Page 17 of Cheating the Devil

Avery was hanging from the ceiling, her nearly bare body covered in welts and bruises. Her face was coated in sweat and tears. He caught a flash of relief in her eyes, underneath her pain. Fury shot through him. Lin Chao was a dead man—he just didn’t know it yet. No, Brad would never murder the man, but when a moment of justification presented itself, and he was sure it would, then he’d take full advantage of it.

While Jordyn stayed just inside the doorway, Brad sidestepped further to his right. Carter did the same, but to his left. Jase and Troy were clearing the rest of the rooms to make sure there were no surprises the team had missed.

“You’ve got the wrong woman, Lin,” Brad said, doubting he would believe the lie, but it was worth a shot.

The man’s face was red with rage. He spat what was probably a curse in Mandarin before switching to English. “She murdered my son!”

“Let her go, and you’ll walk out of here alive.” Another lie. “We’ll leave your island and never return.”

“No! She will never leave this island! Iwillavenge my son!”

Why Chao hadn’t already shot Avery, Brad didn’t know, but it was giving them a chance to save her. He needed all his attention aimed at the man holding a gun to her back. But what he really wanted was to look her in the eyes and let her know he’d do everything he could to get her out of this mess. There was no way he was going to lose her to this devil, hell bent on revenge.

Chao closed the distance between him and Avery, trying to keep her between him and the three weapons aimed in his direction. It suddenly occurred to Brad—despite his vow to die,taking Avery with him, the bastard wasn’t ready to leave this earth. He wanted to celebrate and gloat after he killed her—something Brad would never let him do. “Do you really want your life to end right here? You were able to keep a lot of your money after you were exiled. I think a man as greedy as you would want to live long enough to enjoy every blood-red cent you made at the expense of others.”

Brad shifted again to the right. There was no way he could fire his weapon. While he was certain he could hit Chao dead between the eyes, he couldn’t risk the man pulling his own trigger. The bullet would rip Avery’s kidney to shreds, and she’d bleed out very quickly.

“I don’t care about my money! I don’t care about anything except killing her! She took my son! I loved him more than anything in this world, and she murdered him!”

“Let her go, father.”

Brad’s gaze flittered to the doorway, then back to Chao, whose eyes had gone wide at the sight of the newcomer. Zheng took two steps into the room, his voice eerily calm. “I’m sorry Delan died. I’m even sorrier knowing you wished it was me and not him. I wasn’t your firstborn. In fact, I should never have been born, but you thought the laws of China didn’t pertain to you. You just paid someone off, so mother was allowed to have me. Why? You didn’t want me. I often wondered why you didn’t put me in an orphanage. All my life, I lived in Delan’s shadow, even after his death. And now I’ll have to try to explain to my children why their grandfather is dead. But I’m not sure they’ll even care. You ignored them as much as you ignored me.”

Brad had no idea why Zheng had come back after helping free Lori, but Chao was so focused on his son he seemed oblivious to the fact Brad and Carter had inched further around the room. They needed one second, one split second, when Chao’s gun wasn’t aimed at Avery. The rage on Chao’s faceincreased tenfold. “You worthless piece of shit! You’re right. I wish you were dead instead of Delan. He was my firstborn. My golden child. My legacy. You will never be even a tenth of the man he was. Never!”

Zheng shook his head sadly. “I thank Buddha for that. Now let her go.”

“Never!” He pushed off Avery and stepped back, bringing his gun hand up and pulling the trigger as Brad fired his own weapon. Chao’s head snapped back, blood and brain matter splattering the wall, and his body fell to the ground.

“Avery, no!” While the thunderous shots echoed throughout the room, Brad rushed forward, desperate to reach the woman he loved. She was swinging from the force of Chao pushing her, and she cried out in pain. Grabbing her around the waist, he lifted until her bound wrists cleared the hook. Her arms dropped as she sagged against him. He quickly but gently lowered her to the floor. “Fuck! Where are you hit?”

He tossed his weapon to the side, then ran his hands over Avery, trying to find the gunshot wound to staunch the flow of blood. She couldn’t die.Damn it! Where the hell did the bullet enter?

Avery hissed, then gasped in pain. “Not ... hit.” Her raspy words didn’t register right away over the ringing in his ears. “Brad, I’m ... not hit.”

“Barton.” Carter tapped Brad’s shoulder and repeated his name several times until he finally looked up. The spy pointed toward the doorway where Jordyn was tending to an injured Zheng. The man had been shot in the arm, but, from the looks of it, would survive.

Brad returned his attention to Avery, his panic lessening when he found her staring up at him. He grasped the back of his shirt and yanked it over his head, before using it to cover her bare breasts.

Her hand found one of his. “I—I knew you’d come. J-Just glad you ... made it in time.” She swallowed hard. “Do me a favor?”

He brought his other hand up to softly stroked her head and face, needing to touch her but not wanting to cause her any more pain. Tears filled his eyes as he wished he could take away all the agony she must be in. “Anything, baby. Anything you want, it’s yours.”

“Take me home.”

EPILOGUE

“You may now kiss your bride,”the minister said with a grin.

Cheers and applause erupted from the occupants of the small church as Frisco, dressed in his formal uniform, wrapped his arms around Haven’s torso, dipped her, and then kissed the ever-living heck out of her. The former undercover agent had been able to shed her wheelchair for the ceremony, and Carter had escorted her the short distance from the back of the chapel to the altar, before giving her away. Aside from saying “I do,” it’d been the one thing Haven had wanted more than anything—to be able to walk instead of roll down the aisle. She’d worked her ass off to get to that point. While she was able to walk again, she tired easily and usually split her time between using the chair and crutches, but with Carter’s and then Frisco’s support, she’d been able to get through the ceremony without the devices.

It’d been a beautiful wedding, and Brad clapped along with everyone else, but his gaze wasn’t on the happy couple. It was on one of the two bridesmaids—his wife.

Nine months had passed since their vacation-turned-nightmare in Aruba where Avery had cheated the devil out of his perceived due. As they’d been preparing to transport Avery and Zheng to the clinic for treatment, Ghost, Frisco, and twoother Delta operatives, Fletch and Truck, had arrived on scene. Gene McDaniel had gotten top-secret clearance for the four men to break air-speed records from Fort Hood to Aruba to serve as additional backup. His reasoning had been it was better to have their boots en route and not be needed, than the opposite, and Brad was grateful for the man’s initiative. Truck had brought a medic kit with him, and IVs were quickly placed into both victims before taking them for further treatment.

Meanwhile, Jordyn, Carter, and Jase had stayed behind and sterilized the scene. The guns that’d been fired had been swapped out for the two Chao and his guard had in their possession. The serial numbers of the two throw-away 9mms had been filed off long before they’d been used that day. The covert operatives must’ve done a good job because an online newspaper article Brad read two days later reported that Lin Chao and his bodyguard apparently had an argument of some sorts. Both men had fired their weapons, fatally striking each other in the head. Lin Zheng had told the reporter he was devastated by his father’s death, but wasn’t surprised, given how violent the older man’s temper could be. Chao had been known for belittling his employees, and it had been only a matter of time before one of them snapped. There would be no funeral, Zheng had stated at the time, just a private memorial as his father had requested in the past.

After being rehydrated, having her injuries treated, and receiving some heavy-duty pain killers, Avery had been released from the clinic with no record of her having been there. Brad, Jordyn, Carter, and the Deltas had immediately taken her to the airport where an unmarked Army KC10 tanker was waiting to fly them back to the States. As far as the airport authorities in Aruba knew, it had been an American Airlines passenger plane that had come to pick up several company executives after their vacation had been cut short.

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