Fixing Justice (2 page)

“Shut the fuck up, Drae,” Cameron snapped. “You’re way more likely to go for a pair of brown doe eyes beneath a veil than either of us would,” he added while gesturing with the tilt of his head to where The Kid stood. “Asef is a good kid, and it doesn’t hurt to show the boy that not all Americans are bloodthirsty dickheads worthy of jihad.”

“Hey, leave me out of that argument, Sirs,” The Kid added with tongue-in-cheek humor. “My fiancée would seriously kick my ass if she thought for one minute that any of the female locals were fraternizing with the enemy.” Mention of the fiancée gave Cameron and Draegyn pause. They’d seen pictures of the couple during happier times and had listened to many heartsick stories from the lonely warrior during his time assigned to their squad.

Drae’s ruthless reputation for fucking any woman with a pulse along with Cam’s bitter mistrust of the fairer sex and Alex’s cold-hearted rejection of anything remotely romantic made them quite a trio. Truth be told, each of them envied The Kid in his own way. The battlefield hadn’t robbed him of the ability to feel or diminished the desire to forge a future beyond the shit storm they lived in now.

Suddenly, McLain jumped up from his at ease position and lifted his snout in the air. All three men, ever vigilant to even the slightest signal of danger, stopped in mid-thought and actively scanned their immediate surroundings. Something was up, they could sense it. By reflex and from sheer habit, Cam and Drae immediately hoisted their ever-present M-16 rifles and began moving toward the other side of the well-protected compound.

Shit got real when the K-9 took off running at a fast clip around a mortar pit with The Kid right behind him. A commotion was building just beyond their view. They could hear angry shouts and commands to stand down being barked out in Arabic.

All hell broke loose in the next ten seconds as gunfire erupted followed by a small explosion and then a massive
BOOM
that knocked Cam and Drae off their feet. Smoke, dust, shrapnel, and debris clogged the air.

Drae was propelled backward, landing with a heavy thud thirty feet or so from where he’d been as the blast rocked the camp. Debris pinned him to the ground where he lay stunned from the violence of the explosion. As his senses cleared, he could hear Cameron shouting, “Draegyn! Drae! Are you alright? Where are you?”

Fuck
, he couldn’t move for long moments, barely able to spit the putrid sand and dust from the blast out of his mouth. All around him there was darkness, partially from the tin and wood piled on top of him and partly from being inside a debris cloud.

Anger and fear spiked an adrenalin rush in Drae as Cameron lifted the tremendous piece of tin attached to a wooden post pinning him to the ground and wildly tossed it aside. Sucking in a ragged lungful of oxygen, Drae slowly lifted to his knees and nodded as Cam helped him get to his feet.

A heartbeat later, their years of training took over, and after checking to see that their weapons were ready to go, they started forward again in a fast sprint toward the center of the explosion.

Upon reaching the area of the HQ, the men stopped and assessed the scene before them. Bodies and body parts were everywhere as shouts of “medic” and “Code Red” filled the air. Half the HQ building was gone, and a fire had broken out in another structure nearby.

“Holy fuck, Cam!” Drae shouted. “Goddamn, motherfuckers,” he growled. “We’ve got to get to Alex.”

Both men took off in the direction of the building where they hoped their friend would be found unhurt. Along the way they encountered McLain, who was untethered and clearly in distress, wandering in circles around a clump of brown camo on the ground. Cam’s stomach dropped away as he realized that The Kid had taken the worst of the blast while the dog had somehow survived. Fear arced up his spine, propelling him forward in search of Alex.

Drae got there first, shouting, “Alex, Alex! Talk to me, man! Where the fuck are you?” All around them soldiers were frantically tossing debris aside in search of the injured and dead.

They found Alex, badly hurt, with blood pouring out of every inch of his body, and a leg wound that looked like ground meat. He was alive, barely. The instinct to survive, no matter what the situation, had been branded on their souls in such a way that a pulse meant victory in an otherwise horrendous scenario.

Luckily for Alex, it took only seconds for an entire team to descend on the area and take control of the situation. In the end, sixteen military personnel had been injured or killed along with seven civilians. Magically, the visiting politicos had escaped unscathed, having left for the airfield earlier that morning.

After seeing to Alex’s care and satisfied that he was alive and on the way to the hospital at Ramstein, Drae and Cameron were left to deal with the aftermath of what turned out to be a suicide bomber. In the days and years to come, each battlefield brother would have wounds and emotional scars to contend with. Not only was Alex critically injured and The Kid going home to his fiancée in a body bag, the bomber turned out to be the doe-eyed widow Badirya who sacrificed her only child Asef in some deranged act meant to re-unite her with her dead Afghan husband.

On that fateful day, The Justice Bothers were born from the smoke, death, and despair of an Afghan battlefield. Things would never be the same for any of them and each would carry demons, ghosts, and nightmares from that time into the future. In the two years that followed, one by one, they would leave the desert hell-hole behind and seek a future together, far away from war, in the hot, dusty winds of southern Arizona.

What a fucking mess. Standing in the aftermath of a celebration that had been more than memorable, Draegyn St. John surveyed the carnage left behind. Everywhere he looked was evidence of the Valentine’s Day nuptials that had taken place littered throughout the massive Spanish-styled courtyard at Villa Valleja-Marquez.

Taking a hearty slug from the champagne glass clutched in his hand, Drae contemplated the past few days while shaking his head in amazement. After jumping on a plane in Washington, D.C., he’d landed in the midst of an off the hook celebration. The compound where he lived, along with his two business partners and one-time military brothers, technically belonged to the oldest and most senior of their group, Alexander Marquez. They called it the Villa, a sprawling complex spread out among hundreds of acres of breathtaking Arizona scenery, dominated by an enormous Spanish influenced hacienda.

