The Hostage and the Wanted

“Who are you?” Louis demanded finally breaking the silence, their eyes never taking faltering in their stare down.

“No one. I prefer not to associate myself with a name. I am simply – here. However, I am most curious who you are and what your association with my target is. She normally doesn’t involve herself with people –but judging by that fact that she is bound and gagged, I see that she is not here on her own free will. I can only assume you are after the same information?” The masked man asked, Louis finally breaking contact to stare to the unconscious girl and his friend.

“She won’t tell me anything, not even why you people are after her. I want to know what sort of situation she’s gotten herself into. What do you possibly want with the girl?” Louis demanded, wanting to strangle Isabella to make her talk. She was not only putting her life at risk, she just got them involved in a fuck all of deep shit.

“I imagine we are after the same information-“The guy started but Louis cut him off.

“I very much doubt that, mate, I’m trying to figure out why you people are after her but I’m starting to get an idea. She knows something – “Louis started but the guy’s dark laughter stopped him.

“She has hands, eyes, ears and a mouth. She is a risk should she decide to use those senses, especially if she chooses to talk to the wrong people. I’m here to bring her back to the states, her ex employer wishes to deal with her personally. If you hand her over without incident, I shall see to it that your death is quick and painless.”

Louis felt himself jerk back as if he had been hit. So the girl was involved in something that she shouldn’t have been and these people came to collect. Louis was half tempted to hand Isabella over strictly on convenience alone but the other half of him wanted to dig deeper into this girls past and a small corner of him still needed the girl for his own personal use to avoid prison – although that would be somewhat moot if he was murdered.

“Like I said, I don’t know what she was involved in before getting caught in my web but I’m afraid I can’t just hand her over, mate, especially when you’re threatening me with certain death if I did. Besides, I still need her. She’s my hostage for the time being and when she’s of no more use you can gladly take her but I’m not going back to prison.” Louis spat, folding his arms over his chest, watching the guy’s head tilt slightly in amusement.

“I’d think you would be more concern with dying than with jail. Priorities, friend.” The masked man rolled his eyes with a snort, looking back at the two unmoving occupants. “Your friend fainted just in case you were wondering, I didn’t touch him.”

“Harry can take care of himself, thanks. My main concern is you, mate. The whole threat of murder and such.”

The masked man simply observed his opponent from across the room. The kid was brave. He was also very stupid from another standpoint but the man was impressed.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, friend – but you took the wrong girl hostage. She’s wanted by some pretty powerful people and her employer has entrusted me with the task to bring her back, I’m not going to disappoint him because truth be told the man scares the piss out of me but the money is well worth the inconvenience.”

“You know, after seeing you in my living room, gun aimed at everyone and whatnot, I’m going to go ahead and assume that taking her was possibly the most stupidest mistake I’ve made today. Considering she did try to warn me, sake of argument here, you’re right, that one is on me but you’re not taking her.” Louis said, his voice firm and it held no fear. Although he wished Harry would hurry up and make work on getting to his gun so that he could stop cock testing the other guy and potentially getting himself killed.

“Oh? How do you figure that? You’re not in any position to stop me. You’re in no position to do anything. Besides, if it’s not me, it will be someone else. The guy isn’t going to stop until he gets his precious and in this case it happens to be the girl. She’s got to pay for what she did. The pied piper needs his payment and all that metaphorical bullshit. Give me the girl, I leave – judging how I’d just be wasting a bullet on the likes of you, I’m not even going to bother, it’s obvious you don’t know shit and that’s about the only wise thing that girl has done, keeping her fucking little mouth shut.” The man spat venom.

“Anytime now Harry.” Louis muttered, leaning against the doorway.

“Come again?” The man asked confused as Louis smirked, seeing subtly movement from his friend at the corner of his eye. He decided to engage the man in his curiosities.

“I was just telling my friend, the one who’s been laying there pretending to be unconscious for the past five minutes – although I can’t entertain the idea as to why but I’m telling him to hurry up and –“

“Mother fuck-“Harry swore, opened his eyes, reached to his pocket and took his gun out. Not waiting for a formal invitation he fired the gun at the man before either party could react. “Thanks for throwing me under the bus, mate! I was waiting for the right time” Harry yelled, jumping off the couch as the guy’s body hit the wall, the gun in his hand going off at the exact time, a bullet almost hitting Harry.

Louis saw the man’s hand go to his throat, thickets of blood squirting from the wound.

“Ew, that looks painful, mate, you might need hospital.” Louis observed calmly, ignoring Harry’s further outburst – until Harry aimed the gun at Louis, his green eyes a bright, vibrant and dangerous green.

“Never – EVER call me out like that again, Lou. You just – stupid!” Harry stumbled over his words, the anger so intense that his body was shaking.

