by Alaska Jones
My upper arm hurts like hell from the two holes in it, and panic grips me for a second when I see how much blood I’m losing, only to realize that the brachial artery is about an inch lower than the wound.
Using my right hand, I rip off my sleeve and tie the cloth tightly just below the shoulder. It should hold for a few minutes while I get back to the car. Of course, I’ll be a moving target the moment I get up, but anything’s better than getting shot like a dog here on the hill. If I move fast enough and use the trees for cover, I might just make it to the grove.
Quickly, I dissemble the rifle, stuff it in the case, and roll downhill to another cluster of shrubs and a big tree. The sniper takes another shot, only to hit a branch over my head when I jump to my feet and dash to the tree below, keeping my head behind the raised rifle case.
My arm grows more numb by the second, but I ignore it, focusing on my feet and the treacherous stones underneath. There’s only ten more yards to the grove, but it’s open ground, so I drop on my knees and hide in the shrubs to catch my breath.
If I run, he won’t be able to get a good shot from the distance. So I plant my feet on the ground and push, sprinting across the clearing as the adrenaline pumps in my veins. A bizarre thought that I would’ve been dead already if that was me on that hill flashes through my head just as another bullet hits my thigh, leaving a burning scratch.
I don’t stop, unlocking the car on the run and hopping into the driver’s seat. From what I can guess, the shooter’s position won’t allow him a clean shot at me now, but I decide not to rely on guesses and floor the gas pedal. The Jeep roars to life and spits pebbles, speeding up like it’s highway, not rugged terrain.
I swear out loud when a few bullets hit the car. Whoever it is, he’s not too bright, thinking he can get me with a lucky shot like that. I don’t slow down as I reach the main road, thinking that they could be following me, if it’s Marquez’s men. Otherwise…
Dwight was the only one who knew I was headed here, and even so, I didn’t tell him the exact location. Who knows how many of Hunt’s friends have a villa out of town? I come up with an idea, but wait until I’m sure nobody’s following me before I stop at a gas station.
By that time, my whole arm is sticky with blood, and there’s a bloody smudge on my jeans that’s still getting bigger. I curse and take the first aid kit from underneath the passenger seat, looking for a tourniquet. It’ll be another couple hours before I make it home, and I can’t leave it on that long.
The moment I take off the rugged piece of cloth, blood starts seeping from the wound again. I wince and use the tourniquet to stop the bleeding, then make an awkward bandage, thick enough to hold for a while. While I wait for the painkillers to work, I take out my cell phone and call Dwight, making sure my voice is steady.
“How’s it going, Cage?” he greets me.
“Fine. Just wanted to let you know that the plan didn’t work out, so I’ll need a couple more days.”
There’s a pause, and he gives a curious grunt. “What do you mean? Did something happen?”
“No, nothing happened. He wasn’t there, so I’m in Chinatown, checking another lead. Just wanted to update you on the situation, like you asked.”
Another pause. “Oh… I see. Okay. You sure you’re okay? You sound a little… out of breath.”
“I’m just in a hurry to get somewhere before nightfall. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I disconnect, breathing out in relief as the pain starts to subside. If Dwight has anything to do with what happened, this should throw him off my trail. He will think I left the villa a couple hours ago. For now, it’s all I can do, give them something to think about while I rest and come up with a new plan.
I drink some water and start the car, picking a different route that won’t get me stuck in traffic or pulled over by the police for going over the speed limit. If I’m going to pass out from blood loss, I’d rather do it in my bed than somewhere on the road.
Setting an alarm on my phone an hour from now so I don’t forget about the tourniquet, I drive the Jeep back to the highway. I just hope I’m still conscious in an hour. Always the optimist, the voice in my head mocks me. If anything, at least this mess took my mind off of Jenna. With how ugly things just got, sending her away was probably the best decision I made so far.
