Close Protection (20 page)

Ramon had never wanted to fight Zeus hand to hand. Ramon had studied the art at length, and was as good as almost anybody, but there was one truism that mattered more than anything. Size matters. And against Papa Buldova, Ramon was sorely mismatched. It didn’t help that he was stuck in this damn room. There wasn’t any room to move. If he had more space, he might be able to tire the old man out and get in position to attack his joints or wear him down with body blows to his vulnerable back and sides. He’d started the fight with this tactic, but it quickly became obvious that he was never going to wear Zeus down before he delivered a blow that would end the fight.

Things had felt pretty good until Ramon got himself cornered and Zeus slammed him into the wall. A desperate headbutt had bought him some time, but it worsened the blurring of his vision and the spinning of his head. He couldn’t even get to his feet now, and Zeus, while thoroughly battered, was still ready to fight.

Ramon backed up as much as he could, trying to get away, but it was no use. Zeus walked towards him, well aware that the fight was his. Ramon had survived this long because Zeus had mistakenly believed that his hirelings could be trusted to kill him. He would not make the same mistake this time.

He wondered what Zeus would tattoo to his arm. Surely he’d earned a place amongst the defeated enemies of the kraken. Maybe he’d even gone so far as to warrant a slash or a spear on its giant scarred hide. Zeus stood over him now, looking down at him with pity and disgust.  He kicked Ramon once in the side and Ramon’s body responded by curling into a ball, trying to protect itself. Ramon took a kick to his covered face and tasted blood. He was bracing for another blow when a deafening blast rattled the tiny metal room. He opened his eyes and saw splatters of blood become pools, and past them, Lena. Ramon’s gun was in her hands, and the barrel was smoking.

              Lena had thought about killing her step-father before. Plenty of times, actually. Not just for her own good, but because in the time that she’d lived with him, he’d killed more people that she could remember. He was a bad person, and the world would be better off without him.

              But each time Lena had one of these thoughts, she let it go. She wasn’t a killer. She
couldn’t
kill Zeus. How many people before her had tried? It was true, she had better opportunities, but she never once
seriously
considered murdering him.

              When she saw him slam Ramon against the wall. When she saw the gun on the ground by the bed. When she saw death in Papa Buldova’s eyes, she did not think. She reached down and picked the gun up, looked down the ironsights, and waited until she had a good shot.

              Since she was only five feet away, and Zeus was a big man, she did not have to wait long. She pulled the trigger. There was a flash of light, and then blood. Zeus did not scream or shout. He turned around, surprised, reaching back to try and feel the hole that Lena had put in him.

              He staggered, collapsed, and laid still.

              Ramon got up, shaking.

“Lena…”

“He… I… We need to get out of here.”

Ramon took the gun from Lena’s hands. She was surprised how steady they were. Ramon took her by the hand and started towards the door.

“Wait,” she said, and lit the bedding on fire. “Ok, let’s go.”

They turned out of the presidential suite and ran up a flight of stairs, across the deck with people running and screaming every which way as the fire alarms began to blare. Lena looked at the watch on Ramon’s wrist. 2:24. Smoke began to pour out of one of the ventilation ducts and people were rushing the lifeboats.

Ramon lead her down below deck, fighting a stream of scared people going the other way. They went into the cargo bay and found it empty. Ramon put the gun back in the wet bag and pulled out the grappling hook. They ran out to the cargo deck and Ramon tied the line off on the rail.

“You go first, I’ll help you down. Don’t fall, this high up and you could break something.”

“Thanks…” Lena said. She climbed over the railing and began to work her way down the rope, one knot at a time. She was surprised how cool the water was when she felt it around her ankles and dropped in.

Ramon came in after her, and gestured towards the bow of the boat. Swimming in a wedding dress was hard. Ramon didn’t look like he was having a good time of it either.

She saw a strange machine bobbing in the water. There was a lifeboat not thirty feet away from them. Someone saw them and started shouting, but nobody else turned. Ramon showed her where to grab the machine and then started it up. They jerked forward through the water and it rush up and ran into Lena’s mouth and nose. Ramon held on with one hand and used the other to put the respirator over her face.

