29. Chapter 29 #2
Nik had done exactly what he’d promised.
The woman came around the desk. “They’re waiting for you. Right through there.”
She gestured toward a wall of windows overlooking the airfield.
“Thank you.” Lachlan nodded.
For a moment, I forgot to move.
The white jet sat beyond the glass with its door open and stairs lowered, glowing against the daylight. Sleek and impossibly pristine, it looked like something belonging to another world.
“That’s ours?” I asked.
Lachlan followed my stare.
“Aye, that’s Nik’s G800.”
I’d understood that Lachlan’s people had money. Power. Resources far beyond anything I could comprehend. But understanding it and seeing an airplane like this waiting to carry us out of the country were two very different things.
Several men were crossing the ramp toward the FBO from the direction of the jet.
I knew which one was Lucian almost immediately.
He was darker where Lachlan was fair, but the resemblance was unmistakable—the height, the broad shoulders, the shape of his face. Like someone had taken pieces of Lachlan and rearranged them into another man.
Lucian saw us.
He stopped for half a second, and even through the glass I saw the relief break across his face in a huge smile.
Lachlan glanced over his shoulder. “That’s Lucian,” he said quietly beside me.
Another man walked beside him, with three more spread around them.
“Gabriel’s with him.”
His people.
After days of running, hiding, and wondering whether we would ever reach them, they were finally here.
Then Lachlan’s attention snapped over my shoulder toward the front entrance behind us.
His expression turned deadly in the space of a heartbeat.
“Behind me, Mouse.”
His arm shot across my body and shoved me behind him as he turned toward the front entrance we had used only a minute earlier.
Two men had just come through the door.
Neither looked remarkable at first, dressed in dark trousers and plain shirts, but the way Lachlan’s body went rigid in front of mine told me they were trouble.
One still held a phone in his hand, his attention already locked on us. The other reached beneath his jacket without so much as slowing, barely registering the travelers scattered between us as though they didn’t matter.
A gun appeared.
“Gun!” Lachlan roared.
Across the lobby, people screamed.
Outside the glass, Lucian and the other men reacted instantly.
Weapons came out as they ran through the sliding door.
Everything happened at once.
Ciro’s pistol appeared in Lachlan’s hand.
The first gunshot cracked through the room.
The glass of the sliding door exploded somewhere behind us.
A businessman dove behind one of the chairs while a woman near the windows grabbed a little girl and pulled her down behind a large planter. Around them, luggage toppled and people scrambled for whatever cover they could find.
Lachlan fired back.
The man nearest the front entrance jerked sideways as the round hit him, but he stayed on his feet long enough to raise his weapon again.
Another shot came from behind us.
His body folded.
The second attacker ducked behind a column near the front entrance, shouting into the phone in his hand.
“Los encontré. Están aquí—”
I found them. They’re here—
Lachlan fired.
The phone flew from the man’s hand.
He swore and drew a pistol with his free hand.
A round slammed into the reception desk hard enough to make me flinch.
Lachlan stepped directly into the open, and my heart stopped.
“Lachlan!”
He fired twice.
The man dropped behind the column.
For half a second, no one moved.
Then one of the three men who had come in with Lucian advanced toward the fallen attacker, weapon trained on him.
“Clear.”
Another crossed quickly toward the first man shot.
“Clear.”
The entire gunfight had lasted only seconds, but the lobby looked as though it had been ripped apart.
Somewhere behind the reception desk, a woman was crying while one of the FBO employees crouched beneath another desk with a phone pressed to her ear.
The cool air now carried the smell of gunpowder.
Lachlan immediately turned back to me.
His gaze scanned over my face, my body, my legs.
“I’m fine,” I said before he could ask.
Then his attention went straight back to the room.
Lucian was already moving toward us.
Behind him, Gabriel and the other men fanned out around us, taking positions that kept Lachlan and me protected.
For the first time, I saw Lachlan among his own people. There was no hesitation or confusion, and no one questioned him.
He pointed toward the front entrance. “They got a call out. We’ve got more coming.”
One of their men reached the window beside the lobby’s front entrance and looked toward the road.
“Two vehicles turning in,” he shouted.
Lachlan’s jaw hardened.
“How long?”
“Less than a minute.”
A siren began to wail outside. It sounded like airport security was coming too, adding more armed people who wouldn’t know who had started any of this.
