The Hunt

by J. M. Dabney

  “Ray, you copy,” Richie’s voice pulled me back from my meltdown.

  “Go ahead.”

  “We’re in position and ready to move. We’ve got eyes everywhere. I’ll give a description of the vehicle. Daniels and Benji won’t know we’re on your ass.”

  I confirmed and spent the next fifteen minutes arguing until Benji and I were alone in the car. I repeatedly checked the mirrors and the only familiar vehicle I saw was a motorcycle that disappeared and reappeared. He droned on, we took several lefts and rights as Benji studied the traffic behind us.

  Thirty-seven minutes, the counter was moving too fast, and with each second that ticked off, the knot of fear in the middle of my chest threatened to suffocate me. I tried not to focus on anything other than his words and finally the turns ceased.

  Something about the area we drove into caused a mixture of rage and sickness. I remembered this route. Andy and I had driven it a short time ago. And the sloppiness of my own actions hit me hard.

  “Seem familiar?”

  I ignored his question as I pulled up behind the abandoned warehouse and noticed the door stood wide open. The click of the laptop lid was too loud and harsh; I was out of the car and scanning the area.

  “Keep it together, Ray, we move on your word,” said Bradford.

  I hadn’t expected him to run backup. As far as I knew he tried to stay out of the dirty work these days. I didn’t answer him and jogged around the car to open the door, then dragged Benji out.

  I reached for my weapon in the holster at my hip. Savored the familiar weight of it and the coolness of metal. I hooked the fingers of my free hand in the collar of his t-shirt and shoved him forward. Daniels might not want me dead, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want a shield in case. The trip inside was slow and every step carefully made.

  No lights shone until suddenly the place lit up. I barely restrained myself from running forward at the sight in front of me. Andy was naked and his upper body marred by shallow lacerations. Sweat and blood made his skin shimmer under the lights.

  “You made good time, Ray. Was he followed?”

  “Not that I could tell, we made turns all over the fucking place. I won’t say they won’t show up eventually.”

  I pushed Benji and the man stumbled forward as I took my weapon in both hands. The almost invisible tremors in my hands threatened to give away my nerves.

  “Andy,” I called his name.

  “Don’t worry, he’s…well, for now. I gave him a paralytic, but rest assured he felt every cut.”

  I kept them both in my sights as I carefully made my way to Andy. When I reached him, I dropped to one knee and raised my hand to stroke his cheek. His skin was cool to the touch

  “Don’t touch him!”

  The hysterical edge to Daniels’ tone warned me that the man barely held onto his sanity.

  “Ray,” Andy’s broken voice urged me to look at him.

  “Baby, I’m right here.”

  “I’m so sleepy,” he slurred.

  “Just hang on for me.”

  “Where’s my payment, Daniels?” Benji demanded.

  “It’s right here.”

  The reverberation of a single shot echoed in the cavernous space, making the sound sharp and it zinged my eardrums. I jerked my gaze to find Benji with a hole between his eyes.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, Ray, but he ruined so many of my plans. Led around by his dick. No better than all the whores I killed.”

  Even if Daniels made it out of here tonight, he’d just sealed his fate. Traitor or not, Finn wouldn’t let his son dying go without retribution.

  I dug my knife out of my pocket and quickly cut the zip ties that secured Andy’s wrists and ankles to the chair. He instantly collapsed against my side with his head on my shoulder. His breathing ragged where it fanned against my throat. He didn’t wrap his arms around me or whisper my name again.

  “Why? What the fuck were you thinking?” I demanded.

  I eased Andy to the dirty floor, hating the necessity of it and reached for a sheet that was close by. I tucked it around him and straightened. Daniels looked older and as forgettable as I remembered. He looked like thousands of other men walking the city streets. He blended so easy for years, and worse, he hid under my nose the entire time we rode together.

  He took a few steps forward.

  “Don’t fucking move,” I ordered as I side-stepped, removing Andy from his line of sight.

  “You don’t have to pretend anymore, Ray. I knew you were the one for me the minute we met. It was fate, can’t you see that?”

