Fighting With Light (The Coldwell Brothers #2)

43. Liam

43

Liam

Aelia moves faster than I’ve ever seen her, throwing my Bowie knife at the man’s shoulder. Stunned, he stumbles back, and I watch in awe as she launches for him, landing on top. All that’s heard is branches snapping and leaves rustling, and then a quiet bang as she shoots him in the head. We look around, holding our breath, hoping no one heard anything.

Aelia lifts off of the man and yanks the knife out of his body. She cleans it off on his shirt, then walks back over to us with the knife in one hand and the gun in the other. She lifts the barrel of the gun, looking at Kai and Emerson as she blows on the barrel of the silencer before putting it in the holster.

My gut tugs, my heart thuds in my chest, and if my brothers weren’t here, my tongue would be down her throat right now. I kind of feel like a cartoon character with hearts shooting out of my eyes. I stare at her as she squats down next to me. Screw it. I grab her neck, hauling her face to mine. Our lips smash together with an electric zing and then I rip my mouth away.

“Well then,” Kai says.

“We need to approach the tents from the east side of the camp. Aelia, you should go in first because I’m not sure the women will respond well to three men coming into the tent first,” Emerson says.

She nods.

“I brought a grenade or two…” I mutter.

“Really, little brother?” Kai says.

“I didn’t pack grenades,” Emerson grumbles.

I shrug. “I know the bags you pack and I may have slipped a few in there.”

“Dumbass,” Emerson grumbles .

“You never know when you might need a grenade.” I grin.

“Well, it looks like we’re going to use your grenade to create a distraction to get these people out of here,” Emerson says.

“But what if they can’t run?” Aelia asks.

Emerson sighs and rubs his chin. “I don’t know. Carry them? None of us are familiar with this area, so hiding them seems too risky. And we would have a tough time coming back to get them.”

“So let’s just hope we can either carry them or they can run.”

We’re all silent for a moment.

“We all understand that the moment we do this, we will become enemies of the Marín Cartel. It will make everything worse. Especially for you, princess,” I say and look at her.

Our eyes lock and I struggle to process what I’m seeing.

“I don’t care. They don’t deserve this. No one does.”

“She’s right. Even if we left to come back with reinforcements, they could be long gone by then,” Emerson says.

“We can’t save everyone, but we can try to save them,” Kai says.

“Alright, what’s the plan, Emmy?” I ask him.

He glares at me and points at the map. “Since we only have a grenade or two…we need to place each here and here,” he says, pointing to the entry road and where it appears they are cooking. It’s hard to tell because there are no windows, only smoke coming out of the top.

“Then we need to make it back to the tent in time to get them and get out before anyone knows what we’re doing.”

“Aelia, go with Liam to place the one by the road and cover him. I’ll go with Kai, and he can cover me.”

“You’re the better shot, brother. I’ll go,” Kai protests.

Emerson shakes his head. “And you have a family to get home to.”

They stare at each other heavily for a moment, and Kai dips his head once.

“Well, I’m sure glad I packed the ones with time delays. They will give us three minutes. Place them and run.”

I pull one out of my bag Emerson brought from home and hand it to him. He puts it in his bag and we leave to do our jobs.

“I sure hope I’m on your good side enough to not let me get shot,” I whisper to Aelia.

She shoots me a look. “Shut up and focus.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We get back to our lookout spot and wait to see if any guards are about to walk past as they shift again. There is a gap in their security when the guards move to a different area. It leaves about a minute of open space before another guard shows up. I unhook my rifle from the strap and hand it over to Aelia.

“Do you—” She cuts me off, mashing her fingers against my lips, and turns her head towards the guard, who stopped to pee. We stay still holding our breath until he resumes walking past us. I purse my lips and kiss her bloody fingers.

Aelia glances at her watch and we wait while she gets into position with the rifle. The shift changes and I take my moment running across the road to where it drops down off a cliff to a river below. The blast might collapse the road, which would work in our favor. I place it, pull the small pin, and run back. Aelia looks around one more time right as the new guard walks past us. We wait for him to walk a few more feet, then take off back towards the other side of the camp where the women and kids are being held.

My rifle is strapped around her shoulders. “You’re really sexy with my rifle on, princess.”

“Another time, Tarzan,” Aelia says tightly.

