You are Mine (18 page)

After leaving the island, she’d closeted
herself in the hotel’s business center and had hacked into the
Chicago Police Department’s computer files. She’d thought about
hacking into the FBI’s files or even her own agency’s, but it would
have taken longer. Breaking into the CPD’s system hadn’t been a
piece of cake, but it had been close to child’s play. What she’d
found had made her even more determined to go back to the island.
She knew Cooper would do more than read her the riot act as he’d
done the day before, but she was prepared to take the
consequence.

So here she stood after a night of barely
sleeping and nearly freezing to death, trying to decide if she
should just shoot the little bastard and put everyone out of their
misery. Squinting, she put a figurative bead on the back of
Brickman’s head.

“
Hola,
putita
.
Sabía que si
era paciente
desee
mostrar sus
verdaderos colores.”

Cesare froze and then rolled her eyes before
turning to face the threat.

***

LOWER level, Masco Cottage, 6:05:49

“Want to double check the back of the
house?” Jae asked Brian, approaching him as Brian left the dining
room on his way to the front door.

“No, I’m sure you’ve taken care of
everything,” Brian told him as he neared the front of the house,
“but you could do me a favor and check those windows there while I
get the others. I know we did this last night, but you never can be
too careful.”

“Sure,” Jae said and abreast of Brian now,
turned left while Brian turned right.

And suddenly all hell broke loose as the
door exploded inward. “Cover your ears, close your eyes,” Jae
yelled right before he flew backwards off his feet from the force
of the explosion.

Brian didn’t question, just quickly complied
as he too was thrown back off his feet. He just barely heard the
other man because not only was there the sound of the explosion,
but the entire room was now being bathed in silenced gunshots. He
felt a bullet punch him in his shoulder just before he landed near
the stairwell, his head hitting the floor with a wallop hard enough
to knock him out.

***

OUTSIDE perimeter, front and back, Masco
Cottage, 6:06:00

Jonathan, Ivan, Jasper and Darren looked at
their watches and in unison, two kicked the doors in and the other
two tossed in the flash bangs.

***

UPSTAIRS hallway, Masco Cottage, 6:05:52

Carrying her gun, Caroline left the bedroom,
thinking that she’d check behind Brian and Jae just in case, to
really make sure they weren’t leaving anything behind. She made her
way toward the stairs checking off a list in her head. She’d just
put one foot on the first stair when all of a sudden her own
personal hell opened up below her. Time froze before her and in
that instant, her life with her husband played through her head as
someone -- distantly she realized it was she -- screamed one long
tortured sound of wrenching pain. And every kiss, every joke, every
time they’d made love, every tender moment, every angry one, every
sad one -- every single second of their lives together played
blindingly, her scream an accompaniment to the images. Her mind
broke, just completely
shattered
in that one excruciating
instant of time as she watched her husband come flying toward her
like a weightless rag doll.

Brian!
His name was so loud in her
head that it simply took over so that there was nothing left but
him. Reason forcibly removed, she flew sobbing down the stairs with
her arms outstretched and her palms up in a vain hope that she
would catch him before he fell.
Too late, too late, too
late.
The words were like a funeral dirge and she slowed as she
drew closer to him. He was unmoving, and despairingly, she held out
a hand and then quickly retracted it and covered her mouth with it
to hold back more sobs as she knelt by his crumpled body. Gingerly,
she lifted his head and put it in her lap, her tears splashing all
over his face while she smoothed back his dark hair.

So staggered was she by the pain, that she
was rendered mute and could only press her lips to his forehead as
she continued to stroke him. Logic soon returned, however, and she
realized that she had no time for self-pity. She lifted her head to
really look at him. Noting that his shirt was completely covered
with blood, she put her ear to his mouth to ascertain if he were
still breathing. He was, but it was somewhat shallow and his pulse
was weak. She heard a sound, and panicked, lifted her head again.
She thought she heard men talking and her hand went to the pockets
of her jeans for her cell phone before she remembered that she’d
left it upstairs. She checked Brian’s pockets and found them empty
as well.

