Chapter 38
Koen
A week later
Begrudgingly, my eyes open.
My body feels much like when Greer ran me over with her fucking car.
Thoughts of Greer have me stirring violently, pulling at tubes and IVs, and machines around me go off wildly as I fight.
“Hey, big fella! Hold still, let them get you something to calm you down.”
Chase.
I try to speak, but something down my throat prevents anything from coming out. Instead, I gag.
“Easy,” a doctor above me says.
Flashes of Greer holding pressure on my gunshot wound flutter through my mind, and my eyes scan the room for her.
She’d never leave me here alone.
Chase catches my frantic eyes, flicking his away quickly.
He knows where she is, but he’s nervous to tell me.
There’s a reason Helms kept me busy and at arm’s length: my intellect is too sharp for him to work his own agenda while shirking the responsibilities of his office.
The doctor walks me through getting the tube out of my throat, and I immediately sit up.
“No! That needs to stay in, sir,” a nurse says as I snatch my IV tape off.
“Where is she?” I growl, my throat feeling like rocks were dragged through it.
“Listen, there wasn’t anything else I could do, and she wanted to go…”
Blood squirts out of my vein, and I hold pressure over it after I pluck the IV out of it.
“Sir!” the nurse screeches, trying to help me back into bed as the room spins when I stand, but I shove her back.
Her head hits the monitors that still scream like hell because I’m back earthside, and she snarls at me.
“Where the fuck is she, Chase? I swear to God, I’ll slit your throat right here in front of everyone.”
“I don’t know,” he admits, his eyes growing glassy.
“Excuse me?”
“Helms got her. I armed her; she was with ten of Raymond’s best men… She disappeared in plain sight, Koen. I don’t know how the hell he did it.”
“Clearly, he was fucking hiding in the house, Chase. How daft can you all be?”
“We’ve swept back through the house multiple times since…”
“How long has she been missing?”
He swallows thickly, and I know I’m not going to like his answer.
“A week.”
I step toward Chase, but he doesn’t move. “Get out of my fucking way.”
“You’re not okay enough to leave yet, Koen! You were shot and had surgery. You’ve been in a coma, for fuck’s sake.”
“I said, move. Or I’ll move you.”
To push his chair would be demeaning, and while I’m a fucking asshole, I really don’t want to cross that line.
“Let the doctor check you over before you go all G.I. Joe.”
“I’m not fine, Chase. I won’t be until she’s back home. Safe. Get out of my way and get on the coms.”
His eyes narrow before he sighs and moves his chair back some to let me through.
Getting dressed is a chore. I’m in so much fucking pain, but when I find Helms, he’s going to be in even more than I am for daring to touch what’s mine.
He knew better.
He knows I’m coming for him, and he’s had a week to hide, which isn’t good for me finding Greer, but come hell or high water, I’ll get her back.
I found her once before, I’ll do it again.
“Koen, I’m begging you, see reason.”
“Have I ever before?” I shove my feet into my boots, forcing myself to bend to get the fuckers on, when it’s all I can do not to scream through the pain in my abdomen.
“The doctors are still here; let them check you over, make sure you’re fine.”
“I’m not fucking fine, Chase!” My voice booms through the room.
His eyes widen. “I didn’t mean…”
“You did. And I’m not fine. Brian’s dead, we didn’t get Raymond’s daughter back, Helms is still on the fucking loose somehow, and now Greer is missing.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Standing, I waver on my feet. “I didn’t say it was my fault, Chase. I’m just stating facts.
“Listen, we can get her back after we ensure you’re fit to go out there. She’s been gone this long—” Chase’s words cut off as I wrap my hand around his throat.
“Don’t say another word. You… You motherfucker,” I grit out, spit coating my chin as the vile words spew out of me.
Chase and I have been through thick and thin, but if he thinks I won’t kill over her…
Sobering, I let him go, stumbling backward. “I’m sorry.” Hitting the side of my head, I try to clear some of the insanity, some of the drugs.
“It’s alright,” he manages, coughing.
“No, it’s not. This isn’t your fault.”
Chase clears his throat. “You don’t actually know that yet.”
“Do you want me to kill you?”
He shrugs. “Might be a good way to go.”
“Shut up.” I roll my eyes.
I grunt while getting a jacket on before I grab my balaclava off the nightstand.
“I don’t think you’ll need that. Helms knows what you look like.”
“He might. But he needs to know which version’s coming for him.”
I strap on my many weapons as Chase talks me through everything he knows about Greer and where she was last spotted.
“I’ll start at the house. There must be some hidden doors or wall panels that they left unchecked. A weasel like Helms likes to hide in plain sight.”
Chase nods. “You need to be careful.”
I eye him. “You getting soft on me?”
“No, I’m just—”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll wear my seatbelt.”
“Fucking dickhead.” He shakes his head.
“I know you are, but what am I?”
We lock eyes, our smiles fading as it seems both our brains go in the same direction.
“Brian?” I ask.
