W

by Anne Leigh

  Webb’s blue eyes caught mine in the mirror and a miniature smile ghosted his face.

  Turning away from his gaze, I pivoted towards Dyan and said, “I guess miracles happen, Dy.”

  Everyone in the car laughed, including Webb, whose shoulders rocked even if I couldn’t hear his laughter.

  “Liam, you’re gonna be on my team, right?” Dyan asked, trying to lure the two ex-military guys into joining us.

  The back of Liam’s head shook, “We’re not joining you, Dyan. We gotta stay put.”

  To guard me.

  No matter how much my friends tried to include them, the unmistakable truth was that Liam and Webb weren’t my friends, they were my bodyguards.

  Dyan’s face clearly showed her disappointment. She’d only told me four times through text that having Liam and Webb join us would be super fun. Especially since they were ex-soldiers. That they would bring an element, an extra layer of expertise, to the game. She’d often gone with her childhood friends to the new Paintball Wars field in Palmdale. In fact, four of them were meeting us there since we were celebrating her twenty first birthday in a paintball field and at a club next week.

  Silence carried on for a few minutes.

  Dyan wasn’t a silent moper. When she moped, the whole world knew about it.

  Right now, she was clearly moping, draining the car of her normal jazzy energy.

  “Maybe we can join them.” The sound was coming from my front, from the man whose eyes were fixed on the empty road ahead of us. His deep voice resonated in the amended quiet.

  Liam’s head whipped so fast to his left that I thought it would separate from his neck. “You serious? I thought you said we had to –”

  Dyan screamed, “Yippee! Hooorrraaay!” before Liam could finish his sentence.

  Liam covered both of his ears with his hands, “Geee whiz, girl, I didn’t lose my hearing in the war zone. I definitely don’t wanna lose it now.”

  My girlfriend reached for her bag and took out a Chocolate See’s Candy lollypop and bopped Liam’s head with it. “Shut it, cowboy. You’re coming with us.”

  Cowboy?

  What?

  Since when was Liam a cowboy? He grew up in New York. Hundreds of miles away from farmland.

  “We have to secure the perimeter first. Make sure that everything’s okay before we can join you.” Webb cut in, “But Liam and I will be there, in the field. Just give us some time.”

  I refused to look at him because if his eyes landed on mine in the rearview mirror, the wall that I’d erected in the past weeks would slowly crumble.

  He was being…nice.

  Agreeable.

  I wasn’t used to it.

  While Webb wasn’t mean, he wasn’t flexible either.

  Once he’d set his mind on something, the wind could blow the other way and he’d still be on the same path, never deviating from the original plan.

  The best soldiers were.

  My dad, who has been around soldiers almost all of his career, often mentioned that good men remained good because they remained steadfast in their goals, the outside forces never swaying them.

  Dyan’s hand closed in on mine.

  She knew I was hurting inside.

  She could tell from the way I didn’t talk about Webb and when I tried to avoid her questions about him.

  And here he was being…amenable for the sake of my friend’s birthday.

  He rarely made compromises.

  But when he did, it was big.

  A grand gesture.

  He had nothing to be sorry for, but for some odd reason, it felt like he was apologizing.

  I lifted my eyes, studying his facial features in the mirror while he conversed with Liam about what they were going to do once we’d reached our destination. Strategizing as usual.

  His face was all angles, softness completely absent.

  His skin was tanned, hardened by the sun and the life he’s lived.

  A few visible scars on his face, nothing compared to the ones hidden by his clothes, was just proof that he didn’t live an easy life. It was as if their absence would go against the natural order.

  The detachment in his eyes when they crossed mine in the mirror was non-existent.

  His blues were soft and there it was, the warmth that I’d missed.

  Beckoning me.

  Asking me.

  Letting me know that he was sorry.

  “Don’t take your goggles off. For any reason.” He was repeating everything that the friendly, middle-aged guy who gave our group the instructions. “Stay close to Mario. At least until Liam and I get there.”

