by S A Gardner
There was no way this man would survive my multi-pronged attack. He was done. As I was here.
I crammed my stuff back into my backpack, sprang from the bed and the room, ran out over the stirring guard. I bet he’d be too embarrassed to report the voices he’d heard before inexplicably passing out. Not that I cared right now.
Now I had to endure the same wall-sticking routine back to my start point.
I managed it in one piece, at least on the outside, got back to where I’d first gotten my bag, put it back in its hiding place. It would be brought back to us through the same sequence.
As I headed towards the kitchen, an incensed shout lodged between my scapulas, almost knocking me over. I bet harpies didn’t sound so hostile. I was so shaken, so depleted, I started wailing and weeping again. This time there was far less pretense in the exercise.
This time slavedriver-woman just yanked me around, hit me hard across the face then dragged me behind her with her talons deep in my flesh. In a few moments both Lucia and me were thrown out of the kitchen’s backdoor with a couple of pans and dozens of obscenities hurled after us.
All in all, a perfect exit.
After we’d stumbled outside the estate’s boundaries,
I wiped my tears. “OK. Are you up to running?”
Lucia took in my still shuddering face and frame with a concerned, suspicious look. “Are you?”
“I’m up to anything as long as it isn’t sticking to walls.”
I winced at the flare of interest in her eyes. Now I had to tell her every little detail of my adventures.
And I did as we hiked and climbed our way back over the twenty miles to our post through the most amazing nature I’d ever seen. Not that I’d been in any condition to appreciate it, on either incoming or outgoing trips. Then darkness descended and I couldn’t anyway.
Somewhere in my muddied psyche Damian’s offer for a revisit someday whispered. Yeah, that’d be nice.
Back at the command post, we found the others primed for intervention. They were almost disappointed we hadn’t needed any. In two more hours our Latin men came back without any more incidents and with news of our mark’s nightmarish deterioration.
Damian fell into step with me as we hurried back to our jet, his frown locking onto the marks I knew slavedriverwoman’s fingers had left on my face.
“What happened?” he hissed. I shrugged only to have my shoulders cramping. My groan had his hands clamping down on the pain, defusing it. “Tell me.”
“I just rewrote the whole script with even more diabolical twists, almost fell to my death playing Spiderwoman and found out how easy it is to be a hands-on monster all over again.”
His hands squeezed unspent anxiety into my aches. I winced. I couldn’t handle more angst now.
I shook my head as I stepped out of his reach. “I’m just shaken and sore all over. But I’m alive and he’s dying. Mission accomplished. Let’s go put our finale in motion.”
His eyes raged with the tempests that wrecked him whenever he was forced into helpless-bystander mode as I risked my life. I was intimate with the syndrome, suffered a full-blown episode every time he was out of my sight.
Came with the territory. This had been the first warning on the relationship-between-warriors manual, after all. In bold.
As soon as we boarded the jet he sat down and dragged me onto his lap. I nestled into him, into the sustaining knowledge that I mattered that much. I think I slept immediately.
In some other century, a buzz jolted through me. It dragged me from the depths of oppressive dreams. I woke up enough to realize it had been his phone. Then his voice reverberated in the void that filled my body and mind.
Incensed, lethal.
I opened my eyes and was almost knocked back to unconsciousness by the force of his rage. “Wha…?”
“Ed. He’s escaped.
Twenty-Five
Ed hadn’t only escaped, he’d demolished Emergency doing it.
But that was nothing compared to his damage potential now. He was holding his knowledge of our survival and location hostage in return for Anna and his daughters.
And then it had gotten far worse.
An hour after Damian had gotten off the phone with Nina, I’d had another call.
Ed was now holding Sir Ashton hostage.
He’d called the Sanctuary, told them of his new bargaining chip, told them to tell me to be ready for a trade.
Or else.
Denial had erupted first. He couldn’t have gotten to him!
Then I’d remembered who Ed was and it had turned to dread.
