Dire Desires

It was a setup . . . and you were supposed to die.

A Ranger had received a dishonorable discharge for rescuing him against a direct order. Dare would never forget the soldier’s face, and he doubted the soldier would ever stop seeing his.

Two men, bound by pain.

He closed his eyes briefly, thought about the way he’d been found, nearly hanging from his arms, up on a platform so he could watch the entire scene being played out in front of him.

The villagers. His guides. American peacekeepers. His team. All slaughtered in front of him.

The fire came closer now . . . and he welcomed it. Had prayed for it, even as his captors laughed at his predicament, spat in his face. Cut him with knives and ripped his nails off one by one. There was nothing he could offer them, nothing they would take from him.

He’d offered himself multiple times. They refused. He must’ve passed out—from pain, hunger, it didn’t matter. He clawed at the wood, his wrists, forearms, fingers, all broken from trying so hard to escape chains not meant for humans to fight against. It hadn’t stopped him—he’d been nearly off the platform, ripping the wood out piece by piece, when the worst of the rape happened in front of him.

It would’ve been too late.

Could’ve closed your eyes. Blocked it out. Let yourself pass out.

But if they were going to be tortured, the least he could do was not look away. And he hadn’t, not even when they’d nailed his hands to the boards, not for twenty-four hours, until everyone was dead, the village was razed, the acrid smell of smoke burning his nose, his lungs. The sounds of the chopper brought him no relief, because he knew they’d save him before the fire reached him.

The group of Army Rangers had been going to another mission, stumbled on the destruction by way of the fire. They’d come in without permission, the Ranger who’d saved him taking the brunt of the blame, or so Dare had heard later.

Dare hadn’t gone to the hearing for that soldier who’d saved him. It wouldn’t have helped either of them. In the next months, Dare was sure the soldier would be found dead under mysterious circumstances, another in a long line of men who’d interfered in something S8 related.

He turned his attention back to Adele, who waited with a carefully cultivated pretense of patience. “Why come now?”

She hadn’t seen him since right before that last mission. Hadn’t come to the hospital. Hadn’t called or written. And while he’d told himself it didn’t bother him, it had.

“Your sister’s in trouble.”

Half sister. One he’d never met before out of both necessity and her mother’s insistence. He didn’t even know if Avery Welsh knew he existed. “I thought she was well hidden.”

“We did too.”

“Where is she?”

“On her way to the federal penitentiary in New York—or a cemetery—if you don’t hurry.”

“Are you fucking shitting me?”

She twisted her mouth wryly. “I assure you, I’m not.”

“What did she do?”

“She killed two men,” Adele said calmly. “The police are coming for her—she’s about forty-eight hours away from being sent to jail for life. Of course, there are other men after her too, and they make the police look like the better option.”

So the men who were after her had tipped off the police. “She’s what—twenty-two?” A goddamned baby.

Adele nodded. “You’ll have a small window of opportunity to grab her in the morning at the apartment where she’s been hiding.”

“You want me to . . .” He stopped, turned, ran his hands through his hair and laughed in disbelief. Spoke to the sky. “She wants me to help a killer.”

“Your sister,” she corrected. “Is that a problem?”

He laughed again, a sound that was rusty from severe underuse.

Avery had been secreted away with her mother before she’d been born, the relationship between her mother and Darius brief once she found out what Darius’s livelihood was. But after that last mission, everything S8 related seemed to die down. Until Darius went missing. Until Dare was almost killed.

Until Adele showed up on his doorstep, dragging the past with her like an anchor.

“She’s a known fugitive and I’m supposed to hide her?” he asked now.

“She’s family—and she needs your protection.”

He turned swiftly, fighting the urge to pin her against a column of the porch with an arm across her neck. The animal inside him was always there, lurking barely below the surface, the wildness never easily contained. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Adele hadn’t moved. “Don’t make me spell everything out for you, Dare. You know you’re still wanted. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“I can’t do this. Find—”

“Someone else?” she finished, smiled wanly. “There’s no one but me and you, and I’m about to buy the farm, as they say. Cancer. The doctors give me a month at best.”

“I’m sorry, Adele, but—”

“I know what happened to you. But we protect our own.”

“I didn’t choose to be a part of your group.”

“No, you were lucky enough to be born into it,” she said calmly.

“Yeah, that’s me. Lucky.”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

He wanted to mutter, Barely, but didn’t. “Where’s my father, Adele?”

She simply shrugged. “He’s gone.”

“Yeah, gone.” Darius had been doing that since Dare was six years old.

“They’re all gone—the men, their families. All gone over the course of the last six years. Do you understand?”

He had known. Dare had kept an eye on the families left behind by S8 operatives. Even though Darius had growled at him to stay the hell out of it, he’d found a line of accidents and unexplained deaths. They were all spaced widely enough apart and made enough sense not to look suspicious to the average eye.

But he wasn’t the average eye. This was an S8 clean-house order, an expunging, and Dare knew he was still on that list and there was no escaping it.

For Avery, he would have to come out of hiding.

“Hiding won’t stop your connection with Section 8,” Adele said, as if reading his mind.

“I’m not hiding,” he ground out.

“Then go to Avery—show her this from Darius.”

She handed him a CD—the cover was a photograph of Avery. He glanced at the picture of the woman, and yeah, she resembled her father—the same arctic-frost blue eyes—but her hair was light, not dark. She was really pretty. Too innocent looking to have committed murder, but he’d learned over the years that looks could never be trusted. “And then what? I’m no good for this.”

“You’re better than you think.”

“Bullshit—I’m just the only one you’ve got.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

He looked at the picture stuck into the clear CD case again, and something deep inside him ached for his lost childhood. He hoped Avery had had one. “I’ll think about it.”

With that, she walked away, turned to him when she was halfway to her car and stood stock-still in the driveway. The back of his neck prickled. “Best think fast, Dare.”

It was part instinct, part the way Adele paused as if posing. She gave a small smile, a nod, her shoulders squared.

He sprang into action, yelled, “No!” as he leaped toward her, Sig drawn, but it was too late.