Page 43 of A Brother's Secret

17

Amalia…

Fifteen hours. That’s how long it took for them to reach us from the time Kyle switched on my laptop and connected to the internet. It’d been around nine o’clock after two intense days of getting the piece of property we were on set up and ready to rock and roll. We’d gotten eight hours of sleep, the guys that were staying with us taking up scattered cots around the available space, which had pretty much put the kibosh on Kyle and me getting it on. I wasn’t quite that level of exhibitionist.

Eight solid hours of sleep, then we all got up and took our positions. Kyle was behind his keyboard and mouse, eyes on multiple screens and camera angles. I was at his side marveling at the amount of technical know-how he’d amassed since we were kids. I mean, he’d always been into computers, but this was nuts, way above my pay-grade. My messenger bag sat at my feet fully packed and ready to go, as the plan was as soon as the shit went down and we were through it, I was supposed to go with Reaver to a nearby safe house. I was okay with that, but only because I was going to see Kyle lateron.

Anyways, seven hours after the guys took position, the first alarm went off. Kyle clicked a couple of keys and the mouse once, and the biggest screen was suddenly splattered with a view of the road, and three black SUV’s climbing into the hills.

Trigger came over the radio, “Tint’s too dark to make out how many, but they damn sure out-number what we’ve got on the ground.”

Dragon came on and I looked up at him standing just inside the door to the building, “That’s what we got you for, not to mention the home-field advantage. I wouldn’t panic justyet.”

“Got six of ‘em moving through the woods,” Archer came over the radio and his voice was low, careful.

“Oooh, it’s show time!” Reaver sounded excited. Kyle was pointing out movement on screens and I slipped my dad’s gun out of my waistband just to have it ready, just incase.

“Keep it silent, boys. Also, keep it last minute if you can, taking these fuckers out might tip off the rest o’ theirclan.”

“Copy,” Archer muttered over theline.

“You suck,” Reaver pouted.

Some tall grass and a branch thrashed in the corner of my eye on one screen and I looked, a man with an arrow through his throat sliding, face first, back out ofview.

“One down,” Data murmured.

“Two,” Reaver grunted.

“Three,” Trigger muttered.

“Four.” Archer.

“Five.” Reaver.

“Six.” Archer again.

“Any deviation?” Dragon asked.

“Nope,” Data said and added for my benefit, “This is how we do it. Smooth as butter.”

I punched him lightly in his well-developed shoulder and hissed, “Don’t jinx it!” But he wasn’t paying me any mind. Instead, he called out, to the team both here and over the radio, “Second wave incoming.”

His voice was all business, in total control, and reminded me of how he got when we’d played video games as kids. It was one of those moments where it was a cross between being adorable and having such terrifying overtones it left you speechless and grim. I rolled my lips together and breathed in deep, letting it out slow, anxiety and the urge to do something, to be useful somehow, making my skin crawl.

“They aren’t slowing down,” Trigger stated and Dragon cursed.

“So pump the brakes, Big Man. You’re the only one who can,” he said into the radio.

The SUV’s were coming up the driveway, and the first one, movie-perfect, which was really what this felt like seeing it play out on the screen like this, had a perfect hole develop in the windshield over where the driver’s head should be. The car swerved and went into the split log and wire fence at the side of the sloping field leading up to the building we werein.

“Start pickin’ em’ off,” Kyle ordered, and I realized that this wasn’t Kyle anymore. This was the man seventeen years in the making, during my absence. This was Data… a cold, calculating biker who could casually order the cold-blooded murder of men he didn’t know. I swallowed hard, and let the guilt swamp me, rush over and through me, swirling once inside before I ushered it out the back and focused on getting both him and me out of this situation alive.

I turned him into this…I realized, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

“Get what I can, but I ain’t got a bead on most of ‘em,” Trigger said before I heard rounds popping off just outside, loud. Louder than I expected.

“Take cover!” Zeb shouted in his thick accent through the radio.

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