Page 117 of Fire for Effect

They bickered for two seconds but I didn’t care. My eyes were on Taz. She was safe. She was here. She had my ring in her hand.

“Kai,” she said, her voice shaky as hell, and growing distant by the second. “What the hell is this?”

“I was going to wait until we were a bit more serious, and the timing was right.” I was fading fast. But I had to say it. “But if I’m gonna die, I want to die knowing you’re wearing it.”

Black was giving way to white light. Jesus, was this the end?

“Tell me you’ll wear it, Firefly.” I coughed, and that just made the light brighter.

I needed her to say it. I needed to hear it. If I didn't…

“Tell me you’ll wear it! Let me go out thinking that you’re mine. Don’t let me die without thinking that you’ll marry me.”

A tear streamed down her cheek.

I had made her cry a lot the past few days. Too many tears. And now, I wasn’t even strong enough to wipe them away.

But if I lived, I vowed that I would make sure that there were no more. I’d make her smile more. I’d make her laugh. I’d give her a family.

“Yes, I’ll wear it,” she whispered. “My answer’s yes.”

That would have been a perfect storybook ending to the last chapter of my existence. My woman, agreeing to be my wife. That would be amazing. But I knew she wouldn’t let me go quietly into the dark night.

My little Psycho leaned down, the loose strands of her hair grazing my face.

“If you die on me, so help me God, Kai Winchester Griffith, I will tell Kristin your last words were that she was the love of your life.”

“Don’t you dare, you fucking Psycho!”

Then everything went blank.

Chapter 34

Fire For Effect

Taz

Four helicopters. Four. How the hell did that happen?

I only vaguely had an idea who Cerberus was. I knew even less about Paradigm, other than the fact that they gave Sierra a lady-boner.

She was fangirling so hard, she was giddy at the prospect of working with them, which was only slightly tempered by her partner bleeding and unconscious on a litter that she and Veder carried to the Chinook.

“Wifey!” she yelled at me, as we ducked beneath the spinning rotors over our heads. “He and I are supposed to stay together, but I’m giving you my seat, okay?”

She practically shoved me to the helicopter, before she ran to another one - the one that I guess had been designated for me.

I felt the familiar downward drop of my stomach, as we lifted off the ground, hovering for a moment, before the bird tilted forward, and sped towards the horizon.

We looked back at the compound. The lights were on, but there was no movement there.

“Have we cleared the area of civilians?” Cobra said into a radio handset.

“Yes,” the voice on the radio replied.

“Then fire for effect!” I screamed. They needed to fucking douse the place in artillery. Burn the fucking place down.

“Droning on US soil is kinda different than on deployment,” the voice cautioned. “Please do a final visual scan, to ensure that none of our people aren’t there.”

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