Darling Wildfire (Red Rabbit #2)

70

THERON

I smelled the smoke first. We walked up the dirt road a bit further, and a rustic farmhouse with smoke rising from the chimney appeared around the curve. Looking up, I noticed security cameras in the trees and around the clearing where the house sat away from the treeline. Atlas and Nyx stayed at the bottom of the steps while I went and knocked on the door.

The house sat quiet, so I knocked again and edged closer to the window. I was attempting to peek inside when I heard a small explosion from around back. I trotted down the porch and as we came around the corner, I saw a man feeding a burn pile with gasoline. A lot of gasoline.

“Jesus—”

Nyx said in alarm. “Does he know—”

“Yes,”

I said dryly, watching as he tossed the canister into the flames and caused another small explosion.

“Can’t help yourself, can you?”

I called out.

The man turned quickly, his hand going to his sidearm as he squinted through the smoke.

“Well, fuck me!”

A grin transformed his face as he walked over to me. He ripped off his clear protective glasses, revealing blue eyes glinting from the high of the fire he always loved to play with.

“North! What the hell, man?”

He clasped my forearm and thumped me on the back before pulling away and looking me over. “I heard you were dead! I mean—you look damn close—should’ve known though, you’re harder to kill than that. Stubborn bastard.”

He hugged me again, his excitement potent.

I chuckled. “It was a near thing this time.”

“I take it there’s a hell of a story behind it too.”

“A dark one, if you’ll have us?” I asked.

The grin took over again, and he spread his arms wide, encompassing the property. “Like I told you way back when—my family’s property is always a good place to start if you’re lookin’ for me. You’re welcome anytime!”

“This is Nyx—Atlas,”

I said, pointing respectively to the guys.

“Trent Knight,”

he extended his hand with a grin. “Or as some people like to affectionately call me—Pyro.”

After I showered and borrowed some of Knight’s clothes, I stood out on the front porch.

The forest air was fortifying, and I took one deep breath after another, letting the calm and safety seep into my being. But with that came the grief and distress as the reality of what we’d just gone through shoved its way to the front. I closed my eyes, gripping the railing and fighting it back down. Unfortunately, when I closed my eyes all I saw was Emersyn’s face and feel the blade in my hand—

The door opened behind me, thankfully interrupting my thoughts and Knight walked out. He leaned against the railing facing the house, studying me openly.

“I’m sorry to hear about your family, North,”

he said quietly. “Cap said you were in the fire too or I swear I would have—”

“I know,”

I looked over at him briefly. “It was a professional job. They didn’t want any loose ends.”

Knight nodded and turned to lean his forearms on the railing, looking out over his front lawn.

“They’re all dead,”

he said. “We’re the last ones. Cap died last year—suicide.”

I nodded, unable to feel anything but a dull melancholy. We’d served together for a while and like any crew who’d gone through some shit together, we’d been tight. After the military, we’d gone our separate ways, keeping in touch here and there but life has a way of fucking over people that have seen the shit we’d seen. And once your friends started dying by their own hands, it was like having survivor's guilt all over again.

“How long have you been out here? The last time we talked, you were contracting I think.”

“Yeah, I did that for a bit,”

he said. “But I needed a break. Pops died a few years back, so I figured it was the perfect time to come out here and see to the property. I was going to sell it actually, but I don’t know—we all have our demons, mine are just less noisy out here. It ended up being the perfect break and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to go back to civilian life yet.”

I nodded. I could understand that.

Knight straightened and put his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m really glad you’re not dead,”

he smirked. “Let’s go inside. We’ll eat and you can tell me about everything—or at least who we need to kill.”

It was late into the night by the time we finished telling Knight everything that had happened.

Or at least everything we wanted to share. The conversation wound down, and we sat sipping whiskey and staring into the fire Knight was subconsciously poking at.

“I don’t even know what to say to all that,”

Knight said after a moment. “I’m glad you guys got out. Do you have a plan to take him down?”

“Maybe.”

I threw back the rest of my whiskey and leaned my forearms over my thighs, watching the coals reflect in Knight’s eyes. “Do you still have it?”

A slow smirk spread across his features, and he nodded once before standing up and leaving the room. He was only gone briefly before he came back and tossed a folder down on the coffee table in front of me.

“I looked into it a few years ago, but without you and the rest—”

He shrugged. “It just didn’t feel right.”

“What is that?”

Nyx asked, leaning forward.

I opened the folder and spread the papers out, looking for one in particular. Once I found it, I put it in the center of the table and Atlas reached for it.

“It’s a map,” he said.

“Not just any map,”

Knight said. He went around refreshing everyone’s whiskey before sitting in an armchair next to me. “A treasure map.”

Nyx laughed but when he saw neither Knight nor I laughing he stopped.

“You’re serious,”

he stated. “Treasure? As in gold?”

Knight nodded. “During World War II, some Nazis hid a vast amount of gold in the Austrian mountains. The myth is they sunk it in a lake, but that map says otherwise.”

“How much gold are we talking about?”

Atlas asked.

“5.6—”

I paused. “Billion.”

“How come no one has found it yet?”

