I’ll follow you into the depths of hell, and if I can’t get you out, I’ll quash the fires.
—Jax Mercury
Jax waited until Raze, Tace, and Sami ditched their bikes and met him by the side of the too-quiet road. “We’re ten minutes out from the subdivision. Something feels off.”
Sami nodded. “Moonlight is good, but there’s no sound in the desert. No wildlife. It’s as if everything is on alert.”
The woman had good instincts. “Raze?” Jax asked.
“My guess is that Atherton called his forces in, and they’ve spread out. Waiting for us.” Raze rolled his shoulders. “Feels like we’re walking into it.”
Yeah. The three trucks lumbered to a stop, and soldiers jumped to the ground. Some trained in combat, some just trained since Scorpius, all serious and carrying weapons. Fifteen men and nine women in addition to Jax’s central four.
He gestured everyone around and started drawing in the sand. “If this is the house where Atherton is, I’d expect resistance here, here, here.” He continued marking spots. “We don’t know how many soldiers are here, but we have to prepare for the worst.” Then he set up contingents of four to spread out and infiltrate from every direction. “Raze and I will infiltrate behind enemy lines and reach Lynne.”
The soldiers fell into step and headed through the subdivision, all fairly quietly.
“They’ve been trained well,” Raze said.
But well enough? Not against real military, if that was what the president had amassed.
Five minutes in, and the night lit up. Explosions echoed all around.
A blur of purple sprinted out from behind a stucco wall, and Jax reacted instantly, slicing his knife into the gang member’s gut before dropping him to the ground. Holy fuck.
Raze took down the guy’s partner, snapping his neck.
Jax turned, breathing heavily, his gut burning. “Twenty is here.”
Raze stood, his lips forming a grim line. “Smart. Atherton recruited Twenty to increase his forces against us. We don’t have enough people.”
No, they didn’t. “Grab everyone and head back. I’m going in,” Jax said.
Raze clasped his arm. “No. Your people made the choice to enter this fight, and it’s one they believe in.”
Jax whirled until they were nose to nose. “If I let them go into an ambush like this, I’m no better than Cruz.” Cruz had been willing to sacrifice any member of the gang, any brother, to follow his own agenda. Jax wasn’t that guy.
“No. They followed you willingly, and they’re fighting for Lynne. Let’s do this and trust the training.” Raze released him.
Jax swallowed as fires began to burn around them, the smoke turning the moon a dingy yellow. Raze was right. They needed to find Lynne and end this. “Stay on my six.” He broke into a jog, watching the shadows. Around them battles raged, and cries of pain filled the night. Jax flashed back to a battle years ago, one across the world, and his body shook with each boom.
The blood across Frankie’s face, the wound in his neck just spitting more blood. The scent of death, more powerful than the stench of fear. The sound of Frankie’s breathing, which somehow drowned out the patter of gunfire erupting around them.
His short dark hair burned with embers, and his too-pale face seemed devoid of any life.
Jax’s arms shook with the remembered pain of punching through heated glass and trying to pull his dying buddy’s body free. His one real friend in the world. A guy who’d never asked for anything but friendship.
Jax had failed so completely, even his gut hurt.
He jerked back to the present, trying to fuzz the past. And he kept on running, even as his arm ached with remembered pain. He couldn’t fail again. Not Lynne.
Now that he knew Twenty was near, he knew what to look for and avoid. He and Raze made it inside the subdivision and to the center as the fighting went on around them. He attacked on the way in, noting Raze doing the same, while their forces disabled vehicles and fought around them.
Jax smoothly sliced the neck of the third soldier and waited for the telltale thump of a body from a few yards away. There it was. Man, Raze was good. They’d taken out four sentries already, which left eight soldiers as well as Atherton on the property—if the intel was good, and he’d bet his life the soldier Tace had tortured had given him everything. Of course, they had no idea how many Twenty members were fighting as well.
He hustled around the other side of the mansion, ready to go in the back at the signal. He’d given Sami a gas-filled bomb, rag, and matches. Taking a deep breath, he counted in his head.
An explosion rippled through the night, and then the sound of gunfire took him back to the service.
A splash behind him caught his attention, and he turned. Rapid water sounded, and then running footsteps. Somebody had been in a fucking pool? He bulldozed through a bunch of overgrown bushes to the pool and then stopped dead. Lanterns and candlelight complemented the moonlight around a large pool. Lynne floated in the middle, facedown, her hair billowing out.
The smell of chlorine burned the air. He stopped breathing. God. Lynne! He leaped across the concrete and jumped in, grabbing her and hauling her to the side.
Raze was instantly there, while the firefight continued on the other side of the mansion. He yanked her up and laid her flat.
Jax jumped from the pool and shook her. “Lynne?”
Her face was whiter than the concrete, and she was still. Too still. He pressed his ear to her chest.
Nothing.
Raze pivoted and fired into the bushes, but Jax could only see Lynne.
He set her down and blew into her mouth before starting chest compressions. He counted them out, then breathed into her mouth, and then counted again. Raze fired three more times.
Tears filled Jax’s eyes. He thumped hard on her chest, noting the vibrancy of the blue had died down. “Lynne, wake up.” He grabbed her in a hug, his face collapsing into her neck. She lay limply in his arms. Gone.
The pain cut sharper than any blade ever forged.
Heat rushed through him. “God, no.” He set her back down and thumped her chest, then breathed into her mouth. “You wake up right now. You’re not leaving me.” She couldn’t leave. Not after she’d taught him to feel again. Not now. He sobbed and hit her chest again. “Damn it, Lynne. Fucking wake up.” He pinched her nose and breathed everything he was into her mouth.
She jerked. Her eyelids flew open. Water spurted from her mouth, and she coughed, panic lighting her eyes.
He shuddered and turned her on her side. “It’s okay, baby.” His butt hit the concrete, and he patted her back. “Let it out. You’re okay.” Thank God. His damn hands shook.
Raze dropped to a knee, shooting him a look of pure relief.
Lynne stopped coughing, and Jax turned her to pull her up and into him. “You okay?” he whispered.
She spit out more water. “Atherton.”
“I know.” The wet footsteps. Jax gently laid her down. “Raze is going to cover you, sweetheart. I’ll be right back.”
She nodded, her chest moving.
“You got this?” Raze asked.
“Yeah.” Jax stood and jogged around the pool, following the footsteps. Atherton wouldn’t ever stop coming, and with his resources, he would always be a threat to Lynne. Jax tracked him around the pool house, through a neighbor’s yard, and onto an overgrown golf course.
A bullet whizzed by his head.
He ducked and rolled, coming up just as a boot connected with his cheek. He dropped and then looked up.
Atherton stood in the weeds, the moon shining brightly down on him, his gun pointed at Jax’s head. “She’s dead, you know,” Atherton said.
Jax wiped blood from his cheek. “No, she’s not. Mouth-to-mouth saved her. My mouth.”
Atherton’s hand shook. “My mouth was on her first.”
Jax met his gaze directly, calculating the distance between them. Not good. “My mouth will be on her last.”
“You lughead,” Atherton spat out. “She’s not worth it. Not even close.”