She needed to hide him and get him some
help. Frantically, her gaze shot around her surroundings before
falling on the long dining room table and its equally long table
cloth. She picked up her gun from where she’d dropped it, stuck it
in her waistband and then hurried to position herself behind Brian
where she scooped her arms under his and lifted him as much as she
could. He groaned in pain and tears filled her eyes in regret. “I’m
so sorry, baby. I’ll be as careful as I can.” Knowing her time was
very short, she dragged him towards the table until they were
parallel to it. She then gently laid his shoulders down. A sense of
urgency riding her hard, she pulled out each of the three chairs
that flanked their side of the table. Once done, she struggled to
push him underneath the table, calling on reserves of strength she
hadn’t realized she had. He moaned some more and she blocked it out
by telling herself the moans meant that he was alive.

She pulled on the table cloth until it
dragged the floor and concealed him. After positioning the chairs
back at the table, she took out her gun and released the safety.
Her plan was to run to the hotel and get help, knowing without
checking that a man like Brickman would have already cut the phone
lines to the cottage. She knew if Jae weren’t severely hurt or
worse, he would be right there with them, so she didn’t look for
him or call out to him. She instead ran toward the parlor door,
whispering, “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” just before she pulled
it open and stepped outside into what looked like normal on a crazy
day.

“Ah, my dear. At last we meet, but what have
you done to yourself?” Brickman said as he looked her over, taking
in her tear-streaked face and bloody clothes.

***

DINING room, Masco Cottage, 6:08:53

Jonathan watched Caroline run out of the
house and then looked over at Ivan. “No!” he whispered urgently.
“Don’t shoot. Let her go. It will play into our plans.”

Ivan nodded. “Okay, okay, I forgot. You get
in the mode, you know?”

Gunshots sounded from outside, but unlike
their own gunshots earlier, the gun they blasted from clearly did
not have a silencer. Jonathan lifted a brow. “Maybe she got rid of
him for us,” he supposed.

***

OUTSIDE perimeter, Masco Cottage,
6:08:26

Caroline said nothing; just raised her gun
hand and fired. The shot went wild and she completely missed him as
he ducked out of the way. So she kept shooting. She couldn’t calm
down enough to focus on him or line up the shot. By the time she’d
emptied the gun, he’d long been hiding behind a tree. He blocked
her way toward the hotel, and wanting to draw him away from Brian
and Jae, she turned and ran toward the forest.

***

MACKINAC Island, Masco Cottage, 6:04:55

“Excuse me?” Cesare said, her voice full of
bad attitude and insult as she addressed Tomàs Guerrera. “Did you
just call me a whore, you rag-tag, wanna-be crime lord
motherfucker?”

Guerrera’s eyes narrowed. “So you do speak
Espanol
.”

“Shut up. I knew I should have put you down
back at the hotel, but I was in too much of a hurry. You have been
a pain in my ass since I met you, and I knew you were just waiting
for the chance to catch me alone. Go away, Tomàs before I shoot
you,” she warned and taking a shooter’s stance, raised her gun.

Tomàs laughed. “See, little cousin? What did
I tell you? Your so-called girlfriend is a fraud. You heard what I
just said about true colors, and I was right. I am always right
about women.” He suddenly reached out and yanked Rafe from behind a
cedar tree. Pressing the gun to Rafe’s side, he laughed at the look
on Cesare’s face. “Ah, you are surprised, are you not, little
whore?”

Cesare closed her eyes to block out the fear
and surprise on Rafe’s face. She opened them again. “I’m so sorry,
Rafe.”

Shaking and with his neck at an unnatural
angle since his cousin had yanked his head back by the hair, Rafe
tried a smile. “I always knew there was something special about
you, Esencia.” His nervous gaze went to the gun she held in her
hand. “I just didn’t know how special you are.”

Cesare sighed forlornly, feeling horrible.
“Oh, Rafe. I --”

“Enough!” Tomàs said and jabbed the gun
harder into Rafe’s side, making him wince and cry out. Cesare
stepped forward. “Ah-ah-ah,” Tomàs warned. “Do not come any closer
if you want this useless excuse for a man to live. Ah, you are
surprised, I see. Yes, I know he’s gay. The whole family knows; we
just let him think he was fooling us. It was fun to watch him
sweat.
Maldito maricón
,” he sneered cruelly and yanked on
Rafe’s hair even more.

