Chapter 7 – Ghost
Chapter Seven
Ghost
Screams from the untamed crowd rise up and fill the air, shaking the walls.
There’s nothing steady around us except my heart and my gaze on this strange woman.
I can hear people running, though I can’t see them.
I press Gabby’s body up against the wall as I hear and feel the stampede all trying to escape.
She pushes against me, but I can’t risk her getting free and potentially getting injured.
I cover her completely with my body, protecting her from harm and earning myself several erratic fists pounding against my chest.
I don’t have any answers about what might be happening, but I know that I have to protect Gabby – even if she’s a stranger who desperately wants to get free and protect her own.
“Isaac, my sister!” Gabby screams. I don’t move.
There’s nothing we can do about her sister now.
Hopefully she was smart enough to save herself.
Gabby’s sister is nowhere near me, but I have Gabby right here pressed against the wall with no intentions of letting her out of here.
Something’s wrong, I sense it. I won’t let her get hurt.
As the crowd continues to pound on the front door, attempting to escape, I count out roughly 30 seconds in my head before a hissing noise starts to break through the screams. The illusion of time slowing down tells me I have a fuck-load of adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Gabby hits my chest again trying to get free.
The room is still thick with people who can’t all fit through the bottleneck at the door. I can’t let her go.
The voices are desperate to make sense of our predicament. There’s mostly screaming, but I catch a few escaped sentences.
“What’s that smell?”
“There’s a hissing noise!”
Random voices make their best efforts to piece together what’s happening, but I don’t need to listen more to know.
Someone is gassing the room. We have to get out of here.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I grab Gabby and drag her towards the bar bathrooms. There’s a small window in the men’s room that she can fit through and nobody else is escaping through the bathrooms as far as I can tell.
There are enough phone flashlights on that I can make out the direction I need to head towards.
Thick white gas fills the room as the hissing gets louder.
Gabby’s fingers lock tightly with mine. My body responds to her touch with a more desperate urge to protect her.
Chaos descends among the bar patrons as they lose their direction and whatever composure they might have had, which wasn’t much in the first place.
“ISAAC!” Gabby screams, coughing as she inhales too much of the gas. “MY SISTER! WE CAN’T LEAVE HER!”
She tries to make a break for it as if I would let her disappear into the thickening gas.
Is it just tear gas or worse? We can’t stick around to find out.
I can’t let Gabby get away from me either.
I wish I didn’t have to but… Gabby makes another failed escape attempt and I need a better grip on her so I wrap my arm around her and clutch her against my chest until I get to the door of the men’s bathroom. She keeps fighting me.
“I have to get my sister…”
I act like I can’t hear her and thrust the door open, dragging her inside. She falls to her knees coughing and choking on the gas.
Gabby cries out. “MY SISTER!”
Even if her pained voice tugs on my heart strings, I have to become tough and possibly aggressive to save her life right now. I have no idea what might be happening on the other side of that door. I can’t hear anything but chaotic screaming and louder hissing sounds.
“I’m sorry, Gabby but you need to go through that window.”
I gesture above her head. She’s so short that she doesn’t automatically notice it. I move to the other side of the bathroom, moving things along quickly.
“What win–”
I break the glass and she shrieks in surprise, letting out another deep cough as she struggles to get to her feet. I pull Gabby up and drag her closer to the window as she looks over her shoulder. She tugs her body away from me desperately, but I force her towards the window.
“Your sister is a smart girl. I’m sure she got out.”
I don’t know that, but I hope it’s true.
If she’s anything like Gabby, she might have trampled a few people on the way out.
I struggled to hold Gabby against the wall with most of my strength.
My response only makes her more frantic, which isn’t my intention but adds up as a possibility.
She’s beautiful in her chaotic display of emotions, and almost impossible for me to hold steady in the face of. “You can’t be sure!”
“Gabby. I need you to climb out that window. Now.”
“Isaac!” she says my name pleadingly. “She could be trampled.”
“Gabby, now.” I hate how harsh my voice gets.
