Guardian Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  His hands tightened involuntarily and she yelped.

  “Sorry,” he murmured, loosening his hold.

  “You have to go. These people need help” She burrowed closer to him. Practically climbing all over him.

  And he, damn it, was enjoying this way too much for his own peace of mind. How was he supposed to concentrate on his job when holding Akira was turning out to be far more dangerous?

  Thankfully, the alpha part of his brain was still busy planning and discarding strategies. The first priority was Sebastian, who was safe, temporarily hidden as he was.

  Then there were the guests, the power elite. He hoped to God no one was hurt. But he couldn't be sure.

  His men were camouflaged. They would move stealthily through the room and contain whatever damage there was. And he also knew that the main attack was yet to come.

  A part of his training waited for the inevitable explosion. It wasn’t a bad way to die. With a brave, beautiful woman in your arms, he mused.

  “You have to go now,” Akira whispered, trying to wriggle away from him.

  He simply held on, while she squirmed. For once his body behaved and he whispered,

  “Akira, you have to stay where I put you, okay? I’ll take you there, but you have to stay there. Promise me.”

  He wanted to shake her, as he saw the mutinous set to her mouth in the non-existent light.

  Her eyes were streaming from the effort to not close them and her throat was wracked with coughs now. She didn’t have the benefit of a handkerchief tied around her face like he did. He wanted to take it off and give it to her but knew he needed it more if he wanted to take action.

  “Why? I could help too.” She was challenging him, arguing, even now.

  He wanted to laugh and strangle her at the same time. Why did she have to be so brave?

  “That’s what I am asking you to do, sweetheart.”

  “How?” Akira asked, mutinously.

  Brand considered shaking her, but inspiration struck him at the last possible second.

  “Because someone has to guard Sebastian, while I scope out the situation. It’ll take two minutes, tops, but I don't want to leave him alone. Now, will you, please help me?” He gritted his teeth.

  “Alright, then, when you put it that way...” Akira gave in ungraciously.

  Brand immediately started to guide her rump over the carpeted floor, turning her towards where the Premier was stashed in the small alcove next to the big screen.

  Their whole exchange had taken sixty seconds, max, and Brand knew he would berate himself later for wasting that amount of time. For now, he just wanted to keep both of them safe.

  He deposited Akira near Sebastian. His hands lingered over her waist a second longer, while her small hand closed around his wrist.

  “Thanks, Brandon,” she said quietly. “Go now.”

  He looked at Sebastian, calmly smoking a cigar, no visible tremors or even emotion. Told him sparely, “You’ve got to put that out. They’ll find you by the light.”

  Sebastian looked at him with hot eyes, but put the smoke out in the expensive carpet.

  Akira giggled as she saw the stand-off.

  Sebastian grinned at her, dismissing Brand without words. “So, Ms. Naik. How is the evening so far?”

  Brandon crawled away from the alcove without hearing their reply.

  ~~~~~

  The lights came on the instant he rounded the big screen and Brand could see, exactly, how bad it was. As he slowly straightened to his full height, he knew it was very bad.

  From the three AK47s pointed at him, he figured it was about to get a hell of a lot worse.

  Slowly, he raised his arms to the surrender position, resigned to his fate. He sincerely hoped that his bullet-ridden death would be enough for the Premier and the reporter to not come out for a good long while.

  Maybe.

  “Where is he?” The first of the masked intruders asked him in guttural Spanish.

  It amazed Brand that they had found about him, specifically. Either he must be slipping, or someone very high up wanted the good Premier dead. He leaned toward the second option, because it was more likely.

  He took in the risks of going against three automatic-gun toting maniacs, with only his tiny, in comparison, Walther PPK. Even with the wicked Bowie knife strapped to his ankle, he wouldn’t come out a winner in this standoff.

  Brand shrugged. “Find out for yourself.”

  The silence followed by the wailing of a hysterical woman was ominous. Sure, there were only three of the terrorists in here, who knew how many were upstairs. And, because he wasn’t sure, he couldn't rely on his men to come charging in, because protocol would be to first contain the situation upstairs and not allow the attackers to come down below.

  He only had himself and Markham to depend on.

  Where the fuck was Markham anyway?

  “Fine.” The leader nodded. He then peppered the wall with a round. It was horrifying to hear the people go down in a cacophony of wails and screams and agony. Someone was hit. If he wasn’t wrong, it was the Argentinean ambassador’s pretty wife in a cocktail dress of midnight blue.

  Brand felt a dull pain settle in his gut.

  The innocents had begun to pay. And it was his fault.

  Eight

  “We should go out,” Akira muttered, as she tried to crane her head towards the sound of gun-fire.

  Sebastian lounged beside her, legs stretched out in a deceptive posture of relaxation. Only she knew that the inside of his jacket pocket had a 9 mm Glock, with his hand on the trigger finger. Safety off.

  Guns were never okay, not ever. One way or another, bullets always found their mark. She hoped to Holy God it wasn’t Brand who’d gotten hurt.

  There were no words as to why she felt this way. She just did. In her current heightened situation, Akira suspended her logic.

  “Sure, we should. We should go out, hand ourselves to the bad guys and expect happily ever after,” Sebastian said insolently.

  “But, Sebastian. Innocent people --”

  “We are all innocent, Ms. Naik. God didn’t make any of us guilty. We heap it on ourselves.” Sebastian spoke with a cool smile that bordered on unfeeling.

  And Akira saw the steel will, the sheer strength that made this man the ruler of a country gone wild. She felt pride and a kind of fear because he was a ruthless man who would bend to no one. Such men never lasted in the bigger picture.

  The world didn’t want them to.

  “Sebastian…”

  “Two minutes, and then I’ll go out,” the Premier decided. “If Brand can’t control them by then, he won't ever be able to. And I am not an unreasonable man. I will listen to what they want.” Sebastian smiled unpleasantly.

  Akira shivered, and hoped that Brand could control the attackers. She snorted then. What hope? The super-capable Brandon Rice would control the situation in two minutes.

  “Fine. Two minutes. Then we go out,” She leaned back comfortably against the snug wall of the alcove.

  Sebastian shook his head. “I go out alone, Akira. They want me. Not you.”

  “In your dreams, Premier,” she informed him, before she unlaced her shoes. She stashed them under the small table, and murmured, “Hopefully, I’ll see them again.” Akira ran her hands over them one more time.