They surged away from the boat skimming over the seas. The moved fast, and the waves crashed into them, buffeting Lena to the point where she was quickly becoming numb. Her dress dragged and pulled and threatened to rip off.

There was a flash of light behind them. Lena looked back of Ramon’s shoulder and saw a fireball blossoming into the sky and a huge pillar of black smoke rising up from it. She wondered how many people were still on the boat when it blew. She hoped that Zeus still was.

Almost two hours after they set out, Lena saw a sleek motorboat bobbing on the horizon ahead of them. Ramon climbed aboard and helped pull Lena up. Her dress was so heavy with water that she nearly pulled him back in. It tried to suck her back into the ocean and keep her, but Ramon managed to get her into the boat without incident.

The fabric of the dress clung to her. She was so cold. Ramon was shaking too. He went to the other end of the boat and started digging through a storage area at the other end of the boat. He stripped out of his wet clothes and tossed them onto the deck.

“Take that off, it’s going to keep sapping your body heat until you’re both dry.”

“I need help. It took an extra pair of hands to get this thing on when it wasn’t soaking wet.”

Ramon helped Lena undo clasps and zippers and eased the dress off of her with tender care. She turned around and wrapped her arms around Ramon’s bare chest. He was so warm.

“I’ve got a towel and an emergency blanket, we can dry off and get warm again,” he said.

Lena traced her finger along the chiseled contours of his chest and kissed him.

“I was thinking we warm up a different way.”

Ramon was surprised, to say the least when Lena kissed him and pressed her body against his. After everything they’d both been through, he didn’t think she’d have
this
on her mind. But she wasn’t the only one.

He held her hips, slipping his fingers around her back. She kissed him with tender tenacity, as though she were starving with a hunger that only passion could sate. His hands slipped down and he pulled her up so that she was a foot off the ground, her eyes even with his. She cried out in surprise, laughed, and started kissing him again with her legs wrapped tightly around his waist.

The day had take a lot out of Ramon, and he could hardly hold himself up anymore. Thinking with their continued comfort and safety in mind, he took a step back and sat down on one of the benches that ran along the side of the boat. Lena released him and put one of her knees on either side of his thick legs and raised herself up, an arm over each of his shoulders, and kept kissing him.

Ramon was so grateful to be here, to be anywhere with her. In the Buldova torture chamber, he’d given up on Lena. Given up on himself. The hope hurt too much. But some of it must have survived because here they both were. Alive and with each other.

He knew that he could never let go of her again.

Lena could feel Ramon hot and hard between her legs. She’d been thinking about taking off her dress before Ramon told he to, and not because she was concerned about body heat.

Ever since she saw Ramon walk through the door, she’d had one thought at the front of her mind. The fight, the fire, and their flight had only enhanced that feeling.

She was going to take care of it now. Her hand slipped from Ramon’s shoulder down between his legs and she grabbed his cock and lowered herself onto it. The both moaned with mutual satisfaction and let the sea move them. Lena caressed Ramon’s body and tried to soothe his aches and bruises. He held her and for the first time since he’d left her bed so many nights ago, she felt safe.

Ramon lost himself in that wonderful moment. A gentle spray of seafoam sprang up from the side of the boat and settled on his shoulders as the waves rocked them. Lena, so sweet and so sexy, hardly touching him but each brush of her body causing him to cry out in pleasure. The sun and the salt air and the feeling that for once in his life, he was right where he needed to be.

They stayed with each other long after they were spent, neither of them wishing to leave the other’s arms.

Only the drifting drone of distant sirens stirred them from their lovers embrace. Behind them, a huge black cloud filled the sky, and Ramon got the sense that it was time to leave. He started the boat and set course for Miami.

             
Lena watched Ramon’s hands as he eased the boat through the crowded marina waters. There was a man in an ugly Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts standing on the dock that Ramon pulled up to. He had prosthetic legs from the knees down. They were sleek and shiny and made him look slightly more than human.  Their intimidating presence was offset by the man’s gentle smile and mop of sun-bleached hair.

              “You must be Gabe,” she said.

              “And you must be the reason that my buddy keeps getting in trouble. It’ s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

He shook her hand and helped her out of the boat. Ramon climbed out behind her and gave the man a hug, clapped him three times on the back, and made a rude comment about his parentage.

“Did you bring everything back to me?”