The alarm rouses me from my dangerously drowsy state an hour later, and I pull over to take off the tourniquet before I end up losing an arm because of some shitty sniper who couldn’t just finish me there. The bandage isn’t even soaked yet, which puts me in a better mood, and I speed up the road again thinking that I might just make it. I try turning up the radio, but it gives me a headache, so I end up trying to focus on the news and some random facts just to keep myself from falling asleep. It seems like an eternity, but I see the familiar five-story apartment building eventually and speed up, nearly running someone over as I turn off the street.
I round the corner and hit the breaks in surprise. I thought I’d used up all the swearwords I knew while running down that hill through the bullets, but apparently, there’s a whole new level untouched in my head. My eyes glued to the porch, I press down on the gas pedal and drive the rest of the way before rolling down the window.
“The hell you still doing here?” I bark at Jenna. “I told you to leave hours ago!”
She purses her lips, snaps closed the book she’s reading, and puts it on the bench she’s sitting on.
“I did. I even got into a cab and rode a couple blocks in it. Then I realized that I don’t have to do what you say. I’m staying, and unless you want a big scene that the whole neighborhood will hear, you’ll be happy to take me back. Understood?” she emphasizes the word, mimicking the way I said it just before we left.
I blow out a loud sigh, throwing my head back on the headrest. “Screw you,” I mutter, struggling to unbuckle the seatbelt with numb fingers. “Screw all of you and the mess you got me into. Do whatever you want, I don’t care.” Shoving the rifle case in the back so I don’t have to carry it upstairs, I stumble out of the car, only to grab the door when vertigo hits me like a tornado.
“Oh my God!” I hear Jenna’s panicked voice as I struggle to stand upright, with my knees buckling under me and my vision blurry. I should’ve just slept it off in the car. Now, I’ve got to climb six flights of stairs somehow. “What happened??”
I ignore her anxious bustling as I brush past her to the porch, worried that someone might see me like this. She catches the keys when I toss them to her and locks the car, hurrying after me with her big bag and a stream of questions.
“Who did this? Was it Anthony? Should I call an ambulance?”
I don’t even have the energy to roll my eyes, focused solely on putting one foot in front of the other, stair after stair. “Shut up and help me get to the apartment,” I growl out, grabbing the railing when my vision darkens for a moment.
I feel her duck under my right arm and drape it around her shoulders, and despite her small size, it brings enormous relief. I climb all but one flight of stairs and hear her call my name when I slide down the wall to sit on a stair, losing my grasp on reality for a minute.
“Cage! Cage, I’m calling an ambulance! I don’t know what to do with this!” her high-pitched voice breaks through the white noise in my head, and I grab her arm before she can call anyone.
“I lost some blood, that’s all. You can’t call anyone, promise me.” I stare into her eyes, struggling to keep mine open. “Jenna, promise,” I press when she doesn’t say anything, too scared and confused to think straight.
“Okay, okay, I won’t! But what should I do?”
“Nothing. Stay in the bedroom. Hopefully, I’ll sleep it off by the time they come.” Gathering what’s left of my strength, I pull myself up and stumble to the apartment door.
“They? Who? What are you talking about?” she keeps talking as she hurries to unlock the door before me. The moment she does it, I grab the keys from her and pull her insid
e, slamming the door shut.
“If I’m not awake and anyone comes knocking, call your friends.” I lock the grid when she walks into the bedroom to drop off the bag.
“Hey! What are you doing?? You need my help, Cage!” she yells, banging her fists on the iron bars.
“No, I don’t. I need you to be safe.” I slip down to the floor by the doorway. It’s cold and hard, but right now, it feels so comfortable, I could just curl up and sleep. “I just need some rest…” I mumble, not hearing what she’s saying to me, although sure that she’s saying something.
Closing my eyes is all it takes. The world goes dark, and I tumble down into a bottomless black pit.
Chapter 20
Jenna
“Cage, wake up!” I yell, reaching out through the grid to shake him, only to jerk my hand back when his injured arm is all I can reach. “Please, Cage, you gotta let me out!”
I turn back to the room to look for something long that I could use to get the keys from him, when I remember about the bathroom key that I still have somewhere in my bag.
