Targeted (Firebrand Book 1) (31 page)

“I’m going after him,” Ash said. He dropped to his hands and knees and called down. “Max, don’t move. I’m coming for you. Don’t move. Do you hear me?”

“Y-yes.”

The panic-laced voice made Ash break out in a cold sweat. He cast one last agonized glance at Lainey, and they stared into each other’s eyes for a split-second before he lowered his legs over the side of the cliff and searched for a toe hold. Finding a small cleft in the rock, he dug the toe of his boot into the hole with one foot while he searched for another with the other foot.

When he found one, he smiled at Lainey who had her fist jammed against her lips.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll get him.” Lainey nodded and didn’t blink, but he saw doubt in her eyes.

The toe of his boot slipped into another crevice, and he lowered himself. Now he hung on the side of a mountain and could no longer see the ground above. Forcing himself to concentrate on his descent, he inched his way down. From time to time he called out to Max.

“I’m coming, Max,” he said over and over. “Hang tight till I get there.”

“I-I will, Dad,” Max replied each time Ash called out to him.

Ash’s stomach clenched at the tremor in his son’s voice as he lowered himself down the side of the mountain. When his feet touched the ledge, he breathed a sigh of relief and braced himself against the side of the cliff. Holding onto the rocks with one hand, he stretched the other arm out toward his son.

“Take my hand, son, and move slowly toward me. When you get beside me, put your arms around my neck, climb on my back, and wrap your legs around my waist. No sudden movements, though. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes,” Max stammered and clutched at Ash’s hand.

He eased over the ledge until he stood beside Ash. “Now climb on my back,” Ash said.

Max hesitated. “I-I c-can’t. I’m scared.”

Ash swallowed the fear rising in his throat. “I need you to be a brave soldier, Max. Think of Heracles. He was probably more afraid than you are now, but he did what he had to do. You’re a part of Firebrand now, and that’s what we do, forget our fear. You can do it, too. Now put your arms around my neck and climb on my back.”

Max took a deep breath and reached out to Ash. His arms slipped around Ash’s neck, and then he slowly hooked one leg around Ash’s waist before easing himself on his back and clamping both legs tightly around his father. Max pressed his body close to Ash and tightened his hold with his arms and legs. “Is this okay, Dad?”

Ash wished he could reach out and touch his son, but he needed to keep all movements to a minimum. “You’re fine, Son. Now I’m going to climb back up. Keep a tight hold and don’t let go. I won’t drop you.”

Max laid his head against Ash’s shoulder, and he could feel the boy’s pounding heartbeat through his shirt. As he reached upward for a hold, he took a deep breath. “Max,” he said, “I’ve never told you about the time my brother and I climbed almost to the top of the St. Claire water tank.”

“No.” Max’s muffled voice drifted to his ear.

Ash reached for a hold in the rocks and pulled the two of them upward. “I was about your age, and Richard was eight years older. I told him I could climb up the ladder all the way to the top of that 130 foot tall tower. Richard was always afraid of heights, and he told me not to do it. But I was a know-it-all kid and didn’t listen to him. I got about halfway up and froze. I couldn’t go higher, and I couldn’t climb down. I just hung onto that ladder.”

“What did you do?”

Ash stopped climbing for a moment and took a deep breath before he continued his ascent. Although his body trembled in protest at the exertion, he inched higher and kept speaking in a calm voice. “I waited for Richard. I knew he would come, and he did. He told me I could climb down, but I didn’t think I could. He reached up and nudged my foot to the rung below where I stood, and I started to lower myself. Richard talked to me all the way back to the ground.”

“Were you scared?”

Ash’s lungs were about to burst, but he could now see the edge of the cliff and Lainey anxiously staring down. “Yeah, I was, but I finally reached the ground. That’s when I realized that even though Richard was afraid of heights he’d come after me because I was scared.”

“Was he mad at you?”