“Just about,” Ramon said. “And a little something extra.”

He jumped back into the boat and reached into the cargo hold and pulled out a red suitcase.

“What’s inside?” Gabe asked.

“A little present for your troubles.”

Ramon tossed the suitcase onto the dock. Gabe unzipped it, opened it a crack and peeked inside.

“Holy shit. No man, I can’t take this, and if you’re going to, you should get far away from Miami.”

“That was always part of the plan,” he said. “At least, I think.” He turned to Lena.

“What do you think?” he asked Lena.

“There aren’t enough red suitcases full of money in the world to keep me here,” she said.

Gabe handed Ramon something and climbed into the boat. “I left instructions to my apartment in the dash. I’m meet you back there when I get this all taken care of.”

Lena followed Ramon to the marina parking lot. She recognized one of Zeus’s cars. It was long and black and looked more like a military jet than a car.

They got in and headed off to Gabe’s house, in no particular hurry.

             
Ramon and Lena stayed with Gabe for two weeks. They didn’t know what to do or where to go. For Ramon, it was just another point in his life where he was adrift without any wind behind him. All that was different was that he was not alone. He was strangely comfortable with the strange and undefined quality of it, but he knew that for Lena, this was the first time she’d ever been free. He knew that she needed to make the most of it.

              “Where do you want to go?” he asked her one night as they were laying in bed listening to the cars go by outside their window..

              “I don’t know,” she said. “Somewhere warm. Somewhere with lots of sunshine and lots of people and a big, beautiful ocean.”

              Ramon smiled, kissed her, and held her close.

              Two days later, they packed up their things and went to the airport. They didn’t have tickets. Ramon took Lena to the outbound board and pointed to it.

              “You can pick any city you want, and we’ll go there. If we get there and we don’t like it, we’ll pick a new place and go there instead. I don’t care where in the world we end up, as long as I’m with you.”

              Lena stared up at the hundreds of places she could go to, free to pick any one that she wished. She started at the top and worked her way down, reading each name carefully, moving her lips silently as if feeling each one. She stopped halfway down the board, took Ramon’s hand, and they walked to the counter.

             
Los Angeles suited Lena. It reminded her of the Florida sun and sea that she’d grown up with. It felt like home in all the right ways, and was as far away as she could get from all the wrong ones. She and Ramon had decided to come here for both of those reasons, but also for the change of pace. It was strange how Miami and LA could be so similar and yet so completely different.

              Their home was a small adobe building up in the mountains. The money that they’d managed to get away with wasn’t much, especially not for a city like this. But it bought them a house and let them live comfortably while they got settled in to their new lives. Ramon kept working as a bodyguard. He’d work a few weekends out of the month escorting visiting celebrities and foreign bigshots around the city. It paid well and afforded him some interesting opportunities. He was frequently tipped with tickets to see bands or shows, and he’d always take Lena. Once, when she got to join him to see a TV show being shot, she ended up talking to a hiring agent at the snack table. The agent asked her who she was working for, and she blushed and told him that she wasn’t an actress.

              He asked why not, and after that, Lena started taking acting lessons. She had no delusions that she’d got her break for being pretty, but after a few painful TV commercials, she got a chance to show how much more she was than another pretty face. She started on a small cable TV series that just barely made it out of pilot. It died halfway through the first season, but when it was over, Lena was getting a lot of calls. Most of them were from B list actors and musicians calling to politely ask her to dinner. She turned all of them down, but some of them were from agents, casting directors, and studios.

              It wasn’t long before she was working all the time and kept busy on the road. Ramon quit working piecemeal in the city, and toured with her. They had to fly to Miami to promote a new movie once. It was strange, being back among the same people and places that felt like a different life to her now. There were times that she thought she should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. It was strange, she
couldn’t
. No matter what happened, she knew that everything would be ok, because she was with Ramon and he was with her. She got the sense as she walked down the Miami streets with him that he felt something similar. An uneasiness that he couldn’t quite place.

              “What’s wrong?” she asked.

              Ramon looked around him, trying to figure it out for himself.

              “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just a funny feeling, I guess.”

              “But you’re ok?”

              He turned to his fiance, kissed her, and smiled.

              “Yes,” he said. “And I think I always will be.”

The End

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