Angels & Assassins: BWWM Romance

by K. Alex Walker

  Joel ended the call and spent the next few minutes staring at his phone in silence.

  *****

  Katia felt herself being jerked into wakefulness. There was roughness beneath her back. Her nostrils held the smell of earth. Something crawled across her stomach and she hopped to her feet out of reflex but immediately fell to the floor in pain. A deep gash stretched across her calf, nearly slicing it in half, and her skin was soaked in blood. She was completely naked and in the middle of the woods with no idea how long she’d been out, or if she was even still in North Carolina.

  “Liam? Michaela? Babies, are you out there?” she called, craning her neck to capture the full length of her surroundings. But it might have as well had been nighttime. The bastard had taken the time to remove her contacts.

  The large tree trunks and the immediate debris around her were all that she could make out across the blurred landscape. There were some familiar sounds of insect wildlife, but it didn’t offer her any reprieve. She could have been out for days. Maybe even clear across the country. Hell, for all she knew, she could have been dead in the center of the giant redwoods out in California.

  She’d been packing her things to be escorted over to Tayler’s when a man who’d identified himself as an FBI agent had called to let her know that someone would be over for her, Jason, and the children. He’d also hinted at the possibility of her being in danger because of her relationship with Tayler. Then the doorbell had buzzed and she’d peeked out, expecting to see an agent or police officer’s morphed outline through the peephole. But, it had only been Eric. Sweet, kind, and quiet Eric who, out of concern, had dropped by to see how she was holding up after hearing about Anya’s murder.

  Like a fool, she’d opened the door and invited him in. In a split second, Jason had somehow ended up on the floor, blood staining his straight, dark strands and seeping onto the tiled floor. Eric had then wrapped his hand around Michaela’s ankle and had threatened to drop her sixteen month-old on the head. Liam had walked into the room with a juice box in his hand singing the theme song from one of his favorite kid’s shows. The moment had been so simultaneously unreal and ordinary that it had made her dizzy. Or, maybe it was the rag that Eric had pressed over her nose and mouth.

  Summoning strength, Katia pushed off the floor, steadied her balance on the uninjured leg, and hopped until she could reach out and wrap her body around a tree trunk. With the way her arms encircled half of the tree’s base, she knew that at the very least, she wasn’t in the redwood forest.

  Her leg throbbed and swelled. Sweat beaded over the surface of her skin. The blood trickling down her leg felt like someone brushing her with the tip of a feather. Life was literally draining from her body, but it felt as innocuous as an insect’s wing or the brush of her daughter’s ponytail.

  “Liam!” She was now screaming at the top of her lungs. “Michaela! Jason! Some fucking body!”

  She eyed the trees and judged how far she could possibly make it on one leg from trunk to trunk, still in disbelief that he’d really thought that far ahead to take out her contacts.

  Eric’s daughter had spent the night at her house on more than one occasion. The town had welcomed him with open arms just over two years ago when the thirty year-old single father had introduced them to his daughter. How could he have betrayed everyone’s trust? What did it say about them if they’d given the soulless creature their trust so easily?

  Clenching her teeth, she hopped toward the next nearest tree trunk. Her body had less strength than she’d anticipated, but she saw the power of human resilience every day in her line of work. She’d been the one who had to tell patients of their cancer diagnoses along with the uncertainty of the treatment outcome, but she’d also been there to see many of those same patients go into full remission. She’d seen them fight even as their bodies were literally poisoned in hopes of a positive outcome. She’d told them to hold on for their families, friends, and pets. Now, she had to do the same for herself.

  She grabbed the tree and hugged it close to her body. Her leg throbbed worse than anything she’d ever felt. Endorphins didn’t have the capacity to numb pain this great. Death would have been easier, had it been an option.

  “Keep it together, Katia,” she whispered.

  She pushed toward the next tree. On her third hop, the sole of her foot came down on the sharp edge of a stone. Her knee buckled and she fell to the ground, twisting at the last minute to prevent her open wound from meeting the dirt. Pain shot through her ribs and she was sure at least one had cracked. Tears seeped from her eyes. The ground was where people gave up. Where they died.

  She stilled for a moment to allow some of the pain to ebb before pushing up again. There was residual pain on the bottom of her foot, but the heavier pain in her calf overwhelmed it.

  She continued forward until she reached the tree and looked up, squinting to determine if she could find a way out. When the landscape didn’t clear, not even partially, she realized that it wasn’t her astigmatism that was causing the blur. It was blood loss.

  “God, will I make it?” she prayed, leaning against the tree. “Will I see my babies again? My husband?”

  She pressed her forehead against the bark hard enough to leave an impression, closed her eyes, and steadied her breathing. If she could at least steady her breathing, she could slow her heart beat and try to preserve as much of the blood still flowing throughout.

  Then she heard the sound of waves as a breeze disturbed the surface of a large body of water. She angled her head in the direction of the sound and opened her eyes. There would be no more holding onto trees. She didn’t care if she had to slither on her stomach, she was getting out of these damn woods.

