Gage
“I’ve got eyes on Julia and Dimitri,” I announced through my headset.
“I’ve got Boris,” Chase replied. “Juarez, I need backup. This guy’s huge! What are they feeding these Russians?”
“It’s like they’re breeding them with bears over there,” Ricky agreed. “No sign of Ivan or Aleskei yet. Anyone else?”
The line was silent for a minute.
“Okay, has anyone seen Jorell?” I asked.
“Oh no, are we losing more men?” Juarez chimed in.
“I don’t know, but I think we’re the only ones on the boat now,” Ricky answered.
“Alright, guys, keep your eyes out for the others. You knuckleheads get Boris and incapacitate him somehow. I’m going after Dimitri and Julia.”
I started towards where Dimitri stood with Julia tied to a small wooden chair. At least she was still alive, I thought. At least things hadn’t gone too far south just yet. There was still a possibility that this wouldn’t turn out the way things had with Lisa. I just had to get a good shot.
I raised my gun and aimed at Dimitri.
“Gage, what are you doing?” a voice asked across the headsets. In all actuality, it was probably Ricky, but it sounded just like Angelo. He even asked it the way Angelo would have.
I didn’t say anything in response. I would just have to blame Dimitri’s death on a stray bullet from one of Ivan’s other men.
A soldier stood up right in the way. Apparently, he’d been securing the chair with weights. He was directly in my line of sight and getting ready to salute Dimitri.
I got him right in the head, and he crumbled to the ground right where he had just been standing. The look of shock on Julia’s face was almost amusing in how over-emphasized and cartoonish it was on her face.
Dimitri just looked right at me, as if to dare me to do it again, but someone else caught my eye, running out onto the deck.
“Guys, I’ve got a visual on Ivan,” I announced over the headset.
There he was. He wasn’t anything like the men who worked for him, which probably explained why they all looked like they were cloned between bodybuilders and actual bears. Ivan was slight by comparison, but his features were still stony and hard. He looked like bullets would have bounced off of him, but I wasn’t going to shoot him. I wanted to knock his punk ass out.
I charged after him. I was twice as wide as he was, and maybe a few inches taller. His silver hair was slicked straight back, with his dark roots peeking out here and there, giving his hair a very severe look. It was a dye-job. His hair was as black as the night itself. So were his eyes. His soul probably was, too.
I knew to be cautious when approaching him, though. The only way I’d be able to take him in hand-to-hand combat would be to get behind him and sucker punch him one good time. I’d seen him drop a man with one punch to his chest. It killed the guy right on the spot. Apparently, his fists were made of stone.
I grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, shoving a fist underneath his chin. His feet left the deck for a brief moment before his unconscious body hit the ground. I knocked his ass right out.
“I got him, guys. I’ve got Ivan. Someone tell me we have Boris and Aleskei.”
“We’ve got Boris,” Chase said, speaking for himself and Juarez.
“Still no sign of Aleskei. You know, he may have been at the garage,” Ricky said.
“Good point. Or he might have something to do with why we haven’t seen any of our other guys in a while,” I added. “Get Boris tied up and keep looking.”
I grabbed Ivan by the back of his flashy dress shirt and started dragging him to the steps leading down into the yacht. I saw the other three joining me.
Dimitri clapped loudly for us and turned to say something to Julia.
“He says you’ve done a good job taking down the men on the boat, but you won’t get him,” she called out to us.
I looked at the others and shook my head. I had no idea what he could have meant by that.
“Tell him we have him outnumbered, four to one. Tell him to give up and save himself the trouble,” I yelled back to where they were.
They spoke again, and he laughed.
“This feels like it’s about to go south in a big way. Get ready,” I said over my headset, mostly to myself.
“We’ve got your back, Gage,” Ricky said.
“Yeah, whatever happens,” Chase added.
“We’ll take care of it,” Juarez finished.
“He says you’re going to have to make a choice,” Julia said, and I could hear the fear gripping her voice.
