ZANE

 

While I'm not going to lie and say that I don't enjoy being on top of Anna, I also realize that there are more important tasks at hand. I dig my gun out from behind my back and jump to my feet. Squaring my shoulders with my feet, I aim the gun carefully at the tires of the black SUV, squint one eye and pull the trigger.

Once.

Twice.

And then finally, I shoot the back tire out, sending the car barreling into the brick exterior of a coffee shop. The car tries to turn but it is unable to maneuver in the narrow space of the alley. I step carefully ahead and begin unloading a torrent of bullets into the vehicle. From behind me and out of the corner of my eye, I can see Anna rising to her feet and shielding herself behind me as I continue to fire the bullets.

I stop firing for a few moments as I close in on the vehicle with the intention of dragging whomever the hell it is out of it. My intention is to hold them at gunpoint until they give me the answers that I want and need, which is why in the hell are they after me?

About ten yards away from the vehicle, I hear a suspicious whirring noise. I twist on my feet, and jump at Anna to shield her with my body. I land with force against her just as the SUV explodes in a cloud of fiery metal. The force of the explosion sends us both flying to the cracked ground and behind a dumpster where our bodies are able to take refuge from the fireball of flames shooting toward us.

Once again and for the countless time today, I find myself hovering just above her body. I'm strong and heavy above her fragile frame.

She heaves beneath me trying to catch her breath while my eyes gaze down at her, boring into those beautiful dark eyes. Since the day I first met her, I've had my eyes on her and I've never been able to take them off. I see no point in doing so now, either. A thick cloud of hot smoke billows above us. One hand drops to her head to comb through her hair as I work to calm her down, but I know she's stronger than she looks.

She's calmer than I ever would have expected. My lips hitch into a warm smile because I can't help but to smile at her bravery. I can't help but to smile when this beautiful woman is lying right beneath me. No matter the circumstances of how we got to this point, I’m not about to complain.

"I kind of want to kiss you," I whisper to her softly. I mean to continue my statement, but she interrupts me.

"Wha…?” she stammers. “What?”

"I kind of want to kiss you, but it would be wildly inappropriate."

"Oh." She swallows nervously, her eyes glimmer with something that I can't quite pinpoint, but I don't have time to make sense of why.

I feel the barrel of a gun pressing against the back of my head. And then a man's voice says, "How freaking cute?”

I grit my teeth as a strong hand grabs at the top collar of my shirt and pulls me to my feet. My eyes bore down helplessly at Anna beneath me while I try to figure out a way out of this latest development. That's what I get, I suppose, for contemplating kissing the girl beneath me when I should have been worried about getting that girl to safety. Women have always been my biggest weakness and they'll probably be a deciding factor in the reason I finally die.

I can hear the gun cocking behind me, so I raise my hands slowly to show them that I am no longer a threat. From beneath me, Anna swallows a harsh breath and slides backwards a few feet until she climbs to stand. Two men approach from behind her, walking down the alley with automatic weapons holstered in their hands.

I try to find the words to say, try to find the solution to getting both Anna and myself out of the situation alive. I take comfort in the fact that the man hasn't pulled the trigger yet. If he really wanted to kill me, he probably would have done that already. So I resolve myself to bargain with him.

With my hands still held above my head, I begin to converse with the man behind me. “Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?"

The man just laughs like a maniac. That's never a good response coming from someone with a gun affixed to the back of your head.

“If you wanted to kill me, you would have already done it," I say to him and swallow nervously. "So why don't you tell me what you're after and maybe we can reach an agreement?”

“Do you think you are in any position to try and negotiate with me?" His voice is a lot lower than I had imagined it would be based on the pitch of his evil laugh. "Unfortunately for you and your girlfriend here, there will be no negotiating. We have strict orders to take you back to our boss and that's exactly what we’re going to do.”

"Yeah?" I wet my lips. "And who is that, exactly?"

He laughs again, and once again the tone of his laugh is about two octaves higher than the pitch of his voice. It's rather disorienting if I'm being honest. "Oh, I think you’ll have a pretty good idea once we arrive to our destination."

My eyes shift to the men approaching Anna from behind. I know there's nothing I can do to stop them from apprehending her. I'm powerless in the matter right now so I pass her a knowing glance and hope that she understands that for now we have no choice but to be taken. And I thought this was just something that happened in the movies.

One of the two man grab her from behind, pulling her hands behind her back and wrapping a rope around her wrists. She is silent as they do so displaying her inner strength. It's in her eyes that I can see the faintest hint of being afraid. She manages to hide it well, which might work out in her favor. I hope so anyways.

I take particular notice of the way tears threaten to emerge from the corner of her eyes. And I want to tell her to hold them at bay, to not let these men see her weakness. If they know that she’s afraid, they will use it to their advantage. They already have the upper hand on us so it's important to retain any leverage that we have left.

