Bang!
Fire roared up Glen’s bicep as he threw his arms over the rope rung, and he shuddered. Damien—it must be Damien at the helm—started to pull the impossibly small helicopter up above the island, heading out to sea first, probably because there was a better chance for Glen and Cash to make it if they fell into the water. Watching Barron’s guys disappear out of gun range was a relief, but it was short-lived. While the bullet might have only grazed his arm, his entire left side was on fire. Fuck! He’d never been shot before—this was a novelty he could have foregone.
He kept struggling to hold on, the buffeting of the wind threatening to take him off at any time. On the one hand, that aircraft looked like a child’s toy above him, and he was terrified it was going to disintegrate with the twin forces of Cash and Glen thrashing on the rope dangling beneath its runners.
On the other, it had so little power and went so slow, at least he wasn’t getting blown off the damned rope.
The helicopter rocked hard as Cash scrambled up into the passenger seat and Glen had a minute to wonder how he was going to get into the third seat behind the other two when his arm throbbed and he almost let go.
Fuck. Fuck, he was bleeding, and it made the rope slippery and—
“Get your ass up here!”
Cash was, impossibly, lying on his stomach, half his body out of the aircraft.
“I’m working on it,” Glen muttered while every ache, every pain, every scratch, and every old injury he’d ever sustained tried to drag him down like a lead weight in a Jell-O pond.
“Glen, goddammit, I stayed! I came back! Now get your ass back up to this fucking cockpit. If you fall off the damned rope, I’ll jump in to get you.”
“The hell you will!” The thought of Cash, untrained and vulnerable, leaping into the ocean below them without a wet suit or a life vest spurred Glen up one more rung. And another. “You said you’d stay!”
“I said I’d stay with you, moron! That means you have to get your ass in this helicopter so we can do that!”
“Augh!” His muscle was already stiffening, and his entire bicep burned with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns. “I don’t want you to jump!”
“Then get up here!”
“Jumping would be stupid,” Glen shouted, coming up one more rung.
“And falling would also be stupid!” Cash’s voice was breaking. He sounded like he was losing his shit.
“Don’t cry, baby,” Glen said absurdly. “I’m on my way.”
“Well, you are fucking slow,” Cash snarled, and Glen looked up to realize Cash was almost close enough for Glen to reach his hand. “Hurry up. I don’t think Damien can fly like this much longer!”
“I don’t know—does this thing have pedals?” Glen asked, hoisting himself up one more rung, one more knot, one more haul, grabbing the runners and trying to get to a place where he could reach into the cockpit.
His feet on the last rung of the rope ladder wobbled frantically beneath him. He was going to have to let go of the runner, going to have to—
Cash’s hand, sturdy, callused, stronger than Cash looked, reached into his vision, and he had no choice.
He’d never had any choice.
He took it, then took the other one, and Cash hauled at him and squirmed backward while Damien cursed, the small craft rocked, Cash squirmed some more, and finally, finally, Glen was half inside the helicopter, kicking his feet to get him in the last bit.
Cash had wiggled back between the seats by then, and Glen fell into the cockpit, looking out the open side of a piece of flight vanity that had saved his life.
“The fuck is this thing made of?” he shouted to Damien. “How did that even happen?”
“Fairy kisses!” Damien shouted back. “Now shut up and let me drive!”
Glen leaned back into the seat while Cash fumbled at his waist for the belt. Glen couldn’t do it. His eyes were closed, his arm was on fire, and he was going to trust fate—and Damien.
And Cash.
They’d done that.
And Cash had stayed.
Fallout Boy
THE craft started to whine in a higher pitch as they approached the beach, about fifty yards from where armed policemen and terrified kids were sorting themselves out. Damien swore at it, wrestled with the steering, and beat against the ceiling of the cockpit, angling the thing lower and lower until they literally skimmed the water as he skidded it in on a spray of surf and sand.
Tide was coming in. Cash reckoned they had a good twenty minutes before they had to bail out of the helicopter, but for the moment, the three of them took a few deep breaths and—in Cash’s case, anyway—gave thanks to a merciful god.
Fifty yards farther, Cash could see the skiff Alexander had piloted and the Zodiac Spencer had returned in, and he breathed another sigh of relief.
Then he got a good look at Glen’s pale face and the relief faded. His arm sported an angry, bleeding furrow where a bullet had passed by too closely, and Cash was reminded, yet again, of who instigated this mess.
“Damien?” he said, voice wobbling. “He’s going to need—”
The propellers were slowing, and the noise of the Scout’s mosquito-size motor had stopped whining in their ears, but Damien was still talking on his headset.
He finished and pulled the headset off. “There’s medical assistance waiting up on the road,” he said, nodding with his chin up to where the sand met the pavement. “I called, asking for a stretcher. He’s beat.”
Glen started and then let out a yelp. “I’ve been shot!” he snapped. “Of course I’m beat!”
“Didn’t beat your mouth, though,” Damien said.
“Heh heh heh—”
“Oh, stop it,” Cash muttered. “No dirty jokes. Not now.”
“After escaping mortal peril is the best time to crack a dirty—ouch!—joke,” Glen told him, and if he hadn’t been sporting bruises and a gunshot wound, Cash would have smacked him.
“Scared the shit out of me. What—were you trying to save the bad guy?”
Glen sobered. “Didn’t work.”
“I will beat you,” Damien said amicably. “I’ll wait until you’re all healed; then I will beat you back into the hospital. We are a search-and-rescue operation—and there were goons with guns down there.”
“Oh please,” Glen muttered. “Like I’m the only one of us who’s been shot at.”
Damien chuckled at some shared part of their history, but Cash had lost that jealousy a long time ago. He’d seen the tiny Scout bucking in Damien’s hands, heard him swearing in genuine fear. Scaring up an aircraft and flying to his and Glen’s rescue hadn’t been easy—it had been an act of love. Five months ago, Cash would have said that sort of love could only come with sex attached, but he and Brielle had never been lovers, and look at the promise he’d just kept.
Damien and Glen, with twenty years of comradeship behind them? This was what you did.
“It’s more personal with you,” Damien said now, turning in his seat and getting a good look at Glen’s arm. “Even the wound looks angry.”