Schooled in Revenge (12 page)

“The gun!”

But it took him only a second to raise the weapon, pointing it at Reena as she chased after Cain with Jon. Lee squeezed the trigger.

“Reena, no!” Cruz screamed, lunging for her, pivoting his body in front of her just as he did on the cliff on Rebun Island.

The bullet slammed into his chest. He froze, shock written all over his face as he looked at the wound on his chest, already seeping red. A second later, another shot roared through the air, piercing his skin two inches to the right of the first shot.

Cruz was down.

Reena’s scream tore through the air as Cruz fell to the floor. She dropped next to him, cradling his head in her lap.

“No, no, no…,” she muttered, touching his face. “You can’t do this to me, Cruz. I need you.” Her voice rose. “Do you hear me? I need you! You can’t go!”

Two more gunshots ripped through the shocked silence. Ava was so disoriented by everything that had happened—by everything that was still happening—that it took her a minute to trace the shots to the bartender’s gun. She followed his gaze and saw Lee, crumpled on the floor, the gun that had felled Cruz still in his hand.

A crash sounded near the bar as Vic tried to stand, knocking glasses to the floor as he staggered to his feet. A second later, he lurched for the back door, following his boss out into the hot Sonoma afternoon.

“Come on, Cruz,” Reena said. “It’s time to wake up now. We still have work to do. Simon needs you.
I
need you.”

His face was gray, his eyes closed. Ava lifted his wrist, feeling
for a pulse. When she couldn’t find one, she lowered her head to his chest, listening in vain for his heartbeat.

Ava took a deep breath and laid a hand on Reena’s shoulder. “He’s gone.”

No one moved, Reena’s quiet sobbing the only sound in the once-chaotic tavern. Ava was surprised to feel the ache of something unfamiliar, almost forgotten: loss. She didn’t think she could feel it anymore. Didn’t think she was capable of caring about anyone enough for it to matter if something happened to him.

But somehow, they had become comrades in arms. The loss of Cruz and Reena’s heartache sat like a stone on Ava’s chest.

Suddenly, two more gunshots sounded, muffled this time, coming from outside.

“Jon!” Ava jumped to her feet, crossing the room and grabbing the weapon in Lee’s lifeless hand.

She looked from Jane to Reena, hesitant to leave her after all that had happened. But Reena just nodded.

“I’m fine. Go.”

Ava knew it was a lie. It would be a long, long time before Reena was fine. But losing Jon wouldn’t change what had happened to Cruz.

“I’ll stay,” Jane said, dropping to the floor next to Reena. “Go get those bastards.”

She was almost to the back door when a familiar voice called to her from the bar.

“Don’t do this, Ava,” the bartender said.

“Don’t try to stop me, Shay.” She raced toward the exit, the weapon surprisingly comfortable in her hand.

Bursting into the alleyway behind Tavern Red, she looked around, trying to find the source of the gunshots. The sun was low in the sky, shrouding the alley in shadow, a lone Dumpster the only possible hiding spot for Cain.

She made her way toward it, gun drawn. Creeping up on the hulking piece of orange metal, she placed her back against it, preparing herself to come face-to-face with the barrel of a gun. But when she looked behind the Dumpster, weapon extended in front of her, no one was there.

Tires screeched from the end of the alley, pulling Ava’s attention away from the Dumpster. She ran toward the noise, spotting a black Lincoln racing away from Tavern Red. She could make out Jon’s head in the passenger seat, which meant Cain must be driving.

She ran after the car, but only managed a few steps before nearly tripping over something. Stumbling, she looked down to see a body lying facedown in the dirt, surrounded by blood.

The Lincoln long gone, Ava bent down and turned the body over, coating her hands in blood.

It was Frederick Cain.

But then who took Jon?

She didn’t have long to consider the question as a viselike hand wrapped around her neck from behind.

“Now it’s your turn, bitch.” Ava dimly recognized Vic’s voice as he pressed her against the harsh metal of the Dumpster, forcing the life out of her.

