Laughing Eyes: Bittersweet Familia (3)

by Melissa Jane

  A choked cry broke through the silence as his words resonated within her. In an instant, a moment that would embed its claws in me forever, Anna’s eyes flew open, a mixed look of terror and sorrow as she made a sudden move to escape.

  She looked to me, her chin wobbling in hysteria, both arms reaching for me in desperation. Instinctively, I moved to get her away from Nicolas, but it was too late.

  “Danny, plea—”

  Her screams were cut short. Her attempt to break free thwarted. I watched, helpless, the distance between us too great for the micro seconds it took.

  His knuckles were white, his hold on the knife handle strong and defiant. There was no turning back, no erasing what was about to happen.

  I watched my world be torn apart as the polished blade sliced cleanly across Anna’s slender neck, its metal instantly covered in a thick coat of blood.

  Her name repeatedly broke through the lump in my throat, but I couldn’t hear my own words. I watched, now a broken man as the life vanished in a flash from her beautiful green eyes. Those eyes that had sucked me in from the beginning.

  There was no last final goodbye, no look of adoration between us. It had been taken, ripped away by a ruthless psychopath.

  I ran. I ran to close the space between us, catching her falling body that Nicolas so carelessly discarded.

  She fell limp in my arms, her familiar scent assaulting my senses, ripping my heart straight from my chest. Cradling her, we fell to the floor, her long thick hair fanning out like the angel she was.

  “Anna,” I choked, trying to cover the wound in a futile attempt to save her. My tears fell on her face mixing with her blood, my heart aching like a motherfucker.

  It was too late. I was too late.

  Blood flowed endlessly, staining her tanned skin, soaking greedily into the cotton nightie. “Anna, please, please, please!” I begged her lifeless body. She stared up, eyes only for me, not seeing, no longer knowing.

  Nicolas rounded on us, his footsteps slow and deliberate, taking time to admire his kill.

  “Why?” I said, struggling through the wave of emotion flooding through me. “Why did you have to do that to her? She is an innocent, you fucker!” I was seething and I didn’t know why I was questioning his lack of morality. My body was waging a war, stuck in a world of grief while rage bubbled up from within.

  “A shame really,” he said, the tone void of all emotion. “If you hadn’t turned up I would have kept her as my own.”

  “I will fucking kill you for this you miserable sack of shit,” I didn’t care that he was the one with all the weapons. I knew I would never leave this earth before him. He would pay for taking Anna’s life. He would pay for it all.

  “This is my fucking job, don’t take it personally,” he spat before the butt of his Glock cracked above my temple.

  Danny

  My face was still damp. Wet with the tears that fell while unconscious. Anna’s beautiful, sweet face was there, permanently lodged in my mind. The familiar way she looked at me, the very same that made me weak for her. But that image quickly vanished. Instead it was cruelly replaced with her lifeless eyes staring back at me, blood streaming from the open wound slashed across her neck.

  I couldn’t bring her back.

  I wanted so much to breathe life into Anna’s body again, that the pain of losing her was like fire coursing through my veins.

  I had failed.

  My job was to get her out of this god forsaken place and back to some normality.

  Instead, my arrogance and pride had killed her.

  “Mr?” A voice sounded in my head.

  “Are you ok?” He said again.

  Behind me, hands worked to urgently until the ropes that bound me to a chair were undone. Only when free did I open my eyes. I wished I hadn’t. The same room greeted me, my worst nightmare still my reality. With all my heart I wished someone would knock me out again into pain-free oblivion. Beside me lay the woman I craved to hold. The one who had stolen my heart the second she looked at me. Now she lay in a pool of dried blood circling her head like a halo. In her long white cotton night dress, now stained in crimson blood, she looked the part of a slaughtered innocent.

  “Let’s go,” the same heavily accented voice said. Stepping away breaking my line of sight from Anna, was a dark-skinned child, barely a man.

  “Who are you?” My voice croaked.

  “Tomas,” he replied unsure of the situation.

  I recognized the name. “You knew Anna?”

  “She saved me once,” he said sadly, his eyes clouding over. That rock hard lump in my throat refused to budge.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw you when you went back to my village. You were there once before.” He was talking about the very first day I met Anna. “I wanted to warn you that there were others waiting for you.” There was remorse in his voice.

  “I understand,” There was no possible way for him to have alerted me without getting killed, “How did you get here?”

  “I climbed into the back of your truck. I waited until the gunfire stopped. I watched you walk in here and I waited, but you never came back out, so I came to find you.” Tomas’s English was broken, but he was trying hard to be understood. I could feel the love he had for Anna. Knowing she was lying next to his feet, he did everything he could to not look, his eyes misting with grief.

  “It is dangerous for you here. Thank you for coming to get me, but you really have to go.” The house was eerily silent, but that only meant hidden dangers.

  “Sir, I am not afraid of dying. I have lost everyone in my life. Now I have even lost the one person who saved me.” His young voice cracked as he finished off the sentence. He was a brave boy who had already been through so much.

