Bounty

Chapter 7
My heart dies with you
Benjamin Kahil bit his lower lip as he watched his girlfriend slide up and down the brass pole. His hot Mexican lover just loved to tease him. It was hard to block out the fact that she was teasing about thirty other men at the moment as well but she had often told him that it was all for him.
“Those other men,” she had told him, “are just the furniture in the background, baby.”
He smiled at her when he she made eye contact with him for what must have been at least the fourth time since she’d walked onstage, and she had just now gotten topless, the good stuff was still ahead. She was the best thing in his life right now, it didn’t matter how she got her money. Even though he had told her he could support her and her family on the money he was making. Though he had never actually voiced to her what it was that he did for a living. He didn’t want to risk his superior finding out about it and killing the only thing he had going for him right now. Being one of the top sellers for the biggest drug lords in all of Mexico had its pros and cons.
He had no idea that another con was about to show itself.
A sudden pressure on the couch he was seated on only earned his new sitting companion a side glance, but the barrel of the Kahr P45 pressed up into his ribcage earned them his full attention.
“Don’t move.” The voice in his ear was low but not masculine.
A woman?
“What do you want?” he spoke in English since she had addressed him in that manner. His breath hitched in his throat when she pressed the nose of the gun harder into his flesh.
“I do the talking, got that?”
Kahil nodded stiffly.
“Good. Follow me sir.” She hoisted him up by his shirt and led him with the gun still in his ribs to the back room. He looked back at Cassy who was watching him with concern in her eyes.
“I love you.” He mouthed to her before he disappeared into the back hallway.
~’~’~’~’~’~’~’~’~’~’
Alexa led Kahil out the back hallway of the little club and into an alley behind it with her gun pushing into his back and the other hand on his left arm. Once outside she began the standard procedure.
“Benjamin Bradley Kahil you are hereby placed under arrest.” There was no real reason to say it but the procedure was needed. She was not a cop, far from it actually so the standard reading of the rights was completely abandoned while she cuffed him and patted him down for weapons. She only found a switchblade and a tranquilizer pistol tucked into the back of his pants. Alexa put the tranq where he had kept his and pulled him from the brick wall, which she had him pressed against. “You’re gonna be put away for a long time Kahil.”
He was silent, which Alexa thought was a little more than odd. Usually they would try to say something, anything to plead their case, but he was silent Alexa thought it to be his way of confessing his guilt. He knew he was guilty and he knew that his time in jail would be well justified. But still something about his silence coupled with the look in his eyes sent another sort of chill up Alexa’s spine, leaving what felt like the aftermath of someone punching her in the gut.
Both of his brown eyes were misty and glazed over, and his jaws were set as if trying not to let something out. But his eyes weren’t on her. His gaze had drifted off towards the right, staring almost apologetically at whatever was there. Or more accurately whoever was there.
Alexa turned to meet the round cinnamon colored eyes of Cassandra Sanchez as she stood helplessly near the back exit of the club, clothed in a white robe that was hastily tied in the front. The look in her eyes was pure hurt and Alexa had to gulp to keep her gaze steady on the woman.
The trained bounty hunter held out a hand, keeping the other one on Kahil just in case he would try to run. “Ma’am you should not be out here. This is official business, so you should go back inside ma’am. Please, this is for your own safety.” She hated how much she sounded like an automated voice machine when she went through that part. It always made her seem so lifeless so pre-programmed so, dare she think it, controlled. Sometimes it made her want to just kill her bounties on sight just to be out of protocol, just to be different. But not only would that make her a heartless killer, it would lessen the amount of the bounty she received abundantly.
Cassandra didn’t seem to show any real signs that she was about to heed Alexa’s orders and proceeded outside trying her best to get to Kahil’s side, pleading with a broken voice all the way.
“What’s going on here?” was the brunet’s prime question. “He’s innocent! You’ve got the wrong man.” Was a close second on the list.
“Ma’am I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to step back or I will be forced to take action.” Alexa would answer back. Hearing this made Kahil step in as well.
“Please no! Don’t shoot her! Please! Cassy go back inside!”
That would lead to Cassandra getting more anxious. “Shoot me?! Why would she shoot me? Benny what’s going on here? Why would you shoot me?”
All of the noise and chaos of the situation was getting to Alexa. Their words were clutter in her head and she wasn’t much of a neat freak but mind clutter was the sort that she could not deal with. Plus it was annoying.
