12
Life’s a bitch and then you die. Sort of.
Killian walked up the stairwell alongside Ramon Gutierrez, trying to push out all thoughts of Nick and the look in his eyes when he had left the house that morning.
“You’re distracted,” Gutierrez said.
“And you’re nervous.”
“Of course I’m nervous. My best man is standing next to me and his mind is a million miles away.”
Gutierrez’s “best man” was also his most expensive contractor. Betrayal in the ranks often accompanied a growing empire, and the dark entrepreneur had encountered enough during his rise to glory to reward loyalty—one of the reasons he always sought Killian for private commissions. He was a modern-day businessman succeeding in a questionable world. During an older time, he would have been labeled a gangster.
The tall man stopped on the landing of one floor and turned to face him. It still surprised Killian how young Gutierrez was. Easily fifteen years his junior, the man had amassed enough wealth and control to run a “business” that rivaled many other organizational leaders twice his age.
“Mr. Gutierrez—”
“I’ve told you a million times. Call me Ramon.”
“No.”
“Fine. I don’t care what you call me, but I need you focused.”
Gutierrez wasn’t a hotheaded leader. It was the one trait that rattled most of the veterans in the underworld. He was rational. Stoic and respectful. Until he wasn’t and all hell broke loose. He didn’t need men at his side with guns for protection. Gutierrez had pulled the trigger enough times to command respect and fear from both his friends and enemies. The only time Killian had witnessed a crack in Gutierrez’s facade had been with the events relating to his sister’s abduction and his hunt for the man who had taken her. During that time, Killian had witnessed tiny glimmers of rage as Gutierrez had sought vengeance, but the man had never lost control. Nor had he ever fidgeted.
Killian cocked his head. “There’s something going on you’re not telling me.”
Gutierrez flattened his hand down the front of his suit jacket and faced forward again, resuming his climb up the stairwell. “Petrov’s in town. You’re from Chicago, so I’m sure you know the bastard.”
Killian’s jaw muscles twitched. He had casually touched base with those in his circles earlier for updates, hoping to gather some useful intel relating to Petrov and Nick, but everything had come up empty. “Why’s he here?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t like it.”
“This meeting has nothing to do with Petrov. Why are you worried about him?”
Gutierrez’s attention snapped back to him. “Because I don’t want that son of a bitch in my territory. I don’t know why he’s here. I just want him to go back to his little cave and mind his own fucking business.”
Killian stared at this new, rattled version of the man he had known for years. Nothing ever fazed him. And yet, the thought of Petrov in his backyard had him cursing up a storm and shattering his control.
It was no wonder Nick chose to run and hide.
They reached the designated floor for the meeting.
“I need you focused,” Gutierrez said. “Marcus is a savage, and I don’t trust him to be professional.”
Killian arched his eyebrow. This man…who had personally killed others, point blank, called another man a savage? True, the man they were going to meet was a monster of a different breed. A different shade of darkness in the criminal underworld.
Marcus was a rising star in the business, but still a step behind the breadth of Gutierrez’s reach. Killian had heard enough to know the man was a greedy son of a bitch who strong-armed his contacts, threatening whoever stood in his path, stomping on plenty of toes and backs on the climb up.
Ramon Gutierrez may be lots of things, but ignorant wasn’t one of them. He suspected Marcus’s request to strike up a deal and partner in a business transaction was actually a trap to eliminate the competition. Yet, he needed to meet with Marcus in order to uncover his motives.
Killian placed his hand on his gun as he pushed open the door, revealing the empty space of the abandoned floor of the office building. He quickly assessed the area for obvious threats. His eyes swept the concrete floor, stripped of parts of the linoleum flooring that had once graced this office space. The sheetrock walls had been ripped out in some locations, exposing the fiberglass insulation behind it.
Two concrete support beams were the only thing standing in the center of the space. The dividing wall partitions had been removed, but some of the metal framing and wiring had been left behind, dangling from the drop ceiling above. Overhead, some of the tiles were missing or shifted from their setting. Windows lined each side. Surprisingly, they appeared to be the one thing requiring the least amount of repair in the space. But the molding water spots staining the wall directly below them told a different tale.
The hairs at the back of Killian’s neck prickled in warning as they stepped farther into the room.
Suddenly, the neutral territory didn’t seem balanced.
“Something’s off,” Killian whispered.
