Chapter 91: No Hesitation
Liam didn’t slow down at all.
The nearest man’s hand was still inside his jacket when Liam closed the gap, and there wasn’t time to guess what he was reaching for and be careful about it.
Liam hit him shoulder-first, full speed, driving him back against the van hard enough to rattle the frame before whatever he’d been pulling ever cleared the fabric.
It hit the ground instead. A short black baton, rolling once against the gravel and stopping.
Claire twisted hard against the grip on her arms, using the sudden violence beside her as cover, and got one wrist free before the man holding her registered what had happened.
She didn’t scream this time. She fought, silent and furious, nails finding skin.
The man Liam had shoved off the van recovered fast and came back with his hands up in something that looked almost like training. Liam didn’t give him room to use it. He hit low, then high, ugly and fast, no technique in it at all beyond hit first and hit again before the other man remembered how.
It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t supposed to be.A soft, cold chime cut through the noise of it.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Emergency Objective Active.
Protect Claire
Reward adjusted based on mission completion.
The second man staggered back, blood at his lip, and looked past Liam toward whoever was in charge of this.
"Forget her!" A voice from near the van, sharper than the others, cutting through everything. "Take him down! Now!"
The words landed Efficient. The one holding Claire hesitated at that, just long enough.
She wrenched her other arm free and shoved hard, catching him off-balance, and broke loose entirely, stumbling two steps before catching herself against the alley.
She looked back once found Liam already between her and the rest of them and ran, torn strap and bare feet and all, back toward the gold light bleeding out of the loading dock behind them.
Now it was three against one, and the three weren’t weak men either but Liam had once beaten someone better than the three of them combined.
"You have no idea who you just crossed," the nearest one said, circling wide, blood still at his mouth.
"Then tell your boss he picked the wrong target." Liam didn’t circle with him. He held ground, hands loose at his sides, weight forward.
Whatever the man meant to say back never came out. Somewhere past the alley’s mouth, faint but unmistakable, a siren cut through the night hotel security, or something faster, already responding to whatever alarm the wine-stained woman or someone else near the ballroom had finally raised.
The leader’s head turned toward the sound before anyone else’s did. "Move!" One word, flat, final. No hesitation in it at all.
They didn’t argue. The two still standing peeled off toward the van’s open door in the same motion, hauling the half-conscious one up between them, and the whole thing folded shut in under five seconds door sliding, engine catching, tires finding the wet gravel hard enough to spray it against the alley wall.
Liam was close to the van , close enough to see one pale face turn back through the rear window and look at him for exactly as long as it took the van to clear the alley’s mouth.
Then it was gone, taillights swinging wide onto the street and vanishing into traffic like it had never been there at all.
He stood there a moment, chest heaving, knuckles split, the baton still lying in the gravel behind him.
Hotel security reached the loading dock less than a minute later, radios crackling, flashlights sweeping the alley in wide, useless Liam gave them what he could three men, a van, no plate he’d caught and let them do the rest of the looking while he went to find Claire.
She was sitting on the low concrete step just inside the dock, knees pulled up, one hand pressed to a scrape along her palm, the torn strap of her dress hanging loose at her shoulder.
Someone had draped a jacket over her that wasn’t hers. She looked up when he came through the door, and something in her face broke open at the sight of him in a way it hadn’t the whole rest of the night.
"You’re bleeding," she said, voice thin. It’s not mine." He crouched in front of her. "Are you hurt? Actually hurt?"
"Scraped hand. Bruised everything else." A short, unsteady laugh that didn’t reach her eyes. "I’ll live."
He helped her up, and she came into him before either of them decided it was a good idea arms around his neck, face pressed into his shoulder, the whole practiced composure of the evening finally giving out all at once. Liam held on, said nothing, let her shake for as long as she needed to.
"I don’t understand," she said eventually, muffled against him. "Who does that? Who plans something like that?"
"I don’t know yet." He meant it. "But I’m going to find out."
He walked her to her car himself once security cleared them to leave, one hand steady at her back the whole way, and didn’t let go of her arm until she was safely inside .
A soft chime sounded as he watched her pull away.
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Emergency Objective Completed.
Protected target secured.
Reward issued.
New Threat Level Recorded.
Organized hostile force detected.
New faction added to host threat registry.
"Wait." Her hand shot out and caught his wrist before the door swung shut. Her grip was stronger than he expected, considering how badly her fingers had been shaking a minute ago. "Don’t go yet."
"I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, I just."
"Please." The word cracked slightly on its way out, and she seemed almost startled by her own voice, like she hadn’t meant to let that much through.
"Just get in. For a minute. I don’t" She stopped, pressed her lips together, tried again. "I don’t want to be alone in this car right now.
Liam came around and got in beside her without another word, pulling the door shut, and for a moment neither of them moved. The engine idled quietly.
Claire’s hands were folded tight in her lap, the scraped one wrapped loosely in a napkin someone had given her, and she was staring straight ahead at nothing.
"You don’t have to talk about it," Liam said quietly. I know." Her voice wavered. I just don’t want you to leave.
I was so scared."I know." He tightened his hand around hers. "You don’t have to pretend you weren’t."
She turned to look at him then,. "Thank you," she said, quiet and unsteady. "For coming after me.
She held his gaze a moment longer, then leaned her head against his shoulder, exhaling slowly, like the weight of the whole evening was finally allowed to leave her body now that someone else was there to carry some of it.
Neither of them said anything else for a while. The engine idled. The party’s music drifted faintly through the glass. And Liam stayed exactly where he was, her hand in his, until her breathing finally evened out enough that she didn’t feel like she might shake apart.
Miles away, the van slowed as it merged onto the highway, its interior lit only by the dashboard glow and the sodium orange of passing streetlights.
The man with the split lip pressed a balled-up rag against it, wincing. "He wasn’t in the briefing."
The leader didn’t look back from the passenger seat. "No. He wasn’t."Does the Boss need to know?
For a moment there was only the hum of the engine, the wet hiss of tires on the highway.
"He’ll want to know everything," the leader said finally, watching the city lights blur past the window. "Especially the part where some random dude just cost us a clean job."