“Ma’am!” She said it suddenly, louder than before, causing her voice to carry over both Sanchez and Kahil’s still frantic voices, but the gun that she was pointing directly into the woman’s face was what really grabbed everyone’s attention.
Everyone stopped. There was no sound at all except for the muffled sound of music coming from behind closed metal doors. Alexa was certain that you could hear a pen drop, and that even the rodents that took up inhabitance in this ally had stopped their chatter just to see what was going on.
When Alexa spoke again her voice was softer, and more even. “I do not want any problems here. Now if you please ma’am, go back inside and everything will be fine, ok?”
Cassy glanced to Ben before moving, but did as Alexa had asked when he nodded for her to comply. When she began to move away, Alexa slowly put up her gun, thinking that the issue was handled. But little did she know that she was “dead” wrong.
The first gunshot startled all three occupants of the dark alley behind the “Los Lapizes” club in downtown Rostoria, Mexico and left bugs, rodents and humans alike scattering for cover. Alexa had her gun out in the time it took for the bullet to exit the unseen shooter’s gun and strike its target. Cassandra Sanchez jerked once and crumbled to the ground. Alexa’s breath caught in her throat when she herself was winged by the next bullet, but her previous lighting quick move for cover had prevented further damage. Kahil was not so lucky and was struck down by the next two bullets that met his person when he lunged to his woman’s side after witnessing her murder.
Pressed up against the wall with her gun to her chest Alexa breathed silently as she watched the murder of two people, one of which costing her ten thousand dollars. She cursed under her breath and listened for the signs that it was clear to come out from cover. She heard the static sounds of com-links whirring to life.
“Sir,” she heard above her head, “Two targets down, third target wounded.”
Alexa couldn’t hear what whomever the shooter was talking to said back but she could guess it was “finish the job” or something to that extent when she saw a man land on the ground.
He was in full tactical gear with a sniper rifle in hand the goggles over his eyes were high tech night vision or heat seeking mechanisms, and the thickness of his armor gave him protection from almost any type of bullet. From what Alexa could tell he was a highly trained member of the Mexican army. The stripes on his uniform and the patches on the same confirmed her theory. This confused Alexa as well as excited her. Why would the Mexican army kill Benjamin Kahil and his stripper girlfriend? Kahil was a big time drug dealer sure but nothing for the army to be concerned with. Something was up, that was sure but that would have to wait for her attention. Right now she had to escape this bind with her life, and since it seemed for the moment that this solider was only doing his job that he would leave with his as well.
The soldier swiveled on one booted foot searching the perimeter for the assailant. Moving slowly and cautiously, with his sniper in hands, he neared the corner behind which he had seen the woman in black take cover. He crept forward, silent and intent on using the element of surprise. He cracked a small smirk under his face shield, happy with his success. Alexa would show him to never celebrate to soon.
Alexa waited until he was at the proper place, with his toe just beyond the corner of the wall, to slam the back of her pistol into his face shield, cracking the shatter proof reinforced plastic enough to rattle his brains inside the helmet and break his nose. The sniper in his hands went off twice up into the air and Alexa recoiled herself back into her cover. He stumbled back, dropping the rifle onto the ground and using his hands to cover his face. Quickly he pulled the helmet from his head and viewed his hand, covered in blood from the broken nose. He growled with anger and pain and looked up to observe his surroundings when another surge of pain racked his entire being as the heel of a boot, much like the ones he wore, crashed into the side of his head, knocking him down and out.
Alexa did a quick glance around for any more would-be-attackers and once she’s decided there were none she bent down to put two fingers on the fallen soldier’s pulse. That kick had come in hard contact with his head and Alexa wondered that maybe she had forgotten her own strength…again. She nearly sighed with relief when she found that he was still breathing. She moved over to both Kahil and Sanchez and realized she wouldn’t be so lucky with them. Both were dead. Kahil had met death with one to the chest and head, and Cassandra with a bullet hole darkening the white of her robe on the middle of her back. The bullet had gone right through her heart and Alexa could tell by the look that Kahil had died with that it had gone right through his as well. Alexa shook her head and pulled out the razor thin camera that the baggy low riding black cargos she wore allowed her to hide in one of her many pockets and snapped two pictures of the bounty and his girlfriend each before heading off into the darkness