Word and Breath (Wordless Chronicles)

by Susannah Noel

If these men had been more experienced at abduction or even at basic strategy, they would have positioned Riana behind Mikel, where he couldn’t see her. They were clearly amateurs, though, and this was probably the first time they’d ever done something like this. They were determined, but not entirely competent. Mikel had a clear view of Riana and fairly easy access to Thom, as soon as he decided to make a move.

  If the men had been more experienced, they also would have searched Mikel before they’d done anything else.

  He still had a gun in the pocket of his jacket.

  He was dying to reach for it but—however unprofessional his captors—there were three of them, all with guns, and one of them had his gun pressed up against Riana’s back.

  As they reached the corner, Mikel wondered what their plan was. It would look rather odd for them to have Mikel and Riana at gunpoint on a city street in the middle of the day. Not unheard of, but it would probably make an impression on witnesses.

  As he expected, a car waited for them on the street at the end of the alley. The black sedan was parked next to the sidewalk in a handicapped designated spot. Three more men in raincoats waited beside it.

  His first glance told Mikel that these new men weren’t amateurs. Whoever was in charge of this assignment had called in some professionals for backup.

  So Mikel didn’t hesitate.

  He lunged forward at Thom, his hand landing on the back of his neck. One of the other men fired at him from behind, but it was a sloppy shot and didn’t come close to hitting him.

  Opening a quick, brutal connection, Mikel sucked in enough of Thom’s consciousness to knock him out, nearly spitting at the bitter aftertaste. Thom slumped to the pavement, releasing his hold on Riana’s hair.

  “Run!” Mikel gritted out, giving Riana a push in the direction opposite the waiting car before he reached for the gun in his pocket.

  He whirled around and fired at the skinny man, hitting him efficiently in the leg to disable him without risking the consequences of killing a Union employee. He fired then at Ghent, only to realize that the man wasn’t where he’d been the second before.

  Gent was evidently no hero and no dummy. He’d flattened himself on the ground as soon as he realized Mikel was armed.

  So Mikel ran.

  He caught up with Riana after four strides, grabbed her arm, and pulled her with him as he ran. She kept stumbling in her wet clothes and hair, but she managed to keep up with him.

  The other three men, the ones waiting at the car, were already in pursuit. Mikel could hear them behind him, and it gave his adrenalin another boost of urgency.

  They fled in clumsy haste, pushing through pedestrians and splashing through puddles. The people immediately surrounding the gun shots had stopped and gaped or ran away. But the block hadn’t yet erupted into panic, and Mikel had to maneuver through the slower walkers on the sidewalk, for good measure toppling over a hot dog cart as he passed it and feeling an unexpected pang of guilt at the owner’s wail of distress.

  It was still pouring, although Mikel had filtered out the wetness and discomfort completely. Noticing the amount of spray coming up from the traffic on the street, he hauled Riana into the road, darting in front of an approaching bus.

  They gained a few seconds from the move, as their pursuers had to wait for the bus to pass and then lost them temporarily in the traffic and the violent spray from the road.

  Mikel used the spare seconds to duck into a busy coffee shop across the street.

  The shop was packed, filled with mingling crowds waiting in line for coffee or chatting as they doctored their drink. Mikel dragged Riana to the far corner, where they were shielded by the hoards of coffee-drinkers.

  Without hesitating, he took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders, helping her get her arms into the sleeves. It was way too long for her, coming down to her ankles, so he secured it by tying her scarf around her waist. “Your suit is too distinctive,” he explained.

  She just nodded, her face pale and tense. She twisted her long, wet hair off her back and tucked it in under the coat collar.

  “We need to split up,” Mikel said, holding her eyes. He’d known what they’d have to do from the beginning. “You run out the back door there. I’ll go out the front and try to distract them.”

  Riana opened her mouth to argue, but Mikel didn’t let her.

  He took the gun out of his pocket and forced it into one of her hands. “Take this. And run.”

  “Mikel—” She didn’t look as frightened as she did horrified.

  He gave her a little shake. “You’re the important one here. Remember that.” He tilted his head down to give her a quick, hard kiss, breathing in a taste of her pure panic. And her fear. For him. “Now run.” He shoved her, not gently, toward the back exit, just as he saw their pursuers at the entrance to the coffee shop.

  He didn’t wait any longer, moving as fast as he could through the crowds toward the men at the entrance.

  He risked one glance over his shoulder to see that Riana had left through the back, and that was enough of a relief to give him new momentum as he barreled into the three men who were looking for him.

  He surprised them enough to get past safely, and he even managed to knock one of them out with a hand on the wrist.

  The other two jumped into pursuit. They weren’t playing around. They opened fire, despite the public setting and the other pedestrians.