“Put the gun away, Harry. We need to get out of here, we have more company downstairs.” Louis told him seriously, beginning to throw everything into the bags he had brought up. “We’ll go down the fire escape, our car is off to the side there. If we can get to the car, we should be able to lose them. If I’ve outran cops I can outrun these yanks.” Louis said, focusing on the door, he heard footsteps coming up the stairwell. “Move it Harry, help me grab the girl!”

Harry swore at his friend before helping Louis grab the girl by her ankles, together they picked her up and began to move her, unfortunately with Louis having his hands full with bags and neither concentrating on protecting Isabella’s head, they found themselves running into a wall, Isabella’s head denting the hard plaster in the wall.

“Bloody fucking Christmas,” Harry yelled as Louis lost his hold. Harry wrapped his arms around the girl and picked her up, gesturing to Louis as he did so. “I got her, go! You’ve done Ella enough favors!”

Louis rolled his eyes.

“She’s caused us nothing but problems, I say we bloody leave her.” He challenged Harry who moved passed him toward Louis’s room where the open window to the fire escape was.

“We’re not leaving her, she didn’t ask for this.” Harry argued, balancing the girl on his knee as he ducked through the window to get out.

“Neither did we, mate and you heard it straight from the jackass’s mouth; they won’t quit coming after her! She’s a lost cause.”

“Maybe to you but she was running, we’re partially to blame for this. She was running and we got her further into this situation. Just – not the best time to be arguing about this, yeah? We’ll talk about this when people with weapons aren’t going all open season on our arse. Now come on!” Harry yelled, making sure the girl was in his arms securely as he took to stepping carefully down the fire escape – eight stories up.

“Harry, mate, not to hurry you but –“Louis started before hearing the door to their room burst open. “Bloody fuck, GO!”

“So much for not trying to hurry me –“Harry recanted sarcastically but picked up his speed with Louis following practically to his back, struggling to get his gun.

They made it about two stories down before movement above them caught their attention.

“Drop the fucking bags! We can replace the items, we can’t replace us! Get the gun!” Harry yelled, panicking as they heard guns cocking above them, followed by an electric charge.

Louis took his friend’s advice and dropped some of the bags, which was the food and candles. That freed up his one arm enough to grab his gun and shoot upward toward traveling feet, stopping in the middle of the fire escape to shoot, unfortunately one of the men had a spot on aim and Louis felt one of the bullets clip into his shoulder. He cried out, dropping his gun as he did so to clutch his wound. He pushed through the pain after a moment when a warning shot landed by him. He turned and ran, seeing Harry had about four flights to go.

“Run!” Louis yelled, barely dodging another bullet as he moved his feet faster.

“Shoot them!” Harry yelled back, which made Louis want to roll his eyes.

“I can’t, I’ve been shot!” Louis yelled, jumping down about six stairs from the one in order to get ahead before doing it again, landing on his knees, crying out when the shockwave went through him.

Harry made it down to the ground, dropping the girl and running up the steps to helped Louis, pulling him to his feet and taking his gun out, shooting upward and landing a shot in the bottom of one of the men giving chase, hearing them scream and drop – unfortunately it also caused a retaliation shot, which barely missed them. One thing is for certain to be thankful of, was that the ones chasing them had no aim.

Harry guided Louis down before aiming a well thought shot to one of the men approaching them. He had seen the girl tied up on the ground and thought to make a move.

“Stay back!” Harry demanded, shooting the guy in the leg and pushing Louis toward the car before picking up Isabella and making it to the car, opening the back and tossing her in. He took the keys from Louis who handed them out to Harry before getting in the back beside their hostage, untangling his arm from the rest of the bags.

Harry jumped in the driver’s side on the right side and throwing the car into reverse before pulling forward and speeding off. A few stray bullets hitting the panel work of the car as they barely escaped.

“Where are we going?” Louis asked, looking behind him, flinching at the immense pain radiating from his shoulder before looking over the girl, seeing her head had a little cut that was bleeding.

“I don’t know, Lou. We need to figure it out soon though.” Harry replied calmly, looking through the back mirror. “You alright, mate? That shoulder’s looking a little beat up.”

“I’m fine, is she ok?” Louis nodded over to Isabella.

“She hit her head, she’s going to have a killer headache if she doesn’t already have a bloody concussion.” Harry murmured, slightly concerned before he watched Louis reach back to behind the girl’s head and untie the scarfs Harry had ended up gagging her with when she didn’t calm down.

“Just borrowing them.” Louis flinched, pulling the fabric from her mouth and bunching up the cloth, holding it to his bleeding shoulder as it continued to gush blood. He was losing a lot of it and would need to get medical attention soon; unfortunately with them being wanted men, a regular hospital was out of the question.

“Hang in there, mate, we’ll get you patched up.” Harry soothed, his eyes scanning the open streets in desperation.

Notes

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