Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three

by Lawless, Alexi

  Fear skittered through her. If they took a shot at him and he didn’t trigger the fob, they’d all be dead in less than a second.

  “Well, one has to make do with what one can get ahold of in a pinch.” Lightner shrugged, sliding the fob back in his pocket. “Ingenious really, what you can get at a hobby shop and a car rental counter these days.”

  “Lightner, you will never get out of here alive,” she told him frankly, careful not to show the tremors in her hands. “Surely you know that.”

  “Oh, I’m going to walk out of here, Samantha—right after I kill you,” he answered confidently. “Then I’m going to find Jack Roman and slit his throat from ear to ear,” he added, running the silencer from one end of his throat to the other. “I might even keep him awake a few days while I dismember him. Really make the moment last.” He smiled like a maniac.

  “Sam—we need that fob,” Rush told her urgently. “You have to get close enough to him to get it. He misses one click and we’re done for.”

  “I can take him,” Talon murmured.

  “So can I,” Michaelson echoed from somewhere behind her.

  “No,” she ordered, keeping her voice low, barely moving her mouth so Lightner wouldn’t hear or see her reaction in the dimly-lit garden.

  She stepped toward him. “Don’t you want all your money back, Lightner?”

  Lightner cocked his head, surprised at her approach, though his gun remained steady.

  Danger pressed up against her from all sides.

  If any of the men surrounding them tried to take Lightner, she could die.

  If she didn’t get to him fast enough to press that damn button, everyone on the museum campus and in the surrounding area would die.

  Sam thought of her family. Her team. Jack and Wes. The hundreds of people fleeing with no idea how close they stood to peril. The best way out of this was to sacrifice herself. To make Lightner believe he could take what he wanted. She continued to close the space between them, though she knew she was putting herself at tremendous risk, getting too close to a coiled snake.

  “I could give it all back to you, you know, many times over. I’d be willing to buy my life,” she offered, getting to within six feet of him.

  “I could shoot you right now.” His icy blue eyes narrowed. “In fact, it’s been a pleasure I’ve been imaging for some time.”

  “Where’s the satisfaction in that?” Samantha taunted. “I took everything from you. Now you can make me heel.”

  Five feet.

  “Oh, I’ll do more than that, Ms. Wyatt,” Lightner’s smile was almost lacerating. “I’ll make you suffer in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “So why not prolong it?” she suggested calmly. “After all, you’ve got me right where you want me. Don’t you?”

  His pale eyes trailed down her daring red dress as she stepped forward.

  Four feet.

  “Not yet, love,” he murmured, leering at her, lecherous blood lust in his eyes. “Not yet.”

  Goosebumps of revulsion ran up her arms. Lightner delighted in seeing them, mistaking her reaction for fear. Still, she moved closer.

  Three feet.

  His gun didn’t waver.

  “I’ll give you everything I took from you and more,” she promised, her voice low and beguiling.

  Two feet.

  “What’s it worth to you, Lightner?” Sam stepped close enough that the barrel of his gun touched her chest.

  They stared at one another. She watched the battle in his cold, calculating eyes. He wanted the win. But what was Lightner willing to risk in order to get it?

  Suddenly, Wes burst through the doors. “Get the fuck away from her!” he shouted.

  Lightner jerked around in surprise.

  “No—Wes!” she screamed.

  Lightner got one shot off, and Samantha reacted. She grabbed his shoulder in a vise grip, yanking him backward just enough to throw him off balance as he fired a second shot into the air. Lightner spun toward her like a top, gun extended. Sam locked onto his wrist before he could fire again, snapping forward from the waist in a tight, vicious blow. She head butt Lightner full in the face, breaking his nose with a crack she felt down to her toes. Blood burst from his broken nose as he cried out in shock. Then anger. Then delirium as he struggled to remain upright.

  But she wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

  Sam wrenched the gun out of his hand, twisting his hand backward so hard and fast she felt his wrist snap like a twig. He cried out again, a hoarse howl.