He had him. But where was he keeping him? What would he do to him if things went wrong…?
For the rest of the fifteen-hour flights to Buenos Aires then to L.A. dread demons had danced a frenzy inside my head.
What if Ed harmed Sir Ashton to drive his point home that he meant business? The probability that his weaker daughter wouldn’t make it was rising. What if we succumbed to his demands, handed over Anna and his daughters, against all medical advisement, and she died? What if he considered us responsible for her death, and decided to take us all down in retribution?
Damian had offered no support. He’d been working on redefining the concept of rage. With sizzling success. But it was directed towards himself for not eliminating Ed when he should have.
Right now, we’d just rushed out of L.A. Airport and he was leaving us all in his wake. He was fixing his mistake, right now.
Right. Like I’d let him.
I sprinted after him, stopping him from entering the car he’d left at the parking lot. “I’m saying this once, Damian. No way am I endangering Sir Ashton, or risking my team.”
He turned vacant eyes on me. “There will be no risk. The only reason Ed escaped me before was because, in spite of it all, I didn’t want him dead. Now I do. I’m not giving him a chance to jeopardize Sir Ashton or any of you. This will be short and quick.”
“No way. If there’s one percent chance Ed can expose us or harm Sir Ashton if he feels you coming, I’m not taking it.” He opened his mouth to slam me with his aggravation and I slammed first. “This is all your fault. You convinced Ed that Anna and his daughters are in real danger with you around. He’d probably risk sending the whole world to hell to get them away from you. So if you’ll just calm down, I’ll handle it. I’m the one best qualified at the moment to cut a deal with Ed. I’m the one he’d talked to before, and I’m the one he wants to talk to now. I’m the one with the most personal stake.”
His gaze was long. And alien. Then he just shook my hand off, entered the car. I threw myself at him. “If you do this…”
“What?” He looked down on me in disdain. “You’ll never have sex with me again? Either I do what you want, or you punish me? I did what you wanted before, Calista. I didn’t kill him because you asked me not to. This is all your fault.”
“Oh, yeah? Since when have you kept your promises to me if you thought they were stupid? You just admitted you didn’t want to kill him. You’re not throwing this back into my lap.”
“Get off mine, Calista. Go back to your team. Let me do my job. The job I should have done months ago.”
I was saying all the wrong things again. This wasn’t a confrontation. This had to be a negotiation. A plea for restraint. “Damian, please. Give me a chance. That’s all I ask.”
His eyes narrowed, the 3 pm slanting sun striking gold lasers off of them. “Is this you consciously practicing your feminine wiles, Calista? It neither suits nor works.”
I punched his arm. “How’s that for feminine, buster? Ed asked for me, Damian. He’s willing to negotiate. Don’t go Terminator on me, now. Please. I’ll meet him, on his terms, but if I feel he’ll be a time bomb, I’ll help you kill him myself.”
“No, thanks. Ed’s my responsibility.” A beat. Then he exhaled. “OK. You got one shot. It will be all you get.”
I kissed him, hard. “Thanks, darling.”
He threw
his head back on the headrest, closed his eyes. “Madre de Dios. I really shouldn’t have let you meet Desideria.”
In two hours, I was outside a deserted car service/gas station on the outskirts of L.A.
I was alone as Ed had demanded. Our phone conversation had been telegraphic.
He’d negotiate with only me. No surprises or everyone got hurt. Fine. Deal. As long as I got proof that Sir Ashton was okay.
The door opened. The haggard, wild-eyed, swollen-lipped man standing there barely resembled the devil-may-care, handsome man Ed had been back in Russia.
Sympathy wrenched something loose in my gut.
Not now. He may not deserve any.
“Come in.” He turned a despondent back on me as he led me into the darkened interior. So he trusted me not to sucker him. Good sign. He’d been my friend once. I was glad that in spite of it all, he still thought of me as one.