Nyx asked incredulously.

“Everyone thinks it’s in the lake,”

Knight shrugged with a grin. “No one can get to it.”

“It’s also dangerous,” I added.

Knight barked a laugh. “Oh yeah, there is that too.”

“Mysterious deaths mostly,” I said.

“People would go searching for the treasure and either die in an accident,”

Knight emphasized ‘accident.’ “Or by a bullet. The area is off limits so there are usually some trigger-happy contractors hanging around and oh yeah—to top it all off the area is extremely treacherous.”

“Only one access road in and out,” I said.

“Why didn’t you guys go after it before?”

Atlas asked.

“I had a family,”

I shrugged and looked down at my whiskey and swirled it around in the glass, feeling the ache in my heart that was always there when I thought of what was and what could have been. I shook it off and looked back up at him. “Now—I want to build a fucking empire. I want to become untouchable and then I want to take down Vetticus, Albatron and Atrox. This money would expedite that process. If I have to do it the good old-fashioned way, I will. But this would give me a good jumping off point.”

I looked between Nyx and Atlas. “I understand if you both just want to move on—”

“Oh no,”

Nyx said, shaking his head, his face hard with suppressed anger. “I’m in. For all of it. I want to take that fucker down.”

Atlas nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

Knight chuckled. “And count me in too—I was starting to get bored.”

“Where did you guys get the map?”

Nyx asked.

“Knight and I went to Salzburg on leave one year—got drunk with some Austrians and they started talking about the local lore. One of them told us about a map their family passed down for generations that shows where the Nazis dropped the gold. Knight ended up winning the map in a bet with one of them, with the stipulation that if we ever went after it, we had to call him and include him in the job.”

“Why didn’t he ever go after it himself?”

Atlas asked.

“Apparently he went looking for it a few times. Had a few close calls and gave it up. He’s already filthy rich on his own—family money—so he was doing it mostly for the thrill of it. Said he might as well let someone else have a shot. He’s an ex-Jagdkommando, Austria’s special forces, so he knows the country and he’s also just a hell of a guy to hang with.”

“Should I hit him up then? It’s morning over there right now,”

Knight said.

I nodded and Knight pulled out his phone and shot off a quick text before he stood up.

“Well, I’m off to bed. Those bedrooms down the hall are all available. Help yourself to anything of course—my house is your house and all that.”

Nyx and Atlas murmured a thanks, and he nodded and walked past my chair only to put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s really good to see you, brother.”

“And you, thanks for having us,”

I said genuinely. “Truly—coming here disrupting your peace—”

“Nah,”

Knight shook his head. “Like I said, I was getting bored and being your friend is always an adventure.”

Once Knight went upstairs to bed, Nyx, Atlas and I all had one more drink.

“How long did you two serve together?”

Atlas asked.

“We went through BUD/S and SQT together,”

I said. “Then we were assigned to the same team for a bit. Got pretty close—you know how that goes.”

I’d seen gruesome and traumatizing shit with Knight and the others on my team. I was never the best at regulating my emotions. I was either running hot—buried in training and instincts that take over during a stressful raid—or compartmentalizing everything I’d seen and done after the fact. Why would I deal with any of it if I was just going to go out and do it all over again?

Overtime, my personality just let that be the standard and none of it bothered me anymore. The killing and violence were all just the dark side of human nature that I accepted and understood. It was my job. And like any job—it became my life and desensitized me to things that should have appalled and horrified me.

My feelings for the people I surrounded myself with became my weakness and caused my emotions to get the better of me. Love hurt too much and protecting what belonged to me implied a shortcoming on my part when I failed.

Both were unacceptable to me but overtime, I learned how to be the best, to execute at the highest level possible so that my chances of failure were low. Love was pushed out a long time ago because I couldn’t control love. I’d found if I threw myself into making sure I was the best and my team was the best, I could protect those I had become attached to.

It always made me think, did I really love? Maybe in my own way but love implies vulnerability and openness—two things I was not good at. Even with Whit and the twins, I’d said the words and I would do anything to protect them because they were mine, but there were times Whit would look at me and I knew she was hoping for more.

I slept for a few hours before the nightmares started.

After waking up in a sweat for the third time, I gave up on sleep. The bedroom I was in had a door leading out to the back porch and I slipped out the door and sat down in an old wooden chair looking out over the yard. The forest was alive in the early hours of the morning but it was peaceful.

“Figured I’d find at least one of you out here.”

Knight materialized by my side and took up residence in the other chair.

“You know how it goes,” I said.

“Why do you think I’m out here with you?”

He chuckled. “I’ve hiked a lot of these woods because exhaustion is the only thing that seems to help—and trust me, I’ve tried everything.”

We sat in a comfortable silence for a while before Knight sighed heavily.

“Do you ever think about ending it?”

“Every day,”

I answered truthfully.

“I almost did it once Cap was gone,”

Knight said. “I hiked out to this vista about five miles from here and sat with my gun to my head for hours arguing with myself.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Knight leaned forward and rested his arms on his thighs. “Just seemed like a waste of a bullet.”