  You’re going to die here, Lightner.

  He tried to swing at her, but Sam blocked the blow with her forearm. She used the upward momentum to throw her elbow hard into the side of his head, coming down onto his temple like a scythe. The moment her elbow connected, Lightner crashed to the ground in a heap, looking up at her with dazed eyes as she stood over him.

  She felt unhinged. She felt savage.

  “The fob, Sammy!” Talon shouted urgently from the Bluetooth. “Get the fob!”

  Sam reached for the compact Ruger she’d hidden in a holster under the slit of her dress just as Simon and a herd of men burst through the topiary behind her. Pointing her gun at Lightner, Sam leaned down to reach for the key fob in his trouser pocket.

  Lightner’s hand came up with surprising speed as he clamped down on her searching fingers. Simon and his team surrounded her, their guns raised, aimed at his face.

  “See you in hell, you rotten bitch,” he hissed out, blood covering his teeth.

  “You first.” Sam jabbed the Ruger under his chin and fired.

  The bullet blew open the top of Lightner’s head. An explosion of blood and bone and grey matter sprayed the ground behind him in an obscene bloom, pluming through the air like a hot, crimson mist.

  Sam reached into his pocket, clasping the fob and pressing the button.

  “Boss—” Simon grabbed her, hauling her up and back away from Lightner’s corpse. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he asked, wiping the blood from her face.

  “Get this to Rush,” she told him, pushing the fob into his hand. “Keep pressing the damn thing every few seconds until he gets this fucking thing disarmed!”

  “WYATT! Get over here!” Alejandro shouted. “It’s Wes!”

  Her heart jack-hammered in her chest. Sam swung toward the doors where Wes had been standing. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw him laying on the ground, Alejandro and one of Simon’s team over him.

  “WES! Oh, Jesus—WES!” Sam pushed past Simon, stumbling over Lightner’s body to make it to him. It felt like she was traveling through a surreal nightmare. A nightmare of her own making. Sam fell to her knees by his side, horrified at how much blood was pouring from the wound around his torn, white dress shirt.

  “Get a chest seal!” Alejo shouted.

  “There’s too much blood—”

  “His lung is collapsed—he can’t breathe! Just fucking do it!” Alejandro commanded.

  Sam pulled Wes’s head into her lap as the men worked, fingers slicked red with Wes’s blood.

  “Don’t you goddamn die on me,” she told him, the tears in her eyes making it hard to see him as he lay prone in her arms. “Look at me, Wes—look at me—”

  He opened his eyes groggily, making a choking sound as he looked up at her, dazed, the shock already setting in.

  Sam—Sammy—she saw him moving his mouth. Unable to say her name aloud, unable to gasp for breath.

  Sam cradled his head, not wanting to see the mess Lightner had made of him. His tattoo, their initials, covered in blood. His dog tags—her dog tags—wound around his neck like a red lariat as he looked up at her, the truth in his eyes.

  Sammy—

  “Don’t you fucking die, Wes—” she demanded, her tears falling on his face. “Don’t you die on me—”

  Alejo worked frantically to cover the gunshot with a Bolin seal, trying to relieve the sucking chest wound.

  Wes managed a few short, pained ga
sps as he writhed in her arms, unable to get enough breath into his lungs.

  “Please, God, just help him—” she prayed to a God she didn’t know she believed in anymore. “Please, I’ll do anything—” she begged. “Anything—”

  Wes tried to reach for her face. She clasped his hand to her cheek, kissing his palm, weeping, insisting he keep his eyes open. Demanding he stay alive even as his eyes rolled back, his fingers sliding from her grasp before falling to the blood-soaked concrete.

  “Wes!” Samantha shook him, sobbing. “WES!!”

  Chapter 31

  W E S L E Y

  Painful, crushing pressure, like being pinned beneath a boulder…

  “WES!!”

  He writhed, trapped in the unbearable cage of his own body.

