s clutches long enough to mutter a quick, “Knock it off, Sean. Go secure the prisoners if there be any left alive.” When Jordan dropped his hands, she snagged his collar. “Not you, my handsome man. I have plans for you.”

Now that the danger had passed, Shea couldn’t seem to stop crying. Her friends had stood with her during that daring face-off with Carlson. Not only Eric, Jordan, Murphy, and Elsa, but Phoenix and Gordie, too. She’d felt them. Even Cheyenne was there—in spirit. They’d all filled her with confidence that evaporated the moment she’d hit that ENTER key.

After quick introductions with Elsa and her team, Eric carried Shea into the cottage and straight back to bed. He set her on the edge of the mattress and removed the tennis shoes she’d borrowed while she struggled to compose herself. Winning should’ve felt better than this, but all that noise. All those men dying. It was a horrible way to end this… this mission.

Sliding his palms up her thighs, Eric tugged her borrowed sweat pants off. The sweatshirt went next, before he wrapped her in the blanket and gathered her onto his lap. Finally, he settled against the headboard, and there he stayed, breathing hard with her pressed under his chin. “God, baby, you never cease to amaze me.”

“I told you I could wreck him,” she croaked, for the first time free of the death threat hanging over her. Ruining Carlson financially seemed enough of a fitting punishment, but Elsa’s solution honestly felt better. Carlson deserved to die.

“Were you serious? Carlson’s chip is a hoax?”

“It’s actually not, but it is designed to leave a port open on any security operating system it encounters. That was how he brought the eastern seaboard down. He’s got someone on-line at this very moment hacking more power grids than just our country’s. Whoever Carlson’s computer tech guy is, he or she is as dangerous as Carlson was.”

“And he killed his first wife?”

She nodded. “For a genius, he wasn’t very smart. He kept three ghost files on his desktop. One contained a video clip that looked like it was taken from a scope. It showed Prentiss Carlson through crosshairs at the railing of a ship. Remember when she went missing on that cruise? The guy who did the job tossed her body overboard after he killed her and her baby. That clip was his proof of death so his hired assassin could get paid.”

Shea whined, her heart breaking for that other lost child, the one Carlson hadn’t wanted.

Eric whistled under his breath. “What was in the other two files?”

“Sheesh, eric, I didn’t have time to look at everything. I needed a kill-switch to all his accounts before you guys got yourselves killed.” A yawn came out of nowhere. Shea ran her fingers through her hair, shuffling it like a handful of playing cards. “And I know where Rosie and the cabbie are. They’re at another one of Mr. Carlson’s mansions. Look for the castle north of the River Suir. At least they’re safe.”

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Eric murmured as his large hands skated down her back to her ass. The man had no idea the surge of warmth that flooded her at his intimate touch. It usually excited, but this time, it was the perfect gesture. Eric had literally held her life in those powerful, tender hands. Cheyenne’s, too.

“Tell me a story?” she asked because that might be the only way to get him to stop with the questions.

The sound coming up from his chest rumbled like pure honey on her favorite hero pancakes. He kissed the top of her head, but she only lasted long enough to hear, “Once upon a time, there were three dirty little pigs...”