“His family has been notified. He’ll have a full military funeral when this shit storm is over, and Helms is off the streets.”
I nod, taking a deep breath as I slip my hands into my gloves.
Chase hands me a com, and then I’m limping down the hallway, headed for certain doom.
But one thing’s for sure: I’m getting my fucking girl back.
The house is run down. The interior is dark, the echoes of those who’ve lived here before seeming to cling to the house’s aura like a death shroud.
The porch creaks with my weight on it, and I take a moment to assess the inside through the broken, film-covered windows, unable to see shit because of how dark it is.
An air conditioning unit on the side of the house clicks off, bathing me in silence.
Someone’s inside, because why is the air running?
With my gun poised and ready to go off with even the slightest addition of pressure, I enter the house.
The darkness welcomes me like I belong, engulfing me more with each step.
The air is thick and mottled with the scent of mildew as I move through, clearing each room.
Just as Chase said, I find nothing.
Not until I find a loose panel in the front hall closet.
It doesn’t lead me anywhere, but I now have proof Helms could’ve been sneaky with his hiding spot. I’m not leaving here until I know that Greer isn’t somewhere in this haunted house of horror.
Thoughts of her tied up and hurt plague me as I rip through every closet and tear walls open. Having ripped the house to shreds from top to bottom, I move on to the basement.
I’m about to lose my mind when I find another loose panel in the wall that hides a door behind it.
The door is locked from the inside, and going in guns blazing might not do me any favors, but I stand back and aim my gun anyhow.
She makes me stupid.
Isn’t that the way of love, though?
The sound accompanying my shots is muted by the silencer on the end of my gun.
Three shots, and the door flies open.
Knowing I’ll have alerted Helms, I move past the now blinding pain in my abdomen, my head, and gun on a constant swivel as a young girl sits up in bed, fear screeching out of her through the filthy rag gagging her mouth.
There are handcuffs on the footboard of the bed, but no one is attached to them.
“Are you the only one here?” I ask her, trying not to go into a full-blown panic that I haven’t found Greer, until the slightest flick of the girl’s gaze shifts over my shoulder, and I turn to find Helms behind me.
His shoulder is badly bandaged, and blood is leaking through it.
Greer is black and blue, and Helms has a gun pressed to her temple.
“Helms, let her go. This is between us.”
“It was, before she shot me.”
I fight a grin as Greer still fights Helms, one of her eyes nearly swollen shut.
Good fucking girl.
The girl behind me shifts, whimpering as Helms holds Greer tighter, pressing the gun harder. “Put your fucking weapon down now.”
“No.”
“I’ll shoot her, Grady. I will!”
“Then, you’ll die.”
“You think I don’t see you’re bluffing? You hate it, but you love her. Don’t be stupid, no one has to die today.”
“There’ll be others.” I shrug.
It’s a bald-faced lie, but it’s enough to make Helms waver, and my Greer, my deadly fucking girl, beaten down as she is, siezes the opportunity like I hoped she would.
As Helms’s brain is preoccupied, Greer turns on him, too quickly for him to react, but quick enough she snatches his gun, trains it on him, and backs toward me.
“Close the door,” I tell her, but she doesn’t listen.
Her hands on the gun shake, her stare locked on Helms as he raises his hands.
This is the moment he realizes that whatever he did to my girl over the last week, he regrets.
He wasn’t thinking this moment would come.
No one ever does.
“Greer, close the do—”
Three shots ring out, louder than mine had been, causing the girl on the bed to scream uncontrollably.
Helms drops to the ground with a bullet hole between his eyes and his chest leaking.
Marching over, I take the gun from her shaky hands, wiping it free of her prints with the towel in my back pocket before dropping it on top of Helms.
I look him over—two to the heart, and one to the head.
Fuck, that shouldn’t turn me on.
When I stand, I shove my gun down the back of my pants, stepping cautiously toward my shaking, poisonous girl, who has tears streaming down her face.
“Come here, pretty poison. It’s alright. It’s over now.”
“I killed him,” she whispers.
“You did.”
“I’m a murderer.”
“You were always a murderer, my deadly girl.”
She sobs into my chest, and I hold her tight, attempting not to let her know how much pain I’m in.
My eyes dart to the girl on the bed. “Director Raymond’s daughter?”
The girl nods frantically.
“You’re safe now.”
My words start another round of her crying as I hold Greer tighter.
“We need to get out of here. Those shots, someone will have heard…” Greer realizes.
“Going to flea another scene?”
Her face sours at me.
“Chase has alerted the FBI; they’re on their way. You’re going to be fine.”
“But I killed—”
“You didn’t kill anyone. I did.” I give her a stern look.
“But I—”
“Say it, Greer.”
She looks into my eyes, biting her lower lip. “I didn’t kill anyone; you did.”
Looking over to Raymond’s daughter, I ask, “You good with that?”
She nods, removing her gag. “I wish he’d have died the first time she fucking shot him.”
I smirk.