Watched from a Distance

by Allison B Hanson

  Kulakov had threatened Lena with an especially grim fate for her daughter if she betrayed him. Including a personal delivery to a special buyer. That would play in their favor.

  Unless he’d been bluffing. Viktor Kulakov did have a flair for the dramatic.

  Before Dane could ask Lena if she was okay, a black town car pulled up in front of the dock. Weller jumped out of the passenger seat and moved to the back door on the same side. He opened it while his gaze darted around the parking lot.

  Dane had purposely parked under the light so the glass would reflect like a mirror.

  The door opened, and Viktor slid out of the car wearing a white suit and a straw fedora. He looked like the poster boy for Drug Smugglers R Us. What a cliché.

  Dane heard Colton’s sharp intake of breath at seeing the people who had tried their best to kill him.

  Viktor studied the parking lot nervously, then nodded to Butch who climbed out from the other side of the car.

  The dock was dark except for a few scattered street lights, but the yacht was all lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Where is she?” Lena whispered. “She has to be here.”

  Up on deck, two more men came to stand at the rail by the gangplank.

  “We’ve got four guards visible,” Colton said from the back seat, slipping into deputy marshal mode and keeping everyone on the com informed. “Angel?”

  “I can get the two on deck from here,” she said next to him. She raised a high-power rifle and twisted her neck to the side. “You get the two with Viktor.”

  “I’ve got Viktor,” Dane said, keeping his voice even. Too bad he couldn’t shoot to kill. They would need him to tell them what he’d done with Kenzie.

  Viktor moved around to the side of the town car. The side away from them that was wreathed in darkness. He looked down for a moment, then turned toward the brightly lit yacht.

  “Are we doing this?” Angel asked.

  They were supposed to recover Kenzie, but she wasn’t here. However, there was a good chance the authorities would want to speak with Kulakov regarding the contents of the container. Whether it was full of drugs or people.

  If the team stopped him, he might be willing to bargain his freedom for Kenzie.

  “Let’s move,” said Dane.

  Angel was the first one out. She propped the rifle on the car next to them, and two pops later the guards on deck were down.

  Viktor looked behind him briefly, then ducked and rushed toward the gangplank as the boat’s engines roared to life.

  Lena was right next to Dane as he ran across the parking lot. Colton moved to the side and took out Weller, while Butch tucked in behind Kulakov.

  Dane raised the Beretta to shoot Butch but saw something else. Two tiny legs between Viktor and Butch.

  Legs clad in pink leggings with purple hearts on them.

  A little girl.

  “It’s her,” Lena whispered, her voice choking with emotion as they sprinted down the dark marina dock.

  Once Kulakov got the girl on board, they would be much harder to hunt down. The team had to stop him now.

  “Yell for her,” Dane ordered, hoping hearing Lena would make Viktor stop or slow down.

  “Kenzie!” Lena shouted, her voice cracking badly.

  “Mama!” Kenzie called, then did exactly what Dane wanted her to. She flailed and slipped out of her captor’s grip and turned back toward Dane and her mother.

  As Dane and Lena rushed onto the dock, Butch spun around to shoot, but Colton shot first, knocking him to his knees.

  “Baby!” Lena yelled.

  Viktor snatched the girl by her shoulder and pulled her back into his grip.

  Butch aimed his gun from his position on the ground and shot at them.

  “Get down!” Dane yelled at Lena, just as a bullet burned into his leg.

  Falling to the ground, the only thing that went through his mind was Fuck! Not again.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Lena heard Dane’s order to take cover, but her brain couldn’t process it. Her daughter was right there. Only twenty feet away. But she couldn’t get to her because Butch was shooting at her, and Viktor was pulling Kenzie in the opposite direction.

  Colton fired again and Butch fell back, the gun dropping from his hand. But now another man had rushed to the rail and was firing at them from the deck above. For some reason, Dane wasn’t returning fire.

