I went back to the front window to see if I could figure out what was going on, and just then I heard a rain of shots being fired. Those men that had arrived in the SUV were clearly shooting at whoever was in the house. It was like a scene from a movie, although I was only able to hear the action and not actually see what was going on.
It sounded like one shot went on by itself and then several shots went off right after that. I estimated that it was probably more than one gun going off during the event because the sounds were closer together.
My heart sank as I watched the house for a clue as to what was going on. But I just couldn’t take it. I finally opened my door and walked slowly over to Marcus’s house. I could feel the eyes on me, but I wasn’t sure if they were good guy eyes or bad guy eyes. The man who had ordered me into my house definitely seemed like a good guy, though.
I took a deep breath and moved closer and closer. I was barefooted as I walked through the gate toward his house. The calmness was sickening, actually. Those gunshots had clearly silenced someone.
There was no more gunfire going on, and one of the people that Marcus had called came bursting out of the house and running toward their SUV. I could hear him on his cell phone, and that was what scared me to death.
“Charlie tango nine, we have an officer down. Unmarked only, but send assistance now.”
I stood still by the rock garden in front of Marcus’s house and tried to look in the window to see if I could figure out what was going on.
The man went back into the house with a first aid kit, and I could hear a man grunting. I tried to just look through the window, but I couldn’t see anything. Instead, I ended up going to the front door.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I did know the man I was starting to have feelings for was in that house. I had to find out what was going on, and I had to help if they needed anything.
“What’s going on?” Stanley said as he made his way from my yard over to Marcus’s house.
I really didn’t know what was going on, but I didn’t think Stanley needed to be around there. I quickly grabbed him by the hand and walked with him back toward the garage area of my house without saying a word until we were out of sight of Marcus’s house.
“Marcus had an emergency. I’m not sure what’s going on, but you should get out of here.”
“Not without you,” Stanley said and grabbed me like he’d never grabbed me before. “If it’s dangerous, then you shouldn’t be here either. Come back to my house with me. We will call the police.”
“I think Marcus is with the police,” I said softly. “I don’t think we should get involved. His guys are there, and I’ll let you know when I know more, okay. Go back to your house,” I said as I pushed him away. “Marcus will keep me safe. You know he will.”
“Yeah,” Stanley said reluctantly as he walked away.
I knew he was going to call the police. There was no way Stanley was walking away that easily and not getting involved, but I didn’t have time to deal with that at the moment. I still hadn’t seen Marcus, and I needed to know if he was alright.
There wasn’t anyone guarding the front door, so I took a step inside the living room of Marcus’s house. What I saw was worse than any television show or crime drama. I instantly saw why there was no need for anyone to be guarding the front door.
There were two men lying on the ground who had been shot. One of them had his face looking upward, and the other had his face down to the carpet. Blood was pooling up around the men, and I felt like I was going to pass out after seeing it.
No one was in the living room and instead seemed to be going back to another room, the second bedroom in the house. It was the room I thought Marcus had been keeping those ten large duffle bags in.
Another SUV pulled up in front of the house, and two men dressed in khakis came walking up to the front door. They looked more like accountants than police officers or EMT’s, and I was more confused than ever as they looked at me for directions on where to go.
“Where is he?”
I pointed to the back room. I wasn’t sure who the person was that he was talking about, but I was pretty confident he was in the back room where all these other guys kept going. No one seemed to care that I was standing there, and whatever danger had been going on in that house seemed to have died with the two men in the living room.
I still had not seen Marcus among the men coming and going from the back room, and I started to get very worried. I needed to make my way back to that room to see what was going on, but by this point there were men standing in the hall, so I certainly wasn’t going to be able to get past them.
For the time being, I stayed in the living room and tried to look at the walls instead of down at the two dead men on the ground. It was hard not to look at those men, and I was sure that I would have the memory of their faces burned into my brain for a very long time.
“Get him to the truck now!” I heard a man yell as the other men moved out of the hallway.
I was now trapped in the living room and tried to move into the kitchen so I could be out of the way. My heart fluttered with anxiety and fear as I waited for someone to be brought out of the back room.
In my head I thought that Marcus could certainly be one of the men helping out in the situation. Just because he was involved in a shootout didn’t mean that Marcus wouldn’t be perfectly fine. In fact, I was probably being way too over dramatic, and Marcus was going to walk out of the back room any minute.
Then I saw him. The most horrible sight I could have imagined.
Marcus was being carried by two of the men dressed in black. Marcus was wearing a blue T-shirt and cargo shorts, and he looked so out of place when next to the other men because he had been in bed with me only a few minutes earlier. He was covered in blood and looked like he couldn’t even hold his head up and was about to pass out.
“Marcus, are you OK?” I said as I tried to talk to him.
Marcus did not respond.
Chapter 17
“Marcus! Marcus,” I screamed.
The men continued to carry him out to the SUV and laid him in the back seat.