  “You’re fucking insane.”

  “No, please, don’t deny it. I saw the way you looked at me. You loved me, but we don’t have to act anymore.”

  He kept moving toward me, and I finally stopped in a position where Andy was out of the firing line. Daniels tapped the barrel of his Glock against his thigh in an agitated rhythm. As much as I wanted to call in backup, I wanted to know why more than anything. I felt as if I was drowning under the weight of guilt from Andy’s suffering and all the boys killed in the name of Daniels’ twisted love.

  I knew I had to attract his anger, vest or not, that wouldn’t stop a head shot. He had wicked aim and I knew he never missed. As long as Andy survived, I didn’t care about me. Bradford would take care of him for me and avenge my death.

  “I didn’t look at you any way. I worked with you. We weren’t even friends. Fucking you would’ve been the last thing—”

  “Shut up! Is that…thing what you want. Some whore.” His voice rose several octaves as he started to turn to Andy.

  “Daniels,” I spoke sharply and drew his attention back to me.

  My chest began to heave as I tried to bring oxygen into my lungs as the panic threatened to make me lose it. He was ranting and the words ran together. He paced and swung his weapon wildly, and then rage turned to something else. Tears began to flow down his cheeks and his body seemed to deflate.

  “I did all this for you, Ray, to prove to you that I could be what you wanted—needed.”

  In slow motion I watched his right arm move in tiny increments until the weapon was pointed directly at me. I stared down my barrel at him. It was a standoff and the moment of truth had arrived. Live or die, it would be decided in a single breath and gentle squeeze of a trigger.

  “I never wanted you or anyone, not until a scared man asked me for help. You’re never going to have me, Daniels.”

  I didn’t focus on his face. I gazed into the blackness and took solace in the fact that if I died, he died, but Andy would go on to live a long life without looking over his shoulder. It was barely a microsecond, but I didn’t miss the flex of his trigger finger. I slowly inhaled.

  “If I can’t have you, then…” He paused.

  I exhaled and gently compressed the trigger. Two shots rang out and agony exploded along my left collarbone, I felt myself falling. I didn’t know if he was dead or on his way to the Hell, but images of Andy and overwhelming pain took the last of my control. I shuddered upon dirty cement and I couldn’t lift my head, but I searched for Andy. He was right where I’d left him with the sheet tucked around him.

  The pounding of steps blended with the roaring of my heartbeat in my head.

  “Officer down, get the paramedics now.” A voice I felt I should recognize joined the pandemonium inside my head. My eyes rolled upward. All I could think was Andy was safe and I’d done my job. That’s all that I’d wanted to do, but I mourned the fact I wouldn’t be around to see him live out the rest of his life.

  Someone was calling my name, and then nothing at all.

  27

  Andy

  Without opening my eyelids, I heard the chaos of the hospital. Nurses and doctors shouting out medicines and procedures. Words like lacerations, bleeding, and long words no average person could possibly know. I was afraid to open my eyes. Like if I did, reality would come crashing down on me.

  Daniels almost bought my reve
rse psychology, but then like a twig snapping so did he, and he lashed out across my chest. With the paralytic in me, I couldn’t move much and could only grunt. But the pain, it was searing. He laughed and called me a whore, slut, cheap. Over and over. The longer no one arrived the more hopeless I felt. But Ray was safe…. And then he wasn’t.

  Laying there on the disgusting warehouse floor watching as Daniels lost his mind even further while having a standoff with Ray was terrifying. I couldn’t even help. I was only able to speak softly, every time I tried to scream it came out as a loud whisper. I felt each tear as it fell, and when Ray slumped to the floor, I almost wished Daniels had killed me too.

  Then everything went into frantic chaos. Richie stood over me wrapping the blanket around me. I heard paramedics argue with him when he lifted me.

  Voices shouting, Bradford telling Richie to stay with me and that he would go with Ray. I wanted to run over and grab Ray and bring him back to me.