Ash inhaled and reached higher. “I’d never seen him so mad. He told me I’d scared him to death, and I was going to pay for it.”

“What did he do?”

“He punched me in the nose and told me if I ever pulled a stunt like that again he’d tell our dad.”

Max laughed as Ash grabbed hold of the edge of the cliff, pulled the two of them over the side, and collapsed on the ground with Max still wrapped around him. Lainey sank to her knees beside them and grabbed Max. Her body shook with sobs as she hugged him to her.

As Ash lay on the ground panting and gulping deep breaths to calm his racing heart, he stared at his family. The reality of what might have happened washed over him, and his stomach roiled. The three of them were safe, and that’s all that mattered right now. Lainey reached out toward him, and he enveloped both of them in his arms as he buried his face in Lainey’s hair.

He rocked them gently back and forth and said a quick prayer of thanks that they had come through their ordeal and were together again. His gaze drifted across the rock to Phillip’s body that still lay face down where he had fallen. Releasing Lainey and Max, he moved over to Phillip  and turned him over.

Almost immediately Phillip’s eyelids fluttered open, and he looked up into Ash’s face and groaned in pain. Ash blinked in surprise to see he was still alive and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Take it easy. I’ll call for help.”

Phillip coughed and grabbed at his stomach. “They won’t get here he time,” he rasped.

Ash stared down at him. “I don’t understand why you would do this to me and my family. We’ve trusted our lives to each other in so many battles. Did you hate all of us in Firebrand so much that you’d betray everything we’ve stood for?”

Phillip glared up at him. “You think you’ve won, don’t you? Well, I have news for you. It isn’t over yet.”

Before Ash could ask what he meant, the whirring of an approaching helicopter filled the air. He glanced up and jumped to his feet at what he saw. A man aiming an assault rifle in their direction leaned out the open door of the helicopter. Even at this distance he knew who it was. At last he had come face to face with Eduardo Diaz.

“Lainey! Max!” Ash yelled. “Get to the other side of the wall now!”

Lainey looked up at the helicopter, jumped to her feet, and pulled Max toward the wall. They scrambled over the top and knelt on the other side against the stones as Ash grabbed his gun from the ground and planted his feet against the rocky surface of the cliff. He raised the gun and waited as the helicopter came closer. He would have only a second to react, and he couldn’t move too quickly.

The helicopter flew straight toward him until it was close enough that he could make out the cruel sneer pulling at Eduardo Diaz’s mouth. The cartel leader raised his gun to shoot, but Ash fired first, his bullet directed at the pilot.

The helicopter took a dive downward as the pilot fell against the controls. The sudden movement jerked Diaz backward, and the gun fell from his hands. Ash saw him push the pilot’s body away from the flight control stick and jerk on it. The helicopter surged upward and then began to spiral out of control.

Ash watched as it plunged toward the ground and exploded upon impact. All he could do for a moment was stare down at the flames engulfing the man who’d set out to kill the ones he loved. Then he turned back to Phillip and knelt beside him.

“Diaz is dead,” he said.

A slow smile pulled at Phillip’s mouth. “It’s still not over. This is just a stalemate. Firebrand is going down.”

Ash frowned and clamped his hands down on Phillip’s shoulders. “Stalemate? What do you mean?”
      

Phillip exhaled a deep breath and his eyes glazed over. Ash sat there staring down at the man he’d trusted for years, and he wondered how it could all have come to this sad end. And what did Phillip’s last words mean? He felt for a pulse in Phillip’s neck and finding none, he pulled out his cell phone. His first call was to 911 to report what had occurred at the summit of Devil’s Courthouse, and the second was to Reese Alexander.

When he disconnected the last call, he climbed over the wall, dropped to the ground by Lainey and Max, and hugged them against him. He had no idea what Phillip’s last words meant, but for the present all he cared about was that his family had survived.

He gathered them closer as the three of them waited for the first responders to arrive.

