MY MISSION TO make my brother more comfortable with the surprise sister who’d fallen into his life currently involved a game of 20 Questions while we basked in the backyard in the warmth of the midday sun. The game meant I had to do a fair bit of lying, but I did want to smooth over any awkwardness between us if I could.
And having Carter on my side would make fishing for information about the family much easier.
“Are you a DC or Marvel girl?” he asked for his eighth question, stretching out his lanky legs in the lawn chair. My mom and grandmother sat at the outdoor dining table a few feet away, carrying on with their own conversation about gardening and cooking, which I couldn’t say I’d have had much more to contribute to.
I thought back to everything I knew about those specific franchises. Noelle had sometimes included superhero movies in the rotation of media available to me, but I’d only watched a few. She’d cautioned me that they gave an over-the-top impression of the world, and that was exactly why I’d never totally connected with them. I knew how nitty and gritty tackling your opponents actually was. And you definitely didn’t get points for flashy costumes.
I didn’t think Carter would appreciate that answer, though. I considered the films I had seen and the bits of pop culture I’d managed to absorb over the years. “DC, I guess. I like Batman.” At least he had the sense to keep his costume black, even if the cape and the pointed ears were a bit much. And he used training and gadgets rather than superpowers.
My brother crinkled his nose. “Really? More than Iron Man? Or Black Panther? Or Thor and Loki?”
I shrugged. “I’m not much of a superhero fan in general. But maybe I’ve missed some good ones. What about you?”
He let out a scoffing sound that had Iris glancing over as if worried she might have to defend me from his teenage scorn. “I’m a Marvel fan, obviously,” he said as if the question wasn’t even worth being asked. “But you know the rules. You have to come up with original questions.”
“Do you prefer baseball or football?” I asked, referencing what seemed to be the two most common sports in the country. From what I’d seen, they appealed to very different people with different temperaments—levels of patience, enjoyment of physical aggression.
He opened his mouth to reply at the same moment as my phone released a loud chime in my pocket. “Baseball,” he said as I reached for the device. “I played in middle school, but Dad didn’t want me to be out in public without bodyguards so much, and it started to feel weird having them tagging along for the games in high school, so I just stopped.”
I made a sympathetic face. Even in this family, my life wouldn’t have been completely my own. At least Damien hadn’t tried to enforce that level of security on me so far.
“That must be really hard,” I said. “Does it bother you?”
“Meh. It was just for fun, not anything really important. I had lots of extracurriculars closer to home. Graduated near the top of my class and got a spot at my top pick college, so it all worked out in the end.”
I would have asked more about his plans for college, except I looked at my phone then, and my heart stopped. Blaze had texted me a brief message. Attack at hotel. Stay alert.
An attack in our hotel? Was it happening now? I had to assume that if Blaze had been doing anything other than fighting for his life when he’d composed that message, he’d have explained in more detail—or outright called me. Shit.
“Hold on a second,” I said to Carter, and dialed Blaze’s number. My heart thumped as the line on the other end rang, but he didn’t pick up. When I tried Julius, I got kicked to voicemail too.
My chest was constricting. The Chaos Crew was under attack while I was sitting here making small talk and sipping lemonade. Who the hell had come at them now?
I stood from my chair with the burst of adrenaline and anger, maybe faster than was wise. Grandma Ruby went quiet as I stepped back and away from the table. “My goodness, Rachel.”
“I need to leave,” I blurted out, and scrambled to compose myself slightly more with an appropriate excuse. “A friend of mine had her boyfriend break up with her suddenly. She’s a mess.” Personal issues, especially dating ones, seemed to get the most sympathy from the average person.
“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Grandma Ruby said. “At your age, the men come and go.”
Iris shot her a look. “At Rachel’s age, I was engaged to Damien.” She nodded to me. “We’ve been monopolizing a lot of your time. If your friend needs your support, you should be there for her.”
Her understanding response added a pang of guilt to the whirlwind of emotions inside me, but protecting the guys came before anything else. “Thanks. I’ll call when I have the chance.”
I managed to keep a measured pace as I walked around the house, but as soon as I was out of view of the backyard, I bolted down the street and across it. When I spotted a car in a secluded enough spot that I could break in and hotwire it without being seen, I dashed to it. There wasn’t time to wait for an Uber and another driver’s law-abiding approach to the rules of the road.
