Protective Measures

by Maggie K. Black

  The waitress’s violet eyes widened. But she shoved past him and ran down the stairs without answering.

  “Leo! Help!” Zoe was calling his name. His heart wrenched toward the sound.

  “Hold on, I’m coming!” Leo bolted up the narrow staircase to the top floor. It was small, with slanted ceilings and doors in all directions. He followed the sound of her voice, burst through another door and ended up outside on a patio. Humid air surrounded him. But it was the faint cloud of pepper still hanging in the air that made his eyes sting and his heart ache. “Zoe? Where are you?”

  “I’m here!” A sob choked in her voice. He glanced around. A coffee cart had been knocked over. Broken dishes littered the ground. Then he saw her. Zoe was curled in a ball against the low wall. He dropped to his knees beside her.

  “A waitress pepper-sprayed me.” Thick tears streamed down Zoe’s face. “I can’t see a thing.”

  * * *

  Leo’s blurred shape floated before her stinging eyes. Zoe blinked rapidly, trying to wash away the pain. “I cleared the place out, but this one waitress just wouldn’t leave.”

  “Did she have red hair?” he asked. “Purple eyes?”

  “Wig and colored contacts, yeah,” she said. A fit of coughing overtook her lungs. The burn of the pepper spray seared in her throat. Fresh tears blurred her vision.

  “Hey,” Leo said softly. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to sort your eyes and get you out of here safely. I promise.”

  She felt his hands brush the sides of her face. He tucked her hair behind her ears.

  “Wow, you really did take the blast full on, didn’t you?” He whistled softly under his breath. “I’ve seen men four times your size fall apart from way lighter blasts than that.”

  She could tell he was trying to make her feel better. Somehow it helped.

  “I shouldn’t have tried to force her to leave,” she said. “It was clear she was up to something. Alex told me The Anemoi crew had a woman on it. Her handle is Pandora. It was probably her. I don’t know why I didn’t just leave her and then run.”

  “Because that’s not who you are. Even I know that.” He pulled a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and drenched it in milk from the coffee tray. Gently, he placed the handkerchief against her stinging skin. She almost gasped in relief. “Hold this to your face. It’ll help until we can flush your eyes out with water. Now, I’m going to pick you up and carry you out of here.”

  Her chin raised. “I can walk.”

  “You’ll bump into things.”

  “Not if you guide me.”

  He took her other hand and helped her to her feet. She followed him back into the building. Heavy smoke filled her senses. Then she felt him stop. She dropped the handkerchief from her eyes but saw nothing but a wall of gray.

  “Can’t take the stairs, the fire’s spread to the second floor,” Leo said. Then she heard him pray for guidance.

  “We’ll have to jump and aim for the river,” Zoe said. “It’s pretty deep. But there’s a stone walkway and a wrought iron fence between us and it.”

  “How far out is it?” he asked.

  “Six feet maybe,” she said. “I can jump it.”

  “Not without your eyes,” he said. “Sorry, but I think we’re going to have to make this jump together.”

  He swept her up into his arms. Then she felt him run, pelting out across the patio. The sizzle of the fire echoed behind them. The wail of distant sirens filled the air.

  Help us, Lord. Please, help us.

  She felt him take a step up onto the balcony railing. He leaped and they were airborne. They fell through the air. Her head pressed against his chest. His strong arms locked around her. She took a breath and prepared to hit the water. But then suddenly something jerked them backward. Then she felt him throw her forward, launching her out of his arms. Her body smacked the water. She went under and opened her eyes but saw nothing but the green-gray wall of murky water. She kicked hard and swam for the surface, blinking rapidly as she felt the sting of the pepper spray flush from her eyes. Chaos reigned around her. The castle was a wall of flame casting the scene in an eerie red glow. Sirens wailed closer. People crowded around the fence, yelling, pointing, and it took her a breath to realize she was what they were looking at.

  “Leo? Where are you?” Desperately her blurry gaze scanned the surface of the water. Where was he? Why had he thrown her like that? Then she saw the segment of fence had caved in and broken off. Jagged spikes of what remained jutted out over the water. His torn jacket hung like a rag from one of the barbed points. She swam toward it. Ash and debris rained down around her. Panic filled her core.

  Lord, where was he? Please, may he be okay.

  Then she saw the air bubbles streaming up from beneath her. She gasped a deep breath and dove under again, feeling for him through the darkness. Thick seaweed grabbed at her body. Her lungs ached for breath. Then she felt him, thrashing in the water beneath her, caught on a portion of fallen fence. She reached for him but was almost flung back by the force of his arm. She gritted her teeth and swam forward again.

  It’s okay. I’ve got your back, Commander. Let me help you. Her fingers felt for his arm. Then she felt his hand grab hers and squeeze. She yanked the knife from her leg holster and pressed it into his palm. He took it. She swam upward, praying with each stroke to feel him following her. She broke through the water and gasped for air. Leo surfaced beside her.

  “Thank you!” He gulped a deep breath. Water streamed down the strong lines of his jaw. “You saved my life.”