She was only scared for a minute. Then her fear turned to anger. Anger that she wouldn’t get to finish her path of revenge.
That she wouldn’t be able to make Reinhardt and Charlie pay for what they did to her.

What they did to all of them.

But even her anger was short-lived, followed by a sweet flood of tranquility as she began to lose consciousness.

Now she didn’t have to fight. She could just let go.

Jane grabbed the bartender’s arm as he hurried after Ava.

“Who are you?” she demanded, studying his face, trying to figure out why the dark hair and ice-blue eyes seemed so familiar.

He hesitated. “Let go, Jane.”

She kept hold of his arm. “How do you know to call me that?”

He moved so fast, flipping her over on to her back, that she didn’t even see it coming.

And there was something else; Jane knew that move. They all did.

He pressed one black boot against Jane’s neck as she lay beneath him. It was heavy, rigid, and put her in an inescapable state of immobilization. But she sensed restraint in his muscular legs. He was being careful, trying not to hurt her.

“Stay still. And stay here.” He looked from Jane to Reena, his voice low and rough. “I need to go after Ava, but it’s not safe. Do you understand? You need to stay in here until I get back.”

And then he was gone, leaving them both to wonder how he knew them. And how he knew Takeda.

“You said you know my story. How?” Ava asks the stranger at the shelter.

He tells her it’s not important how he’s come to know her story. What’s important is doing something about it. He wants to know what Ava’s been doing to get Starling Vineyards back. What she plans to do to right the wrongs committed against her.

She blanches, shrinking in her seat. As far as she’s concerned, there’s nothing she can do about it.

“Is there something you’d like to do?”

Ava’s heart thuds excitedly at the possibility. It’s not about the estate or the money. It’s about what it symbolizes. About the fact that people she trusted betrayed her as if she meant nothing, treated her life like some kind of game that they’ve now won.

Talking to Shay, she moves past heartbreak to red-hot anger.

“So what do you really want?” he asks her.

“I want to make them pay.”

“You’re talking about
fukushuu,”
he tells her.

Ava doesn’t even know what that means. She doesn’t care. She just wants to know who sent him.

Shay leans forward. “His name is Takeda. Satoshi Takeda.”

Shay says he can help her, his voice growing low to avoid the surrounding women, all of whom are in need of a hot meal on a cold night. He explains that Takeda specializes in the sort of retribution Ava wants, even if she hasn’t fully realized she wanted it until now.

“Not a second goes by where I don’t consider going after the people who did this to me,” she confides.

“Then why don’t you?”

Ava considers his question. She explains that she has no means. No expertise.

But Shay does. More importantly, Takeda does.

“I don’t know about this…,” Ava says.

“Sure you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t still be sitting here with me.”

“So you’re going to take me to Japan?”

“No, I need to stay here.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Because I know what you’ve been through,” Shay tells her. “And the fact that no one’s investigated the bastards who conned you out of your life, who show no remorse or regard for you or your family… Well, that’s why I’m doing this instead of still…”

“Instead of what?” she asks him, intrigued.

He shook his head. “It’s not important. What’s important is that I want to help. Takeda wants to help.” He pauses. “Close your eyes.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it,” he says gently. “Trust me.”

After a brief hesitation, she closes her eyes, although it will be a long time before she really trusts anyone again.

“Now think of those who wronged you,” he says. “Think of what they did to you. What they took from you.”

Ava’s lungs become heavy, her pulse racing as adrenaline hits her system. She’s tired of running. Tired of being afraid. Of moving from town to town, wondering how long it will be before the little she’s managed to scrape together will be taken from her again. She sees now that she’s scarred, damaged, afraid to live.

And because of that, she’s not living at all.

She welcomes the anger building in her heart, lets it push out the vulnerability and fear that has resided there since Charlie and Reinhardt stole her legacy.

Finally, she opens her eyes.

“Tell me, Ava Winters,” he says, “what do you really want?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Revenge.”