Smacking myself on the head, I dash to the bag, unzip it, and shake everything out on the floor. The air is stale, and I’m sweating in my hoodie, frantic with fear. I take it off, keeping on my jeans and sports top, and pick up my purse where I had hidden the key. The bathroom door crashes into the wall when I finally break free and fall to my knees beside Cage.
“Wake up, you hear me??” He’s sitting with his back to the wall, his legs stretched out before him. The bandage on his left arm is soaked with blood. I hover helplessly for a few seconds, then wrap my hand around his neck and smack his cheek. It takes a few tries, but he pulls away with a quiet groan eventually. “You have to get to the bed, Cage! I can’t move you on my own, come on!”
“’Kay,” he breathes out, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
“Oh my God, you scared me so much!” my exclamation borders on crying. I grab the keys, but with my eyes glued to his face, it’s hard to find the right one and unlock the grid.
“Don’t you worry, Jessica. I’m alright…”
Who’s Jessica? I stare at him, wondering if he’s hallucinating, but he gives me a disturbingly genuine smirk and attempts to get up. I push the grid open and hurry to help him up.
“Here, lean on me, I don’t want you to fall.” I grab his right arm when he waves me off, only to sway and nearly hit his head on the doorjamb. “You won’t break me, Cage! Stop being so goddamn stubborn!” I lose my breath and ability to speak altogether when he leans into me, and it suddenly feels like trying to move a mountain. Somehow, it’s only now that I realize what a beast he is, and just how much he was holding back every time we “fought”.
He collapses on the bed the moment we reach it, and I have to shake him awake again. “Cage, where’s all your medicine? What do I need?”
He moans and tries to rub a hand over his face, only to drop it on his chest because he’s too weak. “Silver case. Five-five-one. Tight bandage will do.”
“Are you cold?” I try to recall everything I know about blood loss as I take off his boots and lift his feet up onto the bed.
“A little…” he murmurs and passes out again. Panic surges in my blood, but I tell myself that it’s got to take more than a little blood loss to kill someone this large, and run to the living room.
The fat silver case is hidden behind the sofa, and the combination he told me works like a charm, revealing a confusing collection of bottles, tubes, syringes, and devices I don’t even know the name of. I take it with me to the bedroom and lay it open next to Cage. Then, I wrap a tourniquet around his upper arm, just over the bandage, and leave it for a minute to slow down the blood loss while I cover him with a blanket and run to the bathroom to wash my hands.
Being able to do something keeps me focused, although the deathlike pallor of his face scares the shit out of me. I push the emotions to the back of my head and focus on the task at hand.
Thanks to his maniacal meticulousness, the case has got everything I need. I use a pair of dangerously sharp scissors to cut through his bandage and take it off, and a couple of cotton pads and some saline solution to cleanse the two holes in his bicep. The blood has almost stopped, but I don’t waste any time, finding a curved needle and thread and bracing myself for sewing up the wounds. Based on how badly he has bled out already, a simple bandage won’t do much good. I might as well use his unconscious state and do it all properly.
Remembering how Dad used to stitch me up when I was a kid, I sterilize my hands and get to work, keeping a cotton pad close to wipe at the blood. Time seems to stretch out as I work, but in the end, it only takes me about ten minutes to do both wounds. I cleanse them one more time, put some antiseptic on the stitches, and wrap his arm in gauze, trying to keep it tight. Then I take off the tourniquet and move to the small wound in his leg.
Seeing how his jeans are already ruined, I end up cutting out a big piece of fabric so I can properly cleanse the skin. The blood has stopped by now, and it only takes a couple of stitches to close the wound. I cover it with a simple patch and breathe out, satisfied with the results.
Unfortunately, having finished all the work also means there’s nothing to occupy my mind but worries about whether all this is enough. I take a few minutes to wash up and change into comfy shorts and a T-shirt, drink some water, and bring a wet cloth for Cage. Remembering his words about someone coming after us, I lock the apartment door and get my cell phone out of the hoodie, putting it on the nightstand.