  “You saved mine.” Then she heard the rumble of debris rushing down toward them. He yanked her into his arms and sheltered her body with his as the flaming balcony caved in toward them.

  THREE

  It was like swimming through a minefield in a hurricane. Thick smoke filled the air. The heat was like a shimmering wave in the darkness. Falling bricks and rock crashed down around them, churning the water and threatening to crush them alive. But in the midst of it all she felt Leo’s strong arm around her, sheltering her from the crumbling building as it collapsed in flames and rubble around them. Zoe swam upstream, her strong legs kicking for her life against the current, only vaguely aware of the voices yelling somewhere beyond her in the chaos. They cleared the debris, but kept swimming, upstream, letting the crowd and fire fade behind them.

  The air cleared. Then Leo stopped swimming, took her hand and pulled her into a bay. Rock rose sheer and high beside them. She tried to stand, but the tips of her toes barely brushed the bottom.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, treading water. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”

  “Yep.” He slid her utility knife back into her hand. “Thank you for coming after me. I was good and stuck there for a moment.”

  She took the knife and traded him for his cell phone, hoping for his sake it was waterproof. Behind them the fire raged, lights from what looked like an endless stream of emergency vehicles flashed and spun, and silhouettes of people crowded the shoreline.

  “We should go,” she said. Her eyes searched the rock for handholds. “I have to find Alex and I imagine a lot of people will be looking for you.”

  “Hang on.” He reached for her hand. “Just one second. We need to talk.”

  Here and now? In a river?

  “Okay,” she said. “But let’s get out of the water first and talk on the dry land. It’s so deep, I can’t even stand here.”

  But instead, he pulled her closer until she was standing on her tiptoes on top of his boots.

  “You’re right, people will be looking for us,” Leo said. His hand slid around her back, holding her firm, even as she could feel the current beating against their bodies. “But we need to talk alone, without an audience, and the moment I get to shore
I’ll be swamped by people again. So please, quickly, tell me everything you know about The Anemoi.”

  The intensity in his voice rattled something inside her. There was an urgency there that she hadn’t heard before. Had he been The Anemoi’s target? Did he know something about The Anemoi or the fire that he wasn’t telling her? She could feel his hand on the small of her back and the strength of his arms under her fingers. This man had saved her life. She had saved his. Yet, he was still virtually a stranger and she was still on a mission.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you five minutes, but then I’m climbing out of this river. Also, I’m talking to you off the record. None of this goes to the press. None of this gets repeated as gossip. Okay? I’m trusting you here.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” he said. “I’m good at keeping secrets and I can’t abide gossip. You can trust me.”

  She took a deep breath and hoped that was true.

  “Two months ago, a client contacted us saying his identity had been stolen and his bank accounts emptied,” Zoe said. “Police had no leads. We said we’d look into it, but honestly didn’t expect to find much. We’re a private security firm, not detectives. Then, three weeks later someone else called us claiming to be the victim of a grand conspiracy to ruin his reputation.”

  “And you saw a connection?” Leo asked.

  “Samantha did,” Zoe said. “She’s brilliant when it comes to online research and making connections. She started digging into something called the Dark Web and building these info charts, before finally hitting on The Anemoi. Basically, they’re a bunch of loosely connected crooks that steal very important things for people, for a very high price. They tend to go by handles from Greek mythology. Like, the guy who attacked me with the knife calls himself Prometheus after the Titan who stole fire from Olympus. In their twisted minds they’re convinced they’re the good guys, righting wrongs and wrecking lives they think deserve to be destroyed.”

  Leo blew out a long breath. She waited. When he didn’t say anything more, she kept going.

  “I get how ridiculous it probably sounds,” she said, “that there are these people, who are fooling themselves into thinking they’re some kind of heroes when they’re really just criminals being paid a whole lot of money to utterly ruin people’s lives.”

  “In my experience most criminals tend to be pretty delusional and think that they’re justified,” Leo said. “Nobody wants to believe they’re the bad guy.”

  She smiled. Okay, maybe he was the kind of person she could talk to. At least it seemed like he was taking her seriously.

  “There were three of them at the gala tonight,” she said. “Their code names were Prometheus, Pandora and Jason. I guess Pandora pepper-sprayed me. I never saw Jason, but apparently he’s young, tall and thin. Like I told you, Samantha saw some online chatter about them scoping out a potential target at this gala and I went in undercover to see if I spotted anything fishy or could identify any members of the team. Something we could pass to police to help our current clients or even help us be on the lookout for the future. I have no idea why they’d set the coatroom on fire, unless it’s to keep someone from discovering what they’ve stolen or rifled through. We have no idea who their target is or what they’re attempting to steal. It could be something professional or intensely personal.”

  There was another long pause. Again, she couldn’t shake the idea that he knew something he wasn’t telling her. This time she waited Leo out. Finally he said, “How do they usually warn their targets?”

  “What?” She nearly slipped off his toes and into the water. “They don’t warn them. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone from The Anemoi warning anyone. Why?”