He smiles. “Then you’ve got a plane to catch.”

Ava was almost completely under, swimming toward the dark ocean of unconsciousness, when she saw Shay out of the corner of one barely open eye.

The next thing she knew, he grabbed hold of Vic’s collar, hauling him off Ava like he was nothing but a child.

“No,” she protested, trying to find her way back to the peaceful calm. “Leave me alone. Let me go…”

“Bullshit,” Shay said, tossing Vic to the ground and pulling Ava to her feet. “Get up.”

Blackness raced in from all sides as she rose, dizziness threatening to send her back to the ground. She leaned against the Dumpster, calling out a warning as Vic stood behind Shay.

“Behind you!”

Shay turned, ducking under Vic’s jab and rising to deliver a swift blow to the man’s stomach. The hit brought Vic to his knees. Ava watched as Shay nailed him with an elbow to the head, causing him to collapse against the Dumpster. He fell to the ground, out cold.

Shay turned to face her. She glared at him, gingerly touching her neck, which was tender and already swollen.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she choked from her burning throat.

“You’re welcome,” Shay said through gritted teeth.

“I’m supposed to thank you now?”

“For saving your ass?” he nodded. “Yeah. ‘Thank you’ seems appropriate.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I’ll chalk that up to an oversight on your part. Like everything else you guys did today.”

Anger flooded her body, replacing the apathy that had made her complacent just moments before. “What are you talking about?”

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” he said.

“None of this was
your
plan,” she said. “It was
our
plan.”

“Dying in an alleyway?” he fumed. “That was your plan?”

She was quiet, his words hitting a nerve as she remembered the strange comfort she’d felt as she slid toward death. The sweet release of knowing she didn’t have to fight anymore.
Didn’t have to plot or plan. Didn’t have to be afraid that she would never, ever find herself again.

“What happened to you?” he said softly. “You used to be a fighter.”

She turned away, ashamed at the tears stinging her eyes. “I’m tired.”

She was standing there, her back to Shay as she tried to pull herself together, when police sirens screamed through the night.

And they were coming closer. Coming for her and the others.

“Go,” she told Shay. “This was our fight. We did what had to be done.”

She hadn’t agreed with Jon’s decision to come to Tavern Red, but it didn’t matter. They had faced off with Cain’s men, had done what they could. She could live with it, even if she was one of the casualties.

Shay’s gaze dropped to the blood on her hands, then to Cain’s dead body. Dropping to his knees, he rifled through Cain’s pockets, removing his wallet before turning his attention to the ring on Cain’s finger.

“What are you doing?” Ava asked him.

“It will take them a while to identify him without this stuff,” Shay explained. “Cain isn’t someone who makes a point of having his fingerprints in the criminal database. It will buy us some time.” He glanced back as the sound of sirens got louder, closer. “Listen to me, Ava. It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“What are you talking about?” she said, already resigned to her fate at the hands of the police closing in on them.

“Do you trust me?” he asked her.

She hesitated, remembering those same words coming from his lips back at the shelter.

“Come on, Ava. If there’s anyone you can trust, it should be me.”

She couldn’t argue the statement so she said nothing.

“You didn’t finish your training,” Shay continued, standing and stuffing Cain’s personal effects in his own pocket. “That’s why you made a mistake.”

The sirens got louder, brasher, piercing through the approaching night as a fleet of police cars pulled into the alleyway, blocking them in on both sides.

“You killed the wrong man!” Shay shouted over the cacophony.

She tried to make sense of Shay’s statement, her heart beating wildly as the police cars raced toward them, the outdated Sonoma County sedans piling into the alleyway, leaving no room for escape. They pinned Ava and Shay with their headlights. Ava held up her hands, shielding her eyes from the glare, and the cops leapt from their vehicles, pointing guns and yelling at them to keep their hands up, palms facing outward.

“Let me do the talking,” Shay muttered as the police moved in.

“You should have let me die,” Ava said under her breath.