Page 60 of Assistant to the Assassin

“What’s your order, sir?”

I look over my shoulder at Colton just as my feet leave the sand and touch wet dirt. “Kill Lukas but keep Reed alive if you find her. She could be of use to us. If you see Cai, bring him to me.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” my remaining teammates say in unison.

“Let’s finish this,” I growl, disappearing into the jungle.

“They’re scattering,” Beth informs me. “One is dead, one is injured, two are still in the perimeter, the rest are making their way towards the center of the island.”

I’m crouching in my high hide, peering around at the ground through the cover of the leaves. “Copy. I’m going to go silent from now on. Don’t want to give myself away.”

“Okay…I love you, Henry.”

My chest squeezes painfully, making it hard to breathe. I want to keep my promise to her, I want to stay alive and live a long fucking life with her by my side, but anything could happen in a battle. Despite my promises, despite Beth’s proclamation that my fate is in my hands, God may plan to take me today. And there might be nothing I can do to stop it.

“I was taught that you must love God above all others,” I tell her, blinking back the stinging in my eyes. “But as God is my witness, I have never loved anyone the way I love you. My soul and spirit have belonged to you since the moment we met, and I would watch Hell freeze and Heaven burn before I let anything harm you. My one regret in life is that I waited so long to tell you, and if today is the day the devil wants to claim me, I will find a way back to you. In this life or the next.”

“Why does that sound like a goodbye?” Beth whispers, emotion clogging her voice.

I shut my eyes, leaning my head against a branch of the tree I hide inside. “I love you.”

I take my earpiece out, using the back of my hand to wipe the tear that has slipped from my shut eyelids. I can hear the faint sound of Beth’s voice coming from the small piece of plastic, but I try my best to ignore it, needing to refocus on the task at hand.

In the distance, I hear the sounds of shouts and bloody screams, I hear detonating bombs and trip wired machine guns. All this preparation and planning has led to this moment, and I’ll die before I let Harrison anywhere near Beth.

He is going to die tonight, even if it means I have to drag him down to Hell with me.

I watch on the monitors as the mercs unknowingly fall into the traps Henry set. One of them gets hit with the swinging mace, another gets blown up by a grenade, and another gets gunned down by one of the trip wired machine guns. Ambrose and I have been keeping the boys updated on where everyone is, and so far, no one has gotten to the inner part of the island yet, where Henry is. Ian, on the other hand, is currently in a shootout with one of the mercs who has two machine guns, one of which belonged to the merc who got hit with the mace. This guy was to be right next to him when it happened. We watched the merc scream and hold his dying friend, then he picked up his machine gun and ran towards the center of the island, but Ian started shooting at him, creating this back-and-forth we are witnessing now.

I’m trying to keep an eye on everyone, but my gaze keeps gravitating towards Henry, who I can see pretty well on one of the camera feeds. He’s kneeling, his gun aimed and ready, his body almost completely still. He’s a predator waiting to pounce.

Every now and then my eyes flicker to Johnathon Harrison, who has made it farther than any of his other teammates. He’s almost at the inner part of the island, where he’ll be in range for the landmines, but he’ll also be near Henry. By his current path, he’ll end up right where Henry is hiding.

As soon as I enter the jungle, chaos erupts.

To my right, Maximus hits a trip wire that activates a machine gun; the bullets rip his chest to shreds and I know he’s dead well before he hits the ground. Kathleen watches this and lets out a bloodcurdling scream, diving behind a tree for cover. As soon as she’s behind the trunk, I see blood and chunks of flesh spray out from both sides. She must have triggered some grenade or land mine. Colton was too close to her when the blast went off; he got blown back into another tree, hitting his head and falling hard onto the bloody grass.

Despite how stupid it might be, I run over to check on him, and thankfully, he’s still alive. As much as I didn’t want to, I have to leave Colton there, knowing he has a concussion at best and a collapsed lung and massive internal bleeding at worst. Moving him now will only cause him more harm. It is best to leave him and hope he’ll be alright.

Screams of my other teammates fills the island. Guns fire, bombs go off, agony is echoed through the trees. It’s a fucking war zone. I’m luckier than the rest, or maybe I can just keep my head better in a situation like this. I manage to evade most of the traps by throwing sticks and rocks onto the ground to activate any possible trip wires or reveal any pit traps. One of my rocks hits a grenade, which does throw me back a little, but towards the path I had already walked.

One of my sticks hits a trip wire or sensor of some kind, because a loud creaking sound starts from behind me, and thankfully I have presence of mind to jump out of the way just in time to miss a spiked tree trunk flying through the air. It swings back and forth along the path I had been tracking, so I decide to head west, but no more than five steps into that direction, another swinging tree nearly wipes me out. I’m forced to crawl on the ground for several yards to stay clear of them, continuing to throw sticks around so I don’t fertilize the ground with my intestines.

The Andrews Sisters’ “I Didn’t Know the Gun Was Loaded” plays in my earpiece the whole time.

Once I finally make it several feet without another flying tree being activated, I catch sight of a camera lodged into a knot in a nearby tree. Careful to avoid any traps, I walk directly up to the tree and look into that little camera, wiping the dirt and blood from my face. “Very fucking funny, Reed. I hope you’re enjoying yourself while you hide away like a coward. Know this, I am coming for you and everyone else on this island. There is nowhere you can hide that I won’t find you, no hole deep enough and no place where you will be safe from me.”

I then take a couple steps forward, and my left foot lands right in a bear trap.

A scream rips from my chest as I crumple to the ground, my hands clutching at my calf so tightly my nails dig into my skin. The sharp metal claws of the trap are completely imbedded into the middle of my foot, and already I can feel blood pooling into the bottom of my boot. And even though getting rid of it may cause more damage than it did going in, I know it has to be done. I am not about to accept defeat from a goddamn animal trap.

I pick up a stick from the ground around me and shove it in my mouth, biting down on it as hard as possible. I place a hand on each side of the trap, and as hard as I can, I pull them apart. My scream is muffled by the stick between my teeth, my arms shake from the exertion and the pain, but I manage to rip the claws out of my boot and then chuck the trap into the jungle behind me.

Blood seeps out from the holes made in my boot, and when I try to put pressure on that foot, I immediately collapse. I try again, and the same result occurs. I make myself push through, though. I take it step by step, alternating between crawling, limping, and hopping forward, my rage and thirst for vengeance being the only things fueling me to keep moving.

At this point I’ve made it into the heart of the island—covered in my blood and the blood of my teammates, injured, exhausted, and all alone. I look around me, at the trees, the bushes, and the brush, and my rage overtakes me.

“Cai!” I shout, my voice raw from screaming.

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