Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (68 page)

Sam reached for the compact Ruger she’d hidden in a holster under the slit of her dress just as Simon and a herd of men burst through the topiary behind her. Pointing her gun at Lightner, Sam leaned down to reach for the key fob in his trouser pocket.

Lightner’s hand came up with surprising speed as he clamped down on her searching fingers. Simon and his team surrounded her, their guns raised, aimed at his face.

“See you in hell, you rotten bitch,” he hissed out, blood covering his teeth.

“You first.” Sam jabbed the Ruger under his chin and fired.

The bullet blew open the top of Lightner’s head. An explosion of blood and bone and grey matter sprayed the ground behind him in an obscene bloom, pluming through the air like a hot, crimson mist.

Sam reached into his pocket, clasping the fob and pressing the button.

“Boss—” Simon grabbed her, hauling her up and back away from Lightner’s corpse. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he asked, wiping the blood from her face.

“Get this to Rush,” she told him, pushing the fob into his hand. “Keep pressing the damn thing every few seconds until he gets this fucking thing disarmed!”

“WYATT! Get over here!” Alejandro shouted. “It’s Wes!”

Her heart jack-hammered in her chest. Sam swung toward the doors where Wes had been standing. Her eyes widened in horror when she saw him laying on the ground, Alejandro and one of Simon’s team over him.

“WES!
Oh, Jesus—WES!
” Sam pushed past Simon, stumbling over Lightner’s body to make it to him. It felt like she was traveling through a surreal nightmare. A nightmare of her own making. Sam fell to her knees by his side, horrified at how much blood was pouring from the wound around his torn, white dress shirt.

“Get a chest seal!” Alejo shouted.

“There’s too much blood—”

“His lung is collapsed—he can’t breathe! Just fucking do it!” Alejandro commanded.

Sam pulled Wes’s head into her lap as the men worked, fingers slicked red with Wes’s blood.

“Don’t you goddamn die on me,” she told him, the tears in her eyes making it hard to see him as he lay prone in her arms. “Look at me, Wes—
look at me
—”

He opened his eyes groggily, making a choking sound as he looked up at her, dazed, the shock already setting in.

Sam—Sammy
—she saw him moving his mouth. Unable to say her name aloud, unable to gasp for breath.

Sam cradled his head, not wanting to see the mess Lightner had made of him. His tattoo, their initials, covered in blood. His dog tags—
her dog tags
—wound around his neck like a red lariat as he looked up at her, the truth in his eyes.

Sammy
—

“Don’t you fucking die, Wes—” she demanded, her tears falling on his face. “Don’t you die on me—”

Alejo worked frantically to cover the gunshot with a Bolin seal, trying to relieve the sucking chest wound.

Wes managed a few short, pained gasps as he writhed in her arms, unable to get enough breath into his lungs.

“Please, God, just help him—” she prayed to a God she didn’t know she believed in anymore. “Please, I’ll do anything—” she begged. “
Anything
—”

Wes tried to reach for her face. She clasped his hand to her cheek, kissing his palm, weeping, insisting he keep his eyes open. Demanding he stay alive even as his eyes rolled back, his fingers sliding from her grasp before falling to the blood-soaked concrete.

“Wes!”
Samantha shook him, sobbing. “WES!!”

W E S L E Y

P
ainful, crushing pressure,
like being pinned beneath a boulder…

“WES!!”

He writhed, trapped in the unbearable cage of his own body.

“Oh, God, no—Wes, please—please—”

The painful constriction was loosening, like wire unwinding, the pounding, violent pressure becoming less… less…

“Don’t do this. Don’t leave me—”

The agony was receding, sucking back into a darkness that felt like relief.

He wanted to follow… wanted to—

“Please, Wesley… just open your eyes. Open your eyes!”

The darkness surrounding him was so intense, so profound, he felt like he’d been cut loose from a tether, like floating through the nothing… the pain just a memory, unimportant…

“Wes—Oh, Jesus, Wes—”

The weightlessness of it…

The sudden peace absolute…

No sound

No form

… just …

calm

“—please, please, help him—”

He couldn’t feel his body anymore—

I’m fine,
he wanted to say.

I’m right here
…

Wes opened his eyes.

She stood in front of him, smiling…

“Come here.”

She held out her hand, hair as black as a raven’s wing falling all around her.

The sun was so bright; he almost couldn’t see her.

His love.

His dream.

The only one.

Where are we going?
he wanted to ask.

“The Louvre,” she said, her smile knowing. “You said you wanted to see it, remember? You promised me Paris.”

He did.

He had.

He’d waited.

I waited for you…

He saw that she understood.

She knew.

It’s always been you.

She opened her arms,

And he went into them, surrounded by the scent of jasmine…

April—Late Night

Wyatt Private Jet, Somewhere over Missouri

J A C K

H
e came to,
slowly, groggy and cotton-mouthed. He felt a low, constant hum, recognized the whooshing sound of fast airflow. Everything was dim and cool. The shadowy figure of a woman stood up slowly from the seat across from him, approaching.