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Lainey couldn’t quit shaking, and she hugged Max closer as she laid her head against Ash’s chest. He tightened his arms around her and Max and bowed his head until his cheek rested against hers. “It’s over now, Lainey. We’re safe.”

She tried to speak, but she couldn’t. All she could think about was the anguish of seeing Max disappear over the side of the cliff. In that moment she thought her whole world had fallen with him, and she’d had no rational thought about her safety when she charged at Sophia. Now the horror of what she had done was beginning to filter into her mind.

“I-I’ve committed murder,” she mumbled.

Ash’s lips grazed her cheek. “No, it was self-defense, not murder. Sophia was an evil person who’d been hired to kill all of us, and you stopped her. I was so scared when you ran forward that I thought my heart was going to stop. I’ve never seen anything so brave in my life, but don’t ever do anything like that again unless you want to see me drop dead.”

His teasing tone made her smile, and she glanced up at him. “I hope we never go through anything like this again. I think I held my breath the whole time you and Max were on the side of that mountain. I knew I couldn’t live if I lost the two people I loved.”

He smiled. “It’s all over now, Lainey.”

Max squirmed in her arms and looked up at her. “Mom, can we go home now?”

She smiled and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “Yes, it’s time to go home.”

He looked at Ash. “Dad, will you come with us?”

Ash swallowed, and his eyes filled with moisture. “I’d like that very much, but it’s up to your mom.”

Lainey reached up and caressed the side of his face. “If I’d been smarter eleven years ago, I would have realized that home is anywhere you are, and I would have gone wherever you had to be. But I chose something else, and I’ve spent years regretting that decision. Now it’s time for us to go home together.”

Ash bent his head and brushed a kiss across her lips while their son snuggled closer to them. It had been a long journey from that trailside shelter to the summit of Devil’s Courthouse, but they had survived it. And now they were all together where they belonged.

Epilogue

One Year Later

Ash sat at the dining room table and glanced around the room where he’d eaten so many meals with his father and Richard. He closed his eyes for a moment and could almost hear their voices as they discussed some business deal while he sat impatient to get the meal over so he could get out of there and meet his friends. It all seemed so long ago, and yet he could remember it all as if it were yesterday.

He’d had a lot of memories to contend with in the year since he and Lainey had been married in the meditation garden at the Firebrand Training Center. Some good, some bad. But they’d dealt with them together, and life had settled into a routine that once he might have thought dull and boring. Now every morning he awoke excited and eager to see what the new day would bring.

Much to his surprise he’d found it easy to fit back into life as a part of the DeHan family and assume the duties his father had once shouldered. The hardest thing he’d done, however, had been to take his father’s seat at the head of the dining room table, but Lainey had insisted. As the husband and father of the family, it was where she wanted him.

For a while after returning he’d been unable to put the events that had brought him home last spring out of his mind. He still thought of Joe and Lisa as well as the three victims who’d died at the hospital and wished he could have saved them somehow, but it hadn’t been possible. One good thing, though, was that Tex Daniels and William had both recovered from their wounds. Tex was back at Firebrand, and William was once again advising Lainey as she ran DeHan Enterprises.

Despite Eduard Diaz’s death, the cartel had continued to operate, but the authorities were committed to continuing their work until they were defeated. As Chris White had told him last time they talked, “At least now the cartel knows that they aren’t invincible, and they’re feeling the heat.”

As time had passed, though, the fear that had ruled their lives then had begun to fade. The only thing that bothered him still was the fact that he had never been able to make sense of Phillip’s last words.

Ash’s forehead wrinkled as he recalled that day on the rocky cliff. ‘Stalemate,’ Phillip had said. That word implied that what had happened at Devil’s Courthouse hadn’t been the end of the vendetta but was simply a time out for a contest that ended in a draw. Since nothing had happened in the last year, he’d begun to think that perhaps Phillip’s last words were uttered simply to frighten him.