  Fortunately, the shots missed him, since both he and the other men were running through the pouring rain and it was difficult to aim precisely in such circumstances. But the bystanders started to scream, some hitting the ground in terror and some trying to jump into convenient businesses to hide.

  The panic would only help Mikel, who instinctively ducked his head as he sprinted down the sidewalk at a dead run. He felt a bullet whiz by his hair.

  If he hadn’t been already ducking his head, the bullet would have planted itself in his skull.

  He didn’t waste any time dwelling on that detail, however. He had a good chance of outrunning his pursuers.

  And he would have too, except he was running in the direction of the Archives. Directly toward Ghent, he was now approaching slowly with a drawn and leveled gun.

  Gent didn’t look like the slightly inept young man he’d been before. His face was twisted with fury and disgust, and Mikel wasn’t fool enough to doubt his ability to kill him.

  With two behind him and Ghent in front of him, Mikel stopped.

  There was a chance he could have gotten past Ghent, somehow distracting him enough to avoid getting a bullet in his chest, but it would have been a long shot. If he was killed or disabled, the men would turn right around and go after Riana.

  He needed to give her more time to get away.

  So he spread his arms in surrender, streams of water cascading from the drenched sleeves of his suit.

  They might kill him. They had originally planned to take him in, but they could easily use his near escape as an excuse to shoot him in the street.

  No one was coming to rescue him. The police would have been notified, but they wouldn’t arrive in time.

  He must be a sight. Soaked to the skin and surrounded by three wet men with guns. Traffic had stopped on the street, as the panic from the gunfire had turned the block into chaos.

  Mikel stood in the middle of an intersection, surrendering to men who were far less impressive than him. To give a woman enough time to get away.

  It was absurd, really. Mikel wasn’t sure how he’d come to this.

  He’d had a perfectly good life—independent, successful, skilled at everything he put his mind to. In a few years, he could have retired and spent the rest of his days lounging in the sun on a free island.

  And here he was. Transformed into the kind of noble fool he’d always scorned.

  Pathetic is what it was.

  But he was doing it.

  His mind was on Riana as he scanned the scene around him, assessing the situation and
determining his last ditch effort to get away.

  She should be a couple of blocks away by now. She would call up Connor or Tava. She would be all right.

  And he was here.

  Mikel. Turned into some sort of hero.

  A trapped, sopping-wet idiot.

  Fourteen

  Riana knew she should have run.

  She actually started running, compelled by her terrified momentum and the absolute authority in Mikel’s voice and black eyes.

  But she hadn’t gotten even halfway down the block when she pulled to a stop, realizing that no one was chasing her.

  That meant they were chasing Mikel.

  She was walking back when she saw him down the block, stopped in the middle of the road, his arms outstretched and a look of bitterly ironic amusement on his face.

  The scene was almost surreal. Mikel—still handsome and compelling, even in his drenched black suit—surrounded by the three men approaching him with guns from all sides. Everyone else on the street had managed to get out of the way, drivers trapped in their cars in stopped traffic and pedestrians finding strategic hiding places.

  Mikel stood in the rain, surrendering when he could have easily gotten away. If he hadn’t been trying to keep her safe.

  She saw Ghent’s face. Barely recognized it, so contorted was it with hate and determination.

  He could easily kill Mikel. Shoot him dead on the wet pavement.

  She could see that Mikel knew that too, although the look on his face was almost mocking.

  For a moment, Riana saw his body slump to the ground like Jenson’s had, saw his blood spilling into the puddles on the street.

  And that decided it. She wasn’t going to run.

  She wasn’t going to let another man die for her.

  She didn’t even think. Just started moving toward the men, toward Mikel, toward the center of the world as she knew it.

  And she didn’t pause to reconsider or plot out the best strategy. She just walked as quickly as her heels and wet clothes would allow.

  She pulled out her taser and Mikel’s gun and briefly wondered if she was crazy—if a stranger was seeing this bizarre, inexplicable scene through her eyes.

  But she didn’t hesitate at all as she reached out with the taser in her left hand. The other men’s focus was entirely on Mikel, but he saw her—his eyes widening before he controlled his reaction.

  There wasn’t time for his look to give her away. She’d already reached her target and held the taser against the back of the man’s neck. A few seconds later, he collapsed.

  Mikel reacted with extraordinary speed. He launched himself at the second man and was on him before the man could recover from his surprise at Riana’s sudden appearance. The two had a brief, vicious grappling match as they both fell to the pavement.

  Ghent fired a shot and, without thinking, Riana fired back. She aimed in his direction, but high—since she didn’t trust herself not to hit someone else accidentally.

  The recoil startled her, jarring her shoulder painfully and causing her to stumble back.