  During target training with Angel and Samantha, Lena hadn’t been sure she’d be able to shoot an actual person. Now there was no doubt.

  She raised her gun and aimed it at the guard. She pulled the trigger. When he went down, she refocused her sights on Kulakov.

  Stepping onto the gangplank, Viktor stopped to hoist Kenzie up in his arms, either to use her as a human shield or to get her to move faster. She was much too close to him for comfort, but Lena had to take a chance. She wouldn’t get another one.

  She definitely didn’t want to shoot Kenzie by accident. Instead of aiming for his back where she might miss a vital organ but hit her daughter if the bullet went through and through, she aimed higher. She let out an even breath and squeezed the trigger with a slow, solid pressure.

  The gun went off.

  Kenzie screamed.

  As a mother, Lena knew every one of her daughter’s cries.

  This one was pain.

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Tucking her gun in her waistband, Lena ran to help her daughter. Kenzie was pinned under Viktor Kulakov’s body. He’d been hit in the back of the head.

  She pulled Kenzie out from under the heap and turned her so she wouldn’t see either of the men who were now dead, lying in pools of blood.

  “Mama,” her daughter sobbed and held onto her neck with all the strength in her little body.

  Lena didn’t mind, even if it did make it difficult to breathe.

  She carried her daughter back to where Dane was sitting on the dock looking like a storm cloud.

  “Are you okay?” she asked with a frown.

  “I was shot in the same leg,” he growled. “Can you believe it?”

  She gasped in surprise. He hadn’t so much as moaned in pain. She hadn’t even realized he’d been shot.

  Sure enough, his thigh was covered in blood. She could see now in the light from the end of the dock.

  There was a lot of blood, but she could tell it wasn’t gushing as one would expect if the bullet had hit an artery. The fact he was shot in the same place might be a good thing…since he had survived being shot there before. Her reasoning wasn’t medically sound, but it kept her from freaking out.

  The wound looked as though it hurt like a bitch. Yet, he was smiling at her daughter, who was clinging to Lena like a baby monkey.

  “Hi, Kenzie. I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said. But his words slurred, his head leaned to the side, and his eyelids drooped shut.

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  “Kulakov’s dead?” Dane asked as he was loaded in the ambulance. He’d started to pass out a few minutes ago, but Angel had smacked him in the face a few times to get him back. He was considering demoting her from best friend status.

  Angel and Colton jumped into the ambulance with him. Mostly because Angel was applying pressure to his wound, and Colton went wherever Angel went. Lena was being pulled away by another emergency worker.

  “Oh, yeah. Real dead,” Colton assured him. He even cringed, indicating it must have been especially gruesome.

  “Good.” Dane smiled despite his spinning head. Viktor deserved an ugly kind of death.

  “Who made the shot?” Angel asked.

  “Lena,” Colton said.

  “It was a clean shoot,” Dane said. “There was no other option but to take out Kulakov with deadly force.”

  Angel raised her brows. “Um… But he wasn’t armed, and he was shot in the back of the head.”

  Dane ground his teeth. “I said it was a good shoot.”

  Angel held up her hands. “Look, I’m not
sorry the guy is dead. And I don’t really care how he got that way. He put my husband and family at risk just by breathing. All I’m saying is, questions will be asked. Make sure you have the right answers.”

  “Kulakov was dragging Kenzie away. Taking her to another country. A mother has a right to protect her child. No parent on the planet would fault her for stopping him any way she could.”

  “Okay,” Angel nodded once. “That’s good.”

  Whether Angel believed that was what really happened or if she thought he’d simply come up with a good cover story, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.

  Colton slid down to the floor of the ambulance, squeezed his eyes shut, and rested his head on his knees.

  “Hey. I can’t take care of both of you,” Angel said. “Why are you falling apart?”

  Colton shook his head slowly and looked up. “Everyone I love is finally safe,” he whispered, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.