  I nodded, absorbing what Webb was telling me; stay close to the bunkers, go in pairs, don’t get hit.

  “It’s supposed to be fun, Webb.” I adjusted the tactical vest that would reduce the impact if I did get hit and housed the ammunition for the paintball gun. “I’ll shoot and get hit and it’s the name of the game.”

  His blue eyes flickered with acquiescence. “I’ll be back soon,” he said before leaving me with my team.

  Mario noticed. “I’d want Webb on my team. He’s a bad-ass mofo. I bet you a hundred bucks he can take those losers,” pointing the mouth of his rifle to Denton’s team who also had four members, “out in twenty seconds.”

  Dyan pouted, watching Liam and Webb’s matching strides slowly disappear from around the corner. “I want them to join us.”

  “They’ll be back in ten minutes,” I said, feeling the gun in my hand, whoa it’s heavy. “I’m sure they’ll catch up.”

  A crackle sounded off in my rented camo pants.

  Picking up the one-way radio, I said, “Roger.”

  Mario held up a thumbs-up sign.

  “You guys going in?” Webb. It hadn’t even been a minute and he was already checking on me.

  “Almost.”

  “‘kay, be safe.”

  “Roger that,” I responded, just as Dyan pulled me towards the field.

  “Remember the goal, A!” Dyan said loudly in my left ear. “We need their flag.”

  “Yep.” How could I forget? It was the only thing she talked about since we got out of the car. We all got introduced to her friends who were completely charming and were as excited as Dyan to be on the field.

  I’d only seen paintball on TV and YouTube so I really didn’t have any expectations.

  Apparently, other people took it quite seriously. Meg, Dyan’s redheaded friend, talked about her new camera gear. The petite school grade teacher liked to replay on a widescreen TV how well her strategies worked out. Wow.

  There was also Chez, an extremely attractive gay guy with Israeli roots. I learned all of these facts when he shook my hand and admired my Parmigiani Fleurier wrist watch, a birthday gift from my dad for my eighteenth birthday.

  Donna and Cristobel were the happy-go-lucky blonde twins whose looks reminded me of Katherine Heigl. They wore cut-off jeans and had their hair in pigtails which was pretty quirky. They brought a freezer bag full of bubblegum, saying that when they hit their targets, they liked to put the gum on their clothes. To which, Liam abruptly said “No,” and Webb’s head bobbed in assent.

  The gum stayed behind in the Mini Cooper.

  Denton’s handsome face was filled with amusement in meeting Dyan’s friends. It was quite crystal clear that Meg and Chez were openly checking him out. He just gave me a look that said, “This is fun.”

  Webb and Liam were busy talking on the side when they just nodded their heads as Dyan casually mentioned them to her friends. I had a feeling that they were both appreciative of what Dyan did because honestly those two wouldn’t even be here if I wasn’t here.

  They weren’t there to mingle.

  But they were giving Dyan a concession because she was my friend and even if they didn’t want to admit it, she was growing on them.

  The referee was now standing in the middle of the field.

  “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Game On!”

  I imme
diately ran towards an old bunker where Mario had signaled us to go hide.

  I was assigned safety so I had to stay by our yellow and white flag and keep it safe from the other team.

  I was the last line of defense before Denton’s team could grab our flag.

  Dyan was hoping that Denton, who was the leader of the Team GOMetal, would be so distracted by my feminine wiles that he’d give up his quest for the flag and not shoot me.

  Following Mario’s tracks, I was now safely ensconced by the wall with our team flag.

  All I had to do was point and shoot anyone who came near me.

  I heard screams.

  Someone was getting paint balled.

  Uh oh.

  Was that Dyan or one of her friends on the other team?

  I knew Webb and Liam would be entering the game soon and Webb would locate me so I leaned back against the solid plywood and waited –

  Technically they couldn’t enter once the game had started, but it was our game and Dyan had revised the rules. Pretty much everyone knew that Webb and Liam had some military background just by looking at them so shrugs and yes’s went around, basically letting Webb and Liam know that they were welcome to join anytime.