We get closer to the tents, and I see movement out of the corner of my eye and don’t think, pulling my pistol. My brothers pause and make the sound. I holster my gun, and they breathe heavily behind me. Reaching for the strap to my rifle, I tug it back over Aelia’s head and hook it back to my strap.

“Let’s hope this works,” Kai mutters.

“It will. It has to,” Aelia says.

I glance at my watch, we have less than sixty seconds until they go off. The mountains still as we wait in tense anticipation for the explosion about to cause chaos. I grab the back of Aelia’s neck and pull her back .

“You stay behind us until it’s time to get in the tent, do you understand me? No Jane shit, got it?”

Her eyes flare with irritation and I give her a dark look. She finally relents and rolls her eyes. I’ll take that as an agreement.

I check my watch again. “Ten seconds,” I mutter.

We all brace ourselves to run the moment they go off.

The one by the road goes off, and it booms against the mountains. Yells echo after the blast, and like clockwork, the next one explodes.

“Go, go,” Emerson says.

We take off for the tent where the women and children are being held, moving as a unit, exactly how we were trained. A man spots us, and I tap my trigger, dropping him. Emerson leads the group with Kai and me, bracketing him in with Aelia between all of us.

Shouts ring out, and it looks like one grenade made something catch fire. The chemicals used to make cocaine are highly flammable, and it wouldn’t take much. We reach the tent, and Emerson steps to the side, peeping his head in, and holds the flap open for Aelia.

Kai follows her, and Emerson and I cover them.

I glance behind me, and realize we miscounted. The women are sitting in front of the five kids, trying to protect them. Fear is written all over their faces, and indignation flies through me. I’ve seen that look before. I’ve seen it on my mother when my father was beating her and forcing us to watch.

Aelia holds out her hands and drops into a squat. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. Can everyone run?” she asks. They look at her, not understanding what she is saying, so Kai jumps in.

He speaks to them in Spanish, and a few of them nod. But they all clearly don’t understand what he’s saying. “Come on, Two, we need to go,” I grunt, and peek out of the tent.

Emerson looks behind him and spots two of the women pulling away from the others. He says something in Russian. They perk up at that and nod rapidly. Aelia gestures for them to stand, and she reaches for the smaller child, who can’t be older than seven. Kai grabs another small girl, and the other women pick up the younger ones. I spot the woman who we saw being dragged, and she’s curled up in a ball, beaten and bloody. I reach for her, and she shies back.

“Quiero ayudar, quiero ayudar mi amiga,” I want to help, I want to help my friend, I tell her. She looks at me with distrust in her eyes, and I smile, holding my hand up. She stands slowly with my help.

“We’re running out of time. That distraction will only last for so long,” Emerson says as he straps a small girl to his chest with the Velcro from his vest straps.

Aelia has one, and Kai has another. He tells them in Spanish to hide their heads, don’t look, and hold on tight.

These women look severely malnourished, and I’m not sure how far we will get, but we have to try.

Emerson gestures for us to move. He checks out the tent, and I follow closely behind. He runs across the small path and up into the trees where we came from. The little girl strapped to his chest keeps her head tucked into his neck, and her small hands grip onto his t-shirt.

I wish I could blow this place to hell. I should have brought C4.

Covering everyone from the back end, my brothers and the other women run across the path.

Aelia hands the girl she was holding to a woman able to carry her and we pull up the rear as we run into the mountainside with Emerson leading the way.

A couple of bullets whiz by, and I twist to drop the shooters like a sack of potatoes. Another gun goes off, and Aelia shoots a man straight through the heart. We cover each other, making sure no one follows us into the mountainside.

When we get deeper in, I hear a grunt, and I turn to fire, only I find a man, one of the guards, holding a gun to my woman’s head with his arm around her neck in a chokehold. I sense Kai come up to my side, pointing his rifle at the man.

The guard is too close to Aelia, a bullet could kill her, too. He takes a step back as if he’s trying to take her, and I growl, trying to determine if I can make the shot. Fear so real I can taste it on my tongue as it fills my veins. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

“Debería desollarte vivo por tocar lo que no te pertenece,” I should skin you alive for touching what doesn’t belong to you. I tell him. He smiles at me and I know I have to act or lose her.

“Three,” Kai drawls. I keep my eyes on Aelia as they take another step back, and she struggles with the guard trying to leverage her weight. He moves just right, and I shoot him straight through the eye. She drops with the body and grumbles, pushing him off.