  Dane reached out with his bloody hand and gripped Colton’s shoulder. “Thank God for that.”

  Dane realized how right Colton was. Colton’s entire family, including baby John, were now safe. His friend could go home and let his brothers and mother know he was still alive.

  Even better, Tobey, Lena, and Kenzie were also safe now. Viktor couldn’t hurt them anymore.

  With that single bullet, Lena had saved almost everyone.

  Everyone but Dane.

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Lena and Kenzie were being pulled toward a different ambulance than the one Dane, Angel, and Colton were in. The paramedics wanted to take Kenzie in to be checked over, and Lena wanted that, too.

  Her daughter wouldn’t leave her side and was clinging to her arm in a way that made Lena wonder if they would be spending every minute of their lives together from now on. At the moment, that prospect sounded pretty damn good to her.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” she asked for probably the hundredth time in the last forty-five minutes.

  Kenzie nodded against Lena’s side but didn’t speak.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner. That I couldn’t get you away from the mean man until now.”

  “He wasn’t mean, Mama,” Kenzie said in a small voice. “He was nice. He always had candy.”

  Lena decided not to argue with the candy litmus test for the time being. For now, she would just be happy that Viktor hadn’t mistreated her child. Despite his horrific plans for her future.

  “Does anything hurt?” Lena asked while taking in the large bump on Kenzie’s forehead from the fall.

  “It hurts here,” Kenzie said pointing to the wrist where Viktor had gripped and dragged her.

  Lena lifted it tenderly and gave it a kiss. “Okay. When we get to the hospital, the doctors will take a look. They’ll make it all better.”

  “I missed you, Mama.”

  If Kenzie had wanted to say the one thing that would make Lena’s heart break the most, she’d chosen her words well. She’d thought having Kenzie ask when she was coming to get her was difficult. This was unbearable.

  “Oh, baby, I’ve missed you so much.” She didn’t want to squeeze Kenzie too tightly. Not until she’d been seen by a doctor and Lena was sure everything on the inside was fine. But she couldn’t resist giving her a long hug.

  “Daddy said he was taking me away for a fun trip, but when I asked if you were coming, he said you didn’t want to because you were mad at me.”

  Lena had to school her face not to give away her explosive feelings over that lie. “Of course I’m not mad at you. Not at all.”

  The subject had come up numerous times during their video chats. It had been difficult to convince Kenzie she wasn’t angry when she also hadn’t shown up to take her home. Lena understood why she might still be worried about it.

  At the hospital, it took forever for Kenzie to be seen and released with a clean bill of health. Thankfully, her wrist wasn’t broken or sprained, just bruised.

  “Can we go home now?” Kenzie asked.

  Lena wanted to cry. She didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter that they no longer had a home. Or that she only had four hundred dollars in the bank. Thanks to Viktor, her entire life had been put on hold.

  She shuddered as she thought of the man. She’d actually killed him. She’d done it to protect her daughter, and she knew if faced with the same situation, she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. But still, she had taken someone’s life.

  “We’ll leave in a minute, but first I want to check in on the friend who helped me find you.” She hoisted her daughter up on her hip even though, at six, she was way too old to be carried. Surely, some spoiling would make them both feel better.

  Kenzie’s leg pushed at the gun tucked in her jeans. Lena adjusted her little body and kissed Kenzie’s hair. It was so nice to have her close. She never wanted to let her go.

  They went to information and waited while a surly-looking receptionist made a number of adjustments to the contents of her desk before looking at Lena with her brow raised. “Yes?”

  “Hi. I’m looking for Dane Ryan.”

  The woman studied her monitor for a few seconds and looked at her. “Are you family?”

  “No. But I—”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you if he’s a patient unless you’re family.”

  “I already know he’s a patient here. He came in with a gunshot wound. I just need to know where he’s been moved.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Fine. I’ll just wait over here.” She pointed in the direction of the waiting room.