“I’m coming with you,” I said as I started to climb into the vehicle.
It was the first time any of the men addressed me.
“No, you can’t. We are taking him to the hospital. Someone will let you know an update as soon as we know something,” a man dressed in black swat gear said.
They closed the door and took off, leaving me standing there in the middle of the street. I could see the two other men working inside, but I didn’t want to go back in there and see the dead bodies on the ground.
I looked around the neighborhood, and it dawned on me how isolated I truly was living in Bain, Missouri. There wasn’t anyone home during the daytime, and many people didn’t even come home until the weekends. All the commotion that had just gone on, and no one was even around to call the police and report gunshots being fired except maybe Stanley, but I wasn’t positive that he was going to call either.
My legs started to feel weak, and I made my way over to the stairs in front of my house. The adrenaline made my body shake, and I started to feel like throwing up. My hands vibrated with fear, and I could feel a cold sweat coming over my body.
I leaned over and put my head in my hands as I tried desperately not to throw up. I hated the feeling of vomiting and would do everything in my power not to give in to the nausea.
“Are you alright?” one of the men from Marcus’s house said as he stood in front of me.
“I’m not sure.”
“If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you inside. Marcus asked me to make sure you were alright.”
He seemed like a nice guy, and I had seen him with Marcus at the airport before. I didn’t exactly respond, but I did try to stand up, and he reached his arm out and helped to stabilize me.
“I’m Isabella,” I said as we walked into my house.
“I know. I’m Zed.”
>
I smiled at him as he helped me over to the couch. He put a couple pillows on one side of the couch, and I moved over to lie down. He disappeared into the kitchen and was back very quickly with some water and a few saltine crackers.
“Thanks.”
My hands were shaking as I tried to drink the water, so Zed took the cup from me and held it while I drank. It was a very kind thing to do. I didn’t know this man, but if Marcus had told him to take care of me, and he was so willingly doing it, I had to figure he was a good guy.
He was a very handsome man, not quite as handsome as Marcus, but still very close. Zed had more of a baby face and looked to be closer to my age. He didn’t seem old enough to be doing whatever it was that Marcus was doing.
“You don’t look too well. Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“I’ll be alright. I’d really like to know how Marcus is as soon as you know something, though. He did not look very good.”
“Oh, it looked like the bullet went straight through the shoulder; he should be fine as long as they get the bleeding stopped.”
Zed seemed like a pretty laid back guy to be in whatever this business was. Although, Marcus also was pretty laid back and was shot in a hospital right now. Perhaps being laid back in their business wasn’t the best personality trait.
His light brown hair was shaved tight on the side of his head with some wavy length on the top. I found it difficult to take him serious with the two large dimples on either side of his perfect smile. My only reason for being able to listen and talk with him was that I had seen him with Marcus at the airport a couple weeks prior. Zed seemed like a pretty intense guy, and his eyes looked at me with a powerful desire. But he stayed away from showing any of that desire; he was wholly appropriate with me. It probably didn’t hurt that I looked like I was going to puke at any moment.
It dawned on me that Zed had said he knew who I was. I wondered how much Marcus had told the guys about me?
“You seem like you’ve seen plenty of shootings,” I said with a little bit of a laugh. “I mean you look unconcerned by this whole thing.”
Zed didn’t look like he was going to respond at first. Then, perhaps because he knew I was friends with Marcus, Zed told me a little more than I could have imagined.
“Yes, I have seen some pretty horrible stuff. Saw a friend get his neck cut once. Many of us have had other injuries like gunshots or being stabbed or something like that,” Zed said. “Marcus has been shot before, though. I’m not too worried about him. I’ll bet you he’s back here in not time making sure I am really taking care of you.”
There seemed to be a little sexual undertone in how Zed had just said that sentence. Certainly, Marcus hadn’t told him to come and sleep with me? That was ridiculous. But I couldn’t help thinking about having Zed. He was utterly adorable. Although I was going to hold back because I was really worried about Marcus, and he was my first concern.
“Why do you do it? I mean it’s obviously a dangerous job. Why keep putting yourself in the middle of things?”
I wanted to know. Did it pay really well? Did this job help with the ladies? Why would any man choose a job where he could see his friends murdered?
“We are saving people. You can’t beat knowing that you are taking these bad guys off the street, and they won’t have anyone to lead their cause.”
Their cause? I wondered who these people were that they were taking them off the streets. It sounded like Marcus and his friends worked as bounty hunters or something like that. Maybe that was why they could afford to travel on a private jet instead of like normal people. Or maybe they had some big person who financed their operation and paid for things. I wasn’t going to keep trying to get information out of Zed, though; he needed to get back to cleaning up the crime scene over at Marcus’s house.
“What are you guys going to do with those two dead guys?”
Zed just smiled. It was one of those smiles that said to me, I didn’t want to know the answer to that question. He stood up and looked down on me with a smile that burned through me. My whole body warmed at how he gazed into my eyes. His muscles flexed tight in his black T-shirt and his various guns strapped to his side and leg. I couldn’t help it; I was seriously turned on by this guy.
