Amaryllis avoided his eyes. If Billy had listened to them, he’d heard a lot more than her encounters with Owens. Malichai sent her a wicked little grin, hoping to lighten her mood. Hell, he needed to lighten his mood. He tried to think back. He’d used the jammer because it was ingrained in him, but he always took it with him just in case someone got into his room. He’d slipped it into his pocket. He’d had sex with Amaryllis and then talked about Owen.
“I was at the beach today, minding my own business, reading, when I was contacted by one of Callendine’s men,” Rubin announced as he continued to assess Malichai’s leg. He was at his calf now. “He clearly was a soldier. Army. I sent his photo to Joe to have him identified. He came back under Callendine’s command. A man by the name of Sergeant Kolt Michigan. He offered me the job of burning down the bed-and-breakfast. This time, he didn’t include Amaryllis or Marie. They switched it to two of the guests. Men by the names of Jay Carpenter and Burnell Strathom. Art dealers out of LA. They wanted them murdered first and their bodies found inside. I was to anonymously call it in. While the police are inside examining the bodies, they’d like the entire bed-and-breakfast to go up in flames.”
“Rubin,” Amaryllis said softly. “What is wrong with those people? Billy had to have told them that there’s two babies in the basement.”
“That’s why Billy tried warning us to get out, Amaryllis,” Malichai reminded her. “He wanted Trap and his family gone, and me to take you out. He didn’t want us to be harmed.”
“Just everyone else,” she said. “I just don’t understand.”
Frankly, neither did he. Growing up on the streets, Malichai had seen a lot of things that didn’t make sense to him, choices made by people who didn’t need to make those choices. He understood fear, hunger, desperation, fighting to stay alive, but throwing away homes and families, children, and wives or husbands, intolerance, none of that made sense to him. Not as a child, and not as an adult. He fought for his country, but mostly he fought for the people in his country so they had freedom to make choices. He just hoped they’d be good ones. Murdering the innocent wasn’t a good choice any way you looked at it.
“I did offer my services to Cayenne and Trap,” Rubin admitted, sounding somewhat embarrassed. As always, his voice was very low and soft, yet those in the room could easily hear him. There was something about the velvet voice that was soothing. Maybe it was the healer in him. Malichai could never quite figure it out. Rubin was both extremely lethal and yet a miracle worker when it came to saving lives.
“They took me up on it. I was able to help Drusilla, the little girl, develop her lungs faster. I just managed to speed things up, they were already well on their way to being ready to go. I wanted them to be able to take those babies and get out of here. Trap is going to move them tonight.”
Malichai was relieved to hear it. He could see that same relief on Amaryllis’s face. He didn’t make the mistake of suggesting she go with Trap and Cayenne, although the urge to do so was strong.
“What about Cayenne?” Joe asked. “Did she allow you to heal her?”
Rubin sighed. “She did, but Trap all but forced her. I don’t feel comfortable in those situations. Cayenne needs to come to us on her terms. She feels safer in the swamp and she’s more apt to cooperate when she’s there. She has Nonny and Pepper there and she knows they’ll have her back. She hasn’t quite secured those same bonds with everyone else the way she has with the two of them. It will happen eventually. She’s trying to be open to it. I think the babies will help. She definitely wants to go home and be with Nonny, but it wouldn’t be wise for the little ones to fly yet.”
“Where will they go?” Amaryllis asked.
“Shylah and Draden will escort the family to the safe house and then come back here to help us with Callendine. Trap and Cayenne will stay there until the babies are old enough to fly,” Ezekiel said.
“When are you supposed to kill Burnell and Jay?” Malichai asked.
“Day after tomorrow is the big day, the opening of the Ideas for Peace convention. This attack here seems to coincide nicely with it,” Rubin said. His hands were still moving up Malichai’s thigh with infinite slowness.
Malichai tried to read his expression, but Rubin was impossible to read. He always had been, even when he’d been a young teenager and he’d first joined the Fortunes brothers on the street, so long ago. He’d been equally as quiet then, and nearly as skilled with a weapon.
“I’ve been going over the plans for the convention center with Zeke,” Joe said. “We’re going to have to make more assumptions than we’d like. They’ll want to take out the support beams to bring down the buildings. If they can collapse them at the same time, they’ll get what they want—the maximum amount of people killed.”
“We’ve got help with this one,” Ezekiel assured. “Team Two has arrived from Montana, and the SEALs will be helping us as well. The convention center is huge. It isn’t like we can handle this on our own. And given that we expect the attack to happen in two days’ time, we don’t have a lot of time to prepare.”
“Is there a way to stop the conference?” Amaryllis asked.
Ezekiel shook his head. “I’m afraid not. We have no concrete evidence that the conference is actually the target. We’ve got others looking at some of the political targets around the city that would be more likely. Even the base would be a better target. It’s confirmed that there are no political figures invited or appearing even on opening day.”
“We can only hope we’re wrong,” Joe said, “but if we’re not, we’ll be prepared.”
“Rubin,” Ezekiel said. “What’s going on with Malichai’s leg?”
Malichai’s heart gave another hard jerk in his chest. He knew the answer was going to be bad. The leg hurt like a mother all the time. All the time. Joe and Amaryllis had worked on it continually and it hadn’t stopped forming the tiny cracks in the bone. In fact, he was certain the damage was happening at a much faster rate. He knew this was going to be bad, and he dreaded the answer.
He took a deep breath and tried to keep all expression off his face. It took effort not to crush Amaryllis’s hand in his.
Rubin glanced up at him, meeting his eyes. There was compassion there. Understanding. Things Malichai didn’t want to see. Then Rubin was all business. He didn’t speak to Ezekiel or the others in the room, only Malichai.
“I’m going in and repairing the bone again. But I’m only able to repair the damage to the bone itself that is happening at this moment. Whatever the Zenith is doing to the bone is beyond my ability to help. Perhaps Lily has ideas. We just need to keep the bone from fragmenting until we can figure out how to stop that process. You have to baby the leg, Malichai. No more hero stuff. No running. No kicking the crap out of someone. You’re in the control room, not in the field. One more stunt like this one and you’ll lose the leg. There will be no going back.”
The thing about Rubin was he always spoke in a low, velvet-soft southern drawl. He never raised his voice, and by doing that, Malichai knew he meant every word he said. The room went absolutely silent and Malichai’s heart dropped. He knew that everyone else would be hopeful, but Rubin wasn’t. He had essentially grown up with Rubin. He knew him, all the subtleties of him, and Rubin knew him. Sidelining him when his team was in trouble was asking the impossible of him.