  “Mama, I want to go home,” Kenzie said against her neck.

  “I know, baby, but I can’t get into the house where we’re visiting since I don’t have a key. And my friend is hurt, so we’re just going to sit here until he comes out. You can sleep if you want.”

  “I’m not tired.” Of course Kenzie would never admit to being tired, even as her eyelids sagged. Lena knew it would be no more than ten minutes before she was out like a light.

  As her daughter snuggled in her lap, Lena watched for any sign of Angel, Colton, or Garrett. They were probably with Dane.

  She prayed he was okay. He’d been talking as he was loaded into the ambulance, but what if something had happened afterward?

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Did you say you were waiting for a patient named Dane Ryan?”

  Lena looked up into the eyes of the biggest police officer she’d ever seen. “Uh. Yes?” The last word came out sounding like a question.

  “Were you involved in the shooting at the marina?” he asked.

  Lena swallowed, not sure what to say. What were they telling the police? Was it still a secret? She’d waited too long. The officer frowned and moved on to another question.

  “Can I see some ID?” he asked.

  “Uh. I’m sorry, I don’t have it.” Her real ID had been taken, along with her personal phone and credit cards by Viktor. Her new ID was back at the house, which she didn’t have access to at the moment.

  “I wanna go home,” Kenzie complained, and when she shifted her foot, she dislodged the gun that had been tucked into Lena’s waistband. The nine-millimeter fell between the gap in the seats and clattered to the floor.

  The officer’s eyes widened slightly and he let out a sigh. “Ma’am, I think you’d better come with me.”

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  Dane woke to the telltale smell of a hospital. He remembered being brought in with a gunshot wound to his thigh. The same thigh that had been shot before, and bitten by a dog. And then shot again. He recalled the trip in the ambulance, but things kind of faded out from there.

  His leg should be hurting, but the pain was numbed by whatever was dripping into the IV attached to his arm.

  “Hello there,” a smiling nurse greeted him as she stepped into the room. She took care of business first—checking the bag and the monitors he was hooked up to. “How’s the pain?”

  “Bearable.”
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  “The doctor will be in shortly. Do you know what happened?”

  “Not after I got to the hospital.”

  “Your femoral artery was nicked. You were losing a lot of blood. You had to have an operation to repair it.”

  He winced, and not just from the bright sun filtering through the windows. “How bad is it?”

  “The doctor will be in to discuss it with you.”

  Dane sure didn’t like the frown on her lips when she turned toward the door. But the sound of grumbling from the hallway distracted him. He would recognize Angel’s bossy voice anywhere, since it was the usual tone she used with him.

  “We are his family, and we want to see him. We heard he was awake. You said we only had to wait until he woke up.”

  “Please let them in before her head explodes,” Dane whispered to the nurse by his bed. She nodded and went out to intervene.

  One by one, Garrett, Sam, Angel, and Colton piled into the small room. His gaze remained on the door, waiting for the missing member of their team. But she didn’t come into the room.

  “Where’s Lena?” he asked.

  “I told you he was going to notice,” Angel said with an eye roll as she smacked Garrett in the arm.

  Lena wasn’t there?

  Where the hell was she?

  Chapter Ninety-Seven

  Lena decided to answer the detective’s questions as honestly as possible. Which included telling him she was the one who shot Viktor Kulakov.

  After an initial screaming fit, Kenzie had been allowed to stay with her. Fortunately, she was sleeping by the time they got to the bad parts where her mother admitted to shooting someone in the back of the head.

  Lena didn’t feel guilty, exactly. It was just the kind of experience that stuck with a person.

  When she’d asked for a phone call, the officer who’d brought her in politely explained that she hadn’t been arrested, but was just being held for questioning. She persisted until they brought her a phone.

  The problem was, she didn’t know anyone’s number. They had been stored in her own phone—the one she’d left behind on Glorious Morning in case the team needed to track Viktor. A lot of good it was doing there now.