Gutierrez halted his step, obviously hearing the warning in Killian’s tone.
“Come,” Killian whispered, casually taking a step to the side and drawing Gutierrez near, guiding him away from the corner of the room to avoid being blocked in should things go awry. Gutierrez’s men were strategically placed around the building’s perimeter and on different floors. He certainly had not become a powerful leader by allowing himself to be fooled into a trap.
Their attention snapped to the door on the opposite side when Marcus entered the room. He walked a few paces along the border of the space with a briefcase in one hand and his most trusted man at his side—only one additional man to the meeting, just as they had agreed. They remained in place at the opposite end of the room, refusing to take another step. “I have your deposit payment for the delivery.” He held out the briefcase, waiting for Gutierrez to step forward.
“Open it,” Gutierrez said, refusing to move.
Marcus chuckled. He stepped forward, briefly hesitated, and then sidestepped along the perimeter of the room. The hesitation was negligible but enough to alert every muscle in Killian’s body and ready him for an attack.
Men like these never hesitated, even for a fraction of a second.
Killian’s mind sped through different scenarios and escape routes, trying to anticipate and decipher the point of entry of his opponent’s attack. He focused on Marcus and each measured movement while continuing to scan the room with his peripheral vision.
The concrete floor could be rigged to blow but that would potentially compromise Marcus and his man. The windows on each side of the room were a possibility, but Marcus’s men couldn’t rappel into the room from the rooftop without Gutierrez’s men spotting them and eliminating the threat.
Killian mentally checked off every man’s pre-determined tactical placement. They had all entry and exit points covered. His gaze slid upward to the drop ceiling just as a minuscule sprinkle of dust fell from a tile, barely catching the hint of moonlight seeping into the dark space.
In an instant, Killian drew his gun with one hand and grabbed Gutierrez by the back of the neck with the other, shoving the man to the ground as he fired shots into the tile. Grunts sounded seconds before the dead weight caved the ceiling, sending two bodies crashing to the floor of the room.
A hail of gunshots sounded around them, from the stairwell and outside the window. Adrenaline flooded Killian’s system as he fired more shots, swapping the empty magazine with another without missing a beat while Marcus’s men charged in through the opposite door. One by one, each man fell with a kill shot to the head.
Gutierrez’s men barreled in through the stairwell door and surrounded their boss in a protective circle, waiting for more men to appear at any moment.
Marcus crouched on the ground across from them with his hand wrapped around his midsection, rage twisting his features. The man was on a timetable of death with an unrecoverable bullet wound based on the amount of blood spilling from the edge of his mouth.
After a few moments of silence, Gutierrez broke his protective ring of guards and walked to the other end of the room.
Marcus looked up to Gutierrez as he approached, spitting a mouthful of blood to his side before giving him a bloody grin. The man obviously knew his time was limited, but that didn’t stop him from exercising a last-minute power play.
“Did you think you could win?” Gutierrez asked, his tone controlled, emotionless, just as it usually was when he conducted business.
A deep, sinister chuckle vibrated Marcus’s body, a hint of a wince barely making an appearance. He looked over to Killian, pinning him with the same evil, empty glare he had seen many times, seconds before eliminating a monster. “I did win.”
Gutierrez looked over his shoulder, frowning as he followed Marcus’s line of sight and met Killian’s stare. He turned back toward the man. “And yet, I’m the one still standing.”
“You don’t trust easily.” Marcus spat another mouthful of blood on the ground at his side. “And I just took out your most trusted man.” He craned his neck, pinning another stare at Killian. His lips curled into a blood-soaked sneer. “You’re a dead man.”
“No.” Gutierrez reached into his suit jacket and drew his weapon, pressing the barrel of his gun to the man’s head. “You are.” The sound echoed in the empty space as Marcus’s lifeless body fell back against the wall.
For men like Gutierrez, betrayal was the greatest enemy.
The thought of how a man like Petrov would handle betrayal, suddenly far too personal, sent a rippling chill through Killian’s body.
Gutierrez walked back toward them, frowning when he glanced at Killian’s upper arm. “You got hit.”
Killian glanced at his arm. “It’s a graze. I’ll be fine.” It was going to burn like hell later and the pain would kick in once the adrenaline rush wore off, but he had survived much worse in the last two decades.
Gutierrez straightened his suit and brushed the dust off his shoulder. “I’ll call my crew to come in and take care of this.”
