Page 80 of Ten

Maybe it would be better for everyone if I didn’t survive the night.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Shoulderburning,Tengroanedand reached over to touch the wound. A through-and-through, he realized, as he probed the injury.I’ll survive.

As he clambered to his feet, he coughed. Smoke was heavy in the air, and it irritated his lungs. He spotted Kostya at a window, trading gunfire with someone outside the cabin. The cleaner glanced at him and then kicked one of the M4 Carbine rifles toward him. “Davai!”

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Ten picked up the rifle, checked that it was loaded, and then used the butt of it to knock out the glass in the window on the far end of the room. He used the wall for cover, sighted a man firing at the cabin, and squeezed the trigger. He missed the first shot but hit the second.

As he continued to fire, the only thing on his mind was Nisha. She was downstairs, probably still in the bedroom, terrified and unprotected. He needed to get to her, but he couldn’t abandon Kostya or this vantage point.

“Get down to the ground floor. Get Nisha!” Kostya shouted over the hail of gunfire.

Ten didn’t stick around to argue. He fired three more rounds before rushing to the door, hopping over the dead body in the center of the room. The man Ilya had captured hadn’t been killed by them. A stray bullet through the window, when the gunfire erupted, had gone right through his brain.

He snatched another magazine from the ammo box Kostya had produced from a cabinet at the first gunshot. He crept down the floating stringer stairs and found Ilya firing out the sliding glass door that faced the rear of the property where the attack stemmed. Ilya noticed him and gave a series of hand signals.

Ten nodded and moved toward the bedroom where he had left Nisha. The smoke was thicker here and caustic. He heard coughing and gagging, but he couldn’t see through the oily black cloud. This wasn’t a normal fire. This had been started by the attackers to keep them away from the bedroom.

His heart stuttered, and it hurt to breathe. Was she already dead on the other side of the door? Shot? Left to bleed alone in a haze of smoke as flames licked at her skin? Was she crying out for him? Terrified?

He nearly tripped over Eric Santos and Alejandro. The detective had taken a nasty bullet to the gut and another to the chest. Alejandro had taken a blast to the face, killing him instantly. He had fallen against the door, his blood and brains smeared down the wood.

Through the burning smoke, Ten could see the men had been trying to get to Nisha, to save her. Ten’s failure to protect the woman he loved had caused Alejandro his life. It was a debt he could never repay.

“Eric?” Ten carefully shifted the man upright. “Eric? Can you hear me?”

“Took her,” Eric groaned. “Took Nisha.”

Ten’s stomach dropped. He swallowed down the bile that threatened to erupt from his throat. “She was alive?”

“Think...yes?” Eric’s head lolled, and Ten wasn’t sure how much time the detective had left. If the blood loss didn’t kill him, the smoke sure as hell would.

As he lifted Eric from the floor, he gritted his teeth against the tearing pain in his shoulder. Awash in agony, he heard the unmistakable chop of helicopter blades. From the living room, Ilya shouted, “They’ve got Nisha. They’re putting her in a helicopter.”

Ten couldn’t believe this was happening. It was a nightmare he couldn’t escape. With Eric in his arms, he kicked the locked bedroom door, shattering what was left of the wood pocked with bullet holes. He stepped into the bedroom, took in the gaping hole where the French doors had been, and roared with fury and anguish.

There, far in the distance, he could just make out the shape of a helicopter. Men spilled out of it, all of them armed to the teeth. He couldn’t chase after her, not with Eric in his arms bleeding to death and all those rifles pointed at him.

The hardest thing he ever did was turn away from the hole and dart back into the hallway with Eric.

Gunfire tore through the cabin, and he flinched as bullets snapped and pinged all around him. He rushed down the hallway and met Kostya who had called Ilya back from the sliding door.

Grabbing his shirt, Kostya forced Ten to look at him. “We’ll get her back.”

“We fucking better,” Ten warned, his temper hanging by a thread.

“We will.” Kostya let go of the fistful of the shirt he held and checked Eric. “Ilya, call 9-1-1. Get the police here immediately. Drive toward the main highway so EMS can intercept you.”

“And then?” Ilya asked, clearly not enjoying the thought of being the focus of an investigation.

“Fucking lie,” Kostya said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You and Eric were out here with Nisha. Ten is still in Houston. He went to see his PO. He didn’t come back. The man upstairs broke into the house first and then the others attacked.”

“That’s not going to explain all the shots fired from inside the cabin,” Ilya warned.

“I guess they’ll have to work overtime figuring it out,” Kostya remarked coldly. He seemed to finally realize they were short one man. “Where is the Mexican?”

“Dead,” Ten said. “Bullet to the brain. Outside the bedroom.”

---