  ~~~~~

  Sebastian smiled widely at the innately female gesture. A quick glance at his watch told him he had about eighty seconds left to enjoy life on earth. He had no illusions about what awaited him once he went on the other side of the screen.

  But he wasn’t a man prone to regrets, so he focused on the here and now.

  “So, tell me, Ms. Naik. Did you enjoy Brandon as much as you have this whole day?” he asked her directly.

  He shrugged when she looked at him with a small gasp. “A dying man can afford to be direct even if it is rude, Akira. And I’d really like to know.”

  “Living vicariously, are we?” She smiled wh
en a slap would have been more appropriate.

  Delgado smiled too, in regret. That surprised him. “Something like that, yes. But mostly… well, let’s just say, if I didn’t know Brandon’s nature I would have danced with you on the deck myself.”

  ~~~~~

  Akira wanted to bristle at the forthright if chauvinistic interest, except she felt the same way. Sebastian was a surprisingly nice, earthily masculine man and she really liked him.

  Certainly he didn’t make her want to kill him. Even though he had enough ruthless in him to make her question how much of his niceness was just a smoke-screen.

  She shook her head. “With all due respect, Premier, I belong to no man.” She was annoyed when he softly laughed.

  “We all belong to someone, Akira. Haven’t you learned that yet?” He looked at his watch again. Thirty seconds to go.

  Akira gave him a quick look. “And who do you belong to?”

  He shrugged. “A ghost.”

  And Akira remembered his tragic origin story. His wife of thirteen months had been killed in a car-bomb meant for him. Pablo Escobar’s henchman had done the deed a decade ago. This had happened when he’d been an up and coming lawyer in his country. It was a terrible time in San Magellan’s history.

  She squeezed his hand in sympathy.

  “You wondered, till now, how I could be so cruel, so cold-blooded to take my country to the brink of war… After losing Emily.” Sebastian shrugged again. “When a man has nothing left to lose, he becomes fearless. Just like Brandon Rice.”

  She nodded, once. Men like him and Brand or even Rumi’s Henry were essentially loners who didn’t work with the rest of the world.

  Her eyes rounded as she finally remembered her best friend.

  “Rumi,” she began uneasily.

  “She’ll be fine. Her man will take care of her.” This time Sebastian squeezed her hand and then got up in one fluid movement. She admired his lithe grace.

  Delgado gave her a stern look. “Stay here. Or Brand will do what all these rebellious fools want him to do. And be heroic.”

  Akira grinned, while her heart warmed, even though it had no right to. Why should she care if Brandon cared about her? Then again, he had found her amidst the initial pandemonium and made sure she was safe.

  She didn’t like his annoying habit of saving her, but it had come in handy. Not that she was about to admit it.

  Sebastian gave her one last enigmatic look before striding down.

  Akira counted to three and crawled behind him. No way, was she letting two men tell her to what to do. Not if this meant the story of her life.

  And more importantly, she couldn't sit idly by while Brand was out there fighting God knows how many maniacs. Not when she could rescue him too!

  Nine

  Brand took a lightning quick decision to play passive, giving Mark the time to disarm the attackers from behind after taking care of the ambassador’s wounded wife.

  He and his men had a creed. No job was worth more than an innocent human life. Strange words for mercenaries to live by, but they were eccentric that way.

  He knew talking to the attackers was a waste of time, so he walked forward with his arms still held up. One of the black masks grinned wickedly as he saw the defensive gesture. He thought they’d already won.

  “Get that bastard Delgado out,” he told the other two in perfect English.

  Brand raised an eyebrow trying to figure out his accent. He couldn't place it fast enough.

  “You don't want it done this way.” Brand spoke Spanish, not wanting all of the guests to panic.

  As it was, several of the women were crying, and who could blame them? These morons had at least not told everyone to shut the hell up. Most hostage-takers decided that silence was more preferable to panic-stricken victims.