  “Oh, God, no—Wes, please—please—”

  The painful constriction was loosening, like wire unwinding, the pounding, violent pressure becoming less… less…

  “Don’t do this. Don’t leave me—”

  The agony was receding, sucking back into a darkness that felt like relief.

  He wanted to follow… wanted to—

  “Please, Wesley… just open your eyes. Open your eyes!”

  The darkness surrounding him was so intense, so profound, he felt like he’d been cut loose from a tether, like floating through the nothing… the pain just a memory, unimportant…

  “Wes—Oh, Jesus, Wes—”

  The weightlessness of it…

  The sudden peace absolute…

  No sound

  No form

  … just …

  calm

  “—please, please, help him—”

  He couldn’t feel his body anymore—

  I’m fine, he wanted to say.

  I’m right here…

  Wes opened his eyes.

  She stood in front of him, smiling…

  “Come here.”

  She held out her hand, hair as black as a raven’s wing falling all around her.

  The sun was so bright; he almost couldn’t see her.

  His love.

  His dream.

  The only one.

  Where are we going? he wanted to ask.

  “The Louvre,” she said, her smile knowing. “You said you wanted to see it, remember? You promised me Paris.”

  He did.

  He had.

  He’d waited.

  I waited for you…

  He saw that she understood.

  She knew.

  It’s always been you.

  She opened her arms,

  And he went into them, surrounded by the scent of jasmine…

  Chapter 32

  April—Late Night

  Wyatt Private Jet, Somewhere over Missouri

  J A C K

  He came to, slowly, groggy and cotton-mouthed. He felt a low, constant hum, recognized the whooshing sound of fast airflow. Everything was dim and cool. The shadowy figure of a woman stood up slowly from the seat across from him, approaching.

  “Sam—” he croaked out, swallowing.

  The figure neared him as he blinked blearily, trying and failing to sit up. Jack shook his head to clear it, and that’s when he felt the dull throb of a chemically-induced headache. He felt drugged, his limbs disembodied and lethargic.

  The woman sat down on the seat next to him, her face swimming into view. She looked familiar, but he was too out of it to place her.

  “Sorry, Jack,” she told him, lifting him gently, like a baby. She held a bottle of water to his mouth and he drank thirstily, as if he’d been rescued from spending days in the Sahara. “Slow down,” she told him. “Easy—you’ll choke.”

  Jack gulped down the water until there was none left. He lay there, disoriented, trying to figure out what was going on. His head was pounding. He looked around him, squinting, realizing slowly that he was on a plane, stretched out on a leather sofa. That the woman he was looking at was Rox. She’d taken off her wig from earlier, and her makeup was gone. She looked younger, softer.

  Jack felt his jaw gingerly, recalling she’d knocked him out with one hell of a punch.

  “What the fuck did you do to me?” he croaked out.

  “You’re a big guy, Jack. We had to make sure we gave you enough sedative to keep you down.”

  “You gave him too much,” a male voice drawled from the other side of the cabin.

  Jack turned his head, saw Alejandro sitting in a leather captain’s chair, holding a glass of liquor. Alejo took a sip. “Sam’s going to be pissed you knocked him out, manita.”

  “You should have seen this pendejo fighting off Anand,” she responded with a shrug. “Like a rhino, this guy,” she laughed lightly, patting his face. He flinched back, pissed off with her. “I figured it was safer for all of us, otherwise he would have just kept fighting.”

  “Where’s Samantha? What’s happened?” Jack struggled to sit up. He was still out of it, but he knew enough to realize she wasn’t on the plane with them.

  “Tranquilo, Jack.” Alejandro told him, pouring himself another glass of whisky. “We’re taking you back to Chicago. Everything’s fine.”

  “Where’s Samantha?” he asked again.

  “She taking care of the mess Lightner made,” Rox replied. “She’ll be heading back to Chicago soon, but she wanted you safe in the meantime. She asked that we take you home and to give you this.” She handed him a sealed envelope, his name, written in her distinctive, slanting scrawl.

