Guardian Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  Akira stood up and threw her shoe at him, praying they would find their mark.

  She hoped it was enough of a distraction for Brand to hit back. She hoped to hell that he would hurt them a lot.

  The terrorist was startled enough to look at her, while Sebastian ducked at her instruction and she threw the second shoe straight at his chest.

  She heard the distinct sound of machine gun fire, and felt a sharp burn on her right shoulder. A hot, sticky substance oozed out.

  She didn’t see Markham overpower the third guy, while they were all distracted by her actions, with a well-placed thumb at a strategic pulse point. She didn’t see Sebastian kick out at his attacker and drop him neatly, while standing up himself.

  She didn’t hear any of the hysterical screams that erupted in the room. She didn’t even check to see if she was really hurt, although she was feeling quite light-headed.

  She just stood watching Brand and the myriad expressions chasing his face. First there was shock, at her action. Then there was anger, and lastly there was concern. Fear.

  Her facial muscles didn’t seem to be working properly when she tried to smile. “You’re welcome.” She managed, because she was polite even if he wasn’t.

  Not that he would thank her, she was sure.

  Akira looked in surprise at her shoulder, where pain was radiating in debilitating waves. She clutched it in agony, and sank down with a small whimper.

  Confusion reigned in the room, as Brand’s men erupted into action, exploding in from three sides. Her eyes hazed red as she saw Brand reach toward the man who’d held him at gun-point and calmly disarm him in a moment. Then he, very deliberately, punched the man in the face and watched him go down.

