“Come on, man,” Garrick says.
I back up a bit, leaving her standing against the cave wall, and I level the piece at her kneecap. “You’d think it’s the kneecap that would produce the loudest scream,” I say to Garrick. “In fact you’d be wrong. It’s the foot. You want to know why?”
He’s not answering.
I sigh.
Ann tries to make a run for it.
I aim. Squeeze the trigger.
Crrrrack! I shoot her foot.
The blast echoes through the cave like a motherfucker. It’s almost as loud as Ann’s scream.
“Fuck! Fuck!” Garrick calls out. “Fuck!” He’s still filming, through. He gets that his life depends on it.
Ann’s down, though much to her credit, she doesn’t scream again.
“Come on. That’s all you got?”
It’s surprising. Admirable, even. She needs another hole in her. Nothing that will kill her right away. The last thing we want is a beast like Kiro with nothing to lose.
Crrrrack! I get her in the gut. She crumples. That does it—she screams. Nice and loud.
It’s then we hear the roar. It’s loud and anguished, echoing through the hills.
I exchange glances with Garrick. I point, meaning, tell me you fucking got that audio. He gives me a grim look, camera steady. That’s a yes.
I signal my guys to drop back into the shadows. “We let him get to her, got it? He’s not coming for us, he’s coming for her.”
They get way the fuck back in the shadows. They’re all feeling pretty fucking nervous. I can hear the chopper now. My guy moving closer, ready for the evacuation.
“I probably don’t need to tell you, Garrick, to concentrate your camera on the shootees instead of the shooters. I don’t want a lot of footage I can’t use. You understand what I’m saying?”
He looks like he might throw up.
“Watch out, Kiro! It’s a trap!” she yells. “You can’t do anything!”
You can almost feel him coming. Even the air seems to change.
“This tension is unbelievable,” I say to nobody in particular. I go up next to Garrick and check the little window in his camera that shows what he’s filming. “The theme I’m going for here is straightforward and unambiguous.”
“Kiro,” she calls, holding her belly. “Don’t fall for it! Stay out there!”
Oh, this is good. Better than I imagined. Death, like porn, needs a bit of a story. Not a lot of story, but a bit, and these two are going to deliver.
Kiro in his last moments holding his dying beloved in his arms before they’re both gunned down. Nobody will doubt his death with this kind of performance.
Aleksio and Viktor will go wild.
I’ll get this footage to them and put every resource out looking for them. Killing them after they see footage of their brother dying like this will be like taking candy from a baby. They’ll be fucking stumbling around on the streets like drunks.
I turn to my men, motion with my gun. It means weapons up. I’m taking the shot. Not them—me. It’s not just that I want to be the one to kill Kiro, but also, I don’t want to cut the scene too fast. I want this shit to spin as long as possible.
“You sure?” my number one says. He thinks I’m getting greedy.
I have only to raise my brows. He, too, puts up his weapon.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ann
I’m on the rough, cold cave floor on my side, holding my belly, legs drawn up. I can’t imagine moving.
Still, I yell.
“Don’t fall for it, Kiro! Leave! Run!” I take a momentary break, then: “They won’t kill me if you stay away!”
It’s a lie. No way will they leave me alive.
The pain is blinding. I press my palm to my belly, sucking in the smoke-tinged air, thinking about this last day with Kiro, and the way we connected.
I thought I was helping him feel less alone by reaching out, but he was helping me.
All my life, I’ve looked in from the outside. Kiro showed me what it was to be on the inside. To live my own story. Those moments when I looked into his eyes made me feel like we’ve been together forever.
I think to yell, to warn him off again, but I know it’s pointless.
Kiro will come.
Kiro has wanted one thing his whole life—to belong.
Kiro would rather die belonging than remain alive and alone.
And there’s that vow.
“Kiro, please…no.” It’s barely a whisper. He’ll come to die with me.
I hear the men talking. They know it. That leader knows it.
I hold my side, trying to keep my mind clear and objective as long as possible. I need to stay awake for him.
A wave of pain. Trauma to the liver, I’m thinking. Not good. The liver is the most regenerative organ. It can be 95 percent destroyed and regenerate itself. It’s more the internal bleeding that’s the problem.
I grit my teeth against the pain.
I think of the eyes of people I’ve treated with injuries like this. It’s like they can see you, but there is so much going on behind the eyes. I always thought it was a sense of the body, the animal taking over, slowly shutting down, preserving blood flow to the core. I’m thinking now it’s just fear.
I pull my legs in more tightly. I can’t imagine stretching my legs ever again.
I suppose I won’t.
The light they shine on me is bright, but not so much that I don’t see him burst through the opening to the cave.
Even knowing he’s doomed—that I’ve doomed him—my heart lifts. I feel him. He feels like happiness.
He stalks to me. There’s this wild look in his eyes, and I think he smells all the blood, and he knows I won’t make it. He knows he’s going to die by coming to me.
He doesn’t give a fuck.
He kneels in front of me.
“Kiro,” I whisper.
“I’m here.” Strong, warm arms circle around me. He puts his body over mine. His forehead to my cheek. “I’m here, Ann,” he whispers.