He barked a laugh. “In the end, I didn’t even think I was worth that.”

He looked back over at me. “Why didn’t you?”

“My family kept me alive. Then after they were killed, every time I thought about it—I’d see the twins…”

I shook my head. “If I ended it—I’d end my suffering, and that didn’t seem right. My family deserves retribution in this life and no one can give it to them but me. Until that’s done, I don’t deserve the peaceful oblivion of death.”

Knight nodded. “Well, I know you’ll get him—being on the wrong side of you would be nothing short of terrifying.”

His phone dinged, and he pulled it out, grinning as he read the message.

“Our Austrian friend is in.”

“When do you want to head over there?”

“Few days?”

Knight shrugged. “We should put a plan together and then fly over and finalize it.”

“Agreed. Tell him we’ll be in town by next weekend. Do you have enough firepower?”

Knight didn’t look up from his text as he scoffed. “That’s embarrassing you even have to ask me that.”

I laughed quietly. “I knew you had your personal collection. I didn’t know you’d started stockpiling.”

Knight put his phone away and sat back again. “It’s a recent development. I started doing a few small deals here and there and ended up amassing a small inventory. One of those deals owes me a favor which is how we’re going to get overseas—he can fly us.”

“If we don’t find the treasure, I’m going to owe you big for this one,” I sighed.

Knight shook his head. “No sir, you’re forgetting about that op where you stopped me from getting my head blown off—twice! A few guns and a lift in a plane are hardly satisfactory exchanges,”

he scrunched up his face. “Or maybe for my sorry excuse for a life it is, I don’t know, I’ll let you decide that.”

He grinned over at me. “Besides, I was literally doing nothing with my life until now so don’t worry about it. You’ve brought purpose and excitement back into this old soldier’s life, I appreciate it.”

“Who are you calling old?”

I grumbled good-naturedly.

Knight laughed. “I feel old.”

“We’re the same age!”

I insisted with a grin in his direction.

“Tell that to my back,”

Knight said in amusement.

Later that morning, I found myself alone with Nyx in the living room.

I was standing in front of one of the terrain maps we’d pinned up on the wall and he was looking over one of the historical documents we’d pulled from the internet.

“So this empire,”

he said. “Tell me more.”

“It’ll be a private military company,”

I turned towards him. “Legal operations with teams around the world. I also have plans for a nightclub that will be a front for illegal arms dealing.”

“You’ve really thought this out.”

I turned around to look at him. “What else was I supposed to do for the last few years? On the outside it’ll look like I’m after money and power—like everyone usually is—but it’s all a smokescreen for my real plan.”

“Revenge,” Nyx said.

“I want you to be my second,”

I said. His eyes snapped to mine. “And I want you and Atlas to both take over the nightclub and help me put together a personal team—separate from the Northern Tactical employees.”

“Northern Tactical? Fitting.”

Nyx smiled. “What will the personal team do?”

“They’ll be our core team we’ll use to get our revenge but we’ll build up Northern Tactical to be a well-oiled machine and then we’ll have money and resources coming in regardless of whether this treasure thing pans out.”

I had nothing to my name anymore. Not even the clothes on my back were mine. Vetticus had taken everything but this time, I was going to be impenetrable. I’d build an empire, so it wasn’t just one man he had to take down but a global enterprise. I wanted unlimited resources available to me. I didn’t want money or support to be in short supply.

“Are you ready to play the long game?”

I leaned over the table, resting my hands on the worn wood. “Because this won’t happen tomorrow or even next year. I don’t want sloppy. I don’t want a thrown together mission. I want complete annihilation.”

“I’m a patient man,” Nyx said.

I heard someone scoff behind me and turned to see Atlas walk in and smirk at Nyx.

“You’re not, but I am,”

Atlas looked at me and winked. “I’ll keep him in line.”

That evening, Knight fired up the smoker and BBQ while we drank whiskey and beer on the back porch.

Nyx was snooping around the perimeter when he pulled out a football and sent it soaring towards Atlas’ head.

“Fucker,”

Atlas shouted as he barely batted it away in time to avoid spilling his drink. He put his drink down and they threw the ball back and forth. Soon the four of us were involved in a rowdy game of tackle football while the meat cooked.

By the time dinner was ready, we were panting and covered in sweat and dirt but the atmosphere was light and I was happy to see Nyx, Atlas and Knight so relaxed. I collapsed onto the stairs to catch my breath and realized for a moment I hadn’t been stuck in the shadows. As Knight took the meat off the grill and the sound of Nyx and Atlas laughing at something drifted over me, I realized for the first time in a long time; I felt…hopeful.

The guilt immediately assaulted me. How could I be hopeful and positive when my family was gone and when I had so much death and destruction still ahead of me? People say to capitalize on the small moments—whatever you can get in the times in between—but sometimes I didn’t think I deserved to feel good.

I had people to protect, people to kill, there wasn’t time to focus on anything else.

Even so, as I watched the light fade across the yard and tint the tops of the evergreens gold in the setting sun, I was able to draw in a full breath and maybe that’s what these moments were for. To pause, catch my breath, and be thankful we’d all seen another day.