Cage doesn’t wake up when I dab at his forehead with a warm cloth, and I decide I might as well get him out of the bloodied T-shirt. I end up cutting it into pieces because it’s the only way I can take it off him without being able to actually move him, while he sleeps through all of it. Too exhausted to do anything else, I sit by his side and watch the rise and fall of his chest, wondering what happened at the villa. I reach out to brush his hair back from his face, only to stir up more worries when I feel how cold his forehead is.
“Hey…” I take another attempt at waking him up, rubbing at his stubbly cheek, then slide my fingers down his neck and to his chest, so that maybe he feels it and comes around. “Please, wake up. I need to ask you something.”
He mumbles something unintelligible, clearly asleep, and drapes his right arm around me. With nothing else to do, I slip under the blanket and wrap my arm around his big chest, as if there’s enough of me to keep all of him warm. Somewhere between these worries and the feeling that there’s something I forgot to do, I doze off, lulled by the sound of his measured breaths.
I wake up to a dark room a few hours later, feeling Cage’s warm hand slip under my shirt and wrap around my waist. His chest rises and falls under me with a deep breath, and I reach my hand up to his forehead, only to bolt upright the next second.
“Jesus, you’re hot!” I press my other palm to his face to double-check it.
“Smoking hot,” he murmurs with a sly smile, making me purse my lips in annoyance.
“No, you’re burning up! Your wounds must have got infected. Do you have anything for that?”
“Antibiotics. Yellow label,” he says, as calm as ever, and I almost smack myself on the head again.
“I knew I forgot something!” Dashing to the silver case, I find a white bottle with a yellow label and take out one pill. Cage swallows it when I slip it in his mouth and give him some water from a bottle.
“Two,” he says, so I give him another pill and put the bottle away.
“Are you sure it’ll help? What if you get worse?”
“I’m a big fucker. I’ll survive.”
I sigh. “Anything else?”
He opens one eye lazily and looks at me, and I feel like I’m missing some private joke, because that sly smile is still there. Pushing the blanket down to his hips, he turns his gaze to the door and frowns.
“Did you lock the door?”
“Yes.”
“The balcon
y?”
I shake my head a no and go to the living room, where I close the windows and lock the balcony door. On my way back, I realize that the bathroom door is still wide open, so I close that one too and lock it without a sound. Cage looks up at me when I return to the bedroom.
“Good girl… Now lock the grid from the inside.”
“What?” I pause. “Why?”
“Just do it.”
I shrug my shoulders and snap the padlock closed before coming back to the bed. “Do you need anything?”
“C’mere,” he beckons me with his finger, and I sit on the edge of the bed. Instantly, his big arm wraps around me and pulls me in, folding me into his body as he rolls onto his side.
I tense in confusion, but stay where I am. “Are you alright?”
“Fantastic,” he whispers into my hair sarcastically and covers me with the blanket.
It’s then that I feel it in full for the first time, so overwhelming and dazzling, yet crystal clear. Pressed against him like this, with his arms wrapped around me and his breath hot on my neck, I realize how long it’s been since I was so truly, genuinely happy. All because we’re together again, and no matter what happens, we have this moment. After being confused for so long, I finally hear it loud and clear in my heart:
I’m falling in love with Cage.
Chapter 21
Cage
I lie unmoving on my back, lost in thought. With my head still dizzy after everything that’s happened, there’s not much for me to do at five in the morning. The room is shrouded in a gray morning light, and with my thoughts moving sluggishly after too much sleep, I feel like I’m stuck in a paused scene from a blurry old movie.
Jenna’s breaths warm my chest, giving the morning a peculiar rhythm and filling me with peace that I haven’t felt in a long time.
I tangle my fingers in her hair, wishing it were Todos Santos and not LA behind the window, wishing impossible things, like taking her with me to sunny beaches and long nights by the fire and the small, warm house that would suit her so perfectly. She would’ve fit right in with the community that Al and his friends have built there, with her smart mouth and fiery spirit. Except, she would never be safe with me. I can blend in as just another mechanic at Al’s auto repair, but with a girl like that? All eyes would be on her. Unwelcome, greedy little eyes.
