by Anne Leigh
One, two, three –
Another shot rang through the air.
Not the sounds of the paintball pellets which were obnoxious, multiplying by the second as Athena’s friends screamed in play.
No, this one was worse.
The sound cutting through the wind was coming off an air rifle, not designed to kill yet it could inflict damage.
Soft as a whisper.
Loud as the banging of the drums in my heart.
Ten steps.
Nine, eight, seven.
Six.
I saw her sitting, on the dusty ground, her legs close to her chest, crouched low, waiting to be seen.
Expecting the other team to show up any minute now.
I couldn’t tell if she was hit.
Or if she was, it hadn’t registered yet.
The nerve impulse can travel at a sluggish rate, and for men like me, we can dull it down and delay the feed for even longer.
Her hands lifted to her side, and as I broke the last two steps to be at her side, I glimpsed at a color that wasn’t anywhere on the field.
Her goggles prevented me from seeing her full expression, but I heard her tiny gasp when she realized what had just happened.
Years ago, I’d stopped hearing the buzzing in my ears when I hit a target or when my team was on the hunt for perps.
I’d become numb to the thunder of missiles.
The barrage of ammos.
The roar of enemy planes.
It’s what the job does to you.
In order to fight back, you dehumanize the fighters on the other side of the fence.
But her…
The gasp, the fear slowly creeping into those damned beautiful eyes, the vulnerability lying in those quivering lips…
I heard it.
I saw it.
I felt it when I applied my hands to put pressure to where she was hit.
The first shot was nowhere near her.
But the second shot served its purpose.
The rage burning inside of me was masked by concern, “You’re going to be okay.”
It wasn’t a statement.
It was a promise.
Felipe David’s hoodlums had marred her beautiful skin, grazed her purity, that even in my dreams, I’d tried to protect.
The genteel nod of her head as I slowly assessed the damage below her shoulder created a momentary distraction from the snowballing truth.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said again, as if saying it a dozen more times would make it happen.
There was no question that Liam had neutralized the threat. He was a soldier after all. One of the best.
Which was why I rest assured that I could move Athena to the car, without alarming the rest of her friends.
The last thing I’d want was for her to be at the center of the turmoil that her father had unknowingly embroiled her in.
“Get me away from here.” Her soft voice wasn’t pleading.
Rather she was adamant that we go. “I don’t want them to be a part of this, whatever this is.”
Her friends, the people she valued, were going to be involved one way or the other.
It was inevitable.
Blowback.
She stood up on her own two feet, but it was all I would allow her to do.
I lifted her off of her feet, cradled her legs between my right arm and held the top part of her body with my left.
She tucked her head between my neck and shoulder and I felt that buzzing again.
Between my ears.
The sound reaching the hole deep within my chest.
I’d stopped feeling pain.
It was easy when you’d detached, desensitized yourself from it.
But as I watched the cloth that I’d torn from the bottom of my shirt, a tourniquet to keep her flesh wound from bleeding, slowly become tinged with red, my neurons started firing. Instantaneously at a million miles a second.
I sent a quick text to Liam to let him know that we were leaving.
He’d know what to tell the others.
“Thank you.” Her voice so small, her message sending shockwaves to my system.
I’d situated her in the front seat and before I started the car to drive, I let my right hand drift to her face.
I ignored my battle-ready signals today.
She could have been hurt. Much worse than what she had been.
I’d missed obvious signals because I’d allowed my emotions to cloud my objectives.
It won’t happen again.
I was here to protect her.
My hand disengaged from her face and I put the car in reverse.
“I’m not scared, Webb.” The calmness in her voice stilled me. “I’m not scared of them. I know I’m safe with you.”
I took a breath, “I failed today.”
“How?” Her eyes challenged me, “Because I got grazed by a pellet?”
“Because you got hit.”
“Am I alive?”
“Not the point,” I replied, barely controlling the edge in my voice.
“Am I breathing?” She refused to cower.
“You got hit.” I stated, my hands firmly locked on the steering wheel.
“But I’m okay.” The resolve in her voice was unflinching. “I’m here talking to you, slightly scratched, but I’m okay. It’s going to take a lot for me to be scared. Now I know that my dad has some bad people as enemies, I know that I have to be extra careful. If their goal was to scare me, then they’ve failed.”
“I fucking failed you, Athena.” The pot was now boiling over, the slow simmer now at a record-level heat. “I’m supposed to protect you. I’m supposed to keep you from getting harmed. To make sure that your goddamned skin is intact and not a hair in your head is out of place. That’s my job.”
The quiet whirring of the car’s engine failed to break the silence that ensued.
“Look at me, Webb.”
I said a lot but for her, it wasn’t enough.
I turned my face towards her, noting the way her eyes gleamed in dissent, a contrast to the softness that was abundant in her face. Her hair was slightly disheveled from when I’d held her in my hands.
“You think I’m this paper thin doll.”
