Chapter 16 #2
“He was led away by two other men,” Amir yelled. “Go. You have to help save Jerome too. Let me rephrase that. I would take it as a great favor if you would help him too,” he pleaded. “He doesn’t deserve to be killed because of my stupidity.”
“Yet my concern is leaving you two alone,” Hayden stated, as he untied Amir and gave him a handgun—one of the weapons that the dead man had been using. “I cannot take that chance, but I can’t move you both either.”
He looked over at the wounded man on the ground, still moaning about his bloody knee. “He won’t go very far.” Then he punched him hard in the face, and the man fell silent.
“Did you have to do that?” she asked him.
“No, I didn’t have to,” he admitted, “but I didn’t want his caterwauling to bring anyone else in to you.”
She shut up and nodded.
Hayden handed another gun to her, telling her to point and shoot as needed, how a bullet was already in the chamber.
Then he took off to find Jerome.
Her father snorted. “He does understand this stuff, doesn’t he?”
She glanced over at him and nodded. “Yes,” she confirmed in a low voice, “he absolutely does. And now I’m realizing so much more of what I lost.”
“What do you mean, what you lost?”
“My relationship with him, … from years ago,” she explained.
“Ah,” he responded. “I’ll admit I’ve got to admire a guy who walked away knowing instinctively that something was very wrong with the scenario. You probably would have kept him otherwise.”
“I guess I wasn’t ready to keep him,” she reflected. He frowned at that, and she nodded. “Meaning I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I was, didn’t know anything about myself. He needed somebody who could identify who they were, not somebody still hiding from her father in the shadows.”
“You weren’t hiding from me.”
“But I was hiding from your name,” she clarified, “from everything you represented, from the restrictions of everything that you put on me, … instead of letting me just be me,” she continued, with a groan.
“I didn’t mean to,” he apologized. “I wasn’t trying to make life difficult for you.”
“You may not have been trying,” she acknowledged, “but you certainly weren’t making life easy for me.”
He smiled. “Nope, I wasn’t. But as long as you were willing to show your mettle, I was okay to let you grow at your own pace. But the minute you stopped doing that, it became an issue.”
“It’s not that I stopped growing,” she defended. “It was me trying to be the person I needed to be when I couldn’t really do anything for you.”
“But we can change things now.”
She smiled, nodded at her father. “Yes, we can change things now between us.” Then she glanced around and complained, “I really hate all these lights, and I hate the fact that I feel as if we’re in some … spotlight.”
He nodded, then rubbed his face.
She frowned and apologized. “I’m so sorry. You look as if you got worked over pretty well.”
She checked him for other injuries, but he waved her away. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “I just want to confirm Jerome is okay too.”
She nodded, but before she had a chance to say anything, Jerome spoke up. “I’m fine.”
But he was pushed to the ground in front of them, literally at their feet, by two more gunmen. She sighed as she looked at the new arrivals.
She went to raise her weapon, but the man closest to her pointed a gun at her. “Drop that weapon, and I mean now.” Realizing that he had absolutely nothing in his tone that showed any willingness to even talk, she lowered the weapon.
“Good choice,” he praised, as he walked over to the man who had been shot in the knee. “Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you?” Taking a closer look, they exchanged a glance, and he pointed his gun and fired, killing his own team member.
She gasped in shock.
He turned to her and smiled. “Stop with the emotions. Do you really think I give a shit? This is business,” he stated, a cold expression on his face. “And your father here knows all about business, don’t you?” He turned to Amir.
“Ah, so now we’ve returned to the prospect of getting money from me.”
“We have to get money from somewhere,” he reasoned. “And it seems you have an awful lot of it. So, I have absolutely no compunction about taking some of it away from you.”
Her father nodded. “Of course not,” he agreed. “I mean, why would you work for your money? That would be way too difficult, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I never tried it.”
“So, you steal and kill instead of working?” she asked, staring at him in astonishment.
He frowned and just gave her a two-word order. “Shut up.”
Her father reached over and patted her hand. “These guys don’t want to discuss anything with a woman,” he observed. “Part of his upbringing, part of his trauma,” he added with a distinct tone of voice. “Don’t let it upset you.”
Her gaze went from one to the other, wishing like hell Hayden was somewhere close by, and he had to be. Plus, he would have heard the gunshot.
