Whiskey Flight

by Violet Howe

  Franco approached the hangar, his eyes wary as he took in the situation.

  Victor’s pacing stopped. “What now?”

  “We found the other SUV. The deputy used it to block the runway.”

  Victor closed his eyes and set his thumb to stroking between his brows again.

  “Well, figure out a way to move it because Tony just called to let me know we’ve got company coming through the front gate of the development. Lots of company.”

  “Shit. All right. We’re on it.”

  Franco signaled to the other two men and the three of them took off running toward the runway as Victor lifted his head to stare at Ned.

  “Let me go help them,” Ned said. “I can hotwire it. We’ll get it moved, and we’ll be on the plane and out of here before the cops arrive.”

  Victor shifted his gaze to me, and his eyes seemed unnaturally dilated, as though some hold on sanity had broken.

  “So, it seems your beloved Seth didn’t abandon you after all. He must still be here, thinking somehow he’s going to be the one who takes you home.”

  Ned took a step forward toward Victor. “Let him. You don’t need her, and if you leave her behind, they may not even pursue us.”

  “I. Am. Not. Leaving. Here. Without. My. Wife.” Victor ground out the words through clenched teeth with his eyes closed and his forehead scrunched so tightly it seemed as though speaking took a Herculean effort.

  The distant sound of helicopters drew Ned’s attention, and I began to search the sky for any sign of the cavalry’s approach.

  Ned looked back to Victor, whose eyes were still closed in his contorted face.

  When Ned spoke, his voice was soft and consoling. “She doesn’t want to be with you, man. She’s gonna keep screwing things up until you let her go. She doesn’t love you.”

  Victor’s eyes opened, and the look he gave Ned should have made the man step back and keep his thoughts to himself.

  Ned must have had a death wish, though, because he pushed the envelope further. “She’s not right for you. She messed with your head right from the start, and you haven’t been thinking clearly since you met her.”

  I opened my mouth to defend myself, but thought better of it and promptly closed it. I didn’t want to draw any more attention than necessary, especially since it appeared Victor was actually considering Ned’s words. If Ned convinced him I was expendable, my situation would become even more precarious, something I hadn’t thought possible given its already dire state.

  Ned laid his hand on Victor’s shoulder, and Victor turned his head to stare down at Ned’s hand.

  “C’mon,” Ned whispered, giving Victor a gentle shake. “There’ll be plenty of other women in the islands. They’ll be falling all over you like they always have. You’ll forget this bitch in no time.”

  In a split second, Ned went from leaning toward Victor with a conspiratorial grin to lying flat on his back with a bullet hole in his forehead and a pool of blood seeping from the back of his skull.

  Pain stabbed through my ears with the deafening explosion of the gun firing so close to me, leaving them ringing with a shrill, high-pitched whine.

  Victor turned to me immediately, his expression horrorstricken.

  “Oh God, Danielle, I’m sorry,” Victor said, his voice pleading, but then almost instantly, his face turned angry again. “Christ, will nothing go right? Please stop screaming!”

  Until he said it, I hadn’t known that I was, and I clamped my hand over my mouth in an attempt to quiet the involuntary reaction.

  Victor rushed forward, his arms lifted like he meant to hold me, and I backed farther away as I screeched, “Don’t touch me!”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I lost my temper. He pushed me too far.”

  “You shot him for nothing,” I choked out, my voice a gurgle as fear constricted my throat.

  “Yes, I shot him, but not for nothing!” His anger had flared again, and his wild eyes widened even more beneath raised eyebrows. “For you! I told you I’d do anything for you, and apparently, that includes severing ties with someone I’ve known since childhood because he insulted you.”

  “Severing ties? You killed him!” I shook my head to dispel the replay of it that seemed to be on a continuous loop in my mind. “You didn’t do this for me. I never asked you to kill anyone.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and swore. “No, this is true. You did not. Ned caused his own death with his disrespect.”

