Bounty Hunter [REWRITTEN VERSION]

Chapter 24: I Can Help You

MAIZE

Before Maize could argue with him further or to tell him to let her go instead, the detective was gone and Maize lost sight of him.

However, she could still hear as the sound of shouting filling the air a distance away, getting farther from them now. Alec was already working to lead them away.

"That...reckless...idiot...!" Kishan wheezed through teeth clenched tight in pain. His bleeding still had not let up, Maize saw, and it wasn't getting any better.

Dammit. She was stuck. She wanted to go after West—for being an idiot and to make sure he didn't get himself killed—but what he had said was true, Kishan was going to bleed out at this rate. Dammit! Maize mentally cursed the word again as she shut her eyes in frustration, torn between the decision. She then chose looked at it objectively, regardless of personal tactile. The bounty Hunter side of her told her to focus on the main thing here; the job. She made a choice.

"Come on, Kishan." Maize's eyes were hard as she took his uninjured arm and pulled him along.

"What? We can't leave him like that! He's good with a gun—don't tell him I admitted that—but not that good that he can take on that many at once!" Kishan exclaimed angrily. "Are you really okay leaving like this?!"

"No, I'm not," Maize answered stiffly as they kept moving purposefully. "But he said he'd meet us there—and not once since I've known him, has he ever failed to do something he said he would," she stated.

Kishan gave her a slight glance but did not say anything more as they continued on. Maize forced herself to keep her mind set in finding the safe house, and not to look back behind her.

Don't prove me wrong, West.

* * *

ALEC

Nearly thirty minutes had passed.

Alec was breathing hard as he fought to catch his breath.

That actually went much quicker than I thought it would, Alec thought to himself as he glanced down at the scene behind him. The forms of several cartel members lay in a trail on the ground, leading a path that ended at the detective's standing form.

Each one of them had come at him, and so, he'd taken each one down with either a bullet or a hit. They weren't dead, yet. Those that had been shot were bleeding and would need medical attention, but that would be for the local authorities to deal with when they issued for their arrest. Whenever they actually decided to show up, Alec thought to himself.

At first, he hadn't doubted that he would be able to take on this many at once, so to say. But damn had he been lucky. Aside from a dull throb in his side from a boot he had received and a slight cut under his left eye from a hit he hadn't managed to block—he had made it out fairly unharmed.

Only, perhaps he had contemplated his victory a little too soon.

Just as he thought he had gotten to means to fully catch his breath, his body was jacked to attention as the flash of a silver bullet whizzed right past his eye. He jumped out of the way just in time as two more followed.