Chapter 4 Falco #2
By the time I arrive, Aerin’s been out of my sight for forty-seven minutes. “Thanks Pidge. I owe you one.”
“You owe me many,” is Pidge’s reply as I hang up.
My gun’s in my hand before I’m even out of the car. T
he stink of oil and saltwater fills the air as I scan the dark parking lot illuminated by a single streetlight that’s fighting with all its might to keep its flickering bulb alive.
Three warehouses.
Not enough time to check them all.
Suddenly, a squeal of laughter echoes through the air, and my attention zeroes in on the furthest warehouse tucked up against the riverbank.
More laughter follows.
I start sprinting and I don’t stop until I’ve cleared the length of the parking lot. I race around a couple of concrete bollards, over discarded rusty trolleys, and up onto the top of a large dumpster as soon as I spot a second-floor broken window large enough for me to get through.
As soon as I’m inside, the laughter morphs into something else.
A scream of fear.
“Wait—stop!” Aerin squeals. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to!”
Rumbles of laughter follow her panicked, slightly slurred words.
Peering through the dark, I keep low to the ground with my gun close to my chest. I can’t see a fucking thing.
It’s far too dark, and what little light there is comes from the moon high above, but even that only illuminates the broken windows, lightly drifting plastic sheets, and the puddles of rainwater gathered on the floor.
I can’t see any—
Suddenly, every lightbulb in the warehouse with even a fraction of working wire going to it blares to life, burning my eyes and forcing them closed for a few brief seconds.
Pidge.
Some lightbulbs immediately shatter from the power surge, sending shards of glass and sparks raining down from above.
Others flicker once and die out, but enough lights remain to illuminate enough of the warehouse that I get my bearings.
“What the fuck?” barks a male voice from above me, cutting above Aerin’s panicked squeals.
I’m kneeling on a metal walkway, a sea of upturned shelves, abandoned forklifts, and broken wooden crates scattered across the floor below me. To my right, rusty, warped metal stairs lead up to a higher walkway and that’s when I see her.
Aerin.
The sight of her sends my heart hammering up into my throat and a pit opens up in my gut.
She’s in the clutches of a tall man with a belly spilling over the top of his jeans.
They stand in the middle of the walkway where the railing has long crumbled from rust and age, his hands on her arms and his body forcing her to lean backward over the abyss below.
The other two, a man and a woman, are locked in an embrace kissing one another without a care in the world, while a half-drunk bottle of vodka dangles from the woman’s hand.
At a second glance, they’re both armed.
My hands tremble, and I spare them a glance.
Why am I shaking?
This is hardly the worst situation I’ve ever been in. Definitely not the most dangerous.
But my stomach’s in knots, my hands tremble, and there’s a sudden anxious bubble growing in my chest.
I have to save her.
“Stop!” Aerin screams, slapping both her hands against her captor’s shoulders. “This isn’t funny anymore, let me go!”
Her screams draw the attention of the two smooching people, and they turn to face her, laughing.
Using that as my distraction, I grit my teeth and slowly climb the stairs as delicately as I can.
Every step causes the metalwork to betray my movements with a creak or a crunch, but thankfully no one looks my way.
“Relax,” groans the woman. “Isn’t this what you wanted? To go somewhere fun and secluded, to have some real-world fun? This is real fun.”
“Yeah,” snorts the man next to her as he loops his arm around the woman’s waist. “Think of the adrenaline rush as you fall. It’ll be the most alive you’ll ever feel.”
“Literally,” mocks the man pushing Aerin further and further over the edge.
She screams, clawing at his shoulders and slapping him as hard as she can, but it doesn’t faze him.
“Aww,” mocks the woman, and she loops her arm containing the bottle around her lover’s neck. “Don’t look so scared! Trust me, we’re going to have the best sex of our life after we get paid for—”
I don’t let her finish.
Reaching the top of the walkway, I lift my gun and fire off three rapid shots.
The first hits the man in the back and goes straight through, shattering the vodka bottle on the other side of his chest and landing in the shoulder of the man holding Aerin.
My second bullet thuds into the woman’s lower back as she screams, and my third collides with the back of her knee.
The impact forces her leg to give way and she falls while her lover crumples to the side and topples off the walkway.
I sprint forward and fire my fourth shot through the middle of the couple as they part and it hits the third man square in the throat.
He stumbles.
His grip loosens on Aerin, and she screams in terror as her weak grip on his shirt slips.
Her fingers only brush thin air as she topples backward.
Aerin falls.
I throw myself forward and land on the walkway just as my hand closes around her wrist.
Her scream cuts off when her body jolts from my grip, and she’s left dangling over the abyss.
The weight of her body drags me an inch further over the edge where the ridge of torn, rusted metal scrapes painfully against my chest.
“Stop moving!” I yell at her.
She just screams and screams, twisting back and forth in terror while clutching at my forearm with her other hand. “Help me!”
“I am! Just—” A ragged gasp behind me forces me to roll onto my back, twisting my shoulder in the process. I take the shot before I’ve even fully processed the bleeding woman standing over me with her own gun raised.
It hits her in the chest, and she stumbles back one step, then two, before toppling over the railing and joining her lover on the floor far below.
“Falco!” Aerin screams. “Help me!”
“I’ve got you! I’ve got you.” With a pounding heart and throbbing shoulder, I roll back over and grab her arm with both hands. “I’ve got you, Aerin. I’ve got you.”
I pull her back up onto the walkway and Aerin collapses in my arms, trembling and sobbing. She clutches at my shirt and buries her wet face in my neck, unable to speak through the sobs tearing out of her.
The relief is unimaginable, and it hits me as hard as a lungful of frozen air on a cold December day.
Panting harshly, I lie back and hold her close with one arm. My other rolls back and forth to try and ease the pain in my shoulder, then I reach for my phone and call in the code.
Code fourteen. Lethal attempt on her life.
“Thank you,” Aerin gasps out, choking through her tears. “Thank you.”
“You’re safe,” I say breathlessly. “You’re safe. I’m right here. I’m here.”
Aerin balls herself up in my lap and sobs.
After a few seconds, I wind my second arm around her and hold her as close as I dare, but it quickly turns into me holding her tightly as she clings to me and a surge of affection crawls up from the cold, dark depths of my heart.
Despite the adrenaline running through my body, despite my pounding heart and twisting stomach, my hands have stopped shaking.
She’s okay. I saved her.
That’s all that matters.
The longer we sit there, cuddling together, the more I realize that the affection I’m feeling can’t be allowed to grow.
I barely know her, and there are a thousand reasons why it would be a death sentence. But my trembling hands… What was I scared of?
Failure?
Or how close I came to losing someone I barely know but haven’t been able to stop thinking about since that night at the restaurant?
The woman who looked at me, and for the first time in years I felt like someone saw me?
Me, and not the grunt with a gun everyone else sees.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter to myself.
I’m never letting her out of my sight ever again.
What little freedom I granted her out of respect is gone, effective immediately.