Killian nodded once in acknowledgment. There was no way he was going to hit Dex up on short notice to come clean up this mess. He looked over to Gutierrez’s men. “Secure the area and get him out of here.”
A few of Gutierrez’s men immediately pushed through the stairwell door, surveying a safe escape route. The remaining men nodded, parting a path for Gutierrez, ensuring he remained within a safe circle of men.
Killian was getting too old for this shit. He wanted some peace while he could still take a breath and enjoy things. The only reason he had extended his time in the business these last few months was plain and simple—he had been biding his time, waiting for one very specific man who had enough power over him to make him pause at the fork in the road.
They walked down the stairwell, flanked on both sides by Gutierrez’s guard. After confirming the area was secure, they each walked to their cars and went their separate ways.
He glanced in his rearview mirror, adjusting his route as needed to ensure he wasn’t followed. He raced along the empty highway, taking full advantage of the vacant streets. He wasn’t sure if Nick would be there when he arrived, but he couldn’t get there fast enough to find out.
His grip on the steering wheel tightened, the blank look in Nick’s eyes still haunted him. It was as if he had intentionally shut down, readying himself to walk away.
Killian depressed the accelerator a bit more, taking the next exit, thankful he was almost home.
Home.
He scoffed at himself and the random thought. He’d never really called that small house in the middle of twenty acres “home.” But there was one person who finally made it feel that way. He pictured Nick with that teasing glint in his eye and hint of a smile on his face, leaning against the doorway. He fit in so perfectly. Both at home and at his side, filling the voids Killian hadn’t realized existed.
He opened the center console and pulled out a small towel, pressing it to the wound on his arm, surprised a whisper of pain hadn’t kicked in yet. He glanced at the display on his dash, frowning at the time. The adrenaline rush usually started to taper off after ten minutes, there was no way he was still riding an endorphin high almost twenty minutes later.
He drove along the dark night, the last bit of faint lights nearing the end of his route warped in and out. Maybe he was more tired than he had realized. He hadn’t gotten much sleep and the odd mix of emotions warring in his mind all day had been both a distraction and exhausting as hell. He focused on the road, the gravel crunching beneath his wheels on the last few blocks to his house.
He tugged at his suit jacket, feeling an odd chill ripple through his body.
Something seemed…off.
You’re a dead man.
A thought slammed his mind.
Fucking Marcus.
He withdrew his phone and dialed Dex’s number.
“I thought you were playing bodyguard tonight. Did you need me?” Dex said as his greeting.
Killian screwed his eyes shut then forced them opened, hoping to sharpen his vision as he rounded his driveway to the garage.
“Question. Marcus Maldonado and his crew.”
“What about them?”
Killian’s breathing became labored. “Do they lace their bullets?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I need an answer.” Killian gripped the steering wheel with one hand, trying to focus on both parking the car in his garage and the phone conversation as a sudden chill racked his body.
“Is that who you were meeting? Marcus uses hollow points and fills the tip with a paralytic. He’s a twisted bastard. It’s his fail-safe for making sure his targets don’t survive the shot. Did you get hit?”
“Grazed.”
He switched off the engine and opened the driver side door, nearly stumbling as he stepped out of the car. He couldn’t feel his foot and he hadn’t noticed how limply his grazed arm now hung at his side.
“Killian, I’m about an hour out.” He didn’t need to be at full capacity to pick up on the worry in Dex’s tone. That let him know he didn’t have much time. “Are you on your way home?”
“Just got here.”
Relief echoed in the sigh that came through the line. “I’m sure Doc will know what to do.”
Each breath came with growing effort. “I don’t…think…he’s here.”
“What?”
Killian stumbled into the house, barely able to coordinate opening the door with his limp arm. His other arm fell to his side, his fingers seized in a grip still holding the phone in his hand. He heard Dex’s voice, yelling his name. Had he not hung up the line?
He could hardly focus on staying upright while dragging his leg into the house. And he certainly couldn’t deal with Dex right now or the fact that he had walked into his quiet, dark house. The only sound the steady buzz of his house alarm waiting to be disarmed. The sudden, stabbing grief of losing Nick was another slam to his body.
He stumbled forward, running into the couch, sending the small lamp on the side table crashing to the floor.
“Shit! What happened?”
Nick?