I opened my mouth to object, but she lifted her pointer finger up in the air –
“I’m not. I’ve had tubes coming out of every orifice of my body to keep me alive. You know it’s true – I know you’ve seen my files.”
I had. Protocol.
“I had ten surgeries before I could even write in cursive. I’ve been the subject of years and years of medical research. My blood test results have been highlighted in medical journals. I’ve seen the walls of hospital rooms for more years than you had been in the warzone… I don’t know how long you were in the war… What I want to say and get through to you is that I’m not scared.”
She reached for my right hand and strategically placed it on her left wrist, where I could feel her pulse.
“My dad always told me, you could tell when a person’s scared with how fast their heart beats. Feel my heart, Webb.”
With my fingers, I could feel it – the rhythm of her heart.
Not erratic.
Not fast.
Strong.
Steady.
“I won’t fail you again,” I said, my fingers still feeling the flow of blood in her veins, the life beating inside her.
“You haven’t and you won’t. Failure is when I’m no longer here.” Her words were far from the voice of youth. They were the sounds of a woman who had been through a lifetime of pain yet managed to survive and actually live.
There were moments, shards of time that defined a person.
I allowed myself to gaze into her face, one more time, while I felt the warmth of her hands, the satisfying assurance that she was indeed here, breathing, living, sitting with me in the parking lot with the view of abandoned bunkers.
She wasn’t defined by moments.
Athena’s whole being was delineated by a lifetime of experiences.
She might be young, but her age belied the true steel that lined her spine.
At close view, you looked at her and you’d think she’d break, that the fragility in her eyes spread through her every pore.
But you couldn’t have been more wrong.
She was a survivor.
A woman who had defied the odds.
A woman who had kept all the good and banished all the pain from ruling her entirety.
She was beautiful.
Riveting.
And so alive.
Traffic on the 101 was extra shitty today. It was always shitty but today, the extra pile-on of accidents just made me curse this polluted city even more.
“ETA?” Liam asked, he was connected via Bluetooth.
“Twenty.” I eyed the five-car pileup on the shoulder and slow moving vehicles who most likely were nosey spectators and said, “Make that thirty.”
Hadn’t these L.A. drivers seen enough accidents? Why does everyone need to take pictures or gawk at the cars who were safely pulled to the side?
From the looks of it, the cars were messed up, but the drivers were talking to each other.
Just another day on the freeways of Los Angeles.
The cops weren’t on the scene yet which meant that in another five minutes, the 5 miles per hour speed that I was going would be reduced to zero.
“I’m getting out of here,” I turned my signal on and maneuvered my car to the right. “I’ll take Temple all the way down.”
“‘Kay,” Liam replied as he ended the call.
I exited on Alvarado and took a left to Temple. It was only 1439, but traffic was already a monster because of the fresh accident.
I didn’t want to leave Athena, but Liam had texted asking if I wanted to chat with the shooter.
Our buddy in the FBI, Salvatore, gave us three hours with Abel Maganos in a special room with no recording devices.
I’d only met Salvatore once.
He was a 10-year FBI veteran who served time in the Army before working for the bureaucracy. He was one of our local contacts who had been briefed on Dr. Bridges’ current situation. A boisterous half-Italian, half-Black guy who pulled no punches and whose loyalty was to keep Dr. Bridges upright and away from danger. I instantly knew that I had an ally in him.
It seemed that a lot of people owed Dr. Bridges their lives.
And a lot of them were willing to protect him and his legacy.
His legacy being the science that he masters and his precious daughter that he’d protect with his life.
A daughter who I just put in harm’s way because I took my eyes off of the mission for a second and hell broke loose.
Eleven green lights later, I squeezed my car beside two Ford F-150s. They looked at home in front of the strip club that boasted Lunch Hour Delights and Dinner Discounts.
I tapped on the new plates that Liam had on his white truck. The tag boasted EXMIL. The guy was just fucking obvious sometimes.
His plates had special security sensors. As soon as my hand got near it, his watch alerted him that I was here.
It was customized by Tony.
Brilliant invention.
I entered the strip club, the bouncer giving me a nod and “Hey.”
“Downstairs.” I motioned with my phone in my hand.
“Got it,” as he pointed to the right where the EXIT STAIRS sign was lit up.
I took in the sounds of Hotel California in the background and the stage where two barely clothed women were dancing on the poles.
Ten guys were nursing their drinks and some were eating their lunches.
Did they tell their significant others where they went to lunch?
Probably not.
It would be easy to say, “I ate at a fast food place,” rather than, “I had lunch today while watching strippers on stage.”
The latter would require a lot of explaining and a whole lotta groveling.
Jogging down the stairs, I saw a small room at the end of the hallway.
I knocked twice and tapped twice.
Liam’s bulky frame opened the door as his eyes flitted to the side, “You got thirty minutes with him before Salvatore arrives with his crew.”
My eyebrows shot up, “Thirty?”
“Affirmative.”