  “Since when is calling someone a bitch a death sentence?”

  My eyes spied Ned’s gun where it had fallen to the floor, and I tried to calculate how long it would take me to reach it.

  “It’s not like I didn’t warn him! I was defending you!” Victor raised his hands in frustration and looked toward the ceiling as he turned from me just enough to give me a window of opportunity.

  I reached down to scoop up Ned’s gun, releasing the safety as I leveled it at Victor.

  His eyes darkened as he stared at me, and his upper lip began to twitch along with that overworked muscle in his jaw.

  “Danielle, don’t do anything you’ll regret.” His voice was cold steel.

  “I’ve had enough regrets in the past two years to last me a lifetime. I’m done regretting. I’m taking back control of my life, and I intend to live it fully without looking over my shoulder and without needing a bottle to numb it.”

  He stepped toward me, and I stepped back, my hands trembling on the gun as I cocked it. It had been years since I’d held one. Tenth grade. Maybe eleventh. Seth and his brother Noah had taught me to shoot at targets in the backyard when we were kids, and I’d always been damned good at it. But I’d never dreamed I would have a human being in my sights, and I wondered if I’d have the courage to pull the trigger.

  The fact that I’d cocked it seemed to convince Victor I was at least considering it, and his attitude shifted almost immediately. He lifted both hands in surrender, even though his left hand still held his pistol. His gaze softened, and so did his voice.

  “I understand that you’re upset. I’ve broken another promise to you, haven’t I? I swore I was done with that life, and I thought I was.”

  The quiet repentance in his voice and the sudden calmness in his demeanor brought to mind Jekyll & Hyde, and I braced my stance and held the gun as steady as I could, watching for any sign of the monster’s return.

  He let his hands drop to his sides, and a frown clouded his face. “I was certain I had pulled my last trigger, and yet, in the downward spiral of our circumstances, I find myself in survival mode, relying on my instincts and doing what comes naturally.”

  Killing came naturally for him. It always would. No matter what promises he made, there would be no reform for a man whose base instincts were to react in rage and violence.

  “Please forgive me. I’ll do better, I swear. I just need to get us away from here. I need to know you’re safe, that we’re safe. I swear it will be different then.” He extended his right hand toward me as he stepped closer. “Give me the gun.”

  “No. Stay where you are.” My voice shook as badly as my hands.

  “You won’t shoot me,” Victor said, his lips spreading in a maddening grin. “You don’t have it in you to be a killer. You’re not like me or my men. Or Seth.”

  “Seth is not a killer,” I said, shaking my head.

  Victor chuckled. “I’ve never understood this obsession with him. It was a childhood romance. He didn’t care enough to carry it into adulthood. So why is it that you cling to this ridiculous notion you have of him?”

  The whirring of the helicopters grew louder as they got closer, and as Victor glanced toward the sky, I made the mistake of doing the same.

  He lunged, and I retreated to find my back against the small plane. I had nowhere to go. I’d either have to shoot him or stand down, and I didn’t want to do either.

  “Don’t come any closer, or I will shoot you.”

  “No, you won’t.”
The grin he flashed was his most charming. The one that had done me in and gotten me in this mess two years earlier. “If you were going to do it, you already would have. You don’t want to shoot me. You’re too tenderhearted. You don’t have what it takes to pull the trigger.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” Seth said, entering the hangar from the other side with a gun trained on Victor. “I’ll pull it for her.”

  Twenty

  Relief washed over me, and my limbs damned near went to jelly.

  Victor spun around immediately, taking aim at Seth, but then, he shifted so he could swing his head back and forth, watching us both. His gun remained on Seth, though.

  Seth’s eyes never left Victor’s, but his questions were directed at me.

  “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, resisting the urge to run across the hangar and throw my arms around him.

  “Your concern is touching,” Victor said, “but I wouldn’t hurt my own wife.”

