Chapter 14 Kira
KIRA
When I woke up from my nap, I felt refreshed for the first time in days.
Ari has been awful, but I was actually expecting it to be worse.
I’ve dealt with Kane and Blaze when they’re hurt, I can handle Ari.
What I didn’t expect was for Jason to come home and tell us that Tivon put Ari in his place and, more importantly, that Ari listened.
“You’re joking,” Tyler laughs. As soon as Jason got here, he pulled me and Tyler outside to tell us what happened.
“Not at all,” Jason answers. “It was…strange.”
Tyler nods like he’s come to some conclusion. “Daddy energy. I told you!” Tyler claps his hands and squeals. “I bet Ari had a conflicted boner.”
I lose it, and so does Jason. The laughter draws Keon to the little back porch, and he takes a seat beside me, taking my hand. “Do I even want to know?”
Tyler launches into the explanation, adding way more to the story than Jason did. When he’s done, he’s nodding like crazy. “Tivon put Ari in his place.”
“Probably because he’s not at a hundred percent,” Keon argues. “A month ago, Ari would have laid his ass out.”
“Would he, though?” Jason asks. “You didn’t see the look on Ari’s face. He tried to act mad, but I think I saw something else underneath it.”
Keon rolls his eyes. “I think you’ve been around Tyler too long.”
“Hey! Don’t blame this on me,” Tyler exclaims. “Tivon is the one swinging his big dick around.”
Someone clears their throat from the doorway, and we all whip around to see Tivon standing there, trying his hardest not to laugh.
It’s not the first time he’s walked into an embarrassing conversation.
He’s so quiet, and sometimes we forget that he’s here.
I wonder if his absence around the house is on purpose because he doesn’t feel like he belongs.
We’ve tried to make him feel welcome, but we didn’t get off to the best start, and he’s already expressed how bad he feels.
Even Keon has forgiven him, and Tivon shot him, accidental or not.
But I guess, in hindsight, he actually saved Gavin and Keon that night.
“As much as I would love to hear how big you think my dick is, my team might have something on the guy who broke into Jason’s apartment.” My mouth drops open at the casual way he let Tyler know he heard every word. He seems…different today, after hanging out with Jason.
Tyler jumps from his chair to follow him inside. “I’m thinking eight to nine inches, thick, and curves a little to the left.”
“Tyler!” I giggle and smack his arm.
“Shut up, Tyler,” Gavin laughs. “Jesus Christ.”
Tivon shakes his head and leads us to the living room where his laptop is set up.
“If you’re done…” he trails off and looks at Tyler, who just bats his eyelashes at him.
Tivon hits a few buttons until his screen is displayed on the flat screen.
“My team found the car.” He scrolls through several pictures of a late model black Ford Taurus.
“They’re processing it right now for any information. ”
“You guys have that kind of technology in the field?” Keon asks.
Tivon nods. “Mossad might be corrupt, but we’re advanced. We took whatever we could before we left Israel.” Tivon scrolls to another set of pictures. “One of my guys was able to pull this off of a street camera and cleaned it up. Does he look familiar?”
We all look closer at a picture of a man driving that same car. It’s grainy, but you can make out the features. “Is this the same guy who tried to run us off the road?” I ask.
“It’s the same car,” Tivon confirms. “But I’m not sure this was a one man crew.”
Gavin crosses his arms over his chest. “What’s your theory?”
“I compared this picture to the campus footage of the guy leaving the note on Tyler’s car.
” Tivon puts them side by side and although neither are clear, you can tell there’s a difference in their build.
“The guy in the car is bigger than the guy from campus. Did anyone see the guy from Jason’s apartment? ”
“I sort of did,” Jason answers. “He was on the fire escape when I walked into my room. He’s about the size of the guy from campus.”
Gavin nods. “I agree. He wasn’t as big as the other guy.”
“So, we’re looking for at least a two man crew,” Keon says. “I’m guessing the car was a dump job, and completely wiped clean.”
“I’m hoping they did it in a hurry.” Tivon shrugs. “It won’t hurt to check. If this has anything to do with Ari, then anyone in the states has been told to pull back and regroup.”
“Why the fuck would someone as powerful as Mossad stoop to petty levels like this?” Tyler asks.