She turns around, but mostly because she doesn’t want to look at me.
It’s painful to hurt her, but I really need her to listen to me so the two of us can get the fuck out of here alive.
If there’s anything wrong with her sister, I’ll worry about it later.
Gabby scrambles up and presses her forearms against the sill, shrieking the whole way.
I apologize for manhandling her and put my hands on Gabby’s ass to shove her out of the window.
Fuck, those ass cheeks feel like pillow cushions.
Not the time, but I would have to have had my dick cut off not to notice how soft and plump those ass cheeks were for those milliseconds in my palms. I see her feet on the other side of the window and look at the small ass hole I’ll have to fit my body into.
It’s much easier for me to get my body up on the window sill, but pulling myself through the broken window without cutting my body up too much takes time.
I groan as I slide the broadest part of my shoulders through and grit my teeth as I feel some of the glass lodging in my cut and sinking through to prickle my skin.
My upper body can easily pull up my lower half, but once I grunt and pull my hips and shocking large ass through the window, I don’t see Gabby standing in the alley. Fuck.
“GABBY?!” I scream, reaching for my weapon and whipping my head around like a maniac.
I hear a muffled grunting noise and my gaze lands on her.
Fuck. She’s not alone. There’s a tall figure pressing her against the alley walls, staying well in the shadows between two large trash cans hoping to avoid detection.
The only thing I truly notice about the figure is his immense size.
The man attacking Gabby hides his features with a ski mask, but he’s only an inch shorter than me.
It’s nice that he comes with a bag to hold his brains in, even if his size should give me some pause.
If he changes his mind and attacks me instead of Gabby… Well, at least she’ll have time to get away. My body moves with a natural instinct towards violence that I honed over years of my membership in the Rebel Barbarians Motorcycle Club.
His hands move to Gabby’s neck for the sin of her attempts to scream and get my attention.
She flails out madly, attacking him with fury I didn’t realize she would have.
My animal instincts take over me completely.
Within two steps, my hands reach out as if controlled by somebody else.
The urge towards violence grows swiftly into pure pleasure from it.
Euphoria surges through me as I close the gap between us.
He would have been better off running away.
The man keeps his hands on Gabby’s neck until my own hands reach their target and his bones crunch in my grasp.
He loses control over Gabby’s body and whips around in an effort to fight back.
I twist his arm, pushing the shoulder out of its socket as he screams and flails with the fury of a scorpion pressed into sand with a boot heel.
He made a mistake laying his hands on Gabby.
Using the back of her assailant’s neck to maneuver him, I swing him around with his own weight and shove him hard against the wall.
He’s too big to move easily, but he lets go of her and Gabby sinks to the ground, gasping loudly for breath. I throw a punch at the bastard’s stomach and he groans.
“Who are you?” I snarl at him, throwing another punch that knocks the wind out of him and forces him to sink to the ground. I hear Gabby let out a sound halfway between a gasp and a pained yelp.
The assailant doesn’t answer.
“You’re going to die, anyways. Might as well tell me.”
Her assailant gasps and heaves for breath.
I don’t bother ripping his mask off, but I look into his eyes and wait for a response.
I note the color. Deep, dark brown. Wrinkles around the edges.
He’s old, which gives me an advantage over him.
Killing him will be easier than I thought.
I don’t hesitate at my gut reaction to end his life.
He touched Gabby. This was the only possible outcome.
Her assailant’s face changes because he sees something in me he’s not too familiar with.
I haven’t been in this position for many, many years.
I gave it up for Tylee and my family. I never wanted to end up like Ryder Sinclair, though God bless he got out.
Despite my desire to stay on the right side of the law, I’ve always known that if I were in a position like this one, I would do what I thought was right to protect the weak.
I would want anyone to do the same for my daughter.
“You stupid fucks are all gonna pay,” he says with an accent that sounds almost Midwestern.
His tone is far too arrogant, which makes me think he’s accustomed to wielding power.
Where’s his gun? This fool has no control here for all his posturing.
Maybe I knocked the sense out of him with my first hit.