he didn’t know it yet. He was done.
But Jonathan wasn’t.
The fight wasn’t yet five seconds old, and 50 percent of the threat was neutralized.
The guy who remained outside to keep track of the other couple was slow to react. He seemed startled. But then he got his shit together and pushed his hostages aside. As the bad guy’s rifle swung up from low ready, Jonathan realized with more than a little irony that he had literally brought a knife to a gunfight.
Jonathan charged forward, using the dead attacker as a human battering ram. Driving his limp body forward, across the patio and past the margin of the surrounding grass, he shoved him into his partner to knock him off balance. In about two seconds, the bad guy with the gun would have all the advantage.
Jonathan slapped at the muzzle of that second rifle, too, pushing it out just the degree or two he needed not to be hit. With a fast and vicious horizontal swing of his blade, he slashed the attacker’s eyes. The man had just begun to scream when Jonathan thrust the point of his blade through the soft tissue under the attacker’s jaw and on into his brainstem.
The guy collapsed like an unstrung marionette.
Jonathan’s heart hammered in his chest as he let the guy drop. He returned to his fighter’s stance, ready for the next threat. The young couple embraced each other, seemingly ready to die at Jonathan’s hand.
“Edwards, right?” Jonathan asked. “Lori and Hunter.”
They nodded in unison. Or maybe it was a shiver.
“W-we met at the pool,” Hunter stammered.
“Yeah,” Jonathan said. The night had turned peaceful again. Sounds of distress continued to roll toward him from the direction of the clubhouse—some crying and an occasional gunshot—but the part of the world he could see was all moonlight and luminescent surf.
He turned back toward the room, toward the shattered glass and the bedroom beyond. “Gail, are you all right?” She had not moved. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands at her mouth. “Gail?”
* * *
She was still trying to process what she had just seen. She understood that she’d fallen in love with a crusader whose combat skills had been honed over nearly two decades of training and experience with the most respected elite Special Forces unit in the world. Yes, she’d seen him kill before. Indeed, she’d killed right alongside him. But those incidents had all involved firearms and extraordinary marksmanship.
Killing with a knife seemed so personal, and Jonathan had wielded the blade with such expert precision that it took her breath away. Frightened her. The look on his face as he sliced and slashed the life out of those men was feral and furious. Some of it remained even now as he looked at her and asked if she’d been hurt. He seemed oblivious to the blood spatter on his naked chest and arms and even his face. He seemed . . . focused.
“Are you hurt?” he said.
Suddenly aware that she’d been frozen in place, she dropped her hands and straightened her posture. “I’m fine,” she said. It was time for her to become part of the solution. “What the hell just happened?”
She’d meant her question to be rhetorical, but he answered it, anyway. “Beyond the obvious, I have no idea,” he said. “It would appear that the resort is under attack.” As he spoke, he stooped to the body closest to the door. He wrapped his left fist around the reinforced tab, which existed on most tactical vests for the very purpose of dragging wounded comrades, and started pulling him back into the room.
“Oh, my God, what are you doing?” This from Lori, who seemed to be rejoining the real world.
“They’re sure to realize that they’re missing a couple of operators,” Jonathan said. “Makes no sense to leave them where people can trip over them.” He shot a look back toward the frightened couple. “You’re welcome to help.”
The couple remained frozen in each other’s arms.
As Jonathan dragged his guy across the tile floor of the bedroom toward the big bathroom, Gail slid past him and went for the other one.
By the time she’d made it to the patio and taken a grip on the other corpse, she tossed a glance back inside. She saw that Jonathan was depositing his guy at the base of the ornate claw-foot tub, probably with the intent of closing the door and turning on a light. That’s what she’d do.
“You okay with that?” Jonathan called back to her.
She found the tab between the dead guy’s shoulder blades and grunted as she hefted his shoulders. In the moonlight, the massive wound under the attacker’s jaw disgusted her and she looked away. “I’m fine,” she said. “I can drag so long as I don’t have to carry.” She shot a look to Hunter. “No, really,” she said. “I’ve got this.” The irony missed him entirely.
Several years ago, things had gone terribly wrong for Gail during an op, and she’d spent altogether too long feeling sorry for herself. Under these circumstances, it felt good to know that the strength she’d been working so hard to rebuild had finally returned. She sure as hell had come a long way since throwing away her cane for the last time just a little while ago.
“Next time you suggest a romantic getaway,” she said, “I believe I’ll think twice.” She looked up and hoped that Jonathan could see that she’d tried to manage a smile.
He stood over the man he’d killed, straddling him and staring down, his knife still gripped in his fist. “Hey, Dig?” she asked as she pulled.
He snapped out of wherever he’d been. “Oh, shit, Gail, I’m sorry. Let me help.” He started toward her.
“No,” she said. For some reason, it was important to her to finish this business of dragging the body. She wasn’t rejecting Digger’s help. She was rejecting anyone’s help. “I just wanted to know if you’re okay.”
“Not a scratch,” he said.
“You’re still holding your knife.”
“These assholes tried to kill us.”
She was crossing the foot of the bed now. “Technically, I think they were trying to take us hostage.”
“They pointed a rifle at you.”
Something in his tone struck an odd chord and she let the dead guy drop as she stood. From here, separated only by inches, she saw something else in Jonathan’s expression that she’d never seen before. Fear.
* * *
“But you’re still holding your knife.”
Truth was, Jonathan knew that the blade and release mechanisms were fouled with gore, and he didn’t want to put that nastiness into his pocket. But he did it, anyway. He thumbed the release button on the locking blade, folded it, and slid the clip back into its designated place.
When both corpses were in the bathroom, Jonathan closed the door and turned on the shower light. It was the dimmest of the options on the five-switch panel, but it allowed enough light to see what they were doing.
The