I had the door open in a matter of seconds and the engine running in several more. As I tore out of the driveway, my teeth gritted.
Who would have attacked the crew here? We were so far from home that none of their usual enemies would have been close enough… although I supposed I didn’t know how many enemies they might have made during their missions across the country.
Was the organization behind the household making another stab at capturing me? But then, why wouldn’t they have come at me here at the Maliks’ rather than attacking the guys?
Whoever it was must have had a death wish, because when I found them, they wouldn’t stand a chance. If they harmed a single hair on the guys’ heads, I would end their lives slowly and painfully.
Nobody messed with my men.
I tore through the city, cutting off other vehicles and racing through red lights until I finally reached the hotel. After slamming to a stop around the corner, I yanked up the parking brake and hurtled inside.
I rushed into the hotel and past the receptionist, who greeted me with a smile, having no idea that an attack was happening in this very building. If it was contained to our suite, it was contained intentionally, either because our enemies were trying to avoid drawing outside attention or because the guys didn’t want to put unnecessary people in danger by making it a spectacle.
It could have been either option, I realized. I had no idea who they were facing or what I’d be walking into. I was nearly unarmed and certainly unprotected with no bulletproof vest or padding to speak of. I was about to rush into a potential bloodbath with only the small blade that I always kept at my hip.
There wasn’t any question that I would, though. The only weapons I really needed were my bare hands.
I didn’t bother waiting for the elevator. Dashing into the stairwell, I stormed up all five flights to the penthouse we’d taken over. The guys had picked this building carefully for discretion, and the soundproofing between the floors was good enough that I didn’t pick up the sound of gunshots until I was bursting out into the short hallway that led to the suite entrance.
At least they were still shooting. That meant someone was alive.
The damn apartment door was locked. Swearing under my breath, I fished out my key card, jabbed it into the slot, and barged inside into what could only be described as chaos.
Several bodies already slumped on the floor in the suite’s living room, but there were still more attackers grappling with the Chaos Crew around the room.
My gaze caught on Talon first. He was whipping back and forth between three opponents, fending off their weapons. If he’d had a gun to begin with, he’d lost it in the fray. Right now he was fighting with… knitting needles.
I’d have laughed if the situation hadn’t looked so dire. His expression was taut with strain. I jumped in, clicking open my small knife as I leapt. I plunged it into the back of the nearest man, jabbing it deep enough to pierce his heart through his ribs. I’d never carry a knife too small to accomplish that.
He crumpled, and the man next to him spun with a gun raised. In the instant before Talon leapt to my defense, the other man… hesitated, staring at my face. He could have taken a shot—and I would have dodged it—but it was almost as if he didn’t think he should.
Then Talon was snapping the guy’s wrist with a crack of shattering bone.
As I whirled, I spotted Blaze holding his own against two men near the sofa. Another man barreled into view and paused at the sight of me, a lot like the gunman had.
What the heck was up with these guys? Had they never fought a woman before?
Well, they were about to find out that I was an equal opponent.
I whipped the knife I’d withdrawn from my first kill through the air, and it hit the man right in the middle of the forehead. As he slumped over, Blaze managed to get in a shot at one of his attackers, who stumbled backward clutching his gut.
I glanced past Blaze and found Julius fighting three men, Garrison at his back fending off another. Four more men were just clambering through the shattered windows that let in a brisk breeze.
I didn’t know who to help first. All of them were getting overwhelmed, and I’d given up my one weapon.
I dropped to the ground and grabbed at the waists of the corpses for anything I could use. My groping hand found a gun. I quickly checked the magazine before pulling back the slide and finding one bullet already in the chamber. Two remained in the magazine. Three bullets total. I’d need to be so careful about how I used them.
A loud groan from across the room caught my attention. I watched as Julius fell to his knees, holding his side as one man circled behind him with a blade and another withdrew a pistol from his hip.
A silent wail of protest filled my head. I didn’t think. I reacted.
I lifted the gun I’d pilfered and fired at the man with the pistol. The bullet lodged itself in the side of the man’s head. I took down the man with the knife a second later.