  Jack managed to heave himself upright on the sofa, swallowing back the residual nausea from whatever he’d been given.

  “Lightner’s dead,” Alejandro told him, his mouth flattened into a hard line. “Sam killed him.”

  Relief spread through Jack like ropes loosening from around his insides. “And the bomb?” he asked.

  “Contained. It’s being sent to the Pantex facility in Amarillo for decommissioning now.”

  “Thank God,” he sighed, closing his eyes. “Thank God, that’s over.” The fuzziness was beginning to recede a little, and Jack tested his dexterity trying to open Samantha’s letter. It was dated for the day before. She’d written it on her personal letterhead. The words danced in front of him at first, so he read it slowly.

  Jack—

  All my life I wanted to be loved. I wanted it so desperately, I came to see loving others and being loved as a weakness—a terrible vulnerability—so I cut myself off from it, not wanting to succumb to what I believed was a fatal flaw.

  But for all my cynicism, doubt, and history, I couldn’t help falling for you. I couldn’t help wanting you for myself. You loved me through my pain, my scars, my fear—you made me feel strong and infinitely cared for, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.

  Please don’t be angry with me for doing what I needed to do to protect you. I know now you would stand by me through everything, but I love you too much and too selfishly to allow you to be harmed by my enemies.

  I don’t know if I will win this fight. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see you again, but whatever happens, thank you for showing me how to love again. Thank you for helping me see past my fears. You’re the one I never knew I wanted—much less needed. And if it’s in my power to come back to you, I will.

  I promise.

  All My Love,

  S.

  Jack looked up from the letter, his eyes burning, his heart bursting. He’d reread it until the words were committed to memory, but for now—he just wanted to be absolutely certain she was okay. He needed that to hold onto. He needed to know she’d find her way back to him.

  “She wasn’t harmed?” he asked.

  Alejandro and Rox exchanged looks. “She’ll be okay,” Alejandro answered, though it sounded like there was far more to it.

  Jack frowned, rubbing his throbbing temple. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Lightner shot Wes,” Alejo told him after a moment.

  Jack blinked. “What?”

  “He was trying to pr
otect her, but he got in the way…” he glanced out the window, knocking back the whisky. “I went to school with that guy. I knew him almost as long as I’ve known you.”

  Awareness dawned through the haze. “He didn’t make it,” Jack said flatly, unsure of how he felt about that. Uncertain of how Samantha would take it—the death of her first love.

  Alejandro shook his head once, his profile hard in the dim light as he stared out the window.

  Jack looked at the woman. “You’ve saved my life twice now.”

  “I’m your guardian angel, Jack.” She winked. “Sent by Sam to protect you from yourself.”

  “Don’t see any wings.”

  “I traded them for my horns,” she quipped, handing him another bottle of water. “Try to relax. We’ll have you back home in a couple hours.”

  Chapter 33

  A Week Later

  Wyatt Ranch, Texas

  S A M A N T H A

  She looked out over the prairie, listening to the gentle rustle of maple leaves, the rising cacophony of crickets and cicadas singing their evening song as the sun began to dip low on the horizon, a flaming fire.

  Her eyes were dry as she watched the hot orange shimmer in the distance. Sam had no more tears left to cry. She’d wept them all for her first great love when she’d held his cool hand to her face a week ago. She’d left her tears in his palm, on his blood-stained fingers.

  And now, it was time to let him go.

  Chris Fields stood by her side, Carey on the other, both stalwart and silent, lost in their own thoughts and remembrances. Wes had no people left, orphaned like her some years ago. He’d loved Chris like a brother, his partner, his best friend. And he’d loved her. That was all.

  Sam held his urn in one hand, her dog tags in the other.

  She stepped forward, twisting it open.

  Sam flung his ashes up high, and they seemed suspended for a moment like a shimmering wave, before the wind took him.

  “Rest,” she whispered, wondering if Wes could hear her in the breeze—if her prayer would reach him in the zephyr.