Page 84 of War Games
“Yeah, not today bitch,” I mutter, walking toward her and making sure she’s well and truly dead. Only as my gaze sails over her limp body, I realize that my blade isn’t the only one protruding from her neck. There’s an identical one directly beside it and considering the angle Shadow is standing at, it came from her.
Lifting my gaze, I arch a brow, more than impressed, only the little brat smirks back at me. “For the record,” she says in a tone that suggests I’m not going to like what’s about to come out of her mouth. “I beat you to it. You might have severed her spinal cord, but I made the kill.”
“Bullshit,” I say, glancing over Harriet’s throat again.
“You got playback, Mila?” Shadow questions.
“Sure do,” she says. “Hold please. Just need to slow it down.”
I clench my jaw and narrow my gaze at Shadow, certain she’s talking shit when Mila’s voice comes through the earpiece again. “You know I’m actually terrified of you, Reaper, so the thought of giving you bad news is actually making me break out in hives right now, but the kid is right. She beat you to the drop.”
Kienna chuckles to herself across the room, and I glance up to find my woman with her pants down around her ankles and an empty coffee cup wedged between her thighs, desperately relieving herself. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Kienna’s head whips up. “I told you I was desperate,” she argues back, not an ounce of shame in her tone. “Now if you wish to keep the romance alive in this little relationship of ours, then I highly suggest you stop being a creepy swamp turd and look away. Let a girl pee in peace.”
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, making a point of turning around despite having seen this woman do a shitload worse than that.
I shake my head as the only noise filling the room is the sound of the monitors whirring mixed with the sound of Kienna’s piss hitting the bottom of the coffee cup, and honestly, how is she stillgoing? Does she have the bladder of a fucking elephant? “Babe, you’re going to need a second coffee cup at this rate.”
“COVER YOUR EARS!” she roars at me, and in order to save myself from being drenched in the contents of that very coffee cup, I do exactly as she asks and make a point of covering my ears. Only, I can still hear everything through my earpiece.
Kienna quickly wraps it up, and with Harriet out of the way and no sign of any bounties on our heads, we’re officially free to fall back into our normal lives. Only, instead of settling back in the Big Apple, I’ll be making Seattle my new home with my girls, and I can’t fucking wait.
“So, what now?” Shadow asks an hour later after we finished retrieving the car and start making a move loading every piece of top-grade equipment into the back of the SUV.
“Well,” I start, quickly glancing at Kienna and only continuing after she nods, confirming my thoughts. “We were going to let you make that call.”
Shadow pauses and glances up at me, her brows furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kienna moves to my side, meeting Shadow’s confused stare. “It means that we want to go after the organization that raised you,” she explains. “I can’t bear the thought of babies being stolen from their mothers and forced into this life. Then spending their childhood in training camps. It’s not a life I would ever want for my own child, and because of that, I think it’s time we step in and officially put an end to it. However, it’s your call. Despite my feelings about this organization, it was still your home, and the monsters who raised you were somewhat your parents. If you’re not comfortable with it, we’ll put the idea on the back burner for a while, but if you are, then I say we go for it.”
“You want to take them out?” she questions.
I shake my head. “I don’t just want to take them out, Shadow. I want to destroy them and tear their training camp to piecesuntil there isn’t even a shred of it left. I want to return those babies back to their families and offer them the childhood that you should have had, and as for the older kids . . . I don’t know. I suppose they should be given a choice of what they want. Either way, I want these assholes to pay for what they’ve done, and if you’re on board, I want you to be the one who calls the shots.”
Tears well in her eyes and panic soars through my chest, thinking that maybe Kienna and I were out of line to even bring this up. A soft smile pulls at the corners of her lips, and she races into us, throwing her arms around us at the same time.
“Thank you,” she breathes before wiping snot across my chest. “I’m in.”
“Thank fuck,” Kienna breathes, wrapping her arm around Shadow’s back. “Then the second we get home and settled in Seattle, we’ll start working out a plan. It’s not going to happen overnight. Might even take us years before we have all the information we need to track down every last bastard involved in this organization, but I promise you, Shadow. We’re going to get every last one of them.”
“Yeah, we are,” she agrees before pulling away and scooping up another monitor to load in the back of the SUV, and I can’t help but notice the skip in her step or the massive smile resting on her lips.
Feeling my heart swell in my chest, I go to get back to work when Kienna pulls me back, throwing her arms around my neck and pushing up onto her tippy toes to kiss me. “We’re free, Nick,” she says. “We’re the family we were always meant to be. We can have a home. We can go back to work, do all the things we love, and check in on Eagle’s sister like I promised. We can even get one of those stupid picket-fence houses and a golden retriever puppy and call her Tinkerbell. We can have it all. Just you, me, and Shadow.”
A throat clears in our ears and Kienna rolls her eyes. “You, too, Mila.”
“Thank you. A little recognition every now and then would go a long way,” she murmurs as I lock my arms tighter around Kienna, unable to look away from those gorgeous green eyes as the idea of the life we’re about to have truly sinks in. I could marry her. It’d have to be under a false name, but I could give her that if she wanted. I could give her a baby, or seven, but for now, I’ll stick with simply giving her my everything just as she’s given me.
“Do you mind?” Kienna says to her best friend. “I’m trying to have a romantic moment with my man.”
“Ugh. Gross,” Shadow mutters from behind us.
“Yeah, I’m with Shadow,” Mila says. “You two are gross. But I can take the hint. I’m logging out before I catch whatever disease came and turned you both into the romantic type. See your asses back in Seattle.”
There’s a soft beep in the earpiece, letting me know it’s offline, and I pull it out of my ear before slipping the tiny piece of tech into my pocket and getting back to my girl. “Where were we?” I murmur, a grin playing on my lips.
“You were about to start making out like horny teenagers like you always do,” Shadow mutters.
“Damn straight we were,” Kienna says as a wide smile cuts across her face, and not a second later, I scoop her up into my arms and bring my lips down on hers.