  No questions were asked about why they were even there which made me feel more at ease.

  I hated lying about why Webb or Liam had to be there.

  My close friends now all knew, but I didn’t want it broadcasted everywhere that because of Dad, my safety was in jeopardy; thereby, requiring bodyguard services.

  “Aaaaaiiyahh! You shit!” That sounded like Chez. He was out now.

  Yay for my team.

  I heard another loud yell, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  This was fun.

  My nerves were on high alert as I looked from side to side. The goggles made it a bit awkward to check out my peripherals, but excitement trumped everything else.

  I stood up from my hiding place, seeing a lot of pellets flying in the air and chuckled, “Someone’s shooting aimlessly.”

  I crouched down low again and just as I was about to make myself comfortable in my safe place, I felt a nip on my right arm.

  Well, it started out as a pinch, like a tiny ant biting me.

  My arm had been the resting place for many needles during my treatments, so if I could compare the pain, it would be similar to that…until slowly I felt the pain climbing up my shoulder.

  I’d been hit.

  I scanned the man-made terrain in front of me and I didn’t see anyone.

  I turned to my left and checked my right.

  Still no one.

  I was wearing a camo so whoever hit me with the pellet, the paint would remain on my clothes so it was nothing to worry about.

  I lowered the rifle from my left hand, the pain insistently moving up my right arm.

  Dyan had talked about the pellet hitting you and having it hurt like a sonofagun.

  I would vouch for that.

  It was stinging and gnawing and throbbing and…

  Red.

  The rifle clattered to the ground.

  I touched my gloved left hand to the area where I felt the most pain, in between my elbow and my shoulder.

  Liquid was now trickling down my arm.

  Red.

  Denton’s team used blue paint.

  We had yellow.

  No one was allowed to use red.

  Because red signaled a real cut. Wound. Injury.

  Red.

  Someone had shot me –

  For real.

  Someone wanted to draw blood.

  Mine.

  There were moments in life that defined the person you were.

  Significant, priceless moments for which memories stood out in your mind.

  The day my father died.

  The day my mother smiled again.

  The day I signed my life away to the Navy.

  The day I signed my life back into the world.

  Moments that make you up.

  Memories that break you down.

  Challenges that define your character.

  I joined the Navy to preserve my father’s legacy.

  I stayed in it because I found where I’d belonged.

  I left because I had to –

  But the skills I gained were engrained in my psyche, at my core.

  So when something felt off, something was off.

  In SoCal, the Santa Ana winds were caused by the high pressure in the Great Basin and the lower pressure off the coast. The wildfires that raged through the area typically occurred during Santa Ana wind events, when the offshore winds from the Northeast pass through the canyons to the mountains, dropping humidity levels and causing a rise in the temperatures.

  These nuggets of data may not seem significant to most people, but to a former (yeah it still creates a fucking hole in my heart to say it) special ops guy like me, it’s extremely important.

  Wind direction becomes paramount when you’re trying to protect a moving target.

  As soon as I’d left Athena and her friends in the paintball field, the feeling in the pit of my stomach grew. She’d been wanting to have fun with her friend, Dyan, since it was her birthday, and I wasn’t about to get in the way of that.

  She was more than allowed to proceed with what they had planned. Dyan had invited Liam and I, and Liam probably thought I was going to go negative, but I’d figured that Liam wanted to participate in the mock war game.

  And it would give me a chance to closely watch Athena and ensure that she didn’t get hurt. Paintballs didn’t hurt until they socked you in an area of your body that wasn’t protected. Depending on the rate and distance of where you were hit, those pellets could hurt like a motherfucker.

