Cherise Sinclair - If only

He rounded the back corner into the yard. Jesus.

A man dashed across the yard jumping over the body of a uniformed cop to get to the six-foot wooden fence. Another police officer lay nearby groaning.

The running man leaped, caught the top of the fence, and tried to pull himself up, feet scrambling on the wood slats. A pistol stuck in the back of his jeans fell, hitting the ground.

“Halt. FBI,” Vance shouted as he aimed and— Something hit his back like the kick of a mule, followed by a blast of pain. Fuck. He retained his weapon as he fell forward. His head smashed against the concrete patio as he rolled off the edge, ending half on his side.

His lungs couldn’t pull in a breath through the agony that was his torso. Above him was an open upstairs window. A man’s face. Somerfeld. And the bore of a pistol pointed toward him.

Jesus. He tried to bring his pistol around. Couldn’t move.

A barrage of shots split the air. A bullet struck the concrete patio in an explosion of fragments. Missed, thank you, God.

No one remained in the window. Vance managed to pull in a breath. Under the bulletproof vest, he was going to have a hell of a bruise for a while.

He turned his head and saw Galen lower his GLOCK. Eyes dark with fury, he looked toward Vance.

Vance gave him a painful nod—thanks, bro—and saw the tightness ease from his face.

With a low groan—it felt as if one shoulder blade had been pushed a foot forward—Vance rolled over.

The man who’d been climbing the fence was gone.

Goddamn it.

“Hey.” Two officers appeared in the window, both holding their weapons. A ruddy-faced one yelled to Galen, “Somerfeld’s dead. Where—”

From the other side of the fence came a man’s scream, shrill with rage and anguish. “Noooo. You bastards. No!”

As orders and shouting filled the air, Vance lurched to his feet. Tried to breathe through the pain. Felt warm blood trickle down his scalp to his neck. Remembered hitting his head.

He staggered toward the downed officers.

One stared up at the sky with blind eyes. The other—he knelt beside him to put pressure on the leg wound. There was too fucking much blood. “Get an ambulance here. Now.”

* * *

Goddamn fucking knee. As the hospital elevator dinged out the different floors, guilt was like lead in Galen’s blood and bones, weighing him down. If he’d only been a few seconds faster, Vance wouldn’t have been shot.

Thank God for body armor, but fuck. His partner could have died, could’ve ended up with his head blown off like one of those two cops.

The elevator doors slid open.

Sally tried to push past him, but Galen snagged her with an arm around her waist. “Walk, pet. Or they’ll toss us out.” He knew just how she felt—he wanted to run as well.

“I need to see him.” She shoved at his restraining arm.

“You will. He’s going to be fine.” Vance is alive. Galen had to keep repeating the reassurance as they hurried down the hospital hall.

Against his side, Sally glowed like sunlight, a comfort against the coldness inside him. “I’m so…so angry,” she growled. “I want them all to pay.”

“Somerfeld is dead,” he reminded her. Galen’s bullet had taken him in the skull, and the two officers who’d broken into the flat had put two rounds in his back.

“There are others. One got away,” Sally muttered. As they dodged an orderly pushing past with a food cart, Galen saw her face. Mouth pressed into a determined line, eyes glittering with resolve. A vengeful female—one who knew computers. Not good.

Galen frowned down at her. “I did have a promise from you about no more hacking, correct?”

She glared before reluctantly nodding. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good.” He relaxed. She might evade questions, but she had a personal honesty that was damned refreshing. She wouldn’t break her promise.

In the hospital room by the window, Vance was in a bed. The back had been raised so he was half sitting. Pale, but awake. Alive.

With a relieved breath, Galen released Sally.

She darted over and halted, obviously afraid to touch him.

Vance smiled. “C’mere, sweetheart. You look like you feel worse than I do.” He painfully held an arm out to her and smiled as Sally snuggled closer. He asked Galen, “How’s the cop?”

“Still in surgery, but he has a chance.” Galen stopped to clear his throat. The X-rays reported Vance hadn’t even suffered any broken bones from the bullet’s impact, although he wouldn’t be moving quickly for a while. He’d hit his head. And he was alive. The knot in Galen’s gut loosened with visual confirmation. “The shooter got away.”

“Fuck,” Vance said under his breath. “If I’d only—”

“No,” Sally said. She shook her head. “You told me that. ‘If onlys’ will drive you mad.”

Galen met his partner’s rueful gaze. They’d managed to get the lesson through to Sally; now they needed to take their own advice. “At least we got the head of the Association. In case no one told you, Somerfeld is dead. The cyber team resurrected enough deleted files on his computer to know he ran the organization. And we’ve got addresses for the rest of the managers. They should be picked up later today.”

“Maybe one of them will be the shooter.”

God, he hoped so. Galen had an itch in the back of his skull. That scream the man had let out…hadn’t sounded normal. Hadn’t sounded sane. “Yeah.”

Despite the lines of pain in his face, Vance actually smiled. “We’re done, partner. Somerfeld and his managers were the last of the bastards.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Galen’s spirits started to rise. “Thanks to the imp, who won’t ever get any of the credit.”

“No problem,” Sally said. “I like my handcuffs for fun, not for real.” With a hand on Vance’s cheek, Sally gently turned his head. “You’re a mess, Sir.” She frowned at the blood in his hair and touched a spot near the back of his head.