Lachlan looked toward the jet waiting beyond the glass.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Lucian reached us as Lachlan gave the order, one hand closing around his brother’s shoulder in a hard grip that lasted barely a second. Whatever either of them wanted to say would have to wait.
Lucian turned toward the broken sliding door while Gabriel and the three Syndicate men immediately reorganized around us. Two covered the front of the FBO, where the dead gunmen had entered, while the third moved with Lucian toward the ramp.
Lachlan caught my hand with his left, Ciro’s pistol in his right.
“Stay with me, Mouse.”
“I will.”
Lucian reached the damaged sliding door first. He kicked several pieces of broken glass out of the way, checked the ramp, then motioned us forward.
We were halfway across the lobby when gunfire erupted near the front entrance again.
People screamed and dropped lower behind the furniture. Another section of glass shattered, and Gabriel returned fire while the Syndicate men forced whoever had arrived to stay near the front entrance instead of advancing into the lounge.
Lachlan pulled me closer.
“Let’s go!”
We ran toward the jet.
The G800 was right there, only yards separating us from the lowered stairs.
Achingly close.
Yet with gunfire behind us, those few yards suddenly looked impossibly far.
Lucian and one of the Syndicate men ran ahead while Lachlan stayed beside me. Behind us, Gabriel and the other two men withdrew in stages, covering one another as they gave up the lobby and came through the door onto the ramp.
Another burst of gunfire cracked from behind us.
I flinched.
Lachlan immediately shifted behind me, putting himself between me and the FBO.
“Keep moving.”
After a few more strides, the stairs were only a few feet away when another shot snapped behind us. Gabriel answered immediately, his return fire cracking across the ramp as I grabbed the rail and started climbing.
Lachlan followed so closely that his hand gripped my waist as we made our way inside.
Two men were already aboard.
I recognized Nikolai Volkov the moment he spoke in that thick Russian accent.
“Sit with Lachlan and buckle in. We’re moving the second everyone’s aboard.”
His pale eyes swept over me quickly before his attention returned to the open door.
There was nothing welcoming about him, but nothing cruel either. He was exactly as he’d sounded on the phone—controlled, watchful, and strangely calm amidst the chaos.
The other man was broader through the shoulders, with a pistol in his hand and his attention fixed entirely on the ramp. He barely looked in my direction.
Lachlan guided me into a seat beside the window, and I quickly drew the belt across me. He didn’t turn back toward the door until the buckle clicked.
Outside, Lucian and one of the DarkMatter men held the base of the stairs while Gabriel and the other two fell back from the FBO, covering one another as they came.
The man beside Lucian came up next. The moment he crossed the threshold, he turned and took a position at the open door.
One of the other two men reached the stairs next and climbed aboard.
Then the third.
Lucian backed up the stairs after them, keeping his weapon trained toward the FBO while Gabriel covered the final distance.
Gabriel fired once more, ran for the aircraft, and took the stairs two at a time.
The instant he crossed the threshold, Lucian shouted, “That’s everyone!”
“Rory, door,” Nik ordered.
The broad-shouldered man yanked the door shut, secured it, then sat in the seat closest to it.
We were all on board, but we were still on the ground in El Salvador.
Lachlan finally lowered Ciro’s pistol and slid it back into the holster at his waist. He then dropped into the seat beside mine as Gabriel and the three DarkMatter men took available seats.
Lucian didn’t sit.
He crossed the aisle and stopped beside us, then crouched next to Lachlan’s seat and gripped the back of his brother’s neck.
“Fuck, Lach.”
The words came out rough.
He pulled Lachlan forward into a hard embrace.
Lachlan wrapped one arm around him and tugged him closer.
“Aye, brother. It’s good to see you.”
For a few seconds, neither man moved.
Watching them made my throat tighten. I’d heard the fear in Lucian’s voice on the phone the night before, but seeing his brother battered and bruised in front of him had to be different.
Lucian finally drew back, keeping one hand on Lachlan’s shoulder as his eyes traveled over the cut on his cheek.
His jaw tightened.
“You look like hell.”
Lachlan’s mouth curved faintly. “Been a rough few days.”
Lucian let out a rough breath and squeezed his shoulder again. “No shit.”
Up close, the resemblance between them was even stronger, although Lucian made far less effort to hide whatever he was feeling.
His expression softened.