  Akira closed her eyes just as he spun towards her.

  ~~~~~~

  Brand ran towards Sebastian and Akira, reaching them in five long strides. He staggered to his knees beside Sebastian, helping him sit up. Sebastian groaned, clutched his side, and cursed ripely.

  Brand didn’t know what to do, because every instinct, every emotion he possessed told him to get to Akira as quickly as he could.

  But his duty was towards Sebastian. He was paid to protect the man and he’d failed gigantically. There were no words for this disaster and no words for what went through him as he saw Akira go down.

  “I’ll be back in an instant. One instant. Okay?” He promised Sebastian.

  It was a testament of how seriously the other man was injured, when he didn’t make a single sound. He just grimaced and grabbed his side tighter.

  Brand crawled to Akira, and his heart stopped… he felt it stop.

  She looked so small, so frail with her life’s blood seeping out of her. Her face was pale against the blood on her shoulder and her fiery red hair; her breathing erratic. He took one of her hands in both of his and willed her awake.

  Of course, she didn’t wake up. And it was good she didn’t.

  He didn’t want her to see him like this.

  He felt the dull thud of her pulse, thready but there. Knowing she was alive made the next part possible.

  “Markham,” he yelled above all the din.

  Mark rushed through the melee to his side. His other men were making sure that the guests were exiting in as orderly a fashion as possible, with no harm or hysteria. The distant sound of the launch being revved up could be heard in the suddenly still night.

  “One of the bastards escaped. The green-eyed fucker.” Markham dropped to his knees beside Brand and hissed when he saw Akira’s prone form.

  The leader. “Shit.” Brand was succinct.

  “Take care of her. I have to get to Seb. We have to medevac these two out, asap. Make sure her…the bleeding’s contained...” Brand murmured, as he looked at Akira’s silent figure once more.

  “Sure thing, Brand. She’s going to be okay, you know.” Admiration tinged Markham’s words as he cradled Akira to his knees and probed the wound gently.

  Akira moaned.

  The sound arrowed through Brand even though he was near Sebastian, stanching his gunshot wound.

  He pressed a button on his chronograph and said, “Two down from unknown infiltrator attack. Requesting medevac assistance aboard The Sea Princess. Asap. I repeat, two down. Need med assistance. Asap. Attack onboard The Sea Princess. Brandon Rice, over and out.”

  This woman was a hazard to him. The knowledge burst inside him with sudden clarity.

  He shoved it to the back of his mind and concentrated on the job at hand. Made sure Sebastian stayed alive so he would be free to finally go after the bastards who thought they could get away with shedding blood… The ambassador’s wife. Seb himself.

  And her…Akira Naik.

  His jaw tightened as he heard the whirl of a chopper that meant help was at hand. He also heard another sound, that of a rotor moving away from the yacht. Henry had done his part just like they’d planned - he’d taken Rumi out of the equation.

  Brand wished he could stay unemotional and forget Akira existed but it wasn’t easy. As it was, during the fifty-minute hospital ride, he could barely keep from glancing to see if she was alright and breathing.

  The worst moment came when both Akira and Sebastian were wheeled in to the emergency OTs.

  Akira opened her eyes, and looked unerringly at him. As if she knew he’d be there.

  It hurt to breathe. Brand deliberately looked down at Sebastian’s unconscious form.

  When he looked up, she was sleeping again.

  Ten

  Four days later

  Baja Madeira City Hospital

  Baja Madeira, San Magellan’s Capital

  “Dead? What do you mean dead? How can Seb be dead?” Akira looked at the TV screen in her impersonal hospital room.

  She’d apparently been flown to this most-secure hospital in the Red Cross medevac helicopter because her co-passenger was leader of the country in turmoil.

  But, by the time, she came out of surgery and was wheeled into the recovery room Brandon Rice had seemingly vanished. And she wondered if the expression she’d seen on his face right before they took her into the OT – one of utter terror – was her imagination playing tricks.

  She slept the last few days away, because she was allowed no visitors, authorities included, and because she couldn't do anything but complain about the pain in her shoulder. The nurses pumped her full of Demerol and she went under.

  But she’d awakened today, feeling bright and rested. Determined to find why no single person of authority had come to talk to her. Where anyone was. Rumi. Henry. Brandon.

  In the absence of any kind of a communication device, she’d finally switched the TV on in her plush private room. Her Spanish was not as fluent as her Italian, but even she could understand the headlines.

  Her nurse, a well-meaning Amazon named Brigida came to check on her, and Akira demanded to see the day’s papers. Even scanning them, even looking at the sole English-speaking BBC coverage on Channel 98, she couldn't believe it.

  Sebastian Delgado couldn’t be dead.

  She tried to replay those last few moments in her head again.

  She’d crawled out of their hiding place. Sebastian had been kneeling down. She’d yelled at him to duck in the same instant that she’d thrown her first shoe at the attacker. The attacker had looked down to see what hit him, and his gun had gone off. By then, Sebastian stood up and she’d been hit.

  Then, she’d seen only Brand.

  Was that when Sebastian got shot? Was it because of her and her sheer stupidity?

  But he’d been standing up. Sebastian had kicked his shooter in the chest, floored him and stood up. When somebody was shot fatally they didn't do that. Did they?

  And if Sebastian was dead why wasn’t anyone coming to talk to her, an eyewitness? Where was the police? Where was the international outrage?

  She frowned; scoured the papers again.

  Her reading Spanish was better than her spoken. She gleaned that there had been a terrible incid
ent on The Sea Princess luxury yacht. The Sea Princess had been taken to an undisclosed location where she would be stripped and searched for every single scrap of evidence.

  Seven people had died, several more injured, mostly from smoke inhalation, but also bullet wounds. The wife of the Argentinean ambassador was dead. Declared so on arrival.

  Delgado was allegedly hit in the chest, where he punctured a lung, and bled profusely. He had hung on in surgery for thirteen hours and they’d declared his condition to be critical when he was taken to recovery. He’d slipped into a coma overnight and never come out of it, when his heart stopped functioning fourteen hours ago.

  Foul motive was suspected, the word murder was lightly skimmed over, but mostly it was a factual report.

  There was no mention of the incident only eight hours before the shootout on The Sea Princess. There was no mention of the men who’d tried to protect Sebastian Delgado.

  Worst of all, there was no mention of her, Akira. At all

  What the fuck was going on?

  Meanwhile, Antony Romero, Delgado’s second-in-command would become the de facto Premier. His swearing-in ceremony was today, four hours from now. It was to be held in the capital city of Baja Medeira, in the Hall of Records that served as the seat of government for San Magellan.

  Akira read through both news items again. And came to a decision.

  She tugged at the bell pull that existed in place of a remote over here that would get Nurse Brigida to her bedside who waddled in. “Si?”

  “I have to get discharged now. How do I do that?” Akira tugged off the tubes that were giving her a healthy dose of Demerol and glucose so that she’d be nourished and out of pain. She barely winced at the pain when the needles came off.

  It was imperative she get to the Hall of Records, to talk to the authorities. Before Romero was sworn in.

  “Senhorita Naik, you can't. You need to be signed out, and you have to have escorts. You can't leave the hospital. It’s too dangerous out there,” Brigida said in her careful English, her South American accent strong in every word.

  “You don't understand, Brigida,” she muttered absently, resisting the nurse’s efforts to subdue her. “I have to be there. It’s my job to understand these things. Sebastian cannot be dead. He just can’t be dead.”

  Akira strode to the single white closet that held her personal effects and opened it. She found nothing there that belonged to her.

  Akira closed her eyes as the enormity of her condition caught up with her. She was utterly alone, stranded in a strange country with no phone and no means of communication…with a dead Premier.

  “Are you even supposed to be out of bed, Akira?” Then she heard a most-familiar, most-annoying voice. Brandon’s voice.

  “Typical of you, isn’t it, to not be where you’re supposed to be?” Brand’s Australian showed through for the first time.

  It appalled her, how relieved she was to see him.

  Brand stood at the doorway, ankles crossed, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He was the epitome of military precision even as he cocked his head in greeting.

  Akira didn’t bother answering him, while she yanked out a black bag filled with a pair of new jeans and a black Save the Pandas t-shirt a size larger.

  “What happened to my phone?”

  He grinned, deliberately - spoke in an undertone to Brigida who just gave him a distressed look but left the room exclaiming in Spanish - before stepping into the room.

  “What happened to ‘Hello, Brandon, nice to see you’?”

  Annoyance flitted through her again. “Hello, Brandon, nice to see you. What happened to my phone?”

  He laughed at that, and handed her the coffee. “It’s destroyed. I’m sorry.” He didn’t add that he was the one who’d ordered her phone to be destroyed, so they wouldn’t be able to track her…whoever ‘they’ were. “But if you’re worried about everyone in Mumbai…don’t be. Rumi informed your office and your parents that you’re…safe,” he finished coolly.

  “That was unexpectedly kind of you. Where’s my equipment?” She sipped the coffee speedily, only just managing to control her moan of pleasure. For the last three days she’d been fed intravenously and anything else was heaven. Even if it was bad hospital coffee.

  Akira smiled. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  Brand’s fingers twitched violently before he deliberately loosened them. Almost as if he wanted to touch her…

  He said, “You’re welcome. Figured you’d need it. And as for your equipment, you’ll get that too. In a week.”

  “What happened, Brand? To Seb? It’s not true, is it? He isn’t...dead?” Akira whispered the last word because suddenly she was tired. In her line of work she saw death, more than her fair share, and yet it never failed to affect her.

  Brand’s eyes shuttered for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Leave it be, Akira. It’s all done now. There’s no use talking about it.”

  “Because it can’t be true.” She punctuated her answer with a deep sip of the coffee.