“Fuck!” He jerked his head away and gave her a dark look. “You keep poking at me, subbie, and I’ll wallop your behind.”

Despite her obvious relief at the threat, she smirked. “This time—for a change—that might hurt you more than me.”

He moved slightly and winced. “Good point.” He glanced up at Galen. “Would you mind beating on her for me?”

“I’d be delighted to help out, bro.”

* * *

Ellis was going to make them pay, the bastards who’d murdered his twin. His only family. He shuddered, seeing again the hole appearing in Drew’s forehead, how his whole face changed, blanked, how he’d jerked as the other bullets hit. He fell.

Should have been me. I should have let him go first. Safe back at his mountain cabin, Ellis raged, kicking the walls, kicking the furniture, kicking the sluts—the two that Drew had delivered just a few days before.

Ellis had shackled their collars to bolts in the rough wooden floor. Purple splotches ranged up and down their bodies. One had ragged breathing. Maybe had busted ribs.

Like he gave a fuck.

Drew had saved his life. Ellis had been easy meat there on the fence, and that fucking cop would have shot him if his twin hadn’t shot first.

“Somerfeld’s dead.” The bastard cops.

Ellis’s head buzzed as angrily as if the bullets had hit him instead and were raging inside him like angry wasps. He felt like he did when he stayed around the chaos of people and noise too long. Worse. This was worse.

How could he live without Drew? His family. His brother.

Ellis raised his hands to his head, realizing exactly how ruined he was. He had no money, no credit cards, no job.

But Drew had cash. Kept spare credit cards in his safe.

Fuck. What should he do? He needed someone to tell him what to do. Who to kill. What to burn.

But Drew was gone. Ellis’s rage flamed higher, burning through his insides like the fire that had scarred his face. The one he had set with his twin’s help. Standing in the bedroom, watching the fire, they’d listened to their father screaming. Begging.

Indeedy yeah, begging. He chuckled, the memory so vivid he could almost taste the fat-laden ash. His father had needed to die.

Drew’s murderers needed to die. All of them. There’d been one in the backyard, and the two smug-faced cops in the window—he remembered all their faces.

A stillness settled inside him as he realized he knew what to do. What to burn.

Them. All three of them.

His gaze fell on the two sluts on the floor, one gasping with pink froth on her lips. He only needed one for what he had planned.

“There we go, Glock. Ready for action.” Chatting with the cat in the quiet, empty house, Sally screwed back on the four-switch outlet plate located in the game room.

The first two switches hadn’t changed and would still turn on the overhead and track lighting. But now the third switch regulated the well-hidden audio receivers for her customized, voice-activated software.

Perched on the mantel over the fireplace, Glock observed, occasionally taking a break to groom down an obstinate section of fur. He’d expressed his displeasure with the paw-clogging sawdust in the still-being-remodeled room.

But Sally was enjoying being part of the progress. The hardwood floor was in. Walls were a textured sand color. They still had to put a ceiling fan in over where the pool table would go. Eventually a bar would curve out from one corner, but the building had gotten no further than the framework of two-by-fours.

“So, let’s see if R2D3 is awake and listening for commands.” All orders would have to be preceded by her voice saying, Please, please, please. She turned toward the receiver and said, “Please, please, please. Are you awake?”

“I’m awake, darling,” came her own voice from the wall speaker of the in-house intercom.

And she scores! Sally whooped, doing a gangnam-style dance. Unfortunately, she had only two command responses set up so far—just this one and the recording she’d done with Gabi the day after she’d come up with the idea. Now that had been a wonderful drunken time.

But once she got this going, it would really liven the place up.

Something sure needed to. A depressed Dominant was not a pretty sight, and both of her guys were majorly grumpy.

They had good reason though. In the hospital, they’d been so pleased that the Harvest Association was finished.

The very next day, Drew Somerfeld’s condo had burned. In the ashes, they’d found a metal safe—opened. The creepy arsonist was still on the loose, and no one had been able to figure out who he was.

So they’d left the search to the New Yorkers and brought Vance back home to Tampa to recuperate. After nearly two weeks, he was pretty much back to normal.

Thank God. Sally rolled her eyes. Every time Vance had trouble moving, Galen had gotten all quiet. Because of his bum knee, he hadn’t been there before Vance was shot, and he blamed himself. As if he could have prevented Vance’s getting hurt. She snorted. He’d just have gotten his own ass shot off. Christ in a computer, but her beloved stubborn Doms sure had I-am-God complexes when it came to protecting other people—probably caused by the overload of testosterone in their gorgeous bodies.

As she picked up her small tool case, she sighed. She’d been trying to help out. Doing the household chores so they could concentrate on work. Making sure they ate regularly. Comforting them. Nothing had worked.

She couldn’t even coax Galen into taking her on in World of Warcraft, even though he usually won. Vance hadn’t watched a game on television since he’d been back. She’d made a kick-ass three-layer chocolate cake last night—Vance’s favorite—and he hadn’t eaten a bite. Galen hadn’t taken the canoe out at all.

Something had to be done.

After flipping the switch off, she scooped up the cat and headed for her room to tuck the tools away. “So, Master Glock, do you have any brilliant ideas on how to use the system to screw with Fed heads,” she asked him on the way up the stairs.

He gave her an ear flick indicating he didn’t think it could be very difficult. They were only humans, after all.

“This is true. I’ll figure something good out.” And she wouldn’t use the software until then.