Then a body slammed into me from the side. But even as I fell, I saw that Julius had heaved back to his feet. He’d be okay.
I rolled as I toppled and yanked my gun hand around with good enough aim to fire a shot into my attacker’s chest before he could do any more damage. He went limp on top of me. I shoved him off, snatching the knife he’d held and swiveling to prepare for another onslaught.
My efforts to thin our enemies’ numbers had helped. No new attackers careened through the window, and the men were making short work of the remaining foes. I slashed one man who was raising his gun toward Blaze across the throat and stabbed the knife deep into the back of another’s head. A few more shots rang out, and then it was just the five of us, a little bleeding and battered, standing over a heap of corpses.
Garrison caught my eye with a quick nod and a grimace that could have either been acknowledgment of the shitty situation or his disgust at all the gore. He crouched to sift through the men’s pockets. “Let’s see if we can find out who these assholes are and why they came after us.”
“Check fast,” Julius demanded. “We’re leaving in five minutes. Get your shit so we can get out before the cops get here.”
His hand was clamped to the wound on his side. Blood seeped across his shirt. His gaze caught mine, and my heart lurched all over again at the thought of how close he’d come to dying.
“You should bandage that,” I said. “No good avoiding arrest if you bleed out.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said with typical unshakeable confidence, but he did march into the bathroom and tear a strip off one of the towels to tie around his waist.
Blaze was grabbing his laptop and assorted other devices off the desk, shoving them into a large satchel. “I texted you so that you could keep an eye out for danger and avoid it where you were,” he said to me, his tone dry but with a hint of frustration.
“Well, I’m happy I came back,” I retorted, “or you all could have been killed.”
He made a face, but none of them disputed that fact.
I only had a small bag of belongings that I refused to leave behind, so I rushed to the side of my bed, stepping over corpses as I went. I always kept my things ready to go at a moment’s notice anyway, so all I had to do was sling the bag over my shoulder.
“You don’t have any idea who these people are?” I asked over my shoulder.
“They’re no one I recognize,” Talon muttered.
“And they didn’t stop to introduce themselves first,” Blaze added. “Very impolite.”
“I have a hunch.” Garrison lifted a phone in the air. “Because there’s an interesting text message on this man’s home screen.”
I hurried over. “What does it say?”
Garrison cleared his throat. “Don’t touch the daughter. Who do you think that could be?”
I stopped in my tracks. Obviously I was the only person who usually hung out with the crew who could be anyone’s daughter. And the way some of the men had shied away from attacking me loomed large in my mind.
Our previous attackers had sometimes gone easier on me, but only because they’d been looking to take me captive rather than murder me. One of the men from the household’s organization had outright told me that they had permission to kill me if I proved too difficult to take alive.
This was different.
“Who would have wanted to kill all of you and not hurt me?” I said, and then the thought clicked into place in my head at the same moment as the guys’ expressions stiffened with similar realizations.
“Who would think of you foremost as being a ‘daughter’?” Julius said. “Does your father know where you’ve been staying? Has he given any indication that he knows you’ve been staying with other people or that he’s concerned about the company you’re keeping?”
I shook my head, my pulse kicking up a notch all over again. “No, I haven’t gotten any impression of that at all.” But Damien Malik did hate criminals, and he was determined to protect his long-lost daughter. Still… “It doesn’t totally make sense, though, does it? It’s pretty convenient that the guy left that text visible on his screen. Every other time we’ve been attacked, our enemies have been more careful not to have any identifying info on them.”
“That’s true,” Blaze said, but he was frowning. “Sometimes people make mistakes, though. And if these people came from Malik, they’d be a different breed from the mercenaries who took us on before.”
I rubbed my forehead. Adrenaline was still surging through my veins, making my thoughts race back and forth through my head. I didn’t know what to make of this when I could barely focus on anything at all.
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Julius said firmly. “We’ll figure this out, but we need to get out of here before someone finds this mess.”
“Where are we going to go?” Blaze asked, holding his satchel and suitcase.
Julius took a deep breath before he spoke. “We’ll want someplace more secure than a typical hotel. There’s a local group that owes us a favor. We’ll go to them and see what they can do for us.”
