I grabbed my bag. “I’m ready.”
“You’re already packed?” Wes asked.
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
“I know. I’m starting to regret coming to check on you.”
“I’m supposed to be dead, remember?” I asked.
“They’re going to bust down the door and I’m going to take them out. Don’t get shot, sweetie, okay?”
“What? Wait!”
Wes moved through the apartment. He stood next to the door, ready to go. The guys kept pounding at the door, kicking at it. Finally, a gunshot rang and the door splintered around the knob. Another swift kick and the door flew open. I stood there with a suitcase. I let it go and put my hands up. Call it instinctive, but I knew how to create a decent enough diversion.
Two men came into the apartment and Wes went to work.
Maybe it wasn’t the time or the place to feel the way I felt, but watching him throwing a right fist and connecting with one of the guy’s faces… it turned me on. The guy fell to ground in a hurry, knocked out. The other guy turned, gun in hand. Wes threw a left, but he screamed in pain from where he’d been shot. His right hand came across and grabbed the guy’s wrist, twisting it so the guy released the gun.
“No, no, no,” the guy said. “You can’t…”
Wes threw his shoulder and the guy flew back into the wall. He then started to unleash punches - left, right, right, left. The guy bounced like he was being shot at. And when Wes stopped punching, the guy toppled to the ground.
He looked up at Wes. “You… you aren’t supposed…”
Wes lifted his foot. I turned my head. I wasn’t able to see it, but I heard the sickening squishy thud sound of Wes’s boot slamming down on the guy’s face.
“Move! Now!” Wes bellowed.
I grabbed my suitcase and went on the move. I hurried past the two bodies on the floor and followed the man who put them on the floor. The man who had taken a bullet - not sure whether it was meant for me or not.
I followed the man who had my picture, knew my name, and knew that my car was destroyed.
I wasn’t sure if I was being saved… or if I was being set up.
6.
(Wes)
What the fuck was I thinking?
I had no business trying to find Rose. And now I had a gunshot wound to the shoulder as my thanks. Not to mention Rose in the passenger seat with me as I sped away from the restaurant apartment set up. I should have known better, for sure. It was a different part of town and the entire place smelled of family stuff. That meant if Aton wanted Rose dead, she was part of a different family and if there was a problem, it went deeper than anything I could do.
In other words, I was now going to be a target. And I had no good reason for it either.
My mind raced.
I turned my head once to look at Rose and I realized something.
She was alive.
She hadn’t gotten into her car.
Yet.
I gritted my teeth as I drove, knowing I had no choice but to take her back to my apartment. Shit. Whoever had been trying to kill her would be coming again. And if it was Aton’s guys and they saw me…
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say right now,” Rose said in a low voice, almost a whisper.
“Did your car blow up?” I asked.
“Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t have time for banter. Tell me right now.”
“I guess. Yes. Sure. Maybe.”
“Pick a fucking answer, sweetie,” I said.
I took a hard right and the tires squealed on the car. My heart and adrenaline were going too fast for me to slow down or calm down. Usually when I got this fired up I was facing someone who expected me to beat the shit out of them. The difference now… I was sitting next a drop dead beautiful woman who was knee deep in something really dirty.
“My brother told me to stay in the apartment,” Rose said. “He said someone was going to kill me. He said something about my car being wired, okay? I didn’t see the car. I obviously wasn’t in the car… and how do you know all this?”
“That doesn't matter right now. What matters is that we get somewhere safe, right now.”
“Where is that?” Rose asked.
I turned my head. Goddamn, she’s beautiful. Just naturally beautiful. “Don’t worry about that.”
I stared straight ahead. My shoulder throbbed in pain. My fucking leather jacket was going to have a damn hole in it.
The entire thing kept rolling through my mind all night. I woke up three times, turning on the light to look at Rose’s picture. It got the damn best of me and now it was getting the worst of me.
“You can just drop me off wherever you want,” Rose said.
“What?”
“You shouldn’t be involved.”
“Too late, sweetie. I got shot. I found your picture…” In your car. When I helped set it up to blow up.
“Where did you find it?”
I made another sharp turn. I didn’t respond.