From behind me, though I don't turn to look because there is a gun pointed at my head, I hear another car approaching. The tires crunch against rocks and the cracked asphalt, and then it comes to a stop just behind me. I hear the front door open and then I hear boots slamming against the ground. My eyes trail back to meet Anna’s eyes, and that tear that was threatening to emerge from her eye earlier is now streaming down her cheek.

In the moment, I feel worthless. It's the absolute worst damn feeling in the world to stand face to face with a woman I was supposed to protect. I wonder if she's thinking the same thing. I wonder if she is thinking that I've let her down somehow. Right now, it doesn't matter, I suppose.

Another man approaches from behind me and then grabs roughly onto Anna's arm to begin dragging her towards the car. Her lips quiver as another tear streams down her beautiful, pale face. I watch the man drag her towards the car from the corner of my eye.

I hear the man behind me snicker and I want nothing more than to punch him in the face. Better yet, I want to send a bullet through his brain. I want the last thing that he ever sees to be me standing before him with a gun pointed straight at his temple. I want him to feel exactly what Anna is feeling now. I want him to suffer. I want him to feel his heart about to beat through his chest as he ponders whether or not he is about to die.

And that's just what I'm going to do to him. When the time comes, I'm going to kill him. That's not a threat. It's a promise.

“What's your name?” I grind out between gritted teeth, not exactly expecting a response. And if he does respond, I’m not expecting for him to tell me the truth. "I just want to know the name of the man that I'm going to kill when I get the chance."

Some might say it's wise to not threaten the man who has the power to take your life. But again, I know something important, which is that if he wanted me dead, I’d be dead already.

“The name’s Mitch,” he says with a dry chuckle and forces me to turn around so that I can stare into his eyes. “But you're never going to see me again because I'm nothing more than a bounty hunter.”

He's an older man, with dark brown hair, and for some reason he's wearing a suit. What is it with criminals thinking that they are high class or some shit like that? Please. This man is nothing more than a hired guy without a backbone of his own. He is absolute scum. The only thing I hate more than criminals is the lapdogs that work for them.

I force a smile, one that ripples across the corner of my mouth. "And who are you working for?"

He throws his smile right back into my face, exposing a pair of off-white and jagged teeth. He finds the situation hilarious for some reason, but I'm guessing that's just part of his character deficiency. "You are going to find out soon enough.”

I feel a man's hands grabbing for my arms and just when I'm about to jump away, I remembered that I'm supposed to be playing along. I wouldn't normally but normally I wouldn't have the responsibility of watching after Anna. It's a stark realization that I could handle this situation if she wasn't here, but she is here and that changes everything.

It changes what I can do. It changes what I want to do. When there is another life that must be accounted for, the calculation always changes. I have been in many of these situations before and I have always come out alive, even when I didn't think I was going to survive. The Seth Grimm disaster is the nearest I have ever come to death. And that is saying something because I have served four tours of duty overseas. The man pushes me towards the black SUV. It looks identical to the black SUV that is wrecked just down the way. It has the same dark-tinted windows as the SUV that first began following us. Whoever this man is working for, he or she is well equipped and obviously financially wealthy.

I don't fight them as they push me into the back of the SUV. When they shut the door behind me, somehow it sounds like they latch it from the outside, I take a long glance over to Anna who is bound in the seat next to me. My instinct tells me to reach out to her, to caress her and to comfort her, to let her know that everything is going to be all right even if I don't know if it's going to be all right.

The front door opens and Mitch climbs inside the driver’s seat. The passenger side door opens and one of the men, one of his cronies, climbs into the passenger seat and closes the door behind him.

I calculate there is at least one more man standing outside of the car. That calculation doesn’t include the many different men who have been following us through the streets, through narrow alleyways, and into the bookstore. By my count, there are at least fifteen men. I am not equipped at this time to handle all of them. Especially not with my hands tied behind my back.

I straighten myself out on the seats and try to edge myself slightly closer to Anna. I manage to slide my hands sideways so that I'm able to lay a soft touch upon her side.

She passes me a sorrowful glance and then her eyes stay glued on me. Though the backseat of the SUV is dark, I can still see the glistening in her eyes. She wants to cry and I want to tell her that's okay but I don't say anything.

The back hatch of the SUV rises and I get a good look in the rearview mirror as the third man, all dressed in black, climbs into the back of the SUV. In his hand is a gun. Mitch’s eyes pass over the same rearview mirror. He looks me square in the eyes and then he averts his attention to make eye contact with the man now sitting behind us with the gun.

With a severe face, Mitch says to the man behind us, "If he so much as moves, kill him."

Anna swallows a nervous gulp and closes her eyes gently. But I can't stop looking at her. I can't stop thinking about how this is all my fault.

Even if it kills me, I'm going to make sure she survives this day.