I hadn’t realized that two and a half hours had passed. After dropping off Athena at my place, ensuring that she was safe in the house, activating the security alarms, and checking the feeds on my phone then driving… Fucking traffic.
I would have been here twenty minutes earlier if it hadn’t been for the congested roads.
But now wasn’t the time to bitch about it.
I had important matters to take care of.
Matters that made my hands twitch in anticipation.
The nerves that Athena had soothed with her words and touch were now buzzing with energy.
Liam must have sensed the change in me.
He warned, “We gotta turn him to Salvatore intact, buddy.”
I gave him a small nod as I eyed the disheveled man on the other side of the room. His hands were tied behind his back, but his black eyes projected pure menace.
The fluorescent lights in the room weren’t the best, but I recognized him from the pictures that Tony sent.
Abel Maganos.
Born in Mexico to a mother who sold her body to the streets, he was left for dead at the age of seven. Picked up by the Sotelo gang and was a top assassin of the cartel by the time he was sixteen.
He moved to Colombia when he was seventeen and the half shaved head that he was sporting now was born when he pledged allegiance to El Padre.
Somewhere on his tattoo-infested body, he would have a replica of the man who owned Colombia branded on his skin.
“What do you have?” My question to Liam.
“So far, he’s said nada. When I asked him why he was at the paintball field today, he just sneered and said the same reason you’re there. He spoke a lot of shit in Spanish.”
Liam understood some Spanish, but not as much as me.
I had the gift of being able to understand and speak multiple languages. Maybe because I grew up with a mother who spoke three fluently. Spanish wasn’t my forte, but I got on fine with it.
“Quien te envio?”
The man whose head hung low sat straighter on the chair he was bound to.
He let out a sinister laugh. Insulting. Meant to degrade a lesser man.
Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people have died from by man’s hands. A lot of them were innocent most likely. Such is the war on drugs. Civilians become the unintended casualties.
“Por que estas aqui?”
The snarly laugh came out of his mouth again and as I took my steps closer to him, I readied my fists that were about to meet this fucker’s face.
“Intact Webb,” Liam reminded me.
My right fist flew and the sound of his head flinging to the side was loud in the room.
“Joder!”
Abel cussed as blood trickled down the side of his mouth. He’d need dental implants by the time I was done with him.
“Por que estas aqui,” I repeated. It wasn’t a question.
Abel spat out blood and sneered.
My left fist flew and his head slammed to the right.
“Que Cabron! Hijo de puta!”
A tooth flew when he spat out more blood.
I already knew before entering this building that he wasn’t going to tell me shit. It would take hours and hours of interrogation and torture before a name came out of his mouth. He wouldn’t sell out his lord because he’d be dead before he could inhale his first breath of freedom outside the prison walls. Or even inside the jail cell he could die in an unfortunate incident or mishap if El Padre ever heard that his name came out of Abel’s mouth.
And drug lords have a way of knowing when someone ratted them out.
Liam also knew t
hat we weren’t getting any information from the sorry excuse of a human being. He was holding Abel in this room for me.
Turning the chair around, I sat a few inches from where Abel was and asked in Spanish, “Why did you shoot her?”
Athena was being watched.
We knew that.
Abel and his friends did the watching.
But now she was being shot at.
What changed?
Abel’s bloodied face raged, his eyes turned to me violently. “Vete a la mierda.”
He’d been in Colombia for a decade or more now, but even when he cursed, he still paid homage to his motherland.
“She’s not your target. Why shoot at her?”
If the son of the devil could smile, it would be Abel.
His eyes burned red and his mouth fumed with blood, the raw hatred in his voice coated the room.
“Ella es una puta. La hija de una puta.”
My back stiffened, the tightness in my neck muscles strained, aching to be released. My foot flew in the air, knocking back his chair.
Not even in this guy’s nightmare would I ever allow Athena to be called a whore.
I stood up.
“They’re on their way.” I heard Liam’s voice on the south end of the room.
I eyed the BSA Scorpion Air Rifle flush against the dingy yellow wall and grabbed it. I hadn’t held one of this size since before I enlisted. It felt light, smooth, and slick.
The silencer was in place, improving the balance of the rifle, making the pellet undetectable before hitting the projectile.
I put my finger on the muzzle.
I’d held many rifles, guns, pistols. None of them were fired to inflict pain on the innocent.
Athena’s shoulder was bruised because of what was fired from this.
The man who took the shot was groaning on the dirty, brown/yellowish carpet. He wasn’t the one who ordered her to be hurt.
But he was the one who took the shot.
He hurt her.
I placed the rifle on my left arm, my firing arm.
“Buddy…” Liam’s voice was closer. I gauged his distance to be five feet away.
I took another step, situating the barrel of the rifle between Abel’s eyes. Eyes that have now turned three degrees scared.
It didn’t matter if you were the son of Satan or the apostle of Hades.
When your eyes were looking at the end of a barrel, you knew you didn’t have a lot of choices, the power was taken from you.