  Richie didn’t leave me. Not once. Much to the doctors’ frustration. I had no idea how long I had been in the hospital, but the fact I could move my body was a relief. One doctor said that amount of the manmade paralytic was toxic, and the fact I was alive after that in itself was a miracle.

  I dozed a lot and didn’t want to hear the words that Ray was dead, so when people came into the room I pretended to be asleep.

  “You suck at acting.” The sound of Bradford’s voice made me flinch and any hope of convincing him I was out cold went right out the window.

  “Please just leave me alone, Bradford.” I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I wanted to wallow. For the first time I had been in love and loved back, and now it was over.

  “I can’t do that. I promised Ray I’d check up on you.” Ray’s name on his lips had me turn my head so fast the dull headache behind my eyes thumped.

  “No, Bradford, you have no ties to me. I don’t care if Ray asked you to watch over me with his last breath, I don’t want….” The sobs wracked my body. It was painful everywhere, my skin, bones, heart, all of it.

  “Hey,” Bradford hushed me and in an uncharacteristic move, he tenderly scooped me up into a hug.

  He sat there on my hospital bed with me on his lap and hushed me.

  “Andy, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  I’d soaked Bradford’s shirt and normally I’d feel like an ass for being so careless, but I just didn’t care.

  “What exactly do I have wrong, Bradford?” I was snappish and angry, but Bradford smiled. It was one of pure pleasure, and I wondered just how sick in the head this man was to be joyful at a time like this.

  “Andy, Ray’s not dead.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was some cruel joke or I was hearing things wrong, so I asked him to repeat it.

  “I said he’s not dead. He’s not going to be playing baseball any time soon, or much of anything until he’s healed, but he’s alive.”

  Realizing that Bradford was telling the truth had me leaping off his lap and, on very unsteady legs, darting out of the room.

  “Andy,” Bradford shouted at me. “Stop.”

  I had no idea where Ray was, and I was also feeling a very chilly breeze on my backside.

  Suddenly a blanket was wrapped around me. “Come back to your room, I’ll have a wheelchair brought to you and I’ll take you to him. I promise.”

  I wanted to argue so badly, but exhaustion made that impossible.

  I sat on the chair and watched as Bradford asked a nurse to please bring a wheelchair to the room. He sat on my now vacated bed, smiled, and told me what happened.

  “Daniels did in fact shoot Ray and for a minute, I thought he was a goner. There was a lot of blood, and I won’t lie and say it wasn’t touch and go for a while there. But in the end, Ray was lucky. There’s really no other way to describe it. We didn’t consider Daniels would have armor piercing bullets, but we should have considering he was a cop and knew Ray or the others would be wearing a vest. Where he was shot there’s a fifty-fifty chance of fatality. But he’s too tough for that.”

  “He’s alive? Where is he, what’s happened? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  He nodded in understanding. “Ray broke his collarbone and he’s had several surgeries already. You’ve been out for four days. I didn’t want anyone telling you anything just in case something happened during one of the procedures.” He chuckled. “It didn’t help that every time someone came into the room you pretended to be sleeping beauty.”

  When the nurse arrived with the wheelchair Bradford helped me get situated, and he pushed me down the hallway.

  “He’s on the floor above you,” he said as he rolled me into the elevator.

  I didn’t know why I felt nervous. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what Ray would look like, but I thought he was dead, and now he’s alive and… The pull of the stitches over my chest made me gasp.

  “Yeah, be careful. You have a lot of stitches. But there’s creams that will help with scarring.” I looked up at Bradford and he winked. “Besides scars are sexy.”

  On Ray, sure. I wasn’t positive they’d look great on me.

  We went down a long corridor, and when Bradford rolled me into Ray’s room, I didn’t hold back. I cried once more, this time in happiness.

  Ray was grumbling to a nurse as she desperately tried to show Ray how the sling worked. At the sound of my crying, Ray turned his gorgeous eyes my way.

  “Andy.” He spoke my name almost reverently.