  The image of Nicolas’s face as he killed Anna came to mind, his final words to me still stinging. I stood, a mix of defeat and rage coursing through my veins. Tomas’s bottom lip trembled as he looked down at Anna. It was a truly awful and heartbreaking site. Gripping his small shoulder, I gave him a reassuring squeeze. How I could reassure someone in this situation defied my own understanding. There was fucking nothing to be reassured about.

  “Here,” the boy said, swiping away the tears before revealing two Glocks from behind his back.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “There are a lot of dead bodies belonging to a weapons maker. There’s plenty of them out there.” Despite the tragedy I couldn’t help but give a sad smile for Tomas’s ingenuity.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, taking both weapons.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “You need to make him suffer.”

  ***

  I held Anna in my arms, her eyes now closed, blocking the horror of her last minutes. Walking to the bed, I kissed her cold lips gently before lowering her onto the mattress. The blood had long since congealed, her tanned skin now pale.

  Tomas and I stood either side of the bed looking down at the beautiful young woman we had loved in different ways. She was a victim of this terrible war. A war the government carried no conscience over.

  My chest ached with a pain so bad, every step was a struggle. I knew that if I made it out alive, Anna would be flying back with Aiden and me. Back to her family where she belonged in the first place. It was then that another fear took hold as I thought about Aiden. I had no idea where he was or if he was unscathed from the crossfire.

  Gesturing for Tomas to follow close behind, we took to the stairs. Without a doubt, my number one priority was getting him to safety, then to track down the son of bitch who deserved the worse death imaginable.

  “Sir,”

  “What is it?”

  “El Leon is still here. I heard him say that he was waiting for the other to be found.”

  I knew perfectly well who the ‘other’ was.

  “Alright, I am going to get you out of here, then you need to stay off the roads. Head back to where the truck is and r
emain there until I return. Do you understand?”

  He nodded his head reluctantly, but didn’t challenge my instruction.

  Voices from the downstairs area silenced us both, my hand on Tomas’s shoulder as we listened.

  “The other will come with a bit of incentive.” It was Nicolas’s voice and despite his intention the message couldn’t have made me happier. It meant that Aiden had made it after all and was still alive and breathing. “Bring the fucker down for some show and tell.”

  Footsteps on the tiled floors propelled me back into action. We were sitting ducks on the stairs and I simply couldn’t risk Tomas being anywhere near gunfire.

  “Back up the stairs,” I urged, pushing him in front of me at speed. Where we were to go I didn’t know. They would find us, that much was certain, but at least we would have the element of surprise on our side.

  “They will be heading straight for the room I was held in. Go to the end room and find somewhere to be out of sight. If they didn’t see you come in they won’t even know to look for you.”

  How much of what I said he understood, I didn’t know. I spoke quickly, some words lost in translation. His eyes were wide as he tried to decipher what I was saying.

  “Do you understand?”

  He nodded his head in slight acknowledgement before I pushed him down the hall. Back in the room, I swallowed the lump in my throat as I took in Anna’s lifeless body. She had hated this war. Detested the violence and everything it stood for. ‘Killing in the name of what?’ she would ask. For some reason she looked at me differently. I too was a killer. My time as a sniper had resulted in many deaths. She was quick to put to rest that theory, her hand snaking through my hair, lips gently touching mine as if she were just a whisper. “The day you take an innocent life, a life that had no right to die at that time, is the day you should never shoot your rifle again. Until then, you have a duty to protect the ones that can’t protect themselves.”

  Yet I hadn’t been able to protect her.

  Danny

  With my Glock at the ready, I waited until the door to the bedroom swung open keeping me hidden by whoever walked through. There were two of them, engrossed in conversation I couldn’t possibly understand yet they didn’t have any sense of urgency given all the shit that had gone down in the last few hours. A lone figure took a few steps in before coming to a stop. His lazy voice now resembled something close to hysteria seeing the empty chair.

  Making my move, I rushed forward hooking my arm around his neck, swivelling us both around to face the other man still waiting on the threshold. His gun was now pointed at my face, a look of vengeance radiating off him in waves.

  The two men yelled heatedly at each in Spanish seemingly at a loss about what to do. One wanting to shoot, the other not wanting to be shot.

  “Shut the fuck up, both of you,” I hissed, my Glock pressing against the temple of the man in my arms, “Get inside and close the door behind you,” I urged the free man, who now raised his hands in surrender.

  Daringly, he hesitated, defying my instruction. The one in my arms grunted, his displeasure at my Glock pressing painfully against his bone enough to spur the other to action. A booming voice from behind stilled him. His cautious eyes darted to the side, his head remaining perfectly still. In a split second, the man jerked to his right as a gun exploded behind him, its bullet missing me by a hair. Not wanting to risk a second near-death, I pushed the man in my arms away. As he stumbled, I fired, shooting him in the back of the head. He fell to the ground in a heavy heap, the blood creating yet another stain on the plush carpet.

  The other two men were now gone, failing to take the opportunity to finish me off. Why? I didn’t know and that in itself didn’t sit well with me. Making my way to the door I found the body belonging to the shooter. He lay face first, a knife stuck firmly into his spine.