  “Boss, I got news for ya.” Tony’s voice cut through the line. Liam and I were in the northwest corner of the field, in an area that’s slightly elevated so we could keep a close eye on what was going on. Dyan had just been shot by her redheaded friend and she was making a commotion out of it. Commotion meaning she was pretending to kick her friend in the foot. Liam watched in amusement as he shook his head. For the life of my Sig Sauer, I’d never guess that Dyan had caught Liam’s eye, in a woman-I’d-like-to-sleep-with kind of way.

  “Hit me,” I said into the phone. We would have been out there on the field with Athena right now, but I had to take this call from Tony – he’d texted ‘urgent’ just as I was parking my car.

  “Dr. Bridges has been getting emails to his personal account,” Tony replied, the constant familiar buzzing around him was now a regular accompaniment to his calls. “At first I was like, dude, whatever – I couldn’t really tell if they were important or not. But I dug deep, super deep, as deep as the cavern in Minecraft, man those game architects are freakin’ good –”

  “Tony…” Gaming made a genius lose focus.

  “Alright alright. Sorry boss, I’m just saying… Anyways, I thought they were phishing scams, the first few emails, you know? But then I was bored one day and I grouped them, created a sample, used language patterns and boom – there was an anonymous proxy service used and I linked it to a few potential authors.”

  “Plain language, Tony,” I commanded, checking out Athena’s location. She was still hidden in the old bunker, and from what I could see, her goggles were safely secured on her face. Good girl.

  Liam kicked a rock with his shoe, appearing to be carefree yet I knew he was closely attuned to the phone call. He couldn’t hear Tony, but he could hear my reaction.

  “Okay okay, too much pressure okay?” The guy needed to lay off those energy drinks. “I wasn’t snooping on Dr. Bridges’ emails, but when I came across a small bit of data that was eerily linked to his email, I had to check on it. It took me a few days and I think I finally hit the nail on the head. Our friends across the borders are not asking for money, which I figured you’d know by now. They have boatloads of Columbian pesos which when converted to US dollars could bankrupt the whole Colombian ba
nking system.”

  Of course I knew it wasn’t about the money, Felipe David had money that equaled the King of Dubai’s, so for an evil man like him, money wasn’t the driving force. “Got that.”

  “They’re after Dr. Bridges’ formula.”

  I knew that too.

  “They want to use it to transport body organs on the black market.”

  I had a hunch about that too.

  “They want to use Dr. Bridges’ findings to broker a deal with Asia and Europe’s leading cosmetic providers.”

  What the fuck? “What?”

  “Maybe it’s for a woman, maybe his wife needs cosmetic manipulation. I don’t know. Usually it’s for a woman but the only woman that popped up in relation to Felipe is his daughter. Felipe’s got a daughter, boss.” I’d relayed the information to Tony as soon as I’d landed from Virginia to check the connections between Felipe David and what his interests were with Dr. Bridges.

  “I know.” A familiar chill ran through my spine. One that had been honed by battle, the alarm starting low in my stomach, then slowly spreading through my system.

  Where the fuck is Athena?

  Liam must have sensed the shift in my tone, raising quizzical eyes at me. I pointed with my head.

  Whereas a minute ago, we could see the top of her head from the bunker, now she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Boss, you there?” Tony inquired, the low hum on his end negligent to the sound my hearing had picked on in response to the change in air vibration. It was hard to focus on the sound with my other ear glued to the phone, but years and years of being in still silence and deafening gunshots had my body on high alert.

  The presence of smoke and dust, in addition to today being a warm day, I could have spotted him easily if I had a scope in my hand, but as I looked across the field, I saw the small, inconspicuous shadow parallel to the wind, the tree branch swaying when he took the shot.

  Fuck.

  “Eleven o’ clock, low. Tree branch,” I said swiftly to Liam before my legs shot out to the field. Liam would engage the shooter.

  “Boss?” Tony’s voice was loud enough for me to hear, but now was not the time to talk.

  With my hand pressing end on the phone, my eyes, trained to pick out the smallest oddity, was now zooming in on where Athena was hiding last.