The room was large and spacious. The kind that was good for storage. Not one you would hide in though.
The men filled the room, and bullets were flying. I took down a few with my gun as I ran over to join Claire, then fuck, my eyes landed on Paul and the sight of what they did to him made my soul shiver.
He sat dead in the corner of the room in an office chair. A bullet to his brain had taken off half his head but the way his body looked pale and decomposed suggested he’d been dead for at least a week. The week he’d been missing for.
It definitely wasn’t him we spoke to this morning.
I ran in guns blazing, taking down the Spades around me, and the ones who now came in after me.
There were too many though.
Four of us against them.
Shit. Fucking shit, we needed to get out.
I needed to get Claire out.
Get her out of harm’s way. She was just so far away from me.
“Bravo, bravo!” Boomed a voice I knew all too well.
Balthazar Kane came from the other side of the room where Claire was.
The Spades stopped to give him access but Claire and the guys rushed him.
“No!” I yelled, but it was too late. One of the men grabbed Claire from behind and held a gun to her head. She couldn’t even fight back.
John and Lucas stopped in their tracks when they saw that, keeping their guns low.
Balthazar and two men came forward, humor on their evil faces.
I stopped too and Balthazar looked to me with a vibrant smile.
“Got your woman, Xander Cage,” he chanted in a sing song voice. He walked up to Claire, took her from the guy and lifted her into the air by her throat. “I got her good this time.”
“Put her down!” I roared, glaring on in complete horror.
It was a fruitless attempt.
“Yeah, you want me to put her down? Sure.”
When he set her down I knew that wasn’t going to be the end of it. He wouldn’t just let her go.
I was ten feet away from them, so close but too far away.
She looked to me. It was in her eyes.
Goodbye.
Goodbye was in her eyes.
“Please don’t –” the shot that rippled through the air stole my words away.
It was like having an out-of-body experience. Watching something that didn’t seem real.
It couldn’t be.
How?
I’d just seen a bullet rip into Claire’s head and blood splatter everywhere.
Everywhere.
My girl.
We met when we were sixteen. We did everything together. I followed her everywhere and she followed me.
I was going to ask her to marry me.
We were going to…
A bullet tore through my chest… and then another.
It took me down, sent me straight to my knees.
Even then the shock of seeing the woman I loved die still gripped me. I was moving to her, crawling forward. In the corner of my eye I saw John go down and the Spades started to run.
The air was filled with a tension that spilled over into my soul, accompanied by laughter. Balthazar’s laughter.
Slow motion and laughter.
Balthazar laughing.
“I told you, you won’t win, Xander Cage.” His voice pierced into the fog that clouded my brain. I looked to him as he was going through the door with his men. It was where he’d come from. He waved something in his hands. Looked like a grenade.
As he threw it I looked back to Claire.
Her beautiful face.
What was I going to tell her father.
I couldn’t protect her.
“Xander get down!” That was Lucas.
Before I could even register what happened, the grenade went off.
Chapter Forty-One
Xander
Present day …
The sight of Balthazar earlier had my mind on replay of the past.
That day was one I’d never forget.
The day Claire was killed.
The day my world flipped and turned upside down.
The bomb went off but the blast only knocked me out because I’d gotten shot. I wasn’t close enough for it to take me out. Not like Lucas. I couldn’t tell if the bullets or the bomb killed John.
When I came too their bodies had been blown up, unrecognizable. It seemed like the facility had been evacuated. That gave me the chance to get myself out.
The thing to do was to contact Ethan but I never did that.
I decided that since it was a trap it was best if everyone thought I was dead. It would give me the advantage of being one step ahead to get Balthazar.
It didn’t really though.
Today was a reminder.
That fucking asshole came back for me to remind me that I was useless.
That was what he wanted me to think.
I refused. I was a mess but I was refusing to give up and be forced into that chasm of shit where I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it.
I’d just arrived at the park and this was me jumping into action to do what I had to do to steal the blueprints.
I pulled out my phone and called Wes. he answered on the first ring.
“Is everything in order?” I asked him, trying to keep the tension out of my voice.
It was a good thing we were on the phone and he couldn’t see me. I was a mess.
“Yes. Ethan thinks you’re doing a job for Giovanni,” Wes answered. “I’ve suggested a closer look at the inventory list in the courtyard to make him think that we missed something there. He’s got the guys from the team looking over it and working with intel. It’s all busy here, so we really do have him thrown off track.”
It was perfect. The way things had worked out was perfect.
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me and kicked a rock that was in my path.
After I dropped Jia off to Giovanni, I went back to my apartment to meet Wes and plan.
Of course, I told him what happened with Balthazar, so he knew my stress.
All the while we planned I couldn’t get what happened out of my damn head.
Balthazar came to screw with me.
The man was surely a sick fuck. His goons had been watching me, saw I was with her and he came to screw with me and remind me that he killed Claire and there wasn’t a damn thing I could have done to save her.
He came to let me know he could do the same thing to Jia.
Then there was fucking Giovanni that added to the shit. His mobster greed had infuriated me to no end, because his greed got her tangled in the mess.
Giovanni had looked stunned beyond measure when I mentioned The Ra and The Spades, but the fucking prick also looked like he was fuming. He looked furious at me, and suspicious.
“Great work Wes,” I told him.
“Thank you bro. You know I’m not happy though right? I feel like I should be with you watching your back. I really do.”
I could hear the worry in his voice. When I thought about it, this was the first time in the years we’d known each other that he hadn’t been watching my back.
I had a portable surveillance device we’d conjured up that connected with the camera system and motion sensors inside the chamber. It would allow me to see my surroundings once I got in. More important it would detect motion and alert me if someone came down there.
I was just hoping for the absence we’d had in the days prior to seeing Giovanni and The Chameleon. Eight of us had been down in the chamber at several points during the days and nights searching through the vaults. So this was me hoping for a night like that.