  I didn’t care what the doctors or nurses said. I jumped out of the wheel chair and into Ray’s one open arm. I didn’t want to hurt him, but it was like I couldn’t get close enough.

  “Oh, god, Ray, I thought I lost you.”

  He kissed my head as I pressed my lips against every available piece of him.

  “No way.” He paused my franticness and cupped my face in his hand. “I have too much to live for.”

  “I love you so much, Ray.”

  “Not even half as much as I love you.”

  I heard Bradford usher the nurse out of the room and the click of the door. But after that it was Ray’s heartbeat, his kisses, and his smell that took over.

  I was able to leave the hospital a few days after discovering Ray was in fact alive. It would be another week before the doctors discharged Ray, however. So I was able to get to the house and clean up. Bradford hired a maid service and a chef to get food ready for us because, he said, even though I was out of the hospital I had to take it easy.

  Richie brought me to the hospital to get Ray, and the look of relief on his face as we drove away from there was almost comical.

  “If I never go back to a hospital it’ll be too soon,” he said as he laced his fingers with mine in the back seat of Richie’s car.

  “Have you talked to Finn?” I asked in the silence of the car. Richie was looking at Ray in the mirror obviously waiting for his response.

  “He visited me in my hospital room the other night.” He flinched when Richie growled. “Yeah, and that right there is why I didn’t want to say anything.” He pointed at Richie, and while I didn’t like Finn going to Ray with no backup, I trusted Ray’s instincts. I never met Finn, knew only what I’d heard from Ray, the media, and anyone else who dared talk about the man. If Ray felt like Finn wasn’t a threat, I wouldn’t press the issue.

  “What did he say?” I squeezed his hand in reassurance.

  “He’s mourning his son. He wants to be angry about what he did, but I think he’s having a hard time reconciling it. Finn admitted Benji was always trying to push modern technology on him, but he never thought his own son would turn the direction he did.” Ray shook his head. “He thanked me for killing Daniels, even though he wanted him to die by inches he considered it squared away.”

  “Does Finn have any more kids? What happens to him now?”

  “From what I know of Finn, Benji was his only kid. He’ll be up to his eyeballs in cops for a while. It’s hard to convince a police force that you had nothing to do
with it when your son was involved and you’re a mob boss.”

  I knew that was true and I felt bad for Finn.

  “Heard Green’s wife filed for divorce.” Richie chuckled from the driver’s seat. “Taking him for all he’s worth.”

  Now that was a man I didn’t feel bad for at all. He deserved all that and more.

  “Maybe he’ll stop playing the closet game now.” Ray lifted my hand to his lips. “It’s dark in there.”

  When Richie dropped us off at Ray’s, it was a relief when no bodyguards stayed. It was just Ray and me.

  The house was quiet and when Ray yawned, I convinced him to go lay down.

  “Nap with me?” He was a little pathetic with his droopy eyes and, yeah, that’s a pout.

  “Sure, and when you wake up, let’s watch a cheesy horror move, eat a million carbs, and pass out as far away from reality as we can?”

  He smiled and pressed his lips to mine.

  “Perfect plan.”

  Epilogue

  Andy

  Six Months Later

  “Didn’t you ever watch the Karate Kid?” I shouted up to Ray as he stood on a ladder in front of our house.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Then wax on wax off, you keep painting like that and it’s going to look like a Jackson Pollack painting.” I chuckled when he grumbled something about being a slave driver.

  My attention was pulled from Ray’s delectable ass at the sound of the mailman. I walked to the mailbox and took the envelopes from him, shuffling through until I saw what I was waiting for.

  “Ray!” I shouted, causing the bucket of paint to fall from the ladder and onto the lawn. “Sorry, but look.” I waved the envelope.

  “Is that?”

  “Yes.”

  He rushed down the ladder and ran over to me. “Open it.”

  “I can’t.” Thrusting it at him, he rolled his eyes and tore it open. I watched his face as he read it.

  “Well,” he sighed, and the rejection flooded over me. “It looks like come the fall you’ll be attending New West College.” He smiled brightly, and I smacked him on the chest.