He stopped at the remains of a workshop, collapsed on a creaking chair. “Listen, Cali. I’m sorry about your facilities. I had to create a diversion to escape. You know the drill.”
Didn’t I just. I’d just finished creating diversion after another, going to any lengths to obtain my objective.
In a way, we inhabited the same moral realm.
“You know what I want. Anna and my babies—they belong with me. Give them to me, give me some money, just enough for me to take them away. You’ll never hear, or fear, from me again”
I stopped a foot away from him. “Why do you want to take them away from us now, Ed? You saw how good we are for them for yourself.”
“You call Damian good for them? He was my leader for twelve years, Cali, and it’s like I never knew him. I knew he had a warped childhood, far worse than any of us could imagine, always knew there’s more to him than anyone would ever know. But I never thought he’d be capable of harming an innocent for any reason. But he would have killed Anna. I saw it in his eyes. That’s why I took Sir Ashton. I had to have something bigger than your secrets, someone as dear, to bargain with. Please, Cali, I don’t want this to get any uglier. Give them to me.”
“Think here for a minute, Ed. If Damian hasn’t terminated you after you gave him that much reason, do you think he could have harmed Anna and the girls? If you know one thing about him, it’s what a superlative actor and manipulator he is. He wanted you to spill your guts, and he knew how to break you down.”
He shook his head. “You’re not the one to trust on this, Cali. He’s got you in so many twists and panting for him, you can’t see what a monster he is. And yeah, I’m a monster, too. You don’t fight monsters for so long and not become one yourself. But I suspect Damian has been a monster all along. Like his father.”
“I’m not blinded, Ed. I know Damian has a monster inside him. But he has it harnessed, targets its destruction in the right direction. You once did, too. I have my own monster. All the difference lies in why we let our monsters loose, who we target. You’re doing it for the wrong reasons, targeting the wrong people. You’re letting the monster take you over.” He shook his head again and I pressed on. “Do you think Damian couldn’t have found you and terminated you already? A monster would have taken you apart by now—long before now. A monster would have taken you apart for no reason. He let me talk him out of it, and it’s not because I have him panting for me. It’s because, even after all you’ve done, he still cares.”
A bark tore from him, demented, despondent. “Yeah, right.”
“Why do you think you’re still alive, then? You think anyone can escape Damian if he wants them dead?”
His face, his body distorted like a tin can being crushed under inexorable pressure. Then he pitched forward, slammed his elbows on the splintered table and both large hands over his face. His broad shoulders shook.
God, I hated men’s anguish. Their distress at succumbing to it, at showing it, made witnessing it gut-wrenching.
Sympathy beat down my barriers. I gave in, let it take me behind him, lean me over him to hug him around his chest.
His sobs intensified, hacked his rasp. “Caring in any way about me now would make him a fool—he’s anything but that…”
“No, he’s not, yet because of Anna, on some level, he still forgives you, at least for the personal betrayal.”
“He can’t forgive me—what I did was unforgivable…”
“But it was justifiable. But what you’re doing now, when Anna is no longer in jeopardy, isn’t. That’s what’s unforgivable, Ed. You don’t have to do this anymore.”
I felt it in every nerve and muscle within my containment. His crushing need to let go. Then it came.
Capitulation. In his draining tension, the acquiescing nod against my breast.
I straightened, stroked the straggly silver blond locks he’d let grow as long as Damian’s, let my eroding anxiety spill out in words. “Can I see Sir Ashton now, Ed?”
He nodded again, shoved to his feet, shuffled through the littered space. I stumbled behind him, feet and heart.
Ever since I’d mired him in this mess, fear for Sir Ashton had been staining my every moment. But this—I’d never even guessed how deep that fear, and my love for him, went.
Ed unlocked a shoddy door at one end of the derelict service area, flicked on a fluorescent light, illuminated the peeling walls of a five by five feet compartment. The first thing I saw was a crumpled heap on a cot in its corner.
Sir Ashton. Eyes closed, disheveled, bruised. Blood staining the dirty sheet below his face.