“Sam—” he croaked out, swallowing.

The figure neared him as he blinked blearily, trying and failing to sit up. Jack shook his head to clear it, and that’s when he felt the dull throb of a chemically-induced headache. He felt drugged, his limbs disembodied and lethargic.

The woman sat down on the seat next to him, her face swimming into view. She looked familiar, but he was too out of it to place her.

“Sorry, Jack,” she told him, lifting him gently, like a baby. She held a bottle of water to his mouth and he drank thirstily, as if he’d been rescued from spending days in the Sahara. “Slow down,” she told him. “Easy—you’ll choke.”

Jack gulped down the water until there was none left. He lay there, disoriented, trying to figure out what was going on. His head was pounding. He looked around him, squinting, realizing slowly that he was on a plane, stretched out on a leather sofa. That the woman he was looking at was Rox. She’d taken off her wig from earlier, and her makeup was gone. She looked younger, softer.

Jack felt his jaw gingerly, recalling she’d knocked him out with one hell of a punch.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” he croaked out.

“You’re a big guy, Jack. We had to make sure we gave you enough sedative to keep you down.”

“You gave him too much,” a male voice drawled from the other side of the cabin.

Jack turned his head, saw Alejandro sitting in a leather captain’s chair, holding a glass of liquor. Alejo took a sip. “Sam’s going to be pissed you knocked him out,
manita
.”

“You should have seen this
pendejo
fighting off Anand,” she responded with a shrug. “Like a rhino, this guy,” she laughed lightly, patting his face. He flinched back, pissed off with her. “I figured it was safer for all of us, otherwise he would have just kept fighting.”

“Where’s Samantha? What’s happened?” Jack struggled to sit up. He was still out of it, but he knew enough to realize she wasn’t on the plane with them.

“
Tranquilo
, Jack.” Alejandro told him, pouring himself another glass of whisky. “We’re taking you back to Chicago. Everything’s fine.”

“Where’s Samantha?” he asked again.

“She taking care of the mess Lightner made,” Rox replied. “She’ll be heading back to Chicago soon, but she wanted you safe in the meantime. She asked that we take you home and to give you this.” She handed him a sealed envelope, his name, written in her distinctive, slanting scrawl.

Jack managed to heave himself upright on the sofa, swallowing back the residual nausea from whatever he’d been given.

“Lightner’s dead,” Alejandro told him, his mouth flattened into a hard line. “Sam killed him.”

Relief spread through Jack like ropes loosening from around his insides. “And the bomb?” he asked.

“Contained. It’s being sent to the Pantex facility in Amarillo for decommissioning now.”

“Thank God,” he sighed, closing his eyes. “Thank God, that’s over.” The fuzziness was beginning to recede a little, and Jack tested his dexterity trying to open Samantha’s letter. It was dated for the day before. She’d written it on her personal letterhead. The words danced in front of him at first, so he read it slowly.

Jack—

All my life I wanted to be loved. I wanted it so desperately, I came to see loving others and being loved as a weakness—a terrible vulnerability—so I cut myself off from it, not wanting to succumb to what I believed was a fatal flaw.

But for all my cynicism, doubt, and history, I couldn’t help falling for you. I couldn’t help wanting you for myself. You loved me through my pain, my scars, my fear—you made me feel strong and infinitely cared for, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.

Please don’t be angry with me for doing what I needed to do to protect you. I know now you would stand by me through everything, but I love you too much and too selfishly to allow you to be harmed by my enemies.

I don’t know if I will win this fight. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see you again, but whatever happens, thank you for showing me how to love again. Thank you for helping me see past my fears. You’re the one I never knew I wanted—much less needed. And if it’s in my power to come back to you, I will.

I promise.

All My Love,

S.

Jack looked up from the letter, his eyes burning, his heart bursting. He’d reread it until the words were committed to memory, but for now—he just wanted to be absolutely certain she was okay. He needed that to hold onto. He needed to know she’d find her way back to him.

“She wasn’t harmed?” he asked.

Alejandro and Rox exchanged looks. “She’ll be okay,” Alejandro answered, though it sounded like there was far more to it.

Jack frowned, rubbing his throbbing temple. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Lightner shot Wes,” Alejo told him after a moment.

Jack blinked. “What?”

“He was trying to protect her, but he got in the way…” he glanced out the window, knocking back the whisky. “I went to school with that guy. I knew him almost as long as I’ve known you.”

Awareness dawned through the haze. “He didn’t make it,” Jack said flatly, unsure of how he felt about that. Uncertain of how Samantha would take it—the death of her first love.

Alejandro shook his head once, his profile hard in the dim light as he stared out the window.

Jack looked at the woman. “You’ve saved my life twice now.”

“I’m your guardian angel, Jack.” She winked. “Sent by Sam to protect you from yourself.”

“Don’t see any wings.”

“I traded them for my horns,” she quipped, handing him another bottle of water. “Try to relax. We’ll have you back home in a couple hours.”