Bounty Hunter [REWRITTEN VERSION]

Chapter 52: Ryder's Leave

MAIZE

A short while later the police arrived to make the arrests of the fifteen Zmeya men—all generously tied up and waiting. She watched it all happened from across the street through the coffee shop window.

Carrying unregistered firearms would most likely be the thing that got them behind bars, but their identities and other past crimes they've committed in the past would keep them there. For a while, Maize hoped as she sipped a hot cup of coffee by the window-cill.

Ryder came in several minutes later.

"Where's Kota?" she asked when she didn't see the familiar mass of black fur following in through the door behind him.

"In the car," Ryder answered, sliding into the booth seat across from her and throwing his arms back behind his head. "Where's mister 'can't get my name right'? I thought you'd both be in the same place together."

"He went looking elsewhere," Maize answered, remembering how Alec had taken off, giving her a minor explanation of where he was supposedly going which told her practically nothing. "Said there was something he wanted to check out."

Ryder shrugged in response meagrely before turned his head out the window next to where they sat and focused in on the guys getting hauled away in the last of the police cruisers. "How lucky for them..." he grinned, "anonymous tip just happens to come in and oh look at that, a nice raid to start off the day."

"Yeah, how lucky," Maize repeated before the slight upwards angle of her mouth slanted into a flat line. "More than we got out of it anyway. The whole thing ended up being nothing but a waste of time for us," she sighed heavily, setting her cup down.

Ryder shrugged. "Well, I wouldn't say that. I mean, at least those guys will be out of your way from now on...that's something," he pointed out, and Maize relented her views slightly.

"They have caused us a lot of trouble these past few weeks," she acknowledged begrudgingly. Admittedly, it was a satisfying to see them driven away in cop cars, or at least justified. So maybe their small excursion hadn't been entirely a waste. "But still—it's disappointing. I thought interrogation the gang members would have led somewhere." She swore.

Ryder was staring at her, with an oddly narrowed look of curiosity in his steely eyes.

"Are you concerned about the agent? Or are you so frustrated because this was your mission?" His tone was neither accusing nor condescending, he was simply asking a straightforward question. "Do you actually care about whether the agent lives or dies?"

Of course I do! Maize was so close to snapping immediately, but a moment of hesitation had her still, and she held it back in time.

There was a reason he was asking her this question—and it wasn't to be rude or provoking—he still thought she operated like she used to; indifferent to her targets. But that had changed, as she had tried to explain it to him. It had changed everything, though she knew she couldn't expect him to understand that with the same revolution that she did. Which is why she calmed herself before answering.

"I do." This mission had yet to be the longest mission she had ever gone on by far, but it was one of the first she had been sent out where she wasn't doing her job alone. That had made a difference, one that she hadn't thought to acknowledge until Ryder asked. "I do care...about saving Kishan's life, not just because it's the job," she said, and she meant it wholeheartedly. "He saved our lives before too, and he was only doing his job, doesn't deserve any of this. I do care. Though I will admit, probably not as much as Alec—they've known each other for a long time."