Killian spun around as the room suddenly flooded with lights above. He couldn’t work his arms to shield his eyes, screwing them shut instead, fighting the sting of the brightness. A few quick beeps of the alarm code being pressed into the keypad silenced the house alarm and ceased the drilling hum in his head. He was off-kilter and stumbled backward over the couch’s back, landing awkwardly on the cushions, unable to control his limbs.
A rapid succession of shivers racked his body, the cold chilling him to his core.
Nick ran around to the side of the couch to kneel at his side. “Ian, what’s happening?” He faintly felt warm hands against his cold face.
Nick stayed.
Great. Now he was hallucinating. He should just count his blessings and consider this a great way to go.
Nick quickly triaged every inch of Killian’s body. He shifted him on the couch, repositioning his legs and adjusting his head so he didn’t look like a discarded rag doll.
“You look like you were poisoned. Give me some information I can use so I know how to fix it.”
“Hard…to…breathe.”
Through his blurred and semi-double vision, he could see the concern in those jade eyes. Nick’s eyebrows twitched, and he quickly leaned over him, digging into Killian’s side.
Great. Nick’s body is pressed against me and I can’t feel shit. This isn’t heaven. It’s fucking hell.
Nick pried the phone from Killian’s grip. “Who is this?”
It was all surreal. Killian heard Dex’s desperate voice yelling through the line and saw Nick race out of the living room, but he couldn’t feel anything or move a single muscle. His voice stopped working, and he could no longer feel the air traveling through his nose or mouth. His desperation grew with the rising panic of this odd out-of-body experience, witnessing his demise but unable to do a damn thing to defend himself.
Nick reappeared, sliding on the tile floor at his side like a baseball player stealing a base run. He swept his arm across the coffee table, sending everything crashing to the floor. He dumped his armful of supplies on the table and returned his attention to Killian.
“You’re going to be fine,” Nick said calmly, in total contradiction to the hard yank of the box in his hands to get to the manual CPR pump inside. He slid a strap over Killian’s head and placed a mask over his nose and mouth. Nick squeezed the bag attached to the mask in timed intervals, speaking in a controlled monotone voice. “Dex says it’s a paralytic. I’m going to assume it’s something like curare. I’ve seen it used in darts, so I’m guessing the bullet that grazed your arm might have done this.”
Killian’s head was turned toward Nick, listening to him as he spoke in a soothing tone. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. Hell, he even tried to blink and that failed.
Nick timed each squeeze of the bag, delivering bursts of oxygen through his body. Nick reached behind himself for the blanket on the table, flicking it toward Killian to cover his body, pulling the flannel material and tucking it around him as he continued to pump the bag.
“Your pupils are really dilated. I imagine the light is hurting your eyes right now.”
He tried to protest when Nick reached out and slid his eyes shut. But his voice was as useless as his body.
“I know you’ve got to be frustrated, but this will eventually wear off. And I’m going to be right here by your side.”
After two decades of escaping death, it was ironic as hell Killian would meet his maker now that he’d scaled things back and planned his leave from this way of life.
Fate had a twisted sense a humor.
“You’re going to be fine. I refuse to let you kiss me the way you did this morning then leave me. So just relax and let this wear off so you can kiss me again. I know you can’t breathe right now, but I’m right here with you. Breathing for you.”
Nick’s tone and the comfort of his presence started working its magic, lulling Killian into sleep like a soothing ballad. There was something about Nick that called to him and beckoned what little remained of his soul to break through the darkness…and live. He focused on the whoosh of air delivered into his body and the sound of Nick’s voice, reveling in the comfort of both and the knowledge that he was still here with him.
I’m right here with you.
An early death had always been a likely outcome in his line of work. A fate he had accepted many years ago. But now, this man—his confidence, his resilience, his strength, the feel of his lips, and the sound of his voice—had awakened a desire to survive and fight the fate this life had in store for him.
“You’re going to be fine,” Nick whispered, his voice a balm to Killian’s soul.
Maybe his life wasn’t etched in stone after all. Maybe he did have a chance at taking that other path at the fork in the road. Killian let his mind wander as he had many times since meeting Nick. Maybe fate would grant him a chance at the life he never thought he could have.
A second chance, but this time, he would actually live life.
Delirium was obviously a side effect. At this point, he didn’t care. He let his mind dream of beautiful sunrises, echoing laughter, and the warmth of Nick’s body at his side. Because there was nothing he wanted more than to be alive and have a chance to see where that path would take them.