The newest gunman began. “Now, let’s talk business.” He raised the gun to Jerome’s head. “How much is he worth? We’ll start with him, and then we’ll go to your daughter.”
Her father looked at the gunman, his face a mask. “They’re both worth a lot to me,” he stated. “How much is it you’re looking for?”
“Billions,” he demanded.
“No.”
She waited for more, but that was all her father said. His refusal had been straightforward, given in such a flat tone that she was stunned.
The other man raised his eyebrows and laughed. “You’re really not in a position to argue.”
“Maybe not,” he countered, “but nobody raises billions in cash. You know that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been in this business this long. That’s just you trying to poke the bear, trying to see how far I am willing to go.”
The gunman laughed. “You know, if you weren’t such an asshole, I might find that amusing,” he remarked, “but I really don’t appreciate anybody schooling me on my business, … so billions it is.”
Then he lowered the gun to Jerome’s legs, and she cried out, “Stop.”
He looked at her and laughed. “Jesus Christ, what will you do, cry for mercy for this guy? I don’t really give a shit about any of you, in case you hadn’t realized that.
” He pointed to his team members on the floor, both now dead.
“I am not a man who gives a shit. Thanks for taking out the other one. The damn bastard was too nosy.”
She choked.
“I mean, that’ll save me a lot.”
“And what about the guy beside you?” she asked.
He glanced over at the man standing at his side, another hard battered face, a man who looked as if he had seen the dark side and had lived it for way longer than anybody should.
“Yoko here will not be a problem. We’ve worked together for a very long time.”
“You say that,” she challenged, “but that doesn’t mean he’s not counting up the people who have gone against you and got popped.
” She sighed. “So, the profits don’t have to be shared very far now because you’ve taken out so many people.
Yoko’s no fool,” she observed. “He’s probably doing the math himself. ”
“Maybe he is, but he also knows that I can’t do it alone. So, he’s very much a part of the equation. Don’t go making trouble where none is to be found.”
“Oh, I don’t know about not making trouble,” she suggested. “Anybody with smarts can see how this cookie will crumble, and Yoko will get cut out of it at the end, right? And that’ll be a bullet in the back of his head when he least expects it.”
The gunman snorted. “You’re just trying to cause trouble,” he accused, trying hard to make light of it, but a certain fury filled his tone. “And I don’t appreciate it.”
She shrugged. “I don’t really appreciate you putting me in this position either.”
He looked at her in astonishment. “Did you not even hear me? I’ll just pop your father here first.”
“If you do that, then you really won’t get any money because I have no idea where anything is, or more accurately, where everything is.”
He stared at her for a moment and then nodded. “That is probably the truth.” He turned again to her father and threatened, “So we’re back to you. Jerome first, and then your daughter.”
Then another voice called out, “Or, maybe no one needs to go.”
She stared in horror as Hayden stepped forward, without even a weapon in hand.
“Oh, look at that. It’s the pretty little navy officer,” he mocked. “Man, you have been a pain in my ass for God only knows how long. What the hell? You should have been taken out a long time ago. I can’t believe that you keep surviving and protecting her.”
“Somebody’s got to do a good job,” he retorted. “And since you and your cohorts are so completely incompetent, I guess it’s up to me.”
“I’ll just take care of you myself then,” the man growled, clearly irritated.
“You’re not taking anybody out,” Hayden declared, raising his weapon with precision.
The gunman hadn’t noticed the firearm Hayden held tightly against his hip.
Then neither had she. With a swift tilt of the barrel, Hayden fired, the shot echoing sharply as it took down the first assailant.
Yoko, startled, stepped back, his own handgun never raised.
Hayden’s shot rang out again, precise and unyielding, hitting Yoko’s gun hand.
Return gunfire erupted as Yoko fired wildly, both hands on the gun now, his bullets ricocheting off the walls, desperation fueling his every move.
He fought for his life, knowing that, if he fell, it would be the end.
Hayden advanced steadily, his gaze locked on his target, the air thick with tension and the acrid smell of gunpowder.
“Just kill me because, if you don’t, they will,” Yoko cried out, his words filled with a mix of fear and defiance.
“Not until we have a little more information,” Hayden replied, his voice cutting through the chaos. “And who is they? I thought nobody else was over here.”
“They are the ones in Europe,” she reminded Hayden. “The boss man mentioned it.”
Yoko nodded. “Yeah, they expect a big payout.”