  She hopped toward the sound of the water. Her knee grew tired and gave out. When she fell, she crawled. Rocks and sticks pierced her skin, but she ignored them, crawling until an object came into view. It was the lake house. Tayler’s lake house. Eric had maimed her and dropped her off in the woods behind Tayler’s house. He’d used her as bait.

  She could make out black blobs on the back porch and remembered that Tayler’s house had been teeming with law enforcement officials. Then, she opened her mouth…and screamed.

  She screamed until her throat went raw and her lungs burned. She screamed until the pain took over and the loss of blood won. And, she screamed until she fell into the grip of either life or death, but no longer had the capacity to care which one she succumbed to.

  *****

  Gage’s head popped up when he heard the commotion in the vicinity of the deck out back. Three agents were hurrying toward the house, one with a woman in his arms wrapped up in his blazer. He could see the woman’s hair and the dark, even complexion covering her legs.

  Katia.

  Tayler appeared behind him, but she didn’t look as though she was in shock. Her face wasn’t transforming into a sick, putrid green even as she recognized her friend’s lifeless frame being ushered into the house. Instead she walked away and reappeared a few moments later wiping her hands on a paper towel.

  “We already called a bus,” one of the men said, clearing a path so that the one holding Katia could easily make his way into the room. They walked her to the living room and began easing her onto the sofa, but Tayler shook her head, grabbed a blanket, and spread it on the floor.

  She scanned Katia’s body as the men let her down onto the blanket. “Go upstairs in my closet and bring me my trauma kit,” she said to one of the agents, kneeling over Katia. “It’s large and boxy. You can’t miss it. She’s got a pretty deep laceration in her lower calf. I can see muscle tissue and debris.”

  “Is she going to need a defibrillator?” Another agent asked. “We have a defibrillator in the car.”

  “Get it. I can feel a pulse, but it’s weak. If you can, hurry that ambulance up because she’s going to need blood. He severed the tibial artery.”

  The first agent returned and dropped the kit next to her side. Gage knelt beside her and t
ugged it open.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “Gloves,” she answered. He handed them over and she slipped the material over her fingers. “And you clean up too, Gage. I know you’ve done this kind of stuff before. Find me a vein and get that saline into her ASAP.”

  She gave her attention to cleaning the wound. The laceration was precise as though it had been done by steady hands, but she could still see where Eric had faltered. It was clearly an amateur attempt at surgery by someone who’d failed to reach a surgeon’s level of precision.

  “Gage, hand me—”

  He was already handing her the trauma dressing. The IV line was secure in Katia’s wrist instead of the angle of her elbow. A quick scan of her arm revealed miniscule veins, shrunken due to dehydration. Having a man familiar with military trauma care rang through like a blessing.

  She wrapped Katia’s leg and did a quick evaluation of the rest of her body for any internal damage or broken bones. Something caught her eye from between Katia’s thighs—a post-it had been affixed to her labia with super glue.

  The sick fuck.

  A message was written on the paper square in genteel lettering:

  Meet me where you found Ares,

  at dawn, or Liam and Michaela will be killed.

  The fact that Eric had used Ares’ and Katia’s children’s names had been even more sickening. He was acting as though the truth of his nature hadn’t been revealed. Everything that had been learned about Eric Hall up until that point was moot. He didn’t know them, nor did they know him. No one knew him.

  Light flickered outside indicating that the ambulance had arrived. Tayler settled Katia’s body, closed the blazer, and eased back as the medics that rushed in situated her on a stretcher. All eyes watched with a mixture of contempt and sorrow as the ambulance sped away. Once it was gone, everything snapped out of slow motion. Joel came bursting through the front door. The rest of the agents went back to doing whatever it was that had engaged them before, but the atmosphere was considerably more sullen.

  Tayler felt Gage’s stare along the side of her face and knew that he’d seen the message.

  “Is Katia going to make it?” Joel asked.

  “I feel good about her prognosis,” Tayler answered. “They found her in time.”

  “Think it’s a coincidence that she showed up virtually in your backyard?” he added.

  “No. I know that’s where Eric left her because he wanted to make sure we found her.”

  “And the children are still missing.” Joel growled and went to shove his fist into the wall, but stopped short when he remembered where he was.

  “They’ll be okay if I go in their place.”

  She felt Gage tense and refused to meet his eyes. She didn’t need to. His glare felt like skin being peeled away from flesh.

  “He’s looking for me,” Tayler continued. “He left a message. I have until dawn or the babies will die. We don’t have a choice. I have to g—”

  Gage pulled her across the room until they reached the bottom of the stairs. She started to tug back, but he picked her up and walked all the way to the bedroom, closing the door behind them and setting her next to the bed.

  “I know you don’t like it,” she preempted.

  He stood in front of her with his back turned and his arms crossed in front of him. The slats on the blinds were drawn, but he was facing them as though taken in by a serene mountain view.

  “We don’t have a choice,” she added.

  The anger had puffed his muscles up making his back appear twice its size. His shirt was stretched taut, exposing the anxious lines in all of their glory. Watching him was beginning to suck the life right out of her, so she moved her focus to the dresser along the wall instead.

