15. Chapter 15 #2
“Let me clear the downstairs, and Easton, you clear the barn first. Kill the guards, and then I’ll be down to help you with the others,” Khai suggested.
“Aye, aye…” Sully said.
Once the plan was set, I gently slid the window open, careful not to make any noise. The best way to kill the guards was to shoot them from above. It was too risky to go down there. They could kill the children by accident… or use them as hostages.
I aimed my gun at the man closest to me, pacing along one side of the stalls.
As soon as he passed the other man, I fired a round into his head.
He instantly dropped, and the other man was alerted, aiming his gun around the barn.
Before he noticed the window open above, I fired a round into his head, killing him.
I holstered my gun, quickly jumped off the roof, and slid open the barn door.
But as soon as I did, a third man I hadn’t seen fired at me.
The bullet tore through my left shoulder, sending a wave of fiery pain throughout my shoulder and arm.
I yanked my gun out and fired at him, missing him the first time, but got him the second, right in the throat.
He dropped his weapon as his hands rushed to his throat, choking on his own blood.
He dropped to his knees and fell to the ground.
“I’ve been shot,” I said. “I’m fine.”
Who knew if that was true? But I was still alive, so I opened the stable doors to grab all the children.
“Come. You’re safe now. We’re going to get you home.”
One by one, they woke up and stood. Most looked at me in fear, probably because of all the blood now dripping from my hand.
“I’m here to take you home,” I repeated. “Your parents are waiting.”
Some of the older boys held each other and cried, then they helped the younger ones up and out of the stalls, except for one. A toddler was terrified and forced himself into a corner, crying.
I approached him and rolled up my masks to make him less afraid, and put on one of my other masks, giving him a big smile. He wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what I looked like, anyway. “Hey, you’re okay now.”
I picked him up, resting him on my hip as I carried him out after I pulled my mask back down. He clung to me and cried while the other boys watched me in a mixture of fear and hope .
“Are you really here to help? Those men said they were trying to help, but they made us watch scary things,” said the oldest boy.
“You’re going home to your parents,” I assured him.
“Easton, how are you really? I know you downplay shit,” Dalton said into my earpiece.
“I’ll live.”
“Do you need a hospital?”
“The bullet has exited. I just need it cleaned and sewn. Khai or Sully can do that when we get back to the house.”
“Shit, Sid’s going to kill me.”
I smiled at that because I knew they all cared about me. Someone else in my life was going to be pissed, too. That would be harder to explain.
The other two men rushed into the barn after taking out the older boys, looking well and uninjured. I cursed myself for missing the third man. He must have been sleeping in a corner.
Khai walked up to me, cut my shirt at the shoulder as I continued to hold the boy, who had stopped crying and watched in fascination with fat tears still rolling down his face.
Khai poked and prodded the wound as I clenched my body and breathed through the pain.
“He’s still bleeding, but we can get him patched up when we reach the van. Then we’ll get him stitched up back at the house.”
“Whatever we need to do, we need to do it quickly. It’s time to take the kiddos to the safehouse and alert the police,” Layla said.
Sully and Khai picked up the two smallest boys, and the rest of them followed us out and toward the van. Once we got them stashed in the back with water bottles and snacks, Khai cleaned my wound, glued it, and wrapped it up. Once we got back, I’d have it properly stitched.
An hour later, we had the kids dropped off at the house alone, and they were scared all over again, but we couldn’t stay. The police had been alerted and would be there shortly.
“Ugh, another good deed done,” Sully complained as Khai stitched me up in the kitchen when we returned to our safehouse.
“Admittedly, it is nice to waste those assholes and rescue some kids. So I don’t hate it too much.
But next time, I get to remove some pinkies and make them suffer a little harder. ”
Khai eyed me, his black eyes glittering with humor, a small smile playing on his lips. “You’re so violent, Sully,” he said, chuckling.
“Please, as if we aren’t all violent.”
“You more so.”
“Well, I was made this way.”
Sully wasn’t wrong. His own lover and our leader, Malik, had sent an assassin to kill Sully’s father, but he disobeyed and killed the entire family, nearly wiping Sully out, but he lived.
Then in foster care, he was repeatedly raped, and his best friend was murdered by their foster father.
Apparently, Sully embraced his darker side after that, but he’d already been on that path.
Malik took him in and trained him to hone his skills as a killer.
Once Khai was done, he washed his hands clean of blood and checked his phone, reading a text.
His grip tightened around it, turning his knuckles white, then his jaw clenched tightly.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“I need to go. Maverick needs help… for a job. ”
“He wasn’t on assignment when we left earlier today.”
“He is now!”
I raised a brow at Khai’s sudden outburst. He was about as calm as I was most of the time. The control over his emotions was as sharp as his sword.
“I’ll charter a flight home. You and Sully stick with the plan and head back on your usual flight.”
“Why not wait until we get back? Why now?” Sully asked, as suspicious as I was.
The shift in mood and the sudden rush for Maverick to need help without alerting the family felt wrong.
“It isn’t for me to say.”
Khai left the room, packed his bag, and was off.
“What the fuck was that about?” Sully asked me.
“It’s not our business.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“No.”
“Come on . That’s got to be a little suspicious.”
“If they want us to know, they will tell us.”
Sully huffed, opened the fridge, pulled out a bottle of white wine, and poured himself a glass. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. There better not be another betrayal. Sid nearly ruined our family.”
I said nothing as I left the kitchen and headed to the bathroom to clean up all the blood from my skin. As I did, I rehashed moments between Maverick and Khai that seemed off, but I couldn’t find any explanations or answers.