A wild throw that misses Zeb by a good foot and a half.

Just as he’s bending down, he senses danger behind him, and he ducks and takes a long step to the side, but his bending and twisting is arrested as an arm encircles his neck, choking him. He tries to break the choke hold, letting his knife drop, when he feels a blade pierce him from the left, between his ribs, going deep inside and upwards.

It’s a knife probing for his heart. Another gunman who has come up from behind him, who escaped Broker’s long gun somehow.

His brain kicks into high alert and starts shutting down nonessential functions in his body.

Dimly Zeb hears the sound of Holt laughing as he lies a few feet away, and that drives him to a deep, raw rage. He forces himself to go into his grey zone where the impossible happens, grabs hold of his rage, shapes it into a raw ball of fire growing tighter and harder and hotter, and then shapes that fire into a spear flowing from inside him to his arms. Instead of moving away from the knife, he pushes back into his assailant, his right hand gripping the wrist wielding the knife, and that spear of energy coils around the wrist, squeezing and squeezing until the bones in the gunman’s wrist snap.

The gunman shouts hoarsely in his ear, his knife hand falling away uselessly and his forearm around Zeb’s neck loosening.

Zeb twists to his left, falling, the gunman half facing him, his right hand searching and finding and gripping the assailant’s throat as he falls and brings the gunman on top of him awkwardly. Zeb squeezes, draining the life out of the gunman, uncaring about the blows against his body, uncaring about the knife sinking deeper into him.

The gunman’s thrashings slow down and then stop.

A few feet away, Holt has been watching curiously, and he now rolls over and shoves himself up, dragging his right leg as he approaches Zeb. He picks up Zeb’s fallen gun, holding it casually as he stands over Zeb.

‘I wonder if you are worth a bullet now, Major. Looks like you will be at the pearly gates soon enough and I’ll be gone with these two. The FBI will come after me now, but at least I have the chips on my side and white pussy to keep me company in the dark lonely nights.’

Zeb whispers something.

‘Praying, Major? Shall I administer the last rites?’ He lifts Zeb’s Glock.

The shot is muffled and could be mistaken for a car misfiring distantly. Except that the shot is in the room, and there is no mistaking the red ugly hole in Holt’s chest. He looks down stupidly, teetering back on his heels, and Zeb fires again from beneath the gunman’s body.

The second blast takes Holt down just as Broker rushes into the room. Taking in Holt and Zeb in one glance, he moves swiftly to cut Lauren and Rory free before kneeling down next to Zeb. He rolls the dead assailant off him and sees the gun in Zeb’s right hand, the gun Zeb had taken off the waist of the gunman, sees the knife deep inside him, the blood dripping alongside it.

He grips Zeb’s shoulder hard. ‘Hold on, buddy. Help’s coming. We’ll get you back in good enough shape to take a swing at Isakson.’

Zeb looks in his eyes and sees everything there, knows it in his body. He clasps Broker’s hand in his own, his breath labored.

The living organism expended all its efforts, all its resources in creating that ball of fire and directing it where needed. Now the need has gone, and the organism is empty, drained by that enormous burst of energy, empty of the survival instinct.

Zeb can feel the stillness flooding him, the room dimming, Rory’s face appearing beside Broker’s shoulder.

He has no words for Rory.

He closes his eyes, his grip on Broker’s hand easing. Darkness floods him, and from far away he sees a pair of bright, mischievous eyes looking at him.

‘I’m coming, baby,’ he whispers and slips away into the welcoming blackness.

Chapter 19

It’s pouring, fierce driving rain battering the windows of New York, the clouds being ripped apart by the occasional streak of lightning.

Connor, looking out the window, adjusting his tie, wonders if the city gets a momentary turn of conscience after such a rain before it lapses into its sell-my-mother-to-get-ahead ways, and then reprimands himself for being silly. After all, he thrives in the razor-sharp living of the city.

Feeling someone behind him, he turns to see Lauren and Rory all dressed up and ready to go. Giving a hug to Rory and a kiss to Lauren, he leads the way to their car.

The two months since Lauren’s and Rory’s rescue have passed in a blur.

*   *   *

Isakson, when he learned that fateful night that Zeb had launched his own rescue, had gone incandescent with rage and had vowed to arrest him on sight. He called Broker to find out where Zeb was and where Holt was holed up, but Broker hadn’t picked up his phone.

As the night wore on and tempers cooled, Isakson acknowledged that Zeb had the best chance of success, since his team from Quantico wouldn’t have reached them in time, and it was likely that Holt would move his base of operations afterward, anyway.

‘We are bound by rules, sir, and the Major isn’t, but don’t ever quote me on that,’ he had told him privately much later.

Connor felt only relief, enormous relief, when he heard of the rescue, and had been reduced to helpless tears when the FBI and police had brought his family back to him.

Shame and guilt had set in later when he noticed Cassandra’s appearance. Cassandra hadn’t uttered a word, had just gone white and swayed a bit and left the apartment, followed by Broker, Bear and Chloe.

Zeb’s not surviving the rescue attempt had never occurred to any of them, and it still was hard to grasp two months later. While Connor and his family had known him only for a short while, his dark brooding presence had had a huge impact on them all, especially Rory. Lauren and Rory had gone through several sessions with a shrink, and both seemed to have recovered from their ordeal. Lauren had been a teary-eyed wreck for a few weeks afterward and had turned her gratitude to Zeb into a rage over Connor’s job. Time, the shrink, and the solidity of her family around her had helped calm her down and put things into perspective.

The rescue had blown Connor’s stories wide open. Hardinger had been arrested, Alchemy was under investigation by numerous federal bodies, and Connor was being feted the length and the breadth of the journalistic world.

The FBI had come under ugly scrutiny but managed to redeem themselves a little by claiming credit for the rescue.

‘Assholes.’ Broker had shrugged when Connor spoke to him briefly a few days later and didn’t say anything more.

Rory had come out of the hostage situation very well, the natural ebullience of youth helping his recovery. Zeb now wasn’t just a hero to him but the closest thing to God.

Connor had found out that there had been one other gunman on the second floor that neither Broker nor Zeb had detected with their thermal imaging. Zeb had shot this guy, but if he had been detected earlier and if Broker had taken out the remaining ones, Zeb would have been fine.

Broker and Zeb had been very close, and Connor was amazed that he didn’t show any trace of guilt or grief.

He had ventured this question to Bear and Chloe and then shut up, his ears flaming when they had turned cold empty eyes on him.

Broker had not let the Balthazars see Zeb’s body – Clare had accompanied his body in an ambulance to the nearest hospital, where he was declared dead.

Broker had spent a lot of time with Rory in private, and Rory seemed to be the better for it. Connor and Lauren hadn’t asked Rory what they talked about, respecting a newfound maturity in him.