  What the fuck was happening?

  It wasn’t Nicolas’s knife. It was crudely made, inexpensive yet effective.

  Tomas!

  Running to the next room I searched frantically for the boy. It was a bedroom with very little in the way of furniture, yet he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Tomas?” I yelled.

  Nothing.

  “Fucking hell!” A sense of terror rattled my spine.

  Sprinting down the now deserted steps, static sounded through my earpiece.

  “Aiden?” I waited only to hear more static. A quick scan of the bottom level revealed evidence of war and death, not a warm body in sight other than my own. A faint voice broke through over the dull static, but it wasn’t Aiden.

  “Peters?”

  “Sarge?”

  “Where the fuck have you been?” His voice dipped in and out of frequency.

  “I’m at El Leons house.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Not yet. I’ve lost contact with Aiden. Have you heard anything?”

  “Confirming Aiden is safe. It appears the problems are on your side. Do you have the girl?”

  My feet froze, a numbness spreading over my body. The brief mention of Anna threatened to throw me off my game.

  Outside, an engine roared to life breaking the eerie silence that engulfed the mountain.

  “Connect me back up with Aiden, boss,” I said, stalking to the front entry, watching as Nicolas drove away with Tomas.

  Static was soon replaced by nothingness.

  ***

  I kept a safe distance.

  Nicolas had taken off at speed down the cliff’s windy roads not long after I had found him again. Back in my truck I now had access to my sniper rifle which would come in useful if he happened to drag us to busier parts of town.

  Twenty minutes later I pulled off the road as I watched the black SUV move down a steep gravel drive. Houses were few and far between in this part of the country, trees offering the protection I needed from being seen. The sun was now setting, a red glow coloring the sky like the blood-soaked day it had been.

  Arming myself, I attempted communication with Aiden again, only to be greeted with silence. Remaining within the protection of the trees, I trailed the property until the soft glimmer of lights broke through the night. The house was less than a hundred yards away in the lower lying valley. My position had me looking down at where my target was making himself at home.

  Setting up, I watched and waited. The desire to abandon my post and sort the fucker out sounding ideal, but I knew how he expected this whole thing to unfold. I would wait until he got bored of the anticipation. A man like him wouldn’t last long.

  “Peters?” My ear piece crackled to life.

  “Kind of busy at the moment,” my tone was curt.

  “Where are you? Your GPS has dropped out.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on me. If one thing wasn’t working at the top of a mountain, be sure that the other would shit itself in the depths of a valley.

  “Truth is I don’t know, boss. I’m South West somewhere.”

  And just like that he was gone again, the static replaced with silence.

  As predicted, I didn’t have to wait long. Down by the house, a gun shot fired, its blast echoing through the valley. My finger twitched on the trigger, keen to take the fucker out as soon as possible. Looking through the scope I watched as a soft light from the first room silhouetted a figure on the outside.

  “Game on,” I said to myself shifting into a better position. Activating my night vision, a cold chill passed through me. Nicolas held Tomas in the same position he had Anna right before he savagely killed her. This time, instead of a knife, he held a gun.

  “Marine!” He yelled into the darkness. He knew full well I was here watching, but not where. That much was comforting. He was on edge. I studied him through the scope trying to line him up, but it was near impossible. Memories from earlier flooded back as the image of Anna’s throat being slashed played over again in my mind.

  I could do nothing to help her.

  I had let her die.

  And now he
re I was, back in almost the same position, another innocent in his grasp.

  “Where are hiding, Peters?” Nicolas was all over the place, keeping a careful hold on Tomas, protecting himself from my line of sight. Fucking coward!

  “I know you are here, you snake. Show your fucking self!” His voice boomed through the valley, but I wasn’t taking the bait, “You want the boy, come down and collect him.”

  My ear piece crackled to life startling me from my venomous thoughts. “Peters?”

  “Yes, boss?” I croaked through a constricted throat.

  “Fill me in.”

  “He’s got a boy.”

  “Do you have a clear shot?”

  “He is in the open, but using the kid as a shield.”

  “You need to hurry the fuck up and take the fucker down, Peters.”

  Ignoring the man who I knew carried with him fifty years of bad temper, I refocused on my target.

  “You want to talk about her, marine?” Nicolas’s taunting voice pulled me straight back to my brutal reality. “Do you want to know what I put her through? How I kissed every inch of her skin? How I took her just the way I like? How I licked the tears she shed as I fucked her? You took your time, marine! She lost faith in you and now she is dead because of you.”

  I could barely breathe, my hatred for the man and my grief for Anna was like a tornado ripping me apart. Despite my resolve, tears welled as I remembered the look on her face when she saw me for the last time.

  “She loved being destroyed, Peters. And I have to say, slicing that knife through her soft skin was complete exhilaration. To make her my own, possess her like I did, then to be the one in control of her last breath… that, marine, is pure.”

  Dropping my rifle, I turned quickly to the side, vomit spilling from my mouth in heaving waves. I was sick with rage. Sick with a pain I knew would never heal. I had witnessed a lot of death and had taken a lot of lives, but never had it been so personal.