Suddenly, I was back on the street with the guys standing behind me and the street gang in front of us, a gun to Lisa’s head. She looked at me, terrified.
“Do it,” she’d said. “Do what you need to do, baby.”
I had kissed her. Our lips met for the last time, and it felt like every time we’d ever kissed, all rolled into one. Our romantic life together flashed between us. The kiss seemed to have lasted forever, but I knew there was no way it could have.
When I pulled away, tears streamed down her face. I rubbed one away with my thumb and smiled at her. “Don’t worry,” I told her, “I’m going to get us out of this.”
Then, the gunshots. Two guns fired at the same time. Lisa’s head slumped, and the gang’s leader slumped with her. And I ran as other gunshots erupted. They unloaded on us as we tried to escape, without Lisa. I had failed her.
I stared at Julia and Dimitri. Dimitri didn’t even have a gun pulled. He stood with a hand on the back of her chair. He smiled at us, so sure of himself, confident that we wouldn’t do anything to him. I could see the tears streaming down Julia’s face.
“Tell him he’s the last one of Ivan’s men alive,” I called to her. “He should give up now before he has to lose his life, too.” I was bluffing. Ivan and Boris were just out, knocked unconscious so we could tie them up nice and neat for the Feds.
She turned to him and started to talk, but he shook his head and said something in a very angry tone that sounded like a growling bear.
We stood where we were, frozen with anticipation. We knew any wrong move could end it all right then and there. Instead, we waited to see what Dimitri was going to do.
The sun was coming up. Daylight was beginning to brighten the scene before us.
“We probably need to wrap this up, Gage,” Ricky urged. “Didn’t the mayor say he had men coming to clean the boat out of the weapons and drugs below deck?”
“He did.” My body ached as my desire to shoot Dimitri now clashed with my sense of self-preservation. I didn’t want to miss and risk making things worse for Julia. I didn’t want to hit him and have to explain to the mayor why I had chosen to take him out the way I did.
“Well, we need to get out of here before we lose the cover of night.”
“You’re right.”
Julia looked up and repeated what Dimitri said to her. “He says your time is up, Gage, and he’s going to make you choose now.”
What happened next was the stuff of nightmares. Dimitri kicked Julia’s chair, which had weights tied to the bottoms of the legs. He shoved it overboard with his foot, sending her crashing into the water below with no way of getting out.
Time stopped.
I looked at Dimitri. I looked at the falling chair as it collided with the water. I took aim, focusing on the bear’s shoulder. I lowered my aim to his leg. I wanted to ground him, not just aggravate him.
He laughed and started to say something in Russian, and I squeezed the trigger, letting off a round right into his thick, muscular leg. When the bullet hit, it jerked him to the side, and he lost his balance, crashing down on top of the yacht. I was surprised the whole boat didn’t quake when his body collided with it.
“Guys, shoot them in the legs or wherever you need to. We don’t need them being able to get around. I’m going after Julia.”
The clock resumed.
I ran for the side of the boat and dove in right where her chair had splashed down into the water. She was sinking fast with those weights on her chair. I pushed myself down to catch up with her, taking out my knife as I swam. I hurried to cut the ropes around her back, her arms, and her ankles, all while both of us were being pulled down by her heavy chair.
Once I had her free, I draped her body over my shoulder and swam up. I could already tell she was in trouble. She was unconscious over my shoulder. There was no telling how much water she’d taken in after sinking below the surface. When she hit, the force must have knocked her out in the chair.
We broke the surface, and I adjusted her to keep her head above the water behind me. I swam back to the boat with her over me. I had to work doubly fast. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the mayor’s men showed up to claim what was theirs on the boat. We had to get what was ours off.
Ricky threw a rope ladder over the side, and I grabbed ahold of it, pulling myself and Julia’s body up from the water. The whole time, my mind was racing. What was I going to do if I lost her? What was I going to do if I didn’t lose her?
This couldn’t be the end for us. It just couldn’t. There was no fucking way I was going to let those bastards take her from me.
