Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
It was hard to breathe.
Makayla wasn't sure why.
Everything had gone a little hazy.
Maybe just because everything her body and her mind had endured over the last ten or so days had caught up with her all at once.
All she knew was that she hurt.
And she was tired.
And more than ready to just find a quiet, dark little place and curl up, sleep for about a month, then maybe feel human again when she woke up.
Something touched her neck, and Makayla startled. For a second, her exhausted brain couldn’t figure out what it was, or whether it was a threat, but the last ten days of experience coupled with her childhood had conditioned it to believe it was always a threat.
“Shh, sweetheart, just me,” a voice soothed, and she realized it was Van, touching her neck, likely worried she was dead.
“Not dead,” she assured him, even though it was clear he already knew that.
Because now that the haziness was passing, her fear for him was rising, and she snapped her eyes open.
Two shots had been fired, she knew that, and she’d thrown the knife.
At the time, she’d known she probably wasn't going to hit Asahi Watanabe, she’d just been aiming to distract him because he’d been going to shoot Van.
Now that her eyes were open, her gaze quickly scanned his face, then dropped to his chest.
There was a hole.
In his shirt.
Panic shoved aside the pain and exhaustion weighing her down, and she pushed away his hands as she scrambled up to her knees, fingers reaching straight for the hole. He’d been shot. In the chest. He was probably bleeding out. How was he even moving?
“Shot,” she whimpered as she pressed her hands to his chest.
“Wearing Kevlar, sweetheart,” Van said, but the words didn't really penetrate. She couldn’t get over the fact that she had probably made things worse. “But you weren't.”
Again, his words didn't penetrate. She knew she’d been shot by Asahi Watanabe when they fought over the gun before Van appeared out of nowhere, like a dark avenging angel. It was only a graze, hurt like hell, but it wasn't any sort of life-threatening injury. Unlike a shot to the chest.
“Kevlar,” she whispered. He said he was wearing it, the only reason he was still alive.
“Kevlar,” Van repeated. “Wouldn't have hit my heart anyway, wrong side.”
If that was meant to make her feel better, it absolutely did not. “Still could have punctured your lung,” she reminded him. A chest wound would likely have been a death sentence regardless of which side the bullet entered.
“You weren't wearing any, sweetheart. I hit you.”
There was so much pain, remorse, and guilt in his voice, that she rushed to reassure him. “No, I got hit when I fought Asahi Watanabe for the gun before you got here.”
“No, Makayla. You got hit then, and again when both Asahi Watanabe and I fired our weapons. His bullet hit me as he turned, but you moved at the same time, and my bullet hit you.”
“Hit me?” Was that why she’d been lying on the floor, everything a haze of pain and exhaustion?
When Van’s gaze dropped to her shoulder, hers moved with it, and she found he had one of his hands clamped around the joint. Blood seeped between his fingers. Her blood, because she’d been shot. Again.
“Oh,” she said, feeling a little woozy now that she knew she was bleeding all over Van.
“Oh? That’s all you’ve got to say?” Van demanded like he was expecting her to explode on him for accidentally shooting her.
But that was really her fault. She was the one who had been so afraid that Asahi Watanabe would shoot Van that she’d reached for the knife and then launched herself at the man, distracting him, but also making him move so that Van’s shot missed and apparently hit her.
Asahi Watanabe.
What had happened to him?
“Where is he? Did you get him?” All she remembered was two shots. If one had hit Van and one had hit her, that meant that none had hit Asahi Watanabe. Maybe there was a third shot she didn't remember?
“No, sweetheart. You did.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. You got him with the knife, right in the neck, severed his carotid artery.”
“I killed him? Me? I killed one of the heads of Azure?”
“You did. Sweetheart, I'm so sorry,” Van said softly, a wealth of pain in those pitch-black eyes that used to be so empty.
“For what? Saving my life? We were fighting for the gun, but I wouldn't have won, Van, you know that.
I'm smaller than him, weaker, and already injured. He was going to kill me anyway, before he went to have breakfast with you guys. You know that, you heard it.” Makayla paused to swallow as she thought about what exactly Asahi Watanabe had planned to do to her.
