The moments ticked away, her ragged breathing the only sound she made. Then she lifted one hand and touched my face. “You’re not dead,” she whispered in awe.
“I don’t know how to express how sorry I am,” I whispered back.
“They said you were dead,” she said slowly, almost in a dream like state.
“I’m an undercover agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,” I explained immediately. “I am so sorry that I couldn’t tell you the truth … and I am even more sorry than you could possibly know that I wasn’t here to protect you. I—” Words failed me and my heart broke all over again at how inadequately I had protected her. I would have given my life to take back all the pain she had suffered in this ordeal. There were no words enough to tell her this. I held her gaze and didn’t stop the tears as they rolled down my face.
She wiped them with her fingers. “Don’t baby. Don’t. A few slaps doesn’t count for nothing. You’re alive and that’s all that matters,” she whispered.
God, I loved her so fucking much. I actually felt insignificant in the face of her quiet strength. Before I could tell her, we were interrupted.
Jeremiah burst out of the cabin. “Michael and Tad are on their way,” he announced.
It struck me for the first time, who the man he was referring to was. “Tad? The Mongol’s secretary?”
He nodded.
“Why is he with Michael?” Yuri asked.
“I don’t know.” Jeremiah shrugged. “He was with him when he stopped by the clubhouse to get Bull and me.”
I rose to my feet then and turned around to face the both of them, the saddest smile on my face.
“I think you should leave, Gage …” Yuri said.
“Not without Della-Ray.”
“You can’t take her,” Jeremiah protested. “She has to call the cops right now and say that she has been kidnapped and assaulted. It has to be on record. Otherwise, no one will be able to explain how they got here.”
“And what about the body?” Yuri asked.
“That’s for you to clean up. Speak to your superiors,” Jeremiah stated. “He threatened you both with a gun, you reacted to protect yourselves.”
“Then what about you?” Yuri asked.
Jeremiah stopped then and sighed in exhaustion, his fingers running through his messy head of ginger hair. “I don’t fucking know.”
A moment of silence ensued and then I spoke, “Let’s go to the kitchen.”
Both men came with me and soon we were in the adjacent room. I addressed Jeremiah, “How important is completing your assignment to you?”
He kept his gaze fixed on the wooden floor deep in thought before finally responding, “I’ve put four years of my life into it,” he said. “I don’t want to throw it all away.”
“Okay then,” I replied. “It means that you cannot have been here.”
Yuri turned to me his brows brimming with anger. “Does that mean that you’re going to take care of Michael and Tav?”
“I’m not going to let Tav go.” I growled.
He shook his head. “Not like this, Gage.”
“All of this is because of him. I joined the program to get him …”
He shook his head. “No, not this way.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m out of time and patience and frankly, interest. I wanted him to rot the rest of his life away for killing Mace, but now I just want him gone. He cannot exist in the same world that I do. You can report me if you choose to.”
Silence.
I knew they wouldn’t.
“What about Michael?” Jeremiah asked. “Are you going to take care of him too?”
“What do you think?” I scoffed.
“Gage,” Yuri called.
“I think you should leave, Yuri …” I said.
“Nah, don’t do it,” Yuri tried again.
“He’s a piece of scum. I’ll be doing the world a favor. He put his hands on her. If I don’t take care of him today, he’s going to turn up dead before the week ends.”
“How are we going to fucking explain all of these?” he complained.
“We turned up to save her … they acted up. We defended ourselves,” I said.
The room went quiet for the longest time and neither of us moved. My mind was already made up … no matter what happened, these three had written their sentence the moment they touched that sweet, innocent girl who had never harmed a soul.
“When do I make the call?”
Her voice was so sudden that we all jumped.
She was standing by the door, her gaze boring directly into mine.
I wanted to call out to her, but my mouth couldn’t form the words.
“Will this get you into trouble?” she asked.
My response was simple. “I don’t care.”
“I do,” she said.
An all-consuming fire started in the pit of my stomach. “Will you disappear with me?”
“Gage,” Yuri called, but I was unable to drag my gaze away from hers or to even respond for that matter.