  White wood. Golden knobs. Seven drawers. At first, the odd number of drawers had thrown her off. Somehow, it had left her feeling as though the dresser would have been inadequate to hold her all of her clothing. It had eventually worked out just fine, which was more than she could say about her attempt to distract herself by thinking about something as trivial as a piece of furniture.

  “If you brought me up here just to not say anything, then I’m going to leave,” she said, turning around.

  He reached out, grabbed her a second time, and pulled her backwards into his body. She slipped out of his grasp and pushed him backwards. He barely budged.

  Capturing her arms, he shoved her until her back pressed against the wall. Tayler struggled until he slackened enough for her to tug her hands away, then she quickly brought her knee up into his stomach. It was like hitting a wall of concrete.

  He grabbed her over the head and around the waist, picked her up so that she was momentarily upside down, and dropped her on the bed. She huffed, popped up, and charged after him, slipping around his body and off the bed at the last minute.

  She struck out, and he blocked her strike with his forearm. She tried lower, and he blocked that one as well. When he tried to block her a third time, she trapped his arm along her left underarm and brought her right palm up toward his chin. He stepped out of the hold, grabbed her hand, and took the other arm with it, pinning them behind her back and returning her to the wall, this time facing forward.

  Her blind spot might have been her weakness, but it wasn’t her end.

  She kicked her foot back and temporarily hyperextended his knee. His grip released and he stepped backwards, his knee now slightly bent forward. Using the top of his angled thigh for lift, she spun around his body, wrapped her legs around his waist, and her elbow around his neck. Then, she pushed so that their bodies went to the floor, ending on top of him with her knee in his back and his stomach flat against the carpet. He was breathing so hard that she rose and fell with each aspiration. When she let up, he rolled over.

  “Better,” he said.

  She straddled his body and looked down into his face. His eyes preferred the ceiling. He was still breathing hard and at some point, tears had leached from her eyes to roll over the hills of her cheekbones.

  He shook his head. “Fuck.”

  The minute she realized what she would have to do, the same thing came to mind—she couldn’t leave him, but their wants were currently insignificant. Putting herself into the crosshairs of a man with no scruples was probably the worst decision she would ever make, but she would never be able to live with herself if harm came to more people because of her.

  He pulled her down to his chest. Although his stomach had slowed, his heart was still racing. She held onto his arms, gripping his biceps. Joel would never allow her to go blindly into the woods. She would have backup and cover. But, the possibility was still there. She could die. It was still possible that she would never see Gage again. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to him if he had to come to grips with letting someone else slip away from him a second time, especially someone he cared about and hopefully, even loved.

  She loved him, but she wouldn’t ruin the moment by telling him now. He probably wouldn’t allow her to anyway. If she told him she loved him, then it meant that she truly believed that she was going to die. Gage would simply shake his head and shut her up. His anger would return. This, she preferred—lying on top of him and listening to his heartbeat, feeling the rise and fall of his chest. It brought her an eerie kind of solitude, one that inferred that perhaps she’d already accepted the possibility of death, justified only by the fact that two very young lives would be saved in her place.

  Up to this point, she’d already seen a lot in thirty-three years. She’d traveled the world, worked in medical humanitarianism, found the will to live again after losing her mother and ended up making the most amazing friends in the process. The days she’d spent in medical school had seemed perpetual, but she’d somehow still made it. If she’d had more time, she would have probably even become one of the top professionals in her field.

  She’d even gotten the chance to fall in love.

  Her life had been full. Though
there was more that she could have accomplished, more to discover, what had happened up until this point wasn’t exactly chopped liver.

  I could die tomorrow…

  The thought was supposed to come across as reassuring. As though, because her life was so full, if it ended in the next several hours there wouldn’t be many more experiences left for her to miss. However, the only thing she felt was a fear deeper than anything she’d ever known she could experience.

  The tears returned. They were followed by Gage’s fingers as he swiped them away and his hands as he cupped her cheeks. He stared at her with an expression on his face that she felt over every inch of her body.

  I could die tomorrow…

  Then, his brows softened as though, all of a sudden, he could hear it too.

  -16-

  Gage’s hands clenched and released as Joel relayed his plan to Tayler—the plan that would essentially mark her as a target, putting her directly in the line of fire. He resisted the urge to pace as he listened, especially since he’d already concluded that there was nothing else that could have been done. If she didn’t go, the children would be killed. There was no wiggle room when children were involved. He’d plunged into carotids, cracked hyoid bones, and collapsed tracheas, but none of his work had ever involved bringing harm to a child. Not even the machine gun toting ones. Children never knew better. They were twice as impressionable as adults who were pretty damn malleable themselves.

  Being enshrouded by his thoughts had caused him to lose the last five minutes of the conversation, but it was something that had caused Tayler’s shoulders to tense beneath his palms. Standing behind her while she sat in a dining room chair with his grip somewhere on her body had been the only thing that had stopped him from incessantly pacing. It was different this time, he knew. The other time, he’d been thousands of miles away. No matter how many ways he’d twisted it in his head, he would have never been able to get there in time to save his family. Yet, it had still gripped him day and night for years, spurring to its worst around the same time each year.