Rafe grimaced, and Cesare could tell it
wasn’t just from physical pain. His cousin had called him a fucking
faggot. “Leave him alone and let him go,” she said to Tomàs
coldly.

He laughed again. “You don’t have the power
here. Throw out your weapon or my cousin’s blood will be on your
hands.”

The
sudden explosion startled them all, but Cesare recovered first and
taking advantage of the distraction, pulled her stiletto from its
belt clip, flicked it open and whipped it across the clearing where
the five-inch blade landed precisely where she wanted it to:
in
Tomàs’s
neck, below
his Adam’s apple and thryroid gland and arteries into his trachea.
He jerked and fell to his knees, making gurgling noises.

Unfortunately, his finger spasmed on the trigger and he
shot Rafe who fell to the floor of the wood with his cousin.
Horrified, Cesare watched as Rafe’s face went blank and lost all
color before he fainted. She rushed over to the two men, kneeling
down and pushing
Tomàs off of Rafe, who by this time had
awakened from his faint and was howling like a banshee. Cesare
lifted his shirt and gingerly checked the wound. When she saw it
was shallow and the bullet had gone right through, she sighed in
relief. “Quiet, Rafe,” she muttered. “It isn’t that bad.”

The howling stopped and an indignant Rafe
said, “Whatever, Esencia! How would you know? I’m the one lying
here with a bullet in me doing God knows what to my insides and
very likely slowly killing me.”

Smirking and laughing through relieved
tears, Cesare said, “It’s a small flesh wound, sweets. The bullet
has left the building,” she finished as she unscrewed a bottle of
antiseptic that she’d removed from the small first aid kit she kept
in her bug-out bag, which she’d worn as a back pack. She emptied
the entire bottle onto the wound. Rafe did the only thing a person
of his constitution would do when what felt like liquid fire met an
open wound: he let his eyes roll to the back of his head and he
fainted. Relieved, Cesare bandaged the wound and pulled out her
satellite phone.

Cooper answered before the first ring had
finished sounding. “Please come and get me,” she pleaded softly
before he could finish his sentence that had begun with ‘Where the
fuck’. “I’ll give you my coordinates if you’ll just come and get
me. It’s not safe here and I’ve got two down -- one a neutral and
the other an unfriendly.” Her first fight and it had completely
unnerved her. Rafe was down because of her and all the blood
flowing from both men was sickening. She looked over at Tomàs and
shuddered. She’d just killed a man and she wondered if she’d ever
be able to do that again. Just as she hung up she heard someone
panting heavily and crashing through the forest, coming right
toward them.

***

OUTSIDE perimeter, front, Masco Cottage,
6:09:31

“She’s gone into the woods,” Brickman
addressed his men, all of whom had come running after hearing
Caroline’s gunshots. “I’m going after her. Jonathan and Ivan,
you’re with me --”

“I’d like to stay here and finish what I
started,” Jonathan said.

“Do you mean to tell me that Keenan is still
alive?” Brickman asked incredulously. “Yes, you will stay here --
you and Ivan both. Handle it. The rest of you come with me,” he
said and turned towards the woods.

***

MACKINAC Island State Park, 6:12:00

BAM!

The second shot shocked Caroline as much as
the first and she kept running, and tried to go even faster when
she heard an imperious voice -- his voice -- demand angrily that
the gunman stop shooting. Knowing that he was so close terrified
her and sent her crashing prey-like even more carelessly and deeper
into the forest.

Long after she couldn’t hear anything behind
her, she ran.

Her breaths were explosive little bursts of
fire as they blew through her lungs and her legs felt as if they
had no muscle tone left, but she took deep breaths and clutched her
own gun tighter.

And…

She ran and decided to take a left turn, one
that she hoped would lead her out of the forest and eventually back
toward the Grand Hotel. “But first, I’ve got to take care of
Brickman,” she swore to herself. Suddenly she stopped and
momentarily captivated by the surreal tableau before her, Caroline
just stared. There was Cesare, a gorgeous model whose beauty was
still quite obvious through the camouflage she wore, kneeling
between two men who both had blood all over them.