Surrender A Section 8 Novel

Chapter Three





Mental institution or jail—the choice was an easy one for Jem, except for the parts when they tied you down and tried to shock the shit out of your brain.

Not that it ever did anything for him but get him hard, which really freaked the docs out, and that alone made it worth the pain.

This stint had only been three months so far. Before this his crimes had always been wiped from the system, thanks to the CIA.

But this time, the CIA wasn’t coming to break him out. His handler had warned him that he’d pushed it too far, and given Jem’s history, the only concession made was to put him in the mental ward while he recovered from his GSW.

After that, he was headed to prison, as the government disavowed all knowledge of him.

He’d known they could do so. Hell, it made the risk that much more intriguing. And if he didn’t have family troubles, he’d probably serve the few years so he could walk away a free man.

He had six months left, his handler had told him earlier in the week.

“And then what? You gonna put me back in the field?”

“You know that’s impossible, Jem. Serve your time in jail, find some peace and then—”

Jem had hung the phone up and walked away. Finding peace was not only impossible; it wasn’t on his life list of things to goddamned do.

He was on his own, and anyway, it kept his skills in shape. Amazing what you could learn from crazy people, especially when you had that gene inside you. Letting it run free for a while was as necessary as a wolf running during the full moon. Inevitable and impossible to stop.

“Jeremiah,” one of the student nurses called, and he glanced up from the bench he’d been lying on.

“Jem,” he corrected, held out his hand for the pills, took them without water and opened his mouth wide to show her that he hadn’t hidden them under his tongue.

Damn right he took them—they gave him a mild jolt, but he’d always been able to handle substances like this without many side effects. The crazy outpaced it all.

The student nurses were the best because they believed the patients. He loved to watch them get led through the floors, only to find themselves trapped between a locked door and giggling patients.

Now he watched one of them try to get a woman to calm down and take her meds. But Bettie would go down fighting—slapped the nurse and threw a chair while Jem watched and waited for his out.

When the orderly tried to stop her, she swung another chair, which Jem caught and held.

Bettie turned to him. “I’m the Queen of England!”

“Yes, you are,” Jem agreed solemnly. He let the orderly get close to her and then he backed away with the man’s keys in his pocket.

Three locks later, he was out the door and in his younger brother’s car. Key had been cleaning up after him—and trying to save him—since they were little.

“Never asked you to,” Jem would tell him, but Key would keep trying.

One of these days, he might not be there.

But today, he was. “Dude, get the hell out of here.”

Key glanced in the rearview at the orderlies and security guard headed toward the car. “I thought you said you were being discharged.”

“I said I was ready to be discharged. Are you going to argue semantics, brother, or are you going to drive?”

Key muttered some choice curses under his breath, but he ultimately floored it out of the lot.

“Get the net.” Jem laughed, turned the radio all the way up and opened the window. “Fresh f*cking air. Got any cigarettes?”

Key just shot him a look and pointed to the glove compartment. “I don’t understand why they keep putting you back into these places. Nothing ever changes.”

Jem drew a few puffs on the cigarette, silently agreeing with Key. But in reality, he forced the CIA’s hand in most of these cases, returned in the hopes that someone could fix him, could explain the burning need to do crazy, dangerous things like they were the air he breathed.

He wanted normal, but as every shrink since the dawn of time had pointed out, normal was relative.

The one thing they did agree on was that he was just enough outside of that box for them to keep agreeing to take him in.

How all this crazy—as his family always called it—skipped Key, he’d never know. But he was grateful for it.

“What did you do this time?”

“Nothing major,” Jem assured him, which he knew was no reassurance at all. “Did I screw up your leave?”

“I’m out.”

Key had been a great Ranger—and he’d been up for a promotion to the Delta Teams once he passed the necessary tests. Jem didn’t know if Key knew that and decided not to even ask. No matter what, he’d done Jem proud.

It had been his brother’s life, and now Jem needed to be there to put the pieces back together, before the family curse took out Key at the knees.

If it was a rescue Key needed, that’s what he’d get. If he needed to drink and f*ck his way through New Orleans before he felt better, they could do that too. But Jem would be damned if he’d watch Key self-destruct and sit by and do nothing about it.

“I don’t understand it. You saved a guy’s life,” he said finally. He hadn’t been able to help Key all that much. Jem had tried to pull some strings, but he’d met with a hell of a lot of resistance, enough to make him suspicious that this was far more complicated than Key simply disobeying a direct order.

“The SEAL didn’t bother to show up to testify,” Key said tightly. “Didn’t answer letters. No one could find him to serve the subpoena.”

“Sure he’s alive?”

“When I find him, he’ll wish he wasn’t,” Key muttered.

Jem didn’t bother to try to talk Key out of that—didn’t tell him that he was out of a job as well. Until you lost it all, you had no idea how much you were willing to give. Owning next to nothing had always worked for Jem. Having some money in the bank for emergencies was also important. “Where are we headed?”

Key gave a small twist of a grin. “Home.”

Most of New Orleans was still shot to shit, which left it a perfect hiding spot for vagrants and lawbreakers.

Luckily, he could be both.