Page 185 of Lone Star

Michelle couldn’t speak; she didn’t try to. Swayed with him, breathing in the blood-and-sweat smell of him, the dead spread out around them like so many crumpled petals.

~*~

Axelle thought she’d read somewhere that moments of extreme shock and stress were the moments in which you found out how you really felt about something. If that was true, then this was definitely one of those, and seeing Albie, alive and unhurt, and coming toward her, now, up the steps, past the broken glass, spawned a bright, fierce tangle of joy and relief inside her. So acute it ached; a wash of dull pain through her chest.Love, she categorized it, as her gaze locked with his very blue one, and her own eyes filled with tears.

She all but tackled him, arms going around his neck, face jammed into his throat. He stood straight and tall and held her; didn’t let her fall.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, over and over, his free hand rubbing circles into her back, the other digging his gun against her hip. She welcomed that small pain; oh, what she wouldn’t have given for a gun minutes ago, when she’d helped Michelle strangle a man to death.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m not hurt,” she managed, between desperate gasps for breath, her pulse thundering. She didn’t sayI’m okay, because she wasn’t. And maybe unhurt was a stretch, too, but she was whole, and so was he, and the rest they could sort out later.

~*~

Fox stalked the perimeter of the house. He found a small pile of cigarette butts on the back patio that gave evidence to lots of smoke breaks. Around the back, on the outside wall, his gaze landed on the bright glint of broken glass – just a few slivers lying on the sod – and lifted to find the shattered window above. The grass, though short and new, was crushed below it. Someone had jumped out, had fallen; had taken off on foot afterward. He jogged along the backs of the two neighboring yards, but whoever it had been, he was long gone.

Or she. The girls?

The sounds of gunfire had ceased. He jogged back to the house, and peered in the back windows, expected a massacre – he found one, but he found a reunion, too. Candy and Chelle, and Albie and Axelle. Safe. Alive.

He let out a deep breath, fished out his phone, and dialed Eden.

She picked up on the second ring. “Did you find them?”

“Yeah. They’re okay.”

She let out a deep breath of her own, this one ending in a low murmur of “thank God.” Then an inhale, and another exhale, like she’d been running and was winded; Fox knew she wasn’t, knew she just needed to breathe a minute, same as him. He envisioned her massaging the tension from the back of her neck, and wished he was with her, and that he could do it for her.

He gave her a moment, and took one for himself, then said, “How are things there?”

“As good as they can be, I guess. No more surprise guests. All of the women are awake now, and appear mostly stable. One got cut on a nail and she’ll need a tetanus shot.”

“They all need to go get checked out.”

“Yeah. Wow. Talk about inundating the hospital.” She was standing outside; he could hear the rustle of the breeze, the stirring of boughs overhead. “Who are we calling this in to?”

“PD, I guess.” He felt an itching between his shoulder blades, a tension of uneasiness, but he had no other ideas at the moment. “Maddox reached out to Quantico, and I’m sure they’re sending someone.”

“Right.” She sounded doubtful, too. “Have to hope they aren’t all crooked, I suppose.”

“Call it in,” he said. “Disguise your voice, then get the girls all set up and get out of sight. I don’t want anybody else in a cut getting cuffed tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Eden.” He hesitated, scanning the fallen forms through the window. All of them were hired muscle, and though he couldn’t see upstairs, he knew what he was about to say was true, sick foresight. “Luis got away.”

She hissed. “Damn.” But she didn’t ask if he was sure. “Little bastard.”

“We’ve decimated his crew, though. We’ve got his dad. We know his face, and his name. I’ve got his bloody birth certificate. We’ll catch up to him,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. This whole thing just – stank. Ripe as washed-up bodies.

The way Eden murmured “right” said she smelled it, too. “There’s a lot to sort out now, darling,” she said, half-exhausted, half-thrilled. She did love a tricky job, his girl.

“I know.”

In the illuminated kitchen, he watched Candy draw back from Michelle, and cup her face reverently between bloodied palms. The look they shared wasn’t meant to be witnessed by anyone; it was like looking at the sun and having your eyes burned.

He shifted his gaze over, and saw Axelle crying on Albie’s shoulder while he stroked her hair. Theirs was still a fresh tenderness; still uncertain, still breakable in an all-too-real way. For his dumb brother’s sake, he hoped Axelle was strong and smart enough to walk away from this moment in the correct direction. It would be so easy to flee; abandon the club and all it promised and never look back.

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