  But the shot was effective anyway. Ghent paused briefly, startled by the unexpected attack. By that time, Mikel had incapacitated his opponent and wrested his gun away.

  With both Mikel and Riana firing at him, Ghent turned tail and fled.

  Probably a smart move, considering.

  Mikel didn’t bother to chase him. He just walked over, grabbed Riana by the upper arm, and hauled her with him as he strode quickly away from the intersection.

  Nobody stopped them. And the sirens that finally started approaching were still too far away to be a problem.

  Mikel took them down a few alleys, doubling back a couple of times to confuse any witnesses.

  When they’d gotten far enough away that city traffic was normal and no one seemed to notice them except to shoulder them out of the way, Mikel finally slowed down.

  “You were supposed to run,” he said, slanting her an odd look—somewhere between frustration and appreciation.

  Riana shrugged and felt a little awkward, now that the momentum of the moment was fading. “I wasn’t going to let you die.”

  He paused for a moment, taking her chin in his hand and scrutinizing her face with a look of such intensity she shivered. Then he gave her a half-smile and dropped his hand again. “They might not have killed me.”

  Snorting, she took his arm, for support as much as the sudden urge to be close to him. “Right. They would have just tortured you with malicious glee for who knows how long. I wasn’t going to let them take you. And it was unreasonable of you to expect me to just run away when you were in danger.”

  She was fueled by righteous indignation and a significant amount of remaining adrenalin.

  “Was it?” Mikel asked, eyeing her strangely.

  “Yes, it was. You wouldn’t have run away if the situation were reversed.”

  “No,” he admitted, a new note—warm and intimate—entering his voice. “I wouldn’t have.”

  Riana flushed, suddenly self-conscious. But she pushed through the feeling to conclude, “So I didn’t run. Stop complaining.”

  His half-smile turned into a full one, so tender and pleased it was heart-stopping. “I wasn’t complaining.” His stride didn’t falter, but he managed to make her feel like they were completely alone. “Thank you.”

  She sniffed and looked away, not quite sure what to say. So she said the obvious thing. “You’re welcome.”

  “But, next time, if I say to run, you run.”

  She scowled at him, but without much heat, and gave his arm a little squeeze.

  There wasn’t any sense in overanalyzing her feelings here. He knew how she felt, as confused and new as the feelings were. She’d spontaneously shared them with him back in the Archives. Trying to neatly label the chaos of feelings for her own comfort was futile.

  If she wanted to stop and kiss him on the street, well, then that was probably just the aftermath of the adrenalin.

  Their options in terms of housing were dwindling quickly. They couldn’t go to Riana’s loft, and Mikel’s borrowed apartment—as well as his real place, she assumed—was out of the question now too.

  They were just considering their options and actually arguing over whether or not they should call Connor for help when an old brown sedan pulled to a stop right in front of them.

  The window rolled down and Connor himself peered at them. The rain had slacked off some, but Riana had to wipe the moisture off her face to see him clearly.

  His expression was uncharacteristically cold. “Get in.”

  Riana looked up at Mikel, whose face was only momentarily torn. “You go ahead,” he said quietly, obviously just for her ears. “I won’t be able to sit through the impending lecture. And I’ve got a few things to take care of now that I’m going to have to drop off the radar. I’ll give you a call later.” He shot a hard look at Connor. “Don’t let him convince you we made a mistake.”

  He was about to turn away from her when she was hit by how much he’d risked, how much he’d given up. For her. She grabbed him by the wet lapels of his suit, feeling a swell of emotion she couldn’t name. “Mikel,” she began, her voice cracking.

  His face softened. “I know,” he murmured, stroking her cheek with his finger and opening a tingling connection that left her breathless, the light caress affecting her as much as a kiss. “We’ll talk later.”

  He helped her into the car, without a word to Connor, and then he took off down the sidewalk, his tall figure soon melting into the gray city scene.

  Reluctantly, Riana turned toward Connor. She was actually glad to see him—knowing his familiar presence would allow her to let down her guard and relax after the panicked urgency of the day.

  Despite everything, she still felt horribly guilty. If not for her decisions, then at least for hiding them from Connor. Especially after the ways he’d helped her over the last week.

  She expected the lecture Mikel had predicted or
at least an angry outburst, and she started to steel herself to face it.

  So she wasn’t prepared when Connor’s dark blue eyes scanned her face anxiously. “Are you all right?”

  For some reason, that did it. Her adrenalin high crashed, leaving her exhausted, scared, and overwrought.

  “Yes,” she choked out, “I’m fine.”

  As answers went, it wasn’t very convincing.

  Connor pulled the car—Jenson’s old one—out into traffic. To her relief, he didn’t try to touch her or comfort her. He was blessedly silent for the entire ride home.