pdf - Eye of the Storm.PDF (14 page)

Molly, flushed from the heated kiss, took the money. "As you should be, lover."

Laughing, Ren replied, "The incident occurred a couple of hours ago, sir. Keely went down to grab some lunch at the pool restaurant and we were joining her when it happened. She had the situation under control. We were just backup."

"That was when you decided to send her home with Stuart?" Molly smiled at him with approval.

He had to think a second about who Stuart was—no one ever called Tweeter that and lived. "No, the decision to send Keely back was made before that. The lunch situation and Trujo's interest in her just underlined the need. The bastard has his eye on her now—

and her connection to SSI makes the situation even worse." His lips thinned and his nostrils flared. "He will never touch her while I live. He should have never been able to breathe the same air she did."

Every Walsh head nodded in agreement.

"Show us the set up and bring us up to speed, Ren," Colonel Walsh ordered as he picked his wife up, sat in the chair and settled her on his lap.

As Ren pulled out the diagrams Keely had made and copies of her intel reports, a furious scream came from the bedroom, followed by the sound of something big hitting the closed door.

Icy fear shot through Ren's body as he moved toward the sounds of fighting coming from the room. "Keely!"

Assorted weapons appeared as every man moved en masse. Molly, a big semi-automatic in her hand, passed the other men, pulling alongside of Ren. She looked the perfect picture of a mother rushing to protect her child. He now realized Keely got her fighting spirit from both sides of the family.

"I've got this, Molly." Ren waved the advancing mini-Titan back.

Whatever Molly might have said was cut off when the bedroom door flew open and a man came flying out, landing on the carpet, just missing Ren and Molly. He pushed Keely’s mother toward one of the twins, who grabbed her and shoved her toward his father.

The downed thug sprang up and turned to run but stopped, his jaw dropping open as he saw all of them. "Hell." He sat on the floor and buried his head on his upraised knees.

"Senor Trujo is going to kill me." The man was the shorter goon from the restaurant; the one Keely had emasculated.

"Not if I do it first, fucker." Ren looked toward the bedroom and the sounds of the continued fight. "Keely!"

"I'm busy." She sounded more irritated than anything. But she was sick and tired—

and, hell, he was here. She didn't need to be fighting.

Ren saw red. "Fuck it. Keely!" He started toward the bedroom and had to dodge another airborne body—the tall man she'd previously knifed.

Keely followed this one out. Her fiery golden hair flew all over the place and her pale face had flags of red on her cheekbones from exertion—or from her fever. He didn't know and didn't care; she needed to rest, not fight hired killers.

The tall man lay on the carpet in a bloody heap. She kicked him in the ribs. "Call me a little bitch, will you?"

Ren hadn't thought she really understood what
poco gata
meant in Spanish, but she obviously had. The man she'd stuck with a steak knife was probably wishing he'd forgotten all about her. Ren scanned her body, looking for obvious injuries. "Fuck it, Keely. You're practically naked!" She was in one of his t-shirts—and nothing else. Every man knew she had no underwear. The thugs had probably gotten an up-close-and-personal look as she tossed them around. That image pushed him from mad to furious.

"I'm wearing your shirt. And don't think I didn't hear all those f-bombs flying. Mama, he owes you—make sure you collect."

Keely sure as hell didn't shrink away from his wrath. Ren managed to avoid smiling at the feisty warrior sprite and pulled a throw off the couch to wrap around her like a sarong. As he enfolded her body in the fluffy material, he spotted new marks on her arms and face that promised to bruise later.

He snarled. "Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch!" His breaths came fast and hard while his hands clenched and unclenched at his side. Every primordial instinct pushed him to avenge the harm to his woman.

"Ren, no. I'm fine." Her voice was low, soothing, a tone aimed at taming a raging beast. She held his arm as if she could prevent him from moving.

He stroked a finger lightly over the red mark on her face. "No, baby. He terrorized you. He fucking touched you, hurt you. I can't let that go." He gently shoved her toward her mother. "Go to your Mama, baby, and hide your eyes. Molly, you might want to hide your eyes also." Turning, he found his brother backing him up. "Get Keely an ice pack, Trey. I have to kill someone."

