Laura Kaye - Hard As It Gets

“They have him,” Jeremy said.

Some sort of static filled Nick’s earpiece for a moment, then Becca cried out, “You have him? You really have him?”

Man, the joy in her voice made him feel ten feet tall.

“Yeah, sunshine. I’m bringing him home.”

Becca had been sitting by Charlie’s makeshift bedside for eight hours, willing him with everything inside her to wake up long enough to let her know he was really okay.

Before they’d even returned to Hard Ink, Nick had given her a rundown of the injuries already identified: dehydration, probable broken ribs, multiple cuts and contusions, burn marks, infection in the amputation sites. They’d cut off two of his fingers. The macabre list went on and on, forcing her to detach from the idea of him as her brother long enough to treat him as a patient. Her attempted abduction proved they couldn’t trust hospitals to be safe right now.

Somewhere along the way, B-Team had met up with A and escorted them back. Marz had been shot three times in his lower right leg—the one with the prosthesis. His jeans were literally Swiss cheese, but otherwise B-Team had escaped the firefight at the storage center intact.

By the time both teams returned home, Becca and Jeremy had set up a trauma station using a table from the tattoo parlor and the supplies from her and Shane’s packs, which thankfully included IV fluids and antibiotics. Shane had helped her treat Charlie, and then she’d patched up Shane’s GSW. Thank God he’d only been grazed.

Once she’d done everything she could for Charlie, and thanked everyone, and welcomed them home safe and sound, she’d broken down in Nick’s arms.

After Charlie’d had two bags of saline and a bag of IV antibiotics, the guys had brought a mattress into the gym from the apartment so he could be moved off the firm table without jostling him too much.

She’d been sitting in this chair almost the entire time since then, alternating between sleeping against Nick, who sat beside her, staring at Charlie and willing him awake, and playing with her bracelet until she drove herself crazy with the jingle. She finally took it off and laid it at the foot of the mattress.

She wasn’t alone. Every member of the team had sat or slept around her and Charlie.

If she hadn’t already known before then, she knew exactly why Nick Rixey loved every one of these people. Becca didn’t know how she’d ever repay them.

Actually, yes she did. She and Charlie had to help them clear their names.

Another hour passed, and Becca fell asleep on Rixey’s shoulder again.

“Becca? Hey, wake up, sunshine.”

Eyes still unfocused, she lifted her head. And realized she was looking at an awake but very groggy Charlie.

She flew from her seat, eased to her knees, and leaned against the mattress. Unsure where to touch him that didn’t hurt, she stopped short. “Charlie. Thank God. I’m so sorry,” she said. “You were right. And I’m sorry.” Lightly, she brushed the mop of blond waves out of his face. He always kept his hair longish—it used to drive their father crazy—but he usually kept it pulled back in a ponytail.

He shook his head, his movements sluggish. “No worries.” Typical Charlie. “Thanks for not giving up on me,” he managed.

“I would never. Do you hear me? Never. I love you.”

“Me, too, sis.” The swallowing sound he made was hard and rough. “I would kill for a Mountain Dew.”

She laughed. “How about some water to start.”

He grunted but took a long draw from the cup she held. “Where am I?” he asked, eyes darting over the rough industrial space of the gym.

“A friend’s house,” she said for now. But she smiled at Rixey, and he winked.

Charlie’s eyes scanned around the gathered group. Everyone had gotten up when she’d said his name. “The Colonel’s team,” he stated, using the name he’d called their father for years. It was like he’d recognized them right off. “And some other dudes,” he said, eyeballing Jeremy and Miguel.

“How do you know us?” Nick asked. “I’m Nick Rixey, by the way.”

Charlie nodded. “My dad had some files on a thumb drive. Just personnel records, like patrol schedules and fitness reports, and stuff.” He shrugged. “I was able to patch together the names of most of the team.”

“No shit? There were fitness reports?” Marz said, looking at the other guys. “That’ll give us Merritt’s own copies to challenge the official records. Oh, I’m Derek DiMarzio, by the way. Any chance you still have those?”

“Yeah. I still have the drive.”

Becca sat on the edge of the mattress. “How, Charlie? Your place was tossed. So was mine, actually.”

He frowned and shifted like he was trying to get comfortable. “Thumb drives are hidden inside the wall of a motel I stayed in.” Holy crap. One of the ones they’d gone to, presumably.

Wide-eyed, Nick stepped to the edge of the mattress and looked down on her brother. “Can you start from the beginning and tell us what you found, what Church’s guys are looking for, and why you told Becca to find me?”

Becca looked between the two men she loved most in the world. Her heart ached for Charlie to know something that might help the team.

“Water again first, please?” Charlie said, reaching out. The guys all edged closer as he drank. He passed the cup back to her. How she wished she could do more for him. “Two months ago, I got a letter from a Singapore bank in the mail. It was addressed to my father at my apartment, which was frackin’ hilarious because he never once stepped foot in my place and wouldn’t have trusted me to handle his affairs. Letter said that per the account holder’s request, notification was being sent because of prolonged inactivity on the account. It’d be closed unless the account holder contacted them within ninety days.” He met Becca’s gaze, his blue eyes so like their father’s. His whole face, really.

“The bank wouldn’t give me the money or any other account information since my name wasn’t on the account and I didn’t have the passcode, even though I explained the account holder was dead. I even sent a copy of his death certificate, but they kept denying me. So I hacked in. Every single deposit was made by the same depositor. A company, presumably, called WCE. They deposited twelve million dollars.”

She gasped. Curses and mutters went around the room. God, there it was in a numerical value. What it had taken for her father to throw away everything he’d ever valued. The price put on the lives of Nick’s six comrades who’d died there on a dirt road in Afghanistan. It made her nauseous. “That’s what the 12M stood for in the note you hid in my jewelry box?” She reached up a hand to Nick. His expression was a storm about to open up. He sat down and kept his fingers intertwined with hers.

“You found that? Yeah. When things started getting dicey, I needed to make some copies of the info. I put it in Mom’s necklace, too, but I lost it.”

“I found it at a motel. How did you get the necklace, though?”

A sheepish expression came over his exhausted face. “I broke into your back door. Needed to hide some stuff without you knowing.”

“Charlie! I thought I was going crazy! What else did you hide?”

“Two of my laptops are in your basement crawl space.”

Becca shook her head, completely overwhelmed by Charlie’s story.

“Back up. What is WCE?” Marz asked.

“Never did find out. As soon as I started searching for it, attacks against my firewalls began. Someone must’ve set up a tracer alerting them of searches for that set of characters and was trying to figure out who was doing the searching. So I started moving locations. Lasted for a while. Until it didn’t.” He shrugged. “Guys who held me were hot as hell to find out how I’d learned about WCE, but I didn’t say a word. Figured they were going to kill me either way.”