Chapter Twelve #2
Hovering over the guard, she held the syringe. “You have a choice here while you’re still able to think. Do you want to live and suffer in your final moments? Or do you want to die quickly?”
“Kill…me…” the guard croaked.
She fired the gun without blinking. Blood pooled around his head. She dropped the syringe to the ground and turned her attention to Aiden.
Oh my god, who is she? Grunting, Aiden shoved himself and the chair back. The metal legs screeched against the ground. Why is she here? The handcuffs bit into his wrists. Did one of the family heads decide to hire her and have me killed?
She smiled at him. A foxlike smile.
The roar of blood in Aiden’s ears faded. The smile tickled his memories.
All those different women pictured hanging by his brother’s side with different hair, different eyes, and even different noses. Different except for the smile that resembled a laughing fox.
He continued panting, but his heart soared.
He wondered. He had been wondering. He never stopped wondering who the woman was.
He wondered if she would appear in that sparkling lime green dress he found in his brother’s bedroom.
“…is it Celia?” He recalled his brother’s cold order to shoot the kidnapper. “Or is it actually Diane?”
The smile grew wider. “Neither. I am Mindy.” She strode her way over and lifted the chair upright.
The heel of her right boot retracted, and she pulled the knife out from the boot and cut the rope away from his legs.
She helped break through the cuffs and kicked the chair to the side, while Aiden collapsed to the ground.
“Move your shoulders and your legs to get your blood circulating again. Then we have to get moving. We don’t have much time.
” She grabbed his hand and pulled him up.
“Is someone else in trouble?” Relief washed over Aiden’s body. He rubbed his shoulders and paced the floor.
“Your prince charming.”
“Prince?” He blinked. “Brendan? What does he have to do with anything?”
“Unfortunately, he has been looking for you. All over the place. Asking around on campus and posting about it on social media with your picture. Not to mention he has also reported you missing to the police.”
“What?” He was never so thankful for the soundproof room. “What picture?”
Mindy pulled out a folded missing person poster from her purse and handed it to him.
Aiden snatched it. His jaw dropped.
Aiden, in his shimmering hanfu, sat against the dark green grass of a clear spring night. The sky sparkled of starlight, and a moon guided its beams right onto his face while his eyes stared distantly into the sky.
“Pretty good picture, too,” Mindy said, looking at it.
“Damn it! That’s what he was calling after me for, the idiot.”
“Yell at him once we rescue him.” Mindy showed him the gun. “You do know how to use this, right?”
He nodded.
She tossed the gun over to him before pulling her curled hair up into a ponytail. “There’s a camera only a few steps away from this room. Shoot the camera. I’ll stand at the end of the hallway to draw the guys’ attention, and you can kill them from the corner.”
“No.”
“Did you just say no?” She turned around, baffled.
“We can escape without killing them. They’re not behind this.”
She raised her eyebrow. “They imprisoned you and tortured you from the looks of your face.”
Aiden shook his head. “I’m not going to kill. I’m not going to become them.”
To his surprise, Mindy acquiesced almost immediately. “How do you suggest we do this?”
“I’ll shoot at their limbs.”
She clicked her tongue. “I suppose it won’t take much to incapacitate them.”
She opened the door, and her heeled boots echoed in the empty hallway. Aiden followed after her, and, despite the pain rocking his body, aimed and shot the camera perfectly.
The armed men barked orders at each other as Mindy stood unafraid in the hallway.
The first raised his arm to shoot her, but Aiden shot the man’s hand.
As the guard screamed and dropped the weapon, Mindy rushed forward to the first wounded man.
She picked up the gun along the way, wrapped her legs around the man’s body, and swung him to the ground while shooting into two other men’s hands in quick succession.
The remaining three scattered in their attempt to kill her.
Aiden shot at one of them, but missed. Mindy promptly knocked out the first man and sliced the hand of another with a kick of her boot.
Aiden could not tell how the heels retracted and returned so quickly, but every few seconds, a dagger hung out from where her heel was.
She sliced their legs and arms with kicks before landing on the ground on a heel.
Aiden only fired three shots in total before she subdued them.
Some groaned, some were knocked out cold, and all bled.
Aiden blinked and glanced upward. You would pick her, he thought.
She kicked all their guns away and motioned for him to follow. “Careful not to step in the blood,” she called, striding toward the exit at the end of the hall. He followed after her.
Aiden burst through the door with a gasp. The door slammed behind him, and his lungs gulped for the outside air. He gazed longingly at the grass, imagining the blades prickling against his skin, but he followed quickly after Mindy.
She walked over to one of the guard’s fancy cars, withdrew a car key from her purse, and unlocked the doors.
“How could you have—how much of this is planned?”
“Questions later. Prince first,” she tutted.
They sat in the car together. Mindy turned the engine on and sped into the night before Aiden properly put on his seatbelt.
· · ·
Mindy slid the car into the parking lot of a closed store. Before waiting for her to fully park, Aiden stumbled out, collapsing onto the ground. “Come on.” Mindy pulled him again. “You can rest once we rescue him.” She started walking away.