  “She’s not your wife,” Seth said. “And if you call her that one more time, the SWAT team that’s on its way here right now will find your corpse when they arrive.”

  “You won’t shoot me either.” Victor’s grin was lethal this time, not charming. “You’re too duty-bound. Honor and all that. I bet the only way you’ll shoot is self-defense.”

  Seth chuckled. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I would have killed you for what you’d done to her even before you showed up tonight.”

  Victor lifted an eyebrow and his grin widened. “Ah. Danielle, perhaps you don’t know your white knight as well you believe.”

  “Dani, I need you to hide,” Seth said, his gaze unwavering as he smiled back at Victor. “Shit’s about to get crazy here from the land and the sky, and I want you to find someplace to lay low and wait it out. You don’t come out until you’re certain it’s safe, you hear me?”

  My heart leapt to my throat at the thought of being separated again when we’d just been reunited. “I don’t want to leave you. I want to stay with you. We’ll be safe once they get here. Let me stay with you.”

  Suddenly, Franco pulled up to the front of the hangar in the recovered SUV. His eyes widened as he took in the scene before him, and then Seth yelled, “Now, Dani! Run! Hide!”

  Franco accelerated, driving straight toward Seth, and nearly taking me out in the process. I scrambled out of his path and around the front of the plane as gunfire echoed throughout the hangar. With no time to search for options, I flung open the only door I could see and began to climb the staircase behind it without much consideration for where it might lead. My heel caught in the metal grate of a step, and as I cursed the stiletto sandals for the hundredth time since I’d put them on, I slipped them off and continued up the stairs barefooted, wincing at the sharp metal pressing into the soft undersides of my feet.

  More bursts of gunfire rang out, and I instinctively ducked and then ran faster. With each shot fired off from the hangar below, I flinched, worried that Seth had been hit. When I reached the landing at the top, a window offered a view outside, and the helicopters were clearly visible in the lightening pre-dawn sky. We just had to survive a few minutes longer, and the cavalry would arrive.

  I looked down at the ground outside the window. One of Victor’s men was running from the plane toward the hangar. He stopped and aimed his gun. Then with the sound of another bullet being fired, he dropped, and I took that as a sign that Seth was unharmed enough to still be shooting back.

  Flinging open the door on the top landing, I rushed out onto a metal catwalk that spanned the expanse of the building to a door on the other side. From my vantage point, I could see the entire hangar below, but not Seth or Victor. It seemed the battle had stopped for a moment. I strained to hear any movement beneath me, but the incessant ringing in my ears and the sound of the approaching helicopters made it impossible to even hear my own thoughts.

  Desperate for any sign of Seth, I inched farther out onto the catwalk, moving slowly so I wouldn’t draw attention to my presence. The helicopters were so close now that I could feel the reverberation of their whirring rotors in my chest.

  Somewhere behind me outside the hangar, the rapid bursts of an automatic rifle ripped through the air, and though they weren’t shooting at me, I dropped as low as I could, holding onto the rails for dear life in my vulnerable and exposed position. A new fear gripped me at the thought of them taking out the helicopters and preventing the cavalry’s arrival. If they were to succeed in bringing one of the big birds down, who knew where it might end up, and the last place I wanted to be was suspended on a piece of scaffolding high above the concrete floor. The door on the other side offered refuge, so I scurried over the catwalk, praying no one would see me.

  A booming voice filled the air as someone on the helicopter demanded that those on the ground drop their weapons, but based on the answering round of shots, the request wasn’t heeded.

  As I reached for the door handle, I made eye contact with Franco down below in his hiding space behind the toolbox with the body on it. I held his gaze as I pulled the door open, turning too late to prevent a crash into the arms of the one person I most wanted to hide from.

  Victor wrapped me in a painfully tight embrace, shoving me up against the door with my arms pinned at my sides. “Well, hello, sweetness. So nice to have you back where you belong.”

  He moved to kiss me, and I headbutted him with all my strength, the world going black and then bursting with bright flashes as the pain exploded behind my eyes.

