Chapter 16
CIAN
It’s him.
I had him the entire time.
Fucking Hawk.
“I’ll kill you,” I snarl, wrestling against his hold on my collar. He presses the barrel of the gun to my temple and leans over me.
“Will you? I’m surprised to see you, Cian. I thought the last of the Giffords had crawled into a hole and died. Instead you’re here with me in Greece. Weird how things work out, don’t you think?”
The cold press of metal keeps me down but white-hot fury burns through my veins. I want to kill him. It surges through me like a need, like there’s no chance for anything else. I want to kill.
“But the hotel,” Faina gasps, her face twisting with horror. “You blew up your own people?”
Hawk chuckles deeply. “I wouldn’t have thought a Russian would be so surprised.
My lines here are broken. No one can be trusted.
They should be thankful I wined and dined them before killing them.
No one here is worth the cost or effort to protect, proven by how swiftly the two of you have been cutting them down. ”
So I was right. This entire thing was his way of gathering the last people on our list and killing them before any of them had a chance to flip and tell us what we wanted. My shoulder rolls as I test the firmness of his grip and Hawk nudges his knee into my back.
“Easy,” he warns. “I wouldn’t want the last Gifford to die so quietly. It’s something that should be celebrated!”
Faina’s gun immediately locks onto Hawk. “Kill him and I’ll kill you.”
“You don’t want to bargain?”
“With a man who just blew up countless employees and innocents? I’m not foolish. I’m just making it clear that if you kill him, the next body to fall will be yours and I don’t miss.”
I’ve never seen her like this before. Her eyes are narrowed and sharp, and there’s not a single hint of shaking in her hand. Earlier, when she’d been buttoning up her waistcoat, I’d been concerned, but there’s not even a brush of weakness in her stance.
“Indeed,” Hawk sighs. “I’ve heard all about you, Faina. But this little mystery?” Hawk shakes me using my collar. “The question I have is—ugh!”
That shake of my collar was the slack I was waiting for. As soon as he moves, I surge up and twist around, slamming my fist into his gut.
He stumbles backward, but I’m on him immediately, relentless in my punches. His stomach again, his chest, his jaw, and then my hands close around his wrist to stop him from aiming the gun anywhere except the sky.
Behind me, I glimpse Faina being grabbed by the decoy on the ground and she’s forced to turn and fight him. Then my vision clouds and I only have eyes for ending Hawk’s life.
I punch his face. He stumbles but ducks and throws a right hook at my ribs. As I flinch, he follows through with another punch and his left fist slams into my face. I follow the motion down and throw my elbow hard into his crotch, then I headbutt his chin as he doubles over.
Hawk’s head snaps back with a crack and blood sprays across the ground as he lands.
I leap on top of him and grab a handful of his hair, then smash his face into the ground.
He twists and hooks a leg around my left thigh and as he throws me to the side, that familiar painful ache flares up in my joints.
No! Not now!
Ignoring it, I surge upward and tackle him back to the ground.
We roll together until momentum forces us apart.
I scramble up and wipe the blood from my nose, then I launch toward him, only this time, I lack the power as weakness throbs painfully through my left leg.
I yell as I fall and Hawk, instead of going for a blow, suddenly dances backward with a smirk.
“Hawk!” I scream, trying once more to get up. Failure hits me like a truck as my leg refuses to listen and with a swift, mocking bow, Hawk vanishes down the alley. “Faina!”
She’s my only hope, a last chance to chase after him and subdue him, but she’s still wrestling with the maniac of a decoy.
His eyes are wild and crazed even as blood pours from several open wounds on his face.
He has her on the ground but at my scream, he looks up and Faina gains an opening.
She punches him hard on the jaw and he rolls off her.
Then she climbs to her feet and shoots him dead between the eyes. Then she sprints over to me.
“Cian!”
“No, not me! Get Hawk! Go after him!” I shove her off and point down the alley, but she hesitates, and the concern I see in her eyes pisses me off more. “Go! The fuck are you doing? Go!”
Her eyes narrow and with her gun held close to her chest, she takes off running down the alley.
“Stupid leg!” Snarling, I bring my fist down on my left thigh, but the pain barely registers.
As sensation finally comes back to my limb, I scramble to my feet and take off after Faina.
The alleyway opens up into a street filled with panicked people from the explosion and more dust that clogs my throat and clouds my eyes.
No sign of Hawk.
A few minutes of searching lead me to Faina hurrying back to me with her weapon holstered.
“Where is he?”
“I lost him,” she pants. “He was so far ahead and the crowd just…” She mimes people smashing together with her hands.
“How could you lose him?”
“Did you miss this sea of people around us?” Faina snaps. “Or the fact that the cops and emergency services are everywhere? The smoke? The dust? How the fuck do you think I lost him?”
“I needed you to get him! I needed you to catch—” Breathless from the fight, I double over and Faina’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Cian. I tried.”
“You should have tried harder,” I snap, instantly knowing it’s unfair of me to say so, but the thought of him escaping leaves me feeling so insanely hopeless.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have let him get away,” Faina bites right back. “If you want to point fingers, then look closer.” She steps away from me and for a few minutes we just glare out at the crowd.
Then my shoulders droop and I lean heavily back against the nearby wall. “Fuck. He knows who we are now.”