“Christina and Javier.” Panting, Aiden followed. His creaked with every step. “We need to check on them, too.”
“They’re not in trouble.”
“They’ll be looking for me with Brendan.”
“It’s not the looking that’s trouble. It’s the background.”
Aiden stopped and propped his hands against his knees, wheezing. The sound of Mindy’s heels clicked away. Clenching his hands, Aiden wiped the sweat from his brow and churned his legs forward to catch up.
“What background? He’s definitely not involved with Infinite.”
“Oh, you weren’t aware?” Mindy glanced back. “His father isn’t just an ordinary lawyer. He’s one of the best in the state, and his current case is to take down Infinite. He’s been working on it for years.”
Aiden froze. For extra measure, he repeated her words back to himself until his brain finally processed and understood the implications.
Grabbing his head, he bent over and groaned.
“No wonder they wouldn’t believe me. Brendan looking everywhere for me just made it seem like I was the traitor even more! ”
“Yes, quite unfortunate for you. Or lucky? Either way, fate has a sense of humor, don’t you think?”
Mindy’s lackadaisical attitude faded into the darkness when Aiden grasped the true sense of danger Brendan was in. He ran up to her. “What’s the quickest way to his apartment?” he asked, and the second she pointed, he sped past her, clutching the gun.
He heard nothing except his heartbeats, and his eyes observed every shadow. The dim streetlights glowed, creating silhouettes ahead. One was a man with his hand on a gun, and it slowly approached another silhouette with recognizable long legs, tense shoulders, and slightly combed hair.
His brother’s voice whispered in his ears.
Do you sense danger? Shoot. Don’t rely on anything else but the weapon.
He leveled the gun and aimed. A muted crack echoed on the street, and the stranger dropped to the ground, grasping at his leg.
Brendan yelped at the sight.
Aiden gasped, flying to Brendan’s side. He jumped around the writhing man and threw his arms around Brendan. His legs collapsed, and, amid Brendan’s confused cursing, the other still caught him, holding him from falling.
He gripped Brendan tighter.
“Aiden, what in the hell—what the fuck is going on?” Brendan sputtered.
It’s still him. He’s so warm. He looked up, smiling, and Brendan’s face turned aghast. “Oh my god—where have you been? What happened to you?”
“Why are you out here at this hour?”
“You texted me!”
Shit, they used my phone!
Another muffled shot rang in the air, and Aiden jumped up, whirling around with his arms in position to throw the perpetrator. Mindy fired another shot at the man’s head. The assassin dropped to the ground dead.
“Fuck!” Brendan shoved Aiden behind him. “She just!”
“It’s okay, Brendan.” He ran back around and covered Brendan’s mouth. “She saved me. She’s with us.”
“With us—she just murdered someone!” Brendan hissed through Aiden’s hand. He grabbed Aiden’s arm and placed his own body before Aiden’s again.
Mindy crouched to the body and picked up all the bullets.
“We've got to go—we've got to go now.” Brendan’s hand clasped Aiden’s firmly. He pulled Aiden, but Aiden dug his heels in.
“She’s our ticket to safety.” Both of his hands clasped around Brendan’s.
He looked into those wide, blue eyes. “I’ll tell you everything.
I promise. Please, just trust me. You almost died.
” He shivered at the thought. If he and Mindy had been a few seconds late, the assassin would have drawn his gun, pointed it at Brendan’s head, and fired.
Brain matter would have exploded alongside a spray of blood, and Brendan's body would have slumped to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. Aiden squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shake the vision, but the closeness of it happening sent tears rolling down his cheeks. He grabbed Brendan’s hands even harder. “You almost died because of me…”
The idea of it broke Aiden to pieces.
A few seconds of silence passed, save Mindy’s rummaging of the body.
Aiden expected Brendan to push him and run from the madness.
Instead, Brendan wrapped his arms around his back, and the warmth of his body covered Aiden as it always did.
“I was looking everywhere for you.” Brendan’s voice shook. “I couldn’t find you.”
Brendan suddenly tensed, and Aiden pulled away to see Mindy approach with a small plastic bag.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“Can’t leave any bullets behind,” she said and pocketed it. She glanced at the buildings around them. “I love apartments near colleges. There’s so much partying and drinking that no one even blinks an eye when they hear suspicious noises.”
Without any further comment, she walked in the opposite direction of where they left the car. “Follow along, boys. You can catch the prince up in the car.”
“Prince?” Brendan asked.
“It’s what she calls you—that’s not where we left the car.”
“We’re not using the same car,” she said.
Her heels echoed against the road.
“You’re certain we can trust her?” Brendan whispered.
Aiden nodded. Cautiously, he linked fingers with Brendan, but the boy held immediately at his wary invitation. He looked to Aiden with complete faith, and Aiden was reminded again of Brendan’s fateful words to him.
Whatever you want.
Aiden wanted to live. He wanted to thrive. He wanted to ensure Brendan’s safety. With warmth surging through him, he held Brendan’s hand and followed after the mysterious woman who appeared when he needed help the most.