  ~~~~~

  “It’s too dangerous for you here. You have to go home. I can put you on any flight that you want. First-class. So you go back to your world and do what you do.” Brand sounded cool, logical… even dismissive.

  Only he knew how desperate he was for her to get away from here. From himself.

  “I want to go to the swearing-in ceremony.” She was stubborn. “I have to talk to the police. The authorities in charge of investigation.”

  He shook his head. “There’s no investigation, Akira. Don’t you read the papers?”

  She glared at him. “I did. It makes no sense. And even if there is no investigation now, there will be after I talk to someone and tell them what I saw.”

  Brand’s jaw tightened some more, if that was even possible. “That’s unacceptable, Akira.”

  “I am not asking your permission, Brandon. I want to go. I will go. I have to see it for myself.” She was pulling the clothes out of the bag along with the underwear someone had been considerate enough to buy her.

  “Akira, try to understand,” he tried again, calmly. “This is dangerous. A man has already lost his life.”

  “Exactly,” she tossed. “If Sebastian died, then those responsible for his death have to be held accountable.”

  “And you have to hold them accountable?”

  “No one else seems to be doing it.” She sounded so puzzled, he wanted to feel compassion for her. Empathy. Unfortunately, all his empathy had bled into terror when this op went sideways so badly.

  “Well, it’s not your job, Akira,” he said grimly. “Your job is to rest and recuperate. Far away from here.”

  “Brandon,” she whispered. “Why hasn’t anyone come for me, yet?”

  He hesitated a fraction too long, then went with half the truth. “Henry requested…actually, Rumi did…that we try and keep you out of it if we can.”

  “Rumi requested,” she repeated. “She wants me to become a ghost on the most important story of my career?”

  Brandon closed his eyes as his worst fears came true. As she uttered the magic words that would fuck this op up even more than it already was. “Akira, try to understand. So far, we’ve managed to keep your identity from the rest of the media but it won’t last for long. I want you out of the country if that happens. You should too. These people are murderous, Akira… they’ve already proved it. If you cross them, they’ll come after everyone you care about.”

  Akira closed her eyes as her hands clenched on the serviceable black bra and panties. She turned back from him, asked quietly, “Are you authorized to be here, Brand?”

  Brand nodded. “I have special dispensation for the next twenty-four hours.” Enough time to ensure her safe passage out of this hellhole.

  “Will you use your dispensation to get me in to the ceremony, Brandon?”

  He raised his eyes heavenwards and called himself ten kinds of a fool. “Once y
ou see how legit the swearing-in ceremony is I hope you’ll forget about all of this.” His words were an order and a threat combined. Only he knew they were his secret prayer.

  She had to leave San Magellan. Be safe. Any other alternative was unacceptable to him.

  ~~~~~

  Akira searched Brand’s onyx eyes for some semblance of what she’d seen, thought she’d seen when she’d first been brought in here. The hollow despair of a man who cared whether she lived or died.