Aelia leaps to her feet and glares at me.

“You know I had him, I was reaching for my knife,” she snaps and wipes her hand across her face, smearing blood.

I scoff. “Like hell, you did, he was about to put a bullet through your skull.”

I would have died right then and there if he did.

“Well, you could have at least waited for me to move because now I’m covered in blood. Gross,” she groans.

“I’m just glad it’s not yours,” I mutter.

She drops her hand from her face. Blood is still splattered across it and down her neck, and yet she has never looked more beautiful. Our eyes lock, and I can’t read them in the dark, but I can feel them. I can feel her steady scrutiny on me and it’s almost too much to bear.

“I will kill for you, princess. Always.”

The lip gloss she’s wearing mingles with the blood on her lips, and I reach up to wipe it off. “Good because I’ll help you bury the body.”

“Guys, we’ve got to go. You can make heart eyes at each other later,” Kai says, trying to hurry us along.

We take off at a full run, following Kai. “What did he say?” I hear Aelia ask Kai.

He glances back at me and then continues forward. “He said he should skin that man alive for touching what doesn’t belong to him,” he breathes, and dodges a branch.

“Oh,” Aelia says and looks over her shoulder at me .

Well if that doesn’t scare her away then maybe nothing will.

It doesn’t take long for us to catch up to Emerson and the women following him. Some of them don’t have shoes. But we can’t stop for me to give them mine.

We urge them forward, moving as fast as humanly possible. I catch a woman teetering on her legs, and Aelia helps hold up another woman. They look like they are on the verge of passing out.

The further we get away from the compound, the quieter it gets. We can’t drop our guard, not until we leave this country. We keep checking and helping the women and kids make our way to the truck.

Adrenaline is the only thing fueling us to keep running. We run for two miles straight, keeping the women going even if they think they can’t.

One more mile to go, and one of the women who responded to Emerson’s Russian drops to the ground.

Aelia runs to her and checks her pulse. “I think she just passed out.”

I pick the woman up, lifting her into a fireman’s carry. She can’t be more than a hundred pounds as I lift her across my shoulders.

“Go on, princess, keep going, we’re almost there.”

She nods and goes to the others.

We move as a team, jogging as fast as we can until we make it to the truck. We clear it and load all the kids and the woman who passed out into the back cab.

Kai and I hop into the truck bed helping the four others and Aelia into the bed. I direct the women to put their backs to the cab of the truck and rest against it. Emerson starts the truck and we take off into the night. Kai and I hold on to the headache rack mounted against the back cab window and keep scanning the area around, just in case someone followed us. Once we’re a couple miles away Kai and I drop back down into the bed and sit on the wheel wells.

I reach for Aelia and grab her chin. She still has blood splattered across her face, and I pull my glove off and try to wipe it off.

“It’s dried. I’ll have to get it off later,” she says.

Her hair has fallen out of her ponytail and blows in the wind. I lean forward, pressing my lips to hers. This woman is a warrior .

“Thank you,” she says against my lips.

“For what?”

“For saving them.” I nod once.

She doesn’t need to thank me. It doesn’t matter if she was here or not, my brothers and I would have done it, anyway.

“We can’t bring them back to the US,” Kai says.

I glance at Kai, and Aelia grips my arm, making me wince. Aelia pulls her hand away, and her eyes widen.

“Oh, whoops,” I mutter.

“Liam,” she gasps, reaching for my arm.

“It’s fine, I’m sure it’s just a graze. I’ll just need some stitches.”

Aelia yanks back the fabric of my jacket, grabs a handkerchief from my pocket, and pushes it on my arm. “Ouch, Aelia, dammit,” I mutter.

“Shut up and take it,” she says quickly. She looks at me again, and it’s so dark it’s hard to see her eyes but she doesn’t seem happy.

“I know where we can take them,” Aelia says, brushing a tear from her cheek. “We need to find one of the churches. They will take them and help them.” I tap the glass of the back window. A kid opens it, and I tell Emerson. Pulling the map from my chest pocket I find one close to the airport.

We ride in silence all the way back into the valley. Before we reach the city limits, we hide our guns and tell the women to lie down in the bed just in case.

“I told the pilot to be ready for us within the next thirty,” Kai says.

Reaching into the truck I pull out a bag Emerson and Kai brought filled with US bills. I think it’s about fifty thousand, give or take. For emergencies, of course.