  She waited again. But this time Leo didn’t answer.

  “Leo?” Her tone grew sharper. “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I saw a thin man—could be Jason—defacing a poster in the ballroom. But it might not mean anything.”

  He was talking like it was no big deal, but that didn’t explain why his voice sounded both angry and strangled.

  “Do you think you know who the target was?” she asked. No answer. A chill ran down her spine. “Could it be you? Do you have something worth stealing?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said.

  Why didn’t she believe him? Voices were clamoring above them now. People were running toward them.

  “We’ve got some survivors over here!” a male voice bellowed above her. “Can someone grab us a rope?”

  She looked up and was blinded by the glare of flashlights. Leo pulled her against the rock.

  “I’m going to hoist you up,” he said. “You should be able to climb up from there. It’s not that far.”

  Light fell from above, highlighting the lines of his chiseled jaw and the strength that lay beneath his wet dress shirt. But it was the depth of the worry pooling in his eyes that made her heart stop beating.

  “What’s wrong?” Her hand brushed his jaw. “Tell me. Do you have any reason to believe you’re The Anemoi’s target? Is there anything you have that someone would think shouldn’t belong to you?”

  To her surprise, he hugged her quickly with the shared relief of two people who’d been through trauma together. She hugged him back.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Leo’s voice was a deep, gruff whisper in her ear. “I don’t have anything worth stealing, and definitely nothing that a vigilante would argue doesn’t belong to me. Thank you for everything.”

  He hoisted her up. Other hands were reaching down for her. She stepped up onto Leo’s shoulder and grabbed onto one of the outstretched hands. A police officer pulled her up onto the ledge.

  “Are you alright, miss?” a paramedic asked. There was a light in her still sensitive eyes. He took her arm and started leading her toward a bank of ambulances.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She pulled away.

  The paramedic let her go without an argument. She wasn’t surprised considering the scene. Firefighters and emergency service personnel were trying to corral people, put out the fire and check for injuries. Party guests rambled around the gardens, ignoring orders and trying to take pictures on their phones.

  She’d learned as a teenager that whenever there was a spectacle there’d be two different types of people running around. There were those who watched the show and those who kept people safe. Back then she’d been the spectacle, the fire, the flashy and fierce marital arts and gymnastics competitor who people cheered for loudly when she won and booed at when it all came to an end. But she’d known, even then, what kind of person she wanted to be. She wanted to be the one who protected people and rescued them from the metaphorical flames.

  The crowd parted and she saw Leo hauling himself over the ledge. He stood on the edge of the rocks, with the fire to his right, the darkness to his left and the river swirling behind him. Her breath caught in her throat. He was rugged, strong and dashing in a way she’d thought only movie stars could be. Yet as his eyes scanned the crowd, something deep inside his gaze almost looked wounded, too.

  Lord, protect him and help him. I don’t know what he wasn’t telling me or why he brushed off my questions. Or why my gut’s telling me that he was The Anemoi’s intended target.

  The Anemoi had gotten its name from a group of deadly winds, and somehow the castle fire felt like the first rumble of thunder that warned of an approaching storm. Something big was coming. Something devastating and dangerous. And she just couldn’t shake the feeling that Leo Darius was going to be right in the center of that storm.

  People pushed past her. Voices babbled around her, fading into white noise. Still her eyes were locked on Leo’s form. He’d come for her. He’d carried her in his arms. He’d leaped through the air to save them both. She’d trusted him with the truth about her job at Ash Private Security and about The Anemoi
. But he hadn’t trusted her in return.

  “Excuse me! Ma’am.” The Irish voice was smooth behind her and his hand touched her shoulder so suddenly she nearly jumped out of her skin. She flinched, her whole body pulling away as she turned. It was him, Killian, the same creep who used to skulk around the edges of martial arts competitions hitting on the female competitors, until one day, when he’d snuck up behind her, she’d wielded around and elbowed him in the face on live television, ending her competitive career. “Are you the woman who Commander Darius rescued from the fire?”

  She nearly choked. He didn’t recognize her. She didn’t know if it was just because of the odd way the combination of the night, the flames and emergency beams played tricks with light and shadows. Or if it was because of how disheveled she was from the fire and the lake.

  But she couldn’t shake the thought that maybe he’d actually forgotten her. That despite everything she’d lost by elbowing him in the face, she’d been nothing but an insignificant and forgettable blip in his life.

  Even though she’d never forgotten his face.

  “No comment.” Zoe didn’t meet his eye and turned away, hoping not to jog his memory.

  “No comment?” he pressed. “How can you have no comment? Either you’re the woman he rescued or you’re not.”

  “Sorry, I’ve got to go.” She persisted through the crowd, searching the sea of emergency vehicles for the plain black Ash Security van.

  Killian kept following her. She could hear his voice as sharp and direct as arrows shooting after her. “At least, tell me your name. Who are you?”

  “I’m nobody.” She disappeared into the crowd. She was nobody now. She liked it that way. One brief intense encounter in a moment of danger with the daring Commander Leo Darius wasn’t about to change that.