"No." Keely stepped into his body, blocking him from the downed thug, and buried her face in the middle of his chest, her small hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. "No. He has broken ribs. I heard his jaw snap. I twisted his testicles and penis when he was on top of me."

"He. Was. On. Top. Of. You." Ren was proud of himself. He didn't roar. He glanced at the piece-of-shit-excuse for a man who lay on the floor, bleeding and moaning as if he were going to die. He turned his narrowed eyes back to his little Amazon. "Explain." He rubbed her back to still her shaking.

Keely sighed and took one of her hands off him and shoved it through her thick, messy curls. "Just stop it with the snarl in your voice. While impressive, it's pissing me off. I handled the situation. It's done."

"Keely." His voice was calm, but he knew she had to feel his trembling as he struggled not to move away and kill the bastards where they lay. "Tell me how you handled it." Then he'd decide just how much more hurt he needed to impart to the assholes.

"They wanted to take me out the balcony and then to Trujo. I said no. They said yes.

So, I took out the little one first and then he—" she pointed to the other one, "knocked me on the floor and tried to put a carotid hold on me, so I twisted his dick and balls. He hit me in the face…"

Ren swiped a gentle finger over the mark on her cheek and took the ice pack Trey handed him and put it on the rapidly swelling bruise.

She gasped and winced, then continued her matter-of-fact narrative. “…but he, like all men, had to check to see if he still had all his working parts. That was his mistake."

Her mother choked back a laugh behind them. "I had him after that. Daddy and the boys taught me how to fight from every position known to man. The a-hole—sorry, Mama—

didn't have a chance once I got leverage. I am
very
good at physics."

She leaned her forehead on his chest. He held her close with one arm, the other hand still holding the ice pack to her face. She continued with a sigh. "I handled it. And while I truly appreciate that you want to handle them some more, it is unnecessary. Now, I'm really tired. I need an ibuprofen or something—and my Pepsi—lots of ice. And I need to be held, first by my Mama, then by you, especially you. Daddy can take care of cleanup."

He sensed every Walsh going on alert at her words. Fuck 'em. She wanted to be held by him, she got him. The fact he'd have held her anyway without her asking was beside the point.

She sniffed into his shirt. He felt wetness. "Okay, baby. God, please don't cry. You're killing me."

"I don't cry—hardly ever. Ask my family. It's just that I don't feel good." She sniffed.

"Crying is a wussy-assed girly thing to do. And I am not a wuss. I'm a frick-fracking Walsh warrior."

Handing Trey the ice pack, he swung Keely into his arms, then reached for the cold pack again. "Hold this on your face, baby. Your Mama and I will put you to bed, get you some meds and the Pepsi, and then after I talk some more with your Dad, I'll come in and lie next to you until you go to sleep. Okay?"

She sniffed and took over holding the ice pack against her face. "I knew you'd see my point of view."

"You won't always get your way, Keely." He whispered against her hair.

She muttered something under her breath. He had to smile—it sounded like "Wanna bet?"

One week later, Sanctuary, Idaho

"Tweetie, hand me that last transmitter stake."

Ignoring the increasingly blustery wind and the feathery flakes of snow whipping around her with more intensity, Keely reached back a Thinsulate-gloved hand. Her other hand, encased in an extra layer of down-filled glove, gripped the rope holding her in mid-air, two thousand feet above the canyon floor. Her brother hung alongside her, carrying the once-heavy pack and spotting her.

"Here ya go, Imp." The stake was slapped into her hand. "Bracing you."

As he had for the last fifty stakes, his body snugged against her back as she practically sat on his strong thighs. She hammered the stake into the hole she'd created seconds earlier. She sprang the hooks that dug the stake further into the rock wall.

Satisfied it was anchored well, she plugged in the electrical conduit they had strung from stake to stake. The green light went on, showing it had power. The power source was a solar-powered battery array secreted on a six-thousand foot crag and cleverly built into the rocks.

"Signal?" She grabbed the rope with both hands, after putting on the other down-filled glove over the thinner one. Air temperature was a balmy twenty-two degrees with a wind chill of minus twenty. Frostbite was a given in these conditions, and both she and Tweeter had multiple layers to protect against it. She swiveled to face her brother.

