Hot as Hell (Deep Six 0.5)(31)

“Flat on the ground!” he bellowed over his shoulder at her and Rick.

From the corner of her eye, Maddy saw the young park ranger face-plant. Bran in full-on SEAL mode was not the type of guy you ignored. And as much as she despised getting sand stuck between her teeth, she belly-flopped right alongside Rick. The beach was cold and wet and smelled of fish. The tiny, crushed shells interspersed with the sand scratched her cheek when she turned her head to keep her eyes focused on the helter-skelter scene.

“Let ’em go!” Bran thundered, his deep voice echoing over the dark water and bouncing against the brick walls of the fort and the seawall.

“Go f*ck yourself, you sonofabitch!” the tyrant who’d been terrorizing Sally Mae, and who now held her in front of him, shouted between the intermittent volleys his cohorts sprayed at the seawall in an effort to pin down the Deep Six Salvage crewman who was obviously hiding there.

“Let the girls go, or end up like your friend here!” Bran yelled.

As if to punctuate his point, or else simply to add insult to injury, he nudged the dead man’s body with his foot. The move caused fresh blood to erupt from the wide hole in the corpse’s chest. More dribbled from his slack mouth to pool in the ear closest to Maddy. It was so dark and thick that it reflected the glow of the moon.

Jesus Christ and all his followers!

Once again her lunch was threatening an encore performance.

“I can knock the beak off a chicken at two hundred yards. Which means I’m gonna give you to the count of three to let that girl go! If you don’t, I’ll send you straight to your Maker with a bullet between your eyes! And then I’ll do the same to your two friends!”

“You’re bluffing!” the tyrant called, still easing Sally Mae backward. The girl’s eyes begged Maddy for help. And it killed her that all she could do was lie there and watch. Her hands, still tied behind her back, curled into claws with the urge to scratch the tyrant’s evil eyes right out of his head.

“I might be bluffing, you miserable, vomitous mass!” Bran yelled. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Really? He’s quotin’ The Princess Bride? “But if you wanna test me,” he added, “I’m your huckleberry!” And now he’s quotin’ Tombstone. “Last chance to let the girl go!”

The tyrant ignored him and continued to backpedal toward the fort.

True to his word, Bran began to count. “One!” The word exploded over the beach like an atom bomb. “Two!”

Maddy bit her tongue to keep from crying out. In the next second, Bran would let his bullets fly and she prayed he was as good as he claimed to be.

“Thr—”

Rat-a-tat-tat!

The sand around Bran’s bare feet erupted with a hail of gunfire as the man holding Louisa suddenly turned his aim away from the seawall and opened up on Bran. Bran spun like a top just as the fabric on the left leg of his cargo shorts shredded.

“No!” Maddy screamed when something hot and sticky sprayed across her face. Then the world went black. All the air was punched from her lungs. And a terrible, suffocating weight fell over her.

For a split second she wondered if she was dead. Did I get shot in the head? Is this what the afterlife feels like? Dark, airless pressure? But then familiar smells tunneled up her nose. Irish Spring soap and Tide laundry detergent. Bran…

He’d thrown himself on top of her, sacrificing himself to shield her from the melee of flying lead.

*

7:20 p.m.…

Mason McCarthy had seen his fair share of wicked bad situations. And this one here qualified as a top ten. After watching the men and the way they carried themselves, he and Bran really thought that once the f*ckheads found themselves in a crossfire situation, they would accept the offer to leave the island, no questions asked. Obviously, he and Bran had given them more credit for smarts than they deserved.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he cursed when another barrage of gunfire bit into the masonry behind his back. But he couldn’t continue to take cover. Bran was in the open and needed his help.

Turkey-peeking around the corner of the seawall, Mason bellied out flat in the sand and gritted his teeth as he laid on his trigger, aiming for the ground at the feet of the masked men, hoping to draw all their fire in his direction and away from the trio on the beach.

It worked.

The seawall continued to take a beating from the assailants’ lead as the end of his M4 flashed with orange lightning in return. The pressure against his shoulder, not to mention the growing warmth of the metal in his hands, felt wonderfully familiar.

Which just goes to show how far from normal you are.

He shook off the thought as soon as it hit him. Not because there wasn’t truth in it. But because there was, and it had been one of his ex-wife’s biggest beefs with him. Right behind you’re never home and you never talk to me.

Ya-huh! On account of me being a f*ckin’ SEAL who goes on f*ckin’ missions that are f*ckin’ classified!

And she’d known that when she married him.

Of course, it’d all seemed very romantic while they were flush with hormones and having sex on every vertical and horizontal surface. But once the honeymoon was over and the hard part of being hitched to a covert operator set in, she’d quickly come to see how truly unromantic it was. He just wished she’d had the guts to divorce him before she turned to another. Because what her duplicity and faithlessness had left him with was a sore on his heart. An open, festering wound that refused to heal.