Faina slowly turns to face me. “And he knows you’re alive. From the sounds of it, that was the only trump card we had.” At the sudden scream of sirens, our argument melts away as Faina hurries forward and grabs my hand. “Come on, time to go.”
A week passes and we’re right back where we started, only this time we have a name and nothing else to go on.
Every other address we had left on the list got cleared out and we’d turned up to either completely empty buildings or the whole block would be burned down.
All the names we had left were reported dead from the explosion, and with no way to safely contact Anastasia or Erik, we had to take those reports at face value.
All our leads were dead in the water and Hawk had shut down all known operations in Greece.
Our search is over.
I failed.
“Come inside.” Faina’s soft voice drags me from my turbulent thoughts and my chest squeezes.
“I’m fine.”
She appears at my side. “You’ll catch a cold and get sick and I’m not in the mood to nurse you or deal with your man-flu, so get the fuck inside.
” Her tone remains gentle, but the apparent warmth from her body that radiates just from standing next to me highlights just how cold I’ve gotten while perched out on the balcony of our most recent motel.
The sky is darkening and a brisk March wind blows in off the nearby ocean.
With Faina’s alluring warmth next to me, there’s nothing to stop the shiver that forces its way through my body and she clearly sees it by the way she clicks her tongue.
She doesn’t say anything else, though. She just turns and heads back inside.
Now I’m aware of my chill so reluctantly, I follow.
Inside our small room, some takeout containers rest in the middle of the small circular table beside Faina’s new laptop and several feet of cable linking to multiple outlets around the room. Faina perches on the chair opposite the laptop and leans forward with a cup of coffee in hand.
“What could you possibly be looking at so intently?” I start gathering up the containers and tossing them into the nearby trash.
“Unlike you, I haven’t given up,” she replies shortly.
“I haven’t given up. I’m just realistic.”
She glances over the edge of the laptop. “There’s realistic and then there’s you, all doom and gloom.”
“What did you expect? I had the fucker right where I needed him and he just—” My throat closes and I throw chopsticks angrily into the trash. “I let him go.”
“Fuck off,” Faina sighs. “You didn’t let him go and that kind of thinking isn’t helpful.”
“You saw what happened.”
“Yeah, I saw the two of you fighting like animals and he used your leg against you. Unintentional, I’m sure, because he ran rather than going for the kill. Don’t you understand?” She leans up and tucks her hair behind her ear. “He ran. He didn’t kill you.”
“So?”
“Ohmygod,” she murmurs. “You’re so caught up in your grief and your anger that you’re not thinking.”
“Because I’m fucking useless, that’s why!” My voice raises a few octaves. “What use have I been to you other than dragging you down?”
“It wasn’t me who came up with the plan to kidnap Hawk and take him away.
It wasn’t me who deduced the entire party was a way for him to kill everyone off.
It wasn’t I who found the money being sent to Africa.
And it wasn’t me who tracked all that money across Europe.
Don’t you get that?” Faina leans forward slightly and rests one elbow on her knee with her cup dangling from her hand between her legs.
“All I can do is fight. That’s it. I’m not the brains here, you are.
All my tech is from Erik. So I make do. And you should too.
We’ve all got weaknesses, and feeling sorry for yourself because you were tortured so badly that your leg fucks up sometimes?
You gotta accept that shit and focus on your strengths, otherwise you might as well have died back at the manor. ”
Her words are sharp and harsh but they’re honest. Like the biting cold of a chill winter morning. Silence falls until her laptop makes a noise and steals her attention.
She’s right.
I hate that she’s right.
I was growing consumed by all the things I couldn’t do as well as I could before while missing all the things I’m still good at. Nudging the trash can with my foot, I take a deeper breath.
“I’m sorry.”
Faina glances up with a softer expression and nods. “Apology accepted.”
“So…” Walking closer, I hover near her shoulder. “What were you implying?”
She swivels in her seat and looks up at me. “Hawk ran, right? He didn’t try to kill you. So I think he either thinks the rest of the Gifford Clan are alive and are waiting in the wings, or he thinks you know something that’s a bigger danger to him and he went to take care of it.”
My brow tightens. “But I don’t know him. I didn’t even recognize him.”
“I know. There might be a connection between him and your family that’s set him on edge because he didn’t recognize you either until I said your name.
But the fact that you are alive worried him enough to flee instead of taking the shot, so I’m hoping we can use that to buy us some time.
And in the meantime, while you two were fighting, I noticed he had a hawk tattoo on the side of his neck.
But it was weird, it had a black swan in its beak. Weird but unique.”
“And?”
“And I’ve been running it through as many databases as I can access. It would be easier if I could reach Erik, but other than leaving him a few breadcrumbs, I don’t want to reach out and endanger him and Anastasia.”
“And you got a hit?” Brushing my fingers over her shoulder, I point to the screen and she nods.
“Yes. Turns out we’re not the only people looking for Hawk and he was flagged by security at an airport.”
“And you want to follow?”
She looks back up at me and bites her lower lip. “What have we got to lose?”
Her. I could lose her.
The thought is so loud that I’m surprised she didn’t hear it, but the words catch in my throat and all I can do is smile softly. “As long as we’re careful. So… where are we going?”
Faina’s smile widens. “Have you ever been to Egypt?”