I wish more than anything that I could hold him, but I can’t move, clenched around my wound like a fist. But Kiro is here.
The man’s trying to get Kiro’s attention. He’s calling out to him. He wants him to turn to the camera, but Kiro is nobody’s bitch.
Kiro is wild and beautiful and utterly his own man. And we’ll never let go of each other now.
“Mine,” he whispers into my hair. His arms feel strong and good around me. I feel like the whole universe is around me, protecting me in Kiro’s embrace.
I can hear the sociopath saying mocking things in the distance.
His words don’t matter to us.
I turn up my head and kiss Kiro’s soft beard. Kiro is what’s real.
Kiro grunts softly. It’s a comforting sound that goes to my heart. We’re both more animal than human now, but our humanity has never been stronger. Clinging together like this.
Somebody approaches and tries to kick us apart.
Kiro snarls and throws the man into the cave wall with a horrible crack, and then he’s back.
Maybe they wanted to film Kiro’s face. Well, they got his face. I feel like I’m floating out of my body—like it’s all happening, yes, but to somebody else.
“Kiro,” I whisper.
Kiro grunts again, sounding more anguished. He feels like he’s losing me.
I tell myself to hold on. They’ll start shooting soon. They’ll have to kill him soon. He has to know that.
“Well, 34, what should we do now?”
He presses his forehead to mine. It hurts to remove even one hand from my belly, but I do. I don’t need to stanch the bleeding anymore. We won’t be getting any help out here, and anyway, I need to touch him. “I love you,” I say.
I stroke his beard the way he likes.
He holds me more tightly. Words never did mean anything to him. But they mean something to me.
There’s a yell just then
.
Followed by a snarl. Not just any snarl, but an unholy snarl.
More than one snarl. Growls rip through the cave, savage and guttural.
Then the screaming starts. The place thunders with snarling and screaming. Kiro gasps. I can feel the shock and surprise in his body, in the way he tightens his arms around me.
Gunshots sound out, but that only seems to increase the snarling. The agonized cries of men echo off the walls.
I look past his arm and see the blur of fur and teeth.
Wolves!
There’s blood everywhere. The roaring in the cave is deafening. People are dying, being ripped apart.
I feel Kiro lifting me. My belly is on fire. I’m bouncing in his arms.
No! I want to say. But I know we have to get out of there.
He’s running. I’m gasping for air. My face feels wet—I have no idea whether it’s sweat or tears. Maybe blood.
I hear Garrick’s voice. The copter. Get in—get in, goddammit! Get her in…do it.
Kiro growls.
I clutch onto him. “Do it,” I manage to say.
Because fucking Garrick knows how to fly. Most of us covering the hot zones know the basics of flying, but he’s a high-performance asshole, and if he’s saying “get in,” he’s confident about getting us out of here.
I feel us getting in. I’m hanging on one moment to the next, powering through the pain.
I concentrate on keeping myself together.
I black out, or maybe time is moving at a different speed, because suddenly we’re aloft. Garrick’s giving Kiro directions. Battlefield bandage for my foot. I smell the first-aid kit.
Two clumsy fingers at my neck.
“You with us?” Garrick.
I force my eyes open. I focus on Kiro.
“We’re doing this,” Garrick says. “I’ve radioed ahead.”
We’re flying. I’m still conscious. My insides feel ripped apart, but consciousness is a good sign.
I grunt.
“Ann—I didn’t know what that guy was,” Garrick says. “I didn’t know.”
Fingers on my forehead. Gentle. Strong. Kiro.
“The wolves…” I say. “They came.”
“The younger ones came,” Kiro says. “They didn’t die after all. They stayed together. Red’s pup. They saved us.”
“The wolves.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Did they…get out…”
“Did the wolves get out of that alive? Is that what you’re asking?” Garrick says. “Did you hear the screaming in there?”
“They came out of it,” Kiro says. He’s saying something about guns. They don’t like anyone with guns.
I close my eyes.
“Stay awake,” Kiro says.
I stay awake. He talks to me. I hang on to his voice.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kiro
Duluth Memorial Medical Center is a place that I hate. It’s where they took me two years ago. I was on a different floor, but the smells are the same. The colors are the same. The sounds are the same, too. Worse, there are beeping sounds that are exactly like beeping sounds at the Fancher Institute, and they make me want to destroy something.
I stand in the waiting room just to the side of the double doors that they won’t let me through.
I could go through if I wanted to. I did it before, but the nurse, a man named Chris, pushed me out and told me that if I go through the doors again, they’ll stop helping Ann because they’ll have to concentrate on me. “Is that what you want?” he asked me. “Do you want the medical staff to have to deal with you instead of helping your girlfriend?”
I’m not good with words. I didn’t know how to tell him how badly I need them to help her, and how badly it hurts to be away from her. I don’t know how to tell him that she’s everything in the world to me.
And I need to protect her. Those men from the cave could still be alive. The wolves were there to protect us, not to slaughter our attackers. The wolves would have left as soon as we were gone.
The man named Lazarus could be coming. Garrick explained the situation to me—or as much as he knows, which is that Lazarus wants to kill me, and he thinks going through Ann is the best way.