  “Dammit,” Victor growled, but he didn’t release me. “Why are you making this so difficult?”

  “Because you’re forcing me to do something I don’t want to do! Why can’t you just let me go? You swore to me tonight that you were the man I fell in love with, and I’m begging that man to let me go. Be the decent person I know you can be. It’s not too late for you to do the right thing.”

  “Getting us out of here is the right thing! As soon as we’re in the air, as soon as I know you’re safe, I’ve already sworn to you I will leave this way of life behind.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Do you not hear those helicopters? Seth said a SWAT team is on its way. There’s no way in hell they will let you take off. It’s done, Vic. It’s over.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “We vowed until death do us part. As long as we’re both still breathing, you’re still my wife, and we still have a chance.”

  “I told you what would happen if you called her that again,” Seth said from the other end of the catwalk as he walked toward us with his gun drawn.

  In the next moment, it was as though the earth had slowed its crawl, suspending time so that everything unfolded in slow motion.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Franco move to stand, his arms lifting as he aimed his gun at Seth. Detecting the movement below, Seth turned to face him just as Victor moved forward, shoving me behind him to take aim at Seth as well.

  It was pure instinct that drove me to raise Ned’s gun and pull the trigger. I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing or whether it was right or wrong. I was simply consumed by the need to make sure Seth survived.

  Four shots rang out from four guns in almost perfect synchronicity. Victor and Franco both went down, and Ned’s gun fell from my hand as I stared at the motionless body of the man I’d married. The man I’d shot.

  Tiny needles prickled across the palm of my hand from the force of the gun’s discharge, and I clutched my fist to my chest, slumping to my knees in shock. I tried to tear my eyes from the gaping hole in Victor’s back, but they wouldn’t obey.

  Then the world sped back up, and I clung to the railing as the catwalk seemed to sway and the edges of my vision began to go black.

  Something moved on the other end of the catwalk, and I managed to focus once I saw it was Seth. My heart rejoiced to see that he was upright and breathing. He stood at an angle, looking down as he scanned the hangar for any further threats,
and when he turned, panic overtook me as I watched the dark red stain rapidly spreading across his shoulder.

  Intent on reaching Seth, I struggled to crawl past Victor on the narrow surface, cringing as my body made contact with his. My stomach heaved, but I bit down hard on my lip and kept moving forward as Seth walked toward me, but then he turned back to look outside the building.

  I shut my eyes briefly and allowed myself to take a breath once I was clear of Victor’s body, but just as I drew the air in, his hand shot out and grasped my ankle, his fingers clamping down as he sought to hold onto me. My reaction was automatic. I kicked with every bit of force I could muster, drawing on the panicked adrenaline coursing through me. The heel of my foot made contact with Victor’s shoulder, the impact strong enough to push his weakened body over the edge beneath the rail.

  He fell to the concrete below with a sickening thud so loud it drowned out the ringing of my ears and shook me to my core. I held tightly to the railing and stared down at his body in horror, and though I opened my mouth to scream, nothing would come out.

  And then, Seth was there, his arms wrapped around me as he turned my head toward his chest and crooned in my ear.

  “Don’t look. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  “I killed him,” I whispered as I twisted my fists into his shirt.

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay!” Tears sprang forth as I shuddered. “Oh, my God. I killed him.”

  Seth cradled my face in his hands, pressing his forehead to mine as our gazes locked.

  “Listen to me! You did what you had to do. You saved my life.”

  Someone yelled from outside, and I jerked at the sound, on full alert again. Men in black entered the hangar below, scurrying beneath us like ants.

  “Look at me,” Seth called, bringing my attention back to him, which brought my eyes back to his shoulder.

  “You’ve been shot! You’re bleeding.”

  He glanced down at his shoulder and then pulled me closer against his chest. “I’m fine. It’s nothing. The bullet grazed me and kept going.”