A lash snapped, slicing my brain in two. A scythe’s sweep cutting through nerves and logic and restraint.
Everything drained, emptied, one screech filling the void.
Hurt the one who did this back. Hurt him bad.
Pain and rage and blood surged, smearing everything, detonating in crimson into Ed’s face.
I saw my fists and feet impacting him, felt my bones damaging his flesh, my pain bleeding into his. He went down and I kicked him, kept on kicking him, wanting to gut him, make him pay, for everything he’d done. Only killing him would be enough. And I could. Kill him. I’d taken him by surprise and all it would take was one kick to his larynx. I could end it all here.
I couldn’t.
He lashed out and I stumbled back, not under his counter-offensive, but under my inability to deal the deathblow.
He used the reprieve, snapped to his feet, put a dozen feet between us. The gun I’d kicked along with his ribs moments ago materialized in his shaking hand as shouts erupted from him, blood and madness-soaked. “It was all an act—you were trying to con me, trying to get everything and give me nothing back.”
I shouted back. “This wasn’t a con, you bastard. This was me taking you apart for daring to lay a hand on Sir Ashton.”
But he wasn’t listening, his bellows rising to a teeth-shattering level. “You’re never giving me Anna and my babies. But I’m setting them free—I’m taking you all to hell.”
And I saw it in his ice-blue derangement. Damian had been right all along. He had to die.
A dart slipped into my palm from the dispensing mechanism at my wrist. I’d come prepared for every contingency. He’d probably shoot me first, but I’d still take him down. I’d end his danger to the others. Before I did, I tried one last time.
“I’m warning you, Ed. Just once. Put this gun down…”
For answer he cocked the hammer. So this was it.
“Will you two young fools turn the angst down? You’re giving me a headache.”
The calmness of the rebuke severed the screeching tension. It had us both recoiling, stumbling back from our intentions.
It hit Ed harder. His hand had gone from shaking to quaking. I gritted my teeth. God—if he shot me, at least make it a conscious decision not a breakdown’s side effect.
Sir Ashton was leaning on the doorframe of his makeshift prison. He took a limping step forward, his face, even with the Technicolor gashed swelling down its left side, placid, as if he’d just walked in on
two old friends arguing about soccer.
“So what were you about to kill each other for? I must be getting old, so bear with me. Explain how your negotiations devolved to this deplorable situation.”
His gaze panned towards me first.
Yeah, sure. Blame Calista when anything goes wrong. Though he’d be right here. Ed had succumbed, had seen reason. Then I’d blown it.
I squirmed under Sir Ashton’s mental interrogation, felt it devolving me into the nineteen-year-old hothead he’d first made his protégée, given every opportunity to become the best surgeon and warrior he could mold me into. I had theories why he had. I was his daughter’s substitute, the reckless creature who’d gotten herself killed playing the hero. He wanted to see me wage the wars his daughter had tried to wage, giving me the assets and skills to keep on winning and surviving them.
Boy, I hated those head-trips back in time. Those had been my roughest times. My sister had just died of surgical negligence and I’d wanted to tear down every institution humanity had erected teeth and talons. Remembering my eruptive state then made me thankful I’d outgrown the raging hormones years. At least, I thought I had.
Not according to Sir Ashton, though, as his next words attested. “So this is how you negotiate my release and avert catastrophe? Ever the politician, eh, Calista?”
“He deserved it!” along with every childish excuse there was frothed on my lips. I was damned if I’d let any escape.
I’d stand there and suffer a frustration/mortification stroke in silence.
But Sir Ashton didn’t think me worth more than that succinct summation, had his gaze trained on the fragmenting Ed. “As for you, young man, what I don’t understand is how on earth you hadn’t realized yet that your actions have long stopped being in Anna’s and your daughters’ interest, that on both a short and long-term basis, they need all of us, not just you.”
A hair-raising noise escaped Ed. A frenzied, cornered predator’s.