He tumbled backward, dead before he hit the sand.
Her gorge rose. Unfortunately, she had no time to indulge in the esophageal eruption she so richly deserved because Mason cried, “No! Hold your fire!”
She spun to see the commodore had wiggled from Mason’s grip and now stood in front of him, breathing heavily.
“Please don’t, Commodore,” Mason pleaded with the man when the commodore pointed a matte-black handgun at Mason’s chest. “The only way outta here for you is a body bag unless you lower your weapon. And haven’t enough died already?” He gestured to the carnage of corpses littering the ground.
Alex’s knees ached where the grains of sand dug into her flesh. She thought if she squinted, she could see the air vibrating between the two men.
“I knew this island would be the death of me,” Bagheri said in his thick accent.
“It doesn’t hafta be.” Mason’s expression was imploring.
“Oh, but you see…it does.” An expression of fatalism drifted across the commodore’s face. “I long to be reunited with my wife and children. But first, if there is a hell, I must see you in it.”
The light of the moon cast the tendons in Bagheri’s hand in stark relief as he began to squeeze his trigger. Alex’s mouth stretched wide over a silent scream. But before a round could belch from the end of the commodore’s weapon, gunfire once again blasted from the tree line.
The old man grunted when two bullets plowed into him. Slowly, almost gracefully, he sank to his knees, his weapon slipping from his lax fingers.
“Hettie,” he wheezed and then whispered something in Farsi before toppling sideways into the sand.
This time, Alex couldn’t contain herself. Leaning over, she retched onto the ground.
“Fuck!” Mason bellowed. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Wiping the back of her hand over her mouth, Alex looked up to find him standing over the commodore’s lifeless body. His face full of anguish.
“Mason…” She jumped to her feet and ran to him.
“Do you see now?” He waved a hand at the dead men. “Do you understand now that this is my life?”
The shattering heartache in his eyes cut her to the core. She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away to run agitated fingers through his hair.
“None of this is your fault,” she told him quietly.
“Isn’t it?” His tone was packed with misery and self-loathing. “No matter what I do, no matter how long I’m out, death and violence follow me.” His voice cracked on the last word, and Alex felt a small fissure open up in her heart.
“You can’t be guilty of something you can’t control,” she assured him quietly. “As for death and violence following you…it follows all of us. Just ask the victims of mass shootings. Ask anyone who’s been mugged or raped or beaten for being a little different. It’s a violent world, Mason.”
“Those things you’re talking about are different,” he insisted, his voice full of misery.
“How so?” she challenged. “Innocent people get targeted by evil men with diabolical axes to grind every day. Just because you spent most of your adult life fighting for your country doesn’t mean—”
That’s as far as she got before a bloodcurdling scream rent the air, raising every hair on Alex’s head. Whipping around, she saw Chrissy stumbling toward the trail that snaked through the trees toward the back of the island. Wolf’s name was a desperate cry on her lips.
Alex blinked and then quickly realized Doc and Romeo had materialized from the tree line. Which meant…
Oh god! Oh, no!
“Chrissy!” she shouted, breaking into a sprint after the woman, her heart broken at the thought of what must have happened to Wolf.
Alex wasn’t professionally trained in the nuances of the human brain and how it dealt with trauma, but she knew Chrissy would be better off never seeing whatever awaited her at the back of the island.
Thud, thud, thud! The sound of the men’s footfalls on the sand as they quickly fell into step behind her matched the pace of her lungs as she ran after Chrissy.
“Chrissy!” she screamed again. But Chrissy didn’t miss a step, kicking up great plumes of sand as she continued to dodge and dart up the trail.
“We put out a Mayday the moment we heard the first shot. Didn’t you hear it?” Doc demanded of Mason.
“My fucking walkie-talkie died,” Mason replied, sounding as if he was hot on Alex’s heels. “We gotta get better comms.”
“Damn.” Doc panted with exertion. Then, “Sorry we didn’t help sooner. By the time we were halfway to investigating the shot, we saw the masked ass clowns skulking toward the house. Once they started rounding up everyone in the front yard, we figured we should wait until—” He cut himself off. “Jesus, none of that matters now. Wolf, man.” His voice broke. “Wolf.”
“I know,” Mason chuffed, and Alex couldn’t bear it.
To hear these men, the toughest sonsofguns she’d ever know, choking back tears was too much. Her own eyes filled.
Stepping to the side of the trail, she pressed a hand to the stitch in her side. “Go!” she told them. “Stop her before she sees him!”
Chrissy had legs like a gazelle. Alex’s little stumps had no hope of catching her.
Doc blasted past, his strides eating up the trail. Romeo was almost as quick. But Mason stopped to place a hand on Alex’s shoulder.
Sweat slicked his forehead. “Y’okay?”
“Fine,” she assured him around the Texas-sized lump in her throat. “Go. I’ll catch up.”
He hesitated. Then, with a determined dip of his chin, he gave her arm a squeeze and sprinted up the trail.
Once she caught her breath, she jogged the remaining distance. The entire time, she thought of Wolf. His cheesy quotes. The way he sang the wrong song lyrics. How he’d made her laugh the first time she caught a fish and was too scared to take it off the hook.
Such a good man, she thought, wetness making her vision swim.
She stumbled to a stop when she reached the end of the trail and saw her friends not crouched around Wolf’s body, but huddled behind a stand of trees. Her chin jerked back in consternation when Mason stepped onto the beach, the AR-15 and handgun he’d snatched off the dead Iranians both held high in the air.
What in the world?
Scrambling up behind the group, she touched Doc’s elbow. Just his elbow since his rifle was up and at the ready as he sighted down its length. “What’s he doing?” she whispered.