Emerson pulls up to the church, and we all hop out. Kai and I help the women out of the bed, and Aelia gets the kids out of the truck.

I look up at the large doors of the church, and a smaller one off to the side opens. A nun steps out as she takes us in, in confusion and Kai runs up to her, explaining everything in Spanish. She nods and gestures for the kids. They follow her with hesitant steps. I smile at them encouragingly, telling them they will be okay. I hand the nun the bag of money and gesture for them .

“Ayudarlos,” help them, I say.

She opens the bag, and her eyes widen, seeing the money. “Sí, sí, sí, se?or, gracias se?or.”

I nod and go back to the truck.

Emerson explains everything in Russian, and the two wave at him and start to follow the others, then a blonde woman with a nasty black eye turns and throws herself into Emerson’s arms. He startles for a moment and hugs her back briefly before setting her on her feet and urging her towards the others. She nods her thanks at each of us, and the nun closes the door behind them.

“We gotta go,” Emerson grunts. We all pile back into the truck, and he drives us to the plane that’s ready and waiting for us.

Emerson parks the truck, and we wipe it all down. I spray the doors and the windows, and Kai gets the bed, cleaning it front to the tailgate, while Aelia does the interior, careful not to touch anything else as she goes.

We leave the keys in the truck unlocked, only bringing the title and license plate, and jog up to the plane.

“Get us in the air, now,” Emerson says to the pilot. The two flight attendants get the door closed, and we all collapse into our seats, still holding our breaths until we are out of Colombian air space.

“So, did we get what we came for?” Kai asks.

I pull out my phone and grab my computer from my backpack. “Yeah, I think we just proved that someone in the United States government, in collaboration with the US Embassy in Colombia, is helping to move cocaine through official channels into the United States. Yeah, I’d say that’s a RICO case, maybe even treasonous.”

“We could only be so lucky,” Emerson grumbles, unstrapping everything from his body.

“Ladies and gents, we are officially out of Colombian airspace and en route to the Costa Mesa private airport,” the pilot says.

We all collectively sigh, and everyone looks at me.

I pull up the pictures from my phone onto the computer and flip through them .

“Is this our smoking gun?” Aelia asks.

“It could be, but we need to prove Congressman Fred Coldwell’s connection to Colombia.”

“Well, that’s not hard. He’s on a foreign affairs committee. It wouldn’t be surprising if Colombia is on that list. I’m surprised you don’t already know,” Emerson says.

I shrug and pull up the foreign committee’s government website with our father on it. Sure enough, Colombia is on the list. I chuckle and lean back against my seat.

“Yes, Aelia, this is our smoking gun. We just proved that our father and potentially other government employees are using US tax-paying dollars to move illegal narcotics across borders onto US soil for a known head of the Costa mob, and other criminal organizations.”

Kai whistles. “Good job, little brother. But…”

“What?” I ask, bracing myself to be chewed out because that was basically a shit show.

“Let’s not tell Cordi that there were explosions and gunfire.”

“She’s going to find out, dude,” I tell Kai.

He sighs. “Let me get some sleep first because she’s going to rip me a new one. And there’s no doubt in my mind Mom will be right after her.”

I wince. “I have a surfing competition I have to get to, so that’s all you.”

He rolls his eyes and tips his head back on the seat.

“Oh, I meant to ask, how is Ben?” I ask my brothers.

Kai frowns, and I look at Emerson.

“He’s living in a lightless hole. How do you think he is?” Emerson says.

I glance at Aelia, and she frowns.

“Maybe when this is all over, we can…let him go? I know you weren’t best friends, but...” I trail off, not sure what to offer her.

“Come on, we need to get that jacket off and check your wound,” Aelia says, trying to pull me out of the chair.

Emerson is already snoring across the aisle, and Kai is texting, likely Cordi and Mom .

I follow her into the larger of the two bathrooms on the plane, and she shuts the door. There’s plenty of room to move around the shiny walnut-covered room with mirrors at every angle. I flip the sink on and grab a towel from the small cabinet to wipe the blood off of her face.

“Thanks,” she rasps.

I nod, and she reaches for the buttons and zipper on my jacket. Grinning, I help her pull it off, still wincing in the process. “If you wanted to punch our mile-high club card, all you had to do is ask, princess. It’s an immediate yes, “ I tell her.

She rolls her eyes and yanks my jacket down.

“Ow!”