“Is everyone else down below deck?” I asked Ricky as we stretched Julia out on the ground.
“Yeah, they’re tying the guys up and locking them in a room they found,” he told me.
“Good. Look, I’ve got her. You make sure any bodies that are just lying around are dumped off in the water, okay?”
“Got it.”
After he got up and ran off, I started CPR on Julia.
“And you aren’t going anywhere, Julia,” I told her as I pumped her chest and pushed air into her lungs.
“You’re staying right here with me, whether you like it or not,” I kept talking to her as I kept working on her.
I lost count of how many times I performed the same routine—pumping her chest and trying to breathe for her—but I wasn’t going to stop until she responded, dammit!
“Don’t do this to me,” I told her. “You don’t get to check out just because I lied to you and tried to protect you from all of this. Damn it, Julia. You weren’t supposed to get this damn involved. You were just supposed to ask that asshole a few questions and report back to me his answers.”
Pump. Breathe.
“Now, wake up, damn you. Wake up.”
Pump. Breathe.
She coughed, and water came up from her lungs. I cupped behind her head and helped her sit up. She coughed up more water and wiped at her mouth as she tried to breathe through it.
“It’s okay. Take your time,” I soothed her. “Take your time.”
She coughed a couple more times and took a good, deep breath. She grabbed my dive suit and pulled me close, kissing me.
Our lips met and mouths parted to let our tongues dance and tangle between us. She continued pulling me to her while she kissed me deeper and harder.
She pushed me away. “Thank you for not giving up on me,” she said. “I love you, Gage Noll.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held her against me. “I love you, too, Julia Danvers. God, I love you.” We held each other like that for a few minutes, until we were interrupted by the voices of my guys.
“We’ve got Boris, Ivan, and Dimitri tied up downstairs. We still haven’t seen Jorell, Aleskei, or any of the other guys who came on board with us,” Ricky said behind me.
I turned around to face him. “I don’t know what to tell you about them, Ricky, but it’s time to go. We’ve got to figure out how to get Julia back to our boats.”
“No, I don’t think we do,” Juarez said, stepping forward and pointing at a small boat approaching.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ricky said.
“Just play it smooth,” I told him.
“Gage Noll?” the man on the front of the boat called as he stepped onto Ivan’s yacht. He wore a nice black suit with a red tie. He wasn’t law enforcement, like I figured we’d been expecting. He apparently represented a different interest on the part of the mayor.
Cautiously, I stepped forward. “Yes, sir,” I addressed him, still uncertain of exactly who he was or what entity he represented.
He flashed a friendly smile and gripped my hand for a firm shake. “The mayor said you would probably need a lift back to shore and told us we’d probably find you here.”
I glanced at the rest of my guys, tired and dumbfounded from the night we’d just had on the boat.
“We’d appreciate it, yes. Is there anything you need us to do before we board your boat?” I asked.
“No, it’s fine. We’ll handle everything we need to do here.” I could see several men in suits with blue gloves on their hands hustling back and forth with sealed packages from the yacht. “Let me show you to your quarters.”
I grabbed Julia and carried her in my arms across to the stranger’s boat. I could hear Jorell and Angelo telling me to be cautious in the back of my mind, but I ignored their advice and accepted the stranger’s help without question. The mayor had been good to us so far, and if this man said he was sent by the mayor, then he was alright with me already.
He showed us to a small room with a couple of bunk beds and couches. I set Julia down on one of the beds. The guys took to one of the couches, and I knelt down beside Julia, keeping her company and comforting her while we waited to figure out what our next move was going to be.
After a few minutes, our stranger came back. “Gage, we’re about to take you back to shore. Do you have a way to get back to Kings HQ or do you need us to escort you? I’ll be more than happy to provide you with a way back so that you can focus on taking care of your people.”
I looked at the guys. This stranger’s generosity almost seemed too good to be true, but I accepted. We needed all the friends we could get right now.