“You’re a crazy son of a bitch, you know that?” The metallic roar of the helicopter rotors made it difficult for Reese to hear her own voice. She was sitting in the back of the chopper with Dominik and six other Enforcers, still marveling at this turn of events.
“Not as crazy as you,” Dominik retorted. “What the hell made you think that you and a handful of people could take out an outpost of thirty Enforcers?”
“There weren’t supposed to be thirty there,” she grumbled. “It was a trap.”
“It was a trap you should have anticipated,” he said with a smirk. “Any military leader worth his salt would have accounted for that.”
She bristled, even though he was right. She’d made a stupid decision based not on intelligence and strategy, but emotion. She’d been on edge because of the threesome and the feelings it had roused in her, and instead of listening to sound advice, she’d acted on her own revenge-driven urges, fueled by the need to run away from her feelings.
“Ferris will kill you for this,” she informed Dominik.
He flashed a grin. “Only if he finds me.”
“You? This isn’t just you.” She waved a hand around the cramped cabin. “You brought a goddamn party with you.” Reese had counted at least twenty-five Enforcers boarding the three choppers in the clearing. “Why would you do this?” she demanded. “Why defect now?”
“Didn’t exactly have a choice,” he said dryly. “We had a plan in motion, a schedule for when we would desert, but your capture sped up our timeline.” He cursed under his breath. “My sister begged me to help you. And if you know Hudson like you claim you do, then you know it’s impossible to say no to that woman. She’s a stubborn little thing.”
Reese experienced a pang of guilt as she recalled her conversation with Hudson, when she’d told the woman in no uncertain terms that she wouldn’t cooperate with the Enforcers or spare Hudson’s twin brother if it came down to it. And she’d been so damn resentful after Hudson’s warnings about Rylan.
But the woman was an ally, and Reese had refused to see it. It was just another mistake to add to her growing list of screw-ups.
She stared at Dominik. “What’s your end game?” she asked suspiciously.
He rolled his eyes. “Would it kill you to say thank you?”
She narrowed her eyes.
“I just saved your life, lady. And in the process I put my own life in danger, not to mention my men’s. I helped the queen of Foxworth escape—Ferris is not going to take that lightly. And he already hated me to begin with. He suspects that I helped my sister escape too.”
“You did help her escape.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have any fucking proof. You’d think he’d trust the word of his most loyal servant.” Dominik looked genuinely offended.
Reese had to laugh. “Who are you loyal to now?” she asked after a moment.
“My sister,” he said steadfastly. “And by extension, my sister’s man. Family’s the only thing that matters in this world. The people you love—those are the only ones who deserve your loyalty.”
She swallowed hard. “Yeah, I think you’re right about that.”
“I’m always right,” he drawled.
She gestured to the other men, none of whom had spoken a word to her. They were all watching Dominik as if waiting for him to issue an order even when they were thousands of feet in the air. “And who are they loyal to?”
Dominik opened his mouth, but the man to his left beat him to it. “We’re loyal to Dom,” he said gruffly. “And we’re loyal to each other. This”—he gestured toward the other Enforcers—“is our family.”
A family of killers, she almost said. But who was she to judge? She’d killed dozens of Enforcers during those outpost attacks. She’d killed bandits. She’d killed Jake.
She was a killer too.
She suddenly remembered the other bit of information Hudson had given her. “Are you guys still taking those drugs?” she asked warily.
Dominik shook his head. “We’ve been off the cocktail for several months now. Took a while because we couldn’t have the men going off them all at once. And I wasn’t sure who was loyal to me and who was loyal to Ferris.” A dark look crossed his eyes. “Some of those men that you shot and blew up, they were loyalists, Reese. They didn’t deserve to die.”
She didn’t offer him an ounce of sympathy. “Yes, they did. It doesn’t matter if they were drugged these past few years—they weren’t drugged before that, when your father was in charge. They may not have killed as many outlaws back then as they’re doing now, but they still killed people.”
He sighed in acknowledgement. “We all kill people,” he agreed, echoing her own thoughts.
“Twenty minute ETA,” the pilot, who hadn’t said a single word in the last hour, suddenly barked.