But he hadn't. Because of the man currently putting pressure on her shoulder.
“You saved me, Van. If you didn't come looking for me, he would have killed me.”
“Should never have let you do this,” he said on a shaky sigh.
“Since I know you're freaked out, I'm going to let the comment about letting me do anything slide. This time. Don’t say it again, though, because next time I won't be as forgiving,” she warned. She was looking for a partner, an equal, not a boss, not another owner.
“Next time?” he asked, brow furrowing in confusion.
“Well, yeah?” she said, equally as confused. “Isn't that what we talked about? Getting to know each other after this was all over?” Had he changed his mind? Is that what he was trying to tell her?
“I thought me … shooting you … would change that for you.”
“You mean you want me to be mad at you for it. Okay, then. Van, I’m so angry you shot me, but I forgive you. There, all good now? Did the guys find …” Makayla trailed off as something occurred to her, something Asahi Watanabe had been doing during his phone call.
“What? And don’t think we’re finished discussing your attitude,” he said, arching a brow at her to tell her he wasn't impressed by her easy acceptance of him accidentally shooting her. Well, too bad for him, she wasn't going to get hung up on it, that would be crazy.
“The only reason I wasn't dead or full of holes by the time you got down here was because Asahi Watanabe was on the phone with someone. I don’t speak Japanese, so I don’t know what they were saying, but he kept looking at something.
” Adrenaline pumped through her system now, dulling the pain, giving her a boost of energy when she needed it most, and she tried to stand only to be held down by Van. “I need to get up, need to show you.”
“Tell me what you need to show me, and I’ll go look at it, but you're bleeding, shot, twice, and your feet still have to be killing you. You're not going anywhere,” he growled.
“Again with the telling me what I can and can't do.” She huffed, annoyed, but not really, because it was clear that his overbearingness was coming from guilt and concern. “Please, Van. I need to show you, I think …” Was she crazy for thinking this? Was she way off course here? There was only one way to find out. “Please, I think that I might know where he keeps his files. Where you’ll find what you need to bring down the other head of the ring. Let me show you.”
For a long moment, he just looked at her, but then he gave a sharp nod and scooped her into his arms, lifting her off the floor, wincing.
She knew that even if the Kevlar had stopped the bullet from piercing his skin, it would have left a horrible bruise, probably cracked ribs, and he had to be in more pain than she was, or at least as much.
“Okay, show me where,” he said.
Not going to argue over being carried, she pointed to a spot on the wall.
“There. That’s where he kept looking. I thought at first he was eyeing up all the tools, talking to someone about what he was going to do to me, but his gaze wasn't right. I had ages to watch him. I looked around a lot, too, trying to figure out what my options were. Right here,” she said when he carried her over to where she’d pointed.
“I was thinking that he would like keeping his files on Azure down here, in his own little torture chamber instead of up in an office.”
“Sit here,” he said, setting her down on the table after he pushed the tools out of the way.
Then he felt around the wall where she’d indicated.
“Whoa, sweetheart. You are on fire today,” he said a moment later as he pried open a panel of the wall, reached inside, and pulled out a leather-bound book.
“First you killed the head of a trafficking ring, and now you’ve found what we need to bring Azure crashing down. ”
September 3rd
10:58 A.M.
“Nothing?” Van asked into his phone as he looked at the woman sleeping in the bed beside him.
It had been a whirlwind of activity the last twenty-four hours.
After Makayla had led him to a journal hidden in the secret cabinet in the basement wall, he’d thought it was all over.
Through the comms unit he was still wearing, he’d updated the Delta Force team on what had happened.
While he’d held Makayla in his arms, unable to let her go, the special forces team had rounded up all the staff on the property, and Van had called Griffin.
Knowing he needed a story to plausibly explain why one of the two heads of the trafficking ring was now dead, he’d told the second in command that Asahi Watanabe had lost his mind.
Thankfully, the phone call that had kept Makayla alive long enough for him to find her turned out to have been to Asahi Watanabe’s partner.
Apparently, the man had been ranting about punishing Makayla for showing him up and wanting to destroy her, while his partner had wanted him to calm down, and send her back with Van and the mercenaries so she could be resold.