Page 16 of Shielded Secrets

“No.” I gasped it, barely able to breathe, let alone speak. Turning around to gauge where this threat was coming from, I watched as someone rushed out from the side and jumped at Jerome’s friend.

It wasn’t someone else following me. It wasn’t a pair of predators hot on my trail.

This man wasstoppingthe other one. He was intervening, almost like the nerdy computer guy had. Miraculously, someone had come to my rescue.

Staggering in my steps, I tried to keep running and shuffling to reach safety. I had to get away. My instinct to flee wouldn’t ebb away with danger so close. Yet, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the gruesome sight of these two men fighting and hitting each other under the shadows beneath a tall oak tree.

Grunts and impacts of fists sounded. Curses came from their mouths too, but all of it was too incoherent and rushed for me to understand a single syllable.

Go. Just go.

I didn’t know who that man was. I didn’t want to know whom I’d be indebted to for this good deed. While I had the opportunity to, I would run like hell and stick with what I’d always hoped to be my motto in life—mind my own business.

Facing forward again, I sprinted faster to reach my apartment, leaving the sounds of combat far behind.

8

RURIK

“You motherfucker,” I growled, punching the man a couple more times. He wasn’t that skilled of a fighter, but one hit to my still-healing shoulder was all it took to knock me down a peg or two.

I was taller, bigger, smarter, and faster. This was just a college punk, a little guy on the totem pole. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have been a challenge for me, but my injury was working against me. So was the rabid rage that swept over me at seeing Kelly walking alone and pursued by an asshole like this.

I’d just found her. I’d just gotten to the campus and sought her out. My hope was that she’d be walking to or from her apartment building, and I’d lucked out in seeing her on her way there. With her head hanging low, her shoulders drooped, and her lips parting in a yawn, she looked like a weary, ragged traveler trekking home after a long journey. I detested how she struggled under the burdens of whatever troubled her. And she sure as hell didn’t need the stress of this punk rushing up after her with the clear intention of some wrong-doing. Her gasp and instinct to run were all the cue I needed to know she was in danger.

I punched the guy harder, again, taking out my anger on him. If he’d been planning to steal her away, to rape her, to drug her, to hit her, he had another thing coming. More than one, because no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop beating him.

Letting my protective emotions about her rule, I lost sight of any level-headed approach to this fight. I saw a threat to the woman I cared about, and I wouldn’t rest until he was dead. It was that simple.

Only the buzzing of my phone cut through the haze of anger. Only the slight rhythm of buzzes from that device reined me in.

The punk didn’t move. He’d stopped resisting me and fighting back a minute ago, but so consumed by the need to obliterate him for even daring to scare Kelly, I had gotten carried away.

His face was a bloody pulp. A tooth had fallen out onto his shirt. I slowed, holding my fist up with my arm reared back to punch him again. Eyeing him as I let the buzz of my phone reach me, I sucked in a deep breath.

Stop.

What the fuck are you doing?

What happened to just watching from a goddamn distance?

Wincing, I lowered the man to the sidewalk. He rested in an immobile heap, but he wasn’t dead—not yet. Lying still, but still breathing, he remained right where I dropped him on the path under the tree’s shadows.

As I straightened, reaching for my phone in my pocket, I winced at the sharp pains ricochetting from where I was shot protecting Oleg.

“Fuck,” I grunted.

I really shouldn’t have done that. I knew better than to just rush into a fight. I was doing fine with my rehab and exercises, but impulsively diving into hand-to-hand combat like that was stupid.

I blinked, catching my breath and willing myself to ride through and ignore the pain in my shoulder. Paying attention to my phone, I scowled at the message that reignited my regret of fighting this man who’d rushed after Kelly.

Lev:Meeting starts in fifteen minutes.

“Fuck!” I repeated. I’d gotten to campus with the intention of checking where Kelly was. She was my first interest, but at the same time, I would’ve been waiting for Lev to report on when this meeting was supposed to occur.

With Oleg appointing me to be on campus to keep an eye on things—and under Eva’s request that I check on Kelly—I was expected to get close to a meeting being held among people of interest. Marcus James and Eric Benson were both up-and-coming politicians who’d gotten involved with a variety of things at the college. Both of them had also been rumored to be participating in the drug trades here, and both men were shopping around between the Mafia families for a superior supplier.

According to word from one of the Baranov spies here, Petrov and Ilyin dealers had called for a meeting with Marcus and Eric. I was expected to listen in and record that meeting, but here I was, already deviating from the plan.

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