It drives me crazy. So many entrances I can’t guard.
So I stand next to the doors, making sure not to block them. They’ve scolded me for that, too. I stand, fists balled, waiting for them to tell me when I can go to her.
Garrick comes to me. “Murray spoke with her family.” Murray. The editor. The boss of Ann and Garrick. “He’s keeping them updated.”
I can see a window. If I go to it, I’ll be able to look down to the edge of the parking lot far below. That parking lot was filled with reporters the last time I was here. “You were one of them,” I say. “Out there when I was here last.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Not Ann.”
“Fuck no,” he says. “Ann would’ve never been down there. That’s not her style. She doesn’t do the money stories.”
“She looks for the humanity.”
“Exactly.”
The buzzing in my ears is so loud, it’s deafening. My woman. My mate. “You will not make a story of Ann.”
“I’m not making a story of her,” he says.
Is he lying? I don’t trust this one. “If you anger me in any way, I will rip your throat out.”
“How about you tell me what exactly will anger you so I can avoid that then.”
“I’ll know what angers me when I become angry.”
“Hey.” He nods at the pair of men in blue at the desk on the far side of the waiting room. “Cops,” he says under his breath. “You ready?”
Garrick warned me that they’d be coming. He told me to “act cool.” He had me memorize a fake name and phone number.
“I’m ready,” I say.
The pair of them come to us. An officer with a young, square face draws me away from the door and asks me questions.
I don’t trust Garrick, but he seems to hate and fear the police as much as I do, so I follow his instructions. I act cool, or at least I try. I give them the information Garrick told me to give. I suppress the urge to fight, to get away. Twice I tell the officer that I didn’t witness the shooting.
They’re much more interested in Garrick when they learn that he witnessed the shooting and has video footage of it. Garrick told me this would happen.
He talks with them for a long time while I wait. Then he sits in the chairs. He does things on his phone. He goes for food and comes back with burgers—one for him and one for me.
“I won’t eat,” I say. “Not until Ann eats.”
He brings his food back to the seats and does more things on his phone.
After another hour, Nurse Chris comes up and tells me I can visit Ann.
I follow him in, impatient for him to walk faster, to show me where she is. It’s not so easy to smell her with all of the smells coming off every surface and object, but as we near, I catch her scent. He tells me Ann’s okay, and that she needs rest now. I can barely hear it.
I burst in and fly to her side. They’ve put a tube into her arm. Her eyes are halfway open. She looks fragile. I take her hand.
“Kiro,” she mouths.
I put my finger to her lips. “They say you’ll be okay. You need rest.”
“You have to get out of here,” she whispers. “Everyone in the world is after you.”
I put my finger to her lips again, like a kiss. “I gave a fake name.”
“Kiro.” Her eyes drift closed. “That won’t work for long.”
I talk to her a little bit, even as she sleeps. I tell her things about the waiting room, the helicopter ride. I tell her how Murray has spoken to her family.
And then the door bangs open, and Garrick stalks in holding his phone, looking upset. He’s followed by Nurse Chris.
“You need to leave, sir,” Chris says. Chris is big and burly enough to throw Garrick out.
“Just a minute,” Garrick says. The look he fixes me with says everything. Trouble.
I stand.
He gets right into my face and speaks in low tones. “I’m still on a loop from when I was embedded. Lazarus and some others got out. He’s injured—I don’t know how bad. But they’re in the air.”
“They got away?”
“They scared the wolves off. Smoke bomb, I think. I don’t know all their lingo, but it sounds like a smoke bomb. They’re in the air.”
Smoke. Fire. That would throw the animals into chaos.
Nurse Chris informs us that he’s getting security.
“So the wolves got out?”
“It sounds like they did, which is kind of a miracle, considering they attacked armed men.”
“Men with guns freeze in the face of animal rage,” I say vacantly. “When they know the animal will stop at nothing.”
“Lazarus knows you’re here. He’s coming, or at least he’s sending people. Count on it. He wants you dead.”
“Go back,” Ann grates out. “Get out while you still can, Kiro.”
I turn to her. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not. It’s you he wants. Go back to your pack.”
I take her hand. Does she understand nothing? “You’re my pack,” I tell her.
She smiles faintly through the pain.
I squeeze her hand. I want to throw myself over her and never leave.
“You’re my pack,” she says.
Garrick swears in the background. Men fill the room.
“We’re leaving, we’re leaving,” Garrick says.
“I’m not leaving,” I say.
“You prefer to be arrested?” one of the guards says. “Noncompliance with staff wishes—”
“He’s coming.” Garrick takes my arm, gives me a significant look. “Ann needs you to leave.”
I don’t want to leave Ann, but I can’t allow myself to be arrested—she’ll be in even more danger then. What I really want to do is destroy this room. That helps nobody.
I allow Garrick to drag me down the hall, away from Ann.
“Lazarus will never stop going after her,” I say. “He knows now that she’s my weak link.”
“Why the fuck does he want to kill you so bad?” Garrick asks once we’re dumped back in the waiting area. “What did you do?”
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 27