  Brand needed the distraction of those panic-stricken victims right now. “Let the women go. Let everyone go. You don't want them.”

  “No, we don't. But they’re fun to be around, anyway. Besides, who’d we shoot, if we let them go?” The weakest of the three pointed his gun at Brand’s chest…let him feel the barrel.

  Brand stared impassively at the man’s eyes behind the mask. They all knew that the whole point of this exercise was submission, not fear. And he’d already surrendered.

  “Someone will hunt you down like the street dogs that you are,” he promised softly, spotting Markham as he moved into position behind rebel number one.

  Markham had worked swiftly to make sure the bleeding woman was as okay under these conditions as it was possible to be. Then he’d blended into the crowd in such a way as to avoid detection. He looked like a guest who was trying to escape or come closer to the violence.

  “Sure, they will, Rice,” the second attacker said, so quietly, that Brand wasn’t sure he heard right.

  Then he knew, he knew, this man was the leader. He was the guy to go after. He was the guy who’d not hesitate to do whatever needed to be done. He was the one Brand would have to take out.

  Markham was inching closer to the third attacker, when Sebastian walked out, with his arms held high.

  “You’ve got me, you assholes. Now let the others go,” he ordered in the local Spanish-Portuguese dialect.

  The first attacker automatically trained his gun on Delgado. The second man turned his in a wide arc including the whole room in his threat, while the leader stared Brand down.

  Markham inched closer, his Glock in his hand.

  Someone moaned loudly. The third attacker looked for the source of the noise and cursed fetidly, when he found Markham in front of him.

  “Kill him if you want to. We can spare hundreds like him.” The first attacker spoke loudly, nervously. Aiming truer at Sebastian, while beckoning him to go down on his knees.

  Sebastian complied.

  “Maybe you should do the same,” the real leader, with eyes of light green, told Brand softly. He waited while Brand got down on his knees.

  Brand couldn't do much else with a Kalashnikov pointed at his sternum. He’d be dead before he moved an inch. Where were the rest of his men?

  The crying got louder, as the guests moved into full panic mode.

  Brand was so tired, he wished for one second that the man would pull the goddamn trigger. He detested power plays, and this one was being milked for all its worth. If he’d been in the leader’s place he would have shot himself about three minutes ago.

  He thanked God the leader was into power plays.

  “Say your last prayers, Santiago,” the first attacker said, as he aimed his gun right between Sebastian’s eyes.

  Sebastian looked back at him with no expression or emotion. He didn’t even see his own death. It was extraordinarily brave and extraordinarily dumb.

  Brand was just about to make his move, when there was a small movement behind Sebastian, and then… incredibly… a shoe was lobbed at the gun.

  He heard Akira yell, “Sebastian, DUCK.”

  The next shoe hit the terrorist in the chest. He looked down, his gun going off with a nervous movement.

  And that was all the opening Brand needed.

  His hand shot out, and he would have gone for the leader’s throat, but two things stopped him.

  Sebastian was down on the floor.

  Akira was standing. With a bullet wound seeping through her shoulder. She smiled crazily at him from ten feet across the room, and said, quite clearly, “You’re welcome.”

  Then clutched her shoulder as the pain finally hit her.

  ~~~~~~

  Akira only vaguely remembered the last few seconds in the time it took for the pain to coalesce into the focal point of her existence. Using her heavy and pointy shoes as weapons was the stupidest move but she had to do it.

  Three men had surrounded Brandon and Sebastian. One of them had just told Sebastian to kneel down. He complied without protest.

  As did Brandon, when the other rebel murmured something to him. An AK47 was pointed at Brand.


  Akira swallowed as she saw how competently, how loosely, the shooter held it. Like he wouldn’t hesitate to use it. She heard the screams and moans of the guests who were hit and hurt and afraid distantly, but all her focus was on Brandon Rice – the last man on earth who needed her help.

  So, she moved her attention to Sebastian…and the man training a fully automatic machine gun right between his eyes.