Tweeter scanned the computer tablet protected in its own down-filled sleeve. "Yeah, it's working. They all are." He beamed at her. "Damn, I can't wait to see the holographic image on the table we built in the Bat Cave."

The Bat Cave was the underground operations center located in the sub-basement of the Lodge, SSI's main building and a gathering place for Sanctuary residents. Sanctuary itself was a hundred square miles of some of the roughest terrain in Idaho. Two years ago, Sanctuary had received town status from Idaho County.

Tweeter already had a fairly impressive security set up, but jumped at the chance to make it even better. When she'd first mentioned a year or so ago the potential of a holographic imaging table to display a complete picture of the whole of Sanctuary, ground-to-sky, he'd almost swooned and begun to collect equipment for the day they could work on it together.

The day had arrived. After their arrival from Argentina—and after her mama, who'd ridden along, had gone back to Georgia—she and Tweetie planted sensors and strung cable and electrical conduit during the blustery days and built the array in the Bat Cave at night. Finally, they were done.

She lifted her face to the gray wintry sky. She loved the snow and cold, but a blizzard was coming and they'd needed to get the system operative before it hit. Thus, the concerted push today. There was already seven feet of snow on the ground and four more predicted with high winds to complicate matters over the next twenty-four hours. And it was only late October. She smiled at her brother. "We'll work on fine-tuning the table's reception and testing the signals. The bad weather should be a trial of how well the system works. Bad guys don't wait for nice weather to attack."

Tweetie patted her cheeks. She barely felt his hands. He pulled her wool balaclava over her face, covering the exposed skin. The hood was one of the men's and far too big for her, so it kept slipping. She really needed to get her own winter clothing if she were going to stay at Sanctuary—and it looked like she would be. Her brother told her Ren intended to offer her a job. She intended to take it. She was highly attracted to the head of SSI—and knew he felt the same about her.

"Looks like we should head back. Wouldn't want Quinn to send out a search party."

Tweetie spoke over the Motorola headset so they could keep their faces covered and wouldn't freeze their lips to their teeth trying to talk in the sub-zero temps.

"He'd do it, too," she replied. Quinn had already sent search parties out twice since she'd been here. The older man was in charge of employee safety when neither Ren nor Trey were here to keep an eye on things.

She had to admit that she and her brother tended to get caught up in what they were doing and forgot about time—and checking in regularly. Ren had called once while they were out and had reamed Quinn a new asshole, or at least, that's what the salty old Marine had told them.

She shivered at the thought of Ren's increasingly possessive and protective attitude.

He'd spoken to her every evening. He wouldn't tell her what was happening in South America, but cross-examined her on her return trip, her mama's thoughts on his home, and her living in it, her sleep patterns, what she'd eaten, and how she was adjusting to Idaho life. Most women would find him too controlling, but she was used to that kind of behavior, having lived with it all her life. Using her mama's fine example of how to handle dominant, know-it-all males, she'd never found it a problem to do what she wanted, when she wanted, even under the eyes of six Walsh males and all their friends. It was all a matter of knowing when to give in and when to assert one's self.

"Earth to Imp. Need help climbing?" Her brother reached for her pulley system.

They might be two thousand feet above the canyon floor, but they still had one thousand feet to climb to the top where their two-seater snowmobile was parked.

"Yeah," she held out a shaky hand, "all of a sudden, I'm beat." The remnants of her injuries and the subsequent illness from her abduction still managed to bother her when she was fatigued. Of course, she hadn't breathed a word of her continuing weakness to Ren on the nightly calls. She wasn't stupid; he'd have had Quinn tying her to the bed and had Quinn's wife Lacey, a nurse, caring for her.

She couldn't afford to rest and had purposely pushed her physical limits to get this wiring done. The weather and the terrain hadn't helped. She and Tweeter had been banged about yesterday and today in gusty winds as they climbed and installed cable all over Sanctuary's borders. Added to the physical demands of the job, she was still acclimating to the altitude. It was amazing she wasn't flat on her back with exhaustion and acute mountain sickness. But whatever she suffered, it would all be worth it. Her gut and itchy neck told her the system would get a trial by fire—and soon.