“I’m going to get back over there. You’re alright?”
“Yes, I’ll be alright. Thank you,” I said as I looked away from his gaze.
Zed let himself out of the house, and I got up to look at him out the window. He was much more my type of guy than Marcus was. His age and appearance fit more with the type of guy I found attractive, and Zed seemed sweet and kind instead of angry and dangerous like Marcus. But that was because Marcus was beyond the type of guy I thought I could ever date. I never, in a million years, would have thought a guy like Marcus would be with a girl like me.
Now I was sitting and shaking while I worried about him. I had no idea where he was taken or which hospital. I didn’t even know his last name! It was going to be really hard to get any sort of update on his health.
Hopefully, Zed would come back and give me the news as soon as they figured out what was going on. I also desperately hoped that Zed was right and the bullet went through Marcus’s shoulder without causing any permanent damage.
***
I fell asleep out of exhaustion and didn’t wake up until the middle of the night. I had a nightmare and was sweating when I sat up straight. I looked around the room and could feel my heart beating out of my chest. Beads of sweat filled my brow, and I needed to check to make sure all the doors were locked.
I got up and went to the front door which had been left unlocked from when Zed had left earlier in the day. My anxiety got instantly worse.
Slowly I walked from room to room, flipping the light on and then searching the room before moving onto the next. My body could not relax until I had searched every corner of the house and was assured that there were no intruders.
I’m not sure what I expected to do if I had found an intruder, but surely I would have thought of something.
When I sat back down on the couch a flood of emotions filled me. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to find out where Marcus was so I could go see him. It was too late to go back over to Marcus’s house, and I’m not sure I wanted to be back over there at all.
Knowing that two dead bodies had been on the floor in the living room was enough to make me never want to go to Marcus’s house ever.
The television offered a little distraction, but I just couldn’t seem to get my mind around everything that was going on. I use to be a lonely woman hiding away in my family’s home and grieving the loss of my one true love. Now I sat staring at the television and trying to get over seeing three men shot, one of whom I was starting to have feelings for.
I wanted to reach out to Willow and tell her everything that was going on, but I didn’t know if Marcus would like that. His job seemed pretty secretive, and I didn’t want to put him at risk by telling people what I thought he did. In fact, I didn’t really know at all what he did for work, so I should probably wait until I talked to Marcus.
Suddenly my heart started to race as I heard a noise coming from behind my house.
It dawned on me that those men who had come to Marcus’s house had been there to murder or hurt him. Now here I was sitting there without any protection at all. What if they had come back to finish Marcus off? What if they knew I was involved now?
My body shook again with fear. How could Zed have left me there alone? I thought he was supposed to be keeping an eye on me? I thought he had promised Marcus that he would watch out for me? Certainly, leaving my door unlocked and leaving me alone wasn’t watching out for me, I fumed as I tried to calm myself down.
I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs just couldn’t fill up. After I had closed my eyes, I tried again to get a full breath, but it would not come. I heard a knock at the back door and almost screamed.
Surely no one would be coming over to my
house at this hour of the night; it was almost four o’clock in the morning.
I didn’t want to go to the back door. I didn’t want to see who it was because then they would be able to see who I was. I breathed in as deep a breath as I could gather and slowly walked toward the kitchen.
My head peeked around the corner, and I could see two male figures standing on my back porch. Because I had all the lights on in the house, it was difficult to see who was standing there. But since he wasn’t trying to break in or anything like that, I decided to move closer.
“Marcus!” I screamed as I realized it was him. “And Stanley! What are you guys doing here?”
“I’ve been sitting outside your house since Zed left,” Stanley said. “He told me to keep an eye on things until he got back with Marcus.
I moved quickly toward the two guys and was about to fling my arms around both of them when I realized Marcus had his arm in a sling. I hugged Stanley first and then softly hugged Marcus.
“I was so worried about you,” I said to him.
“Hey, babe,” he said with a wink.
“Don’t hey babe me! I have been going crazy. Where were you? Are you alright? Who were those men? Why were they after you?”
“I think that’s my cue to head out. I’m glad you’re alright, Marcus. I’ll check in tomorrow with you both to see if you need anything,” Stanley said as he and Marcus shook hands. “Take care of yourself, and don’t let this girl wear you out.”
“Thanks for helping out and keeping her safe,” Marcus said.
Marcus held his finger up to his mouth in a clue for me to be quiet as he turned back toward me. Then he took a step into my kitchen and shut the door behind him. His ocean blue eyes looked down at me, and his lips moved to touch mine.
All my worry and concern was vanishing as I felt his passion as our tongues moved in time with each other. My lip quivered, and he calmed it with his touch.
I worried about where to put my hands, as I didn’t want to hurt him or his shoulder, so I wrapped them around his waist.
Mine to Protect Page 83