The glorious southwestern weather he loved was a welcome respite from the bitter cold and the never-ending snowfall he’d dealt with in D.C. Not one to usually gripe about anything remotely connected to being out-of-doors, he’d come to despise the winter weather back East. Having to clear off his car every morning, from either a coating of ice or inches of snow, had seriously pissed him off.

After leaving the nation’s frigid capitol, he’d found himself immediately immersed in a thousand last-minute details for a wedding that had surprised them all. He still couldn’t fathom how the dark and brooding mass of contradictions that was Cameron Justice had ended up married.
Married
! Jesus H. Christ. Just the word brought shudders of distaste racing through his mind.
Ugh
,
no thanks
.

Marriage and its false promise of commitment were a social convention that he’d vowed never to allow in his life. His parents had taught him the hard way what a charade all that was when he’d been shocked out of his perfect family bubble as a hormonal fourteen-year-old. Having fallen hook, line, and sinker for the faultless picture of social, marital, and domestic bliss that defined the St. John family, he’d been duly horrified after happening upon his,
Do as you’re told!
Father, diddling the giggly twit who worked for the family as a quasi kid minder for him and his younger sister.

Dear old Dad had been dismissive of Drae’s shock and cruelly arrogant when the time came to explain his actions to his only son. Hearing that his parents’ marriage had been an arranged affair between two old-school, upper-class families had destroyed the image of who he’d thought they were. It had all been a lie.

His mother hadn’t made it any better. Not only did she not care about her husband’s wandering penis, she sarcastically informed him that ‘this was how things were done’ in their world. A cold, intolerant bitch on the best of days, Draegyn had tried more ways than his teenage brain could count to be the son she wanted, only to never feel any warmth or genuine approval from the woman. Now he knew why.

She’d married for social status and prestige and did what was expected of her in the deal, popping out the perfect set of perfect children for their perfect family. Even now, all these years later, the thought made him sick. She made it sound like she’d consented to be bred in order to live an affluent lifestyle.
Who fucking did that?
He never trusted any woman’s motives from that moment on.

Wandering to a bench swing beneath strands of tiny white lights strung around the decorated courtyard, Drae flung his half-inebriated ass onto the seat and forced his thoughts back to the present. All around him was evidence of the romantic, country chic wedding that had joined Cam to the blond-haired lovely who had changed everything with her quiet smile. He liked his new sister-in-law very much. She was unique and absolutely perfect for his old friend; one of the few females Drae hadn’t immediately mistrusted.

Lacey Morrow had been quite the surprise when she’d turned up last autumn in Cam’s company. That the two ended up together hadn’t shocked anyone in the least, except Cam himself. Drae couldn’t help the half grin each time he thought about the unusual parade of events that brought his old friend to his knees where Lacey was concerned.

Miraculously surviving the minefield of bullshit surrounding their relationship, once they became an official couple, his friend had become an A-1 besotted, romantic fool. Drae supposed it was probably just an over-reaction to the years of emotional isolation that had defined Cam’s life. Once the floodgates of hearts and flowers had been breached, though, the man had gone ape-shit with one over-the-top romantic gesture after another, culminating in the red and white wedding he insisted take place on the one day every year when true love was supposed to be celebrated.

Ha
! True love.
What the fuck was that, anyway?
Even so, he was happy for Cam. Truly. Knowing that one of them hadn’t been doomed to an eternity of solitude made the burdens each carried lighter. It sure as shit wasn’t easy dealing with what they’d done and witnessed during their time together in the puke-fest that was Afghanistan.

Swinging absently, Drae tilted his head back and watched a million twinkling stars shining overhead. Stretching his arms wide on the back of the swing, he sat there in his perfectly tailored Tom Ford tuxedo and let his champagne-fueled mind wander.

He’d gotten into Special Forces as an extra special
fuck you
to his parents. He could still remember the way his mother, with her tight-assed need to control him and his little sister, had gone ballistic at his announcement. She’d been apoplectic learning that he’d already enlisted by the time they found out what he’d done. Hidden in the dark memories that haunted him, he remembered the woman freaking out on her husband. “Fix this!” she had screamed. “Arthur, you fix this right away. He’s
your
son after all. Do something about his attitude before he ruins everything I’ve sacrificed for.”

Ah. Yes
. He’d been Arthur St. John’s son. Not hers. She’d made that abundantly clear. Understanding that he and his sister held no emotional importance in her world-view, beyond the parts they were expected to play, had been the final straw. Of course her
fix him
attitude had landed on his psyche and stuck to him like fucking fly paper.

And his parents had tried to fix him to no avail. The military tried to fix his bad attitude too and while he’d certainly adjusted somewhat, he always managed to walk the fine line of insubordination. He didn’t need fixing,
thank you very much
. He was just fine as he was, calling the shots, and answering only to himself.

He was also a card-carrying male chauvinist pig with a scornful arrogance about the travesty of marriage. Keeping clear of powerful women, because they all but ate their young and generally came with a shit-ton of issues, hadn’t been that difficult. He wasn’t the sort they’d be interested in anyway. That left the rest of the female population in the available category. Except for the innocent of course – they were out-of-bounds. He wanted no responsibility,
ever
, and virgins came with a truckload.

Admitting that Cam was an exception to the rule, Drae wished his old friend nothing but happiness. Lacey was one in a million, and if the emotional wedding they just pulled off was any indication, they’d be wallowing in contentment for all time. He’d been honored to serve as best man
and
maid of honor while Alex had done his Big Daddy duty by walking the beautiful bride down the flower-strewn aisle. Standing as a second to the bride and groom had touched Drae’s heart; not that he was going to admit it anytime soon. He played his role as the sarcastic, conceited brother to perfection and kept the ribald comments flowing.