“To throw Aryeh off his game,” Tivon answers without hesitation. “They wanted to overwhelm him by coming at him from all sides. Aryeh might have been away from Mossad for years, but he’s still just as powerful. They didn’t want to underestimate him, but they didn’t take you guys into account.”
“So, what do we do?” Keon asks. Ever since Ari’s been in the hospital, Keon has had to step up into Ari’s spot even though he still hasn’t fully healed, either. He’s promised me that he won’t go into the field until he’s healed, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last.
“If we can get this guy’s identity, we can track him down and persuade him to give us information,” Tivon answers.
“Persuade?” Tyler asks with a raised brow. “Is that what we call torture now?”
Tivon shrugs. “Call it whatever you want, but either way, we need him to talk if we’re going to figure this out. On the off chance this doesn’t have anything to do with Aryeh, we need to know.”
Tyler sits on the arm of the couch. “Now that we have that figured out, I need to know how you got Ari to fold.”
“I didn’t make Ari fold,” Tivon replies. “I just got him to see reason.”
“You out-daddied him,” Tyler argues.
Tivon’s phone rings, interrupting whatever he was going to say.
He pulls it from his pocket, checks the display, then looks back at Tyler.
“You have a very active imagination, and for your information, it does curve to the left.” With that, he answers his phone and strides from the room, leaving Tyler staring at him with his mouth wide open.
“Holy shit. He made Tyler speechless,” Gavin laughs.
“He’ll fit in just fine,” I reply. At least he’s starting to let us see some of his personality, and he’s loosening up enough to joke with us. “What do we need to do to bring Ari home?”
“I already set up the room downstairs,” Keon responds. “Doc will be here soon to bring us what we need to continue his care.”
“How are we going to get him here?” Jason asks. “He’s still unsteady on his feet and weak. Plus, his family is watching the cameras.”
“We can always take him out like they did me,” Gavin throws in.
“How was that?” I ask.
Gavin grins. “In a body bag.”
“Oh, hell no,” I shudder. I couldn’t imagine being in a body bag even temporarily.
“I think that will work,” Keon agrees. “We can run it by Tivon and see if he can get his men to drive the getaway vehicle. But how are we going to convince the doctor and nurses to fake his death?”
“Let me handle that,” I say, already pulling out my phone.
“Kira,” Kane answers on the second ring. He’s still not happy about how everything went down, but he’s coming around. Not that he’ll ever officially like the guys, but he won’t want to kill them for just breathing.
“We need help getting Ari from the hospital.” I outline our plan. “We need someone to convince the doctors and nurses to pronounce him dead, bag him, and bring him out through the morgue. We’ll have Tivon’s team waiting.”
“I’ll send Blaze,” Kane answers. I shake my head just imagining how that will look. Blaze is certifiably insane on a good day, which he’s aware of, so I can only imagine how he’ll convince these poor people to play along. “Anything else?”
“Kane,” I sigh. “You can’t stay mad at me forever.”
“I’m not mad, Kira. But you should have told me you were in trouble.”
“We’ve already had this conversation. You would have tried to drag me back to New York, which you tried to do when you got here. I trust them to take care of me, Kane. Bad shit happens to the best of us, you know this. So, can we move on now?”
“And what about your…relationship with these men?”
“Are you really judging me right now?”
“I have no room to judge, but I don’t know if you’re ready for that type of commitment with not only one, but four men.”
“How about you let me make my own decisions?”
“You know who these guys are. Is that really the life that you want?”
“I’ve been a part of this my whole life, Kane, and what they do is good. Maybe if you’d quit being an ass and try to get to know them, you would know this. You are the one that picked them to protect me. Maybe you should think about that before throwing stones, brother.”
Kane is quiet for a long time but I wait him out, knowing that he’s thinking about what I said. “Point taken,” he says finally. “I’ll send Blaze to the hospital to take care of this for you.”
“Thank you, Kane.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.” I disconnect the call and feel like I’ve gone twenty rounds with Mike Tyson. “He’s sending Blaze to make the arrangements with the doctor.”
Keon raises a brow. “He does know we need the doctor alive for this to work, right?”
I can’t help but laugh, because I understand what he means. “He does. Blaze will get it done.”
I just hope we can get Ari out safely.