Checkmate

First Move

Opening his heavy brown eyes, Alex blinked. And blinked again. Where was he? A car, James’ car. Where was James? Crap, he thought, looking around again. All of the windows were broken. Across the garage the same had been done to the other agents’ car. Alex felt a small amount of relief when he saw Emma and Joseph sitting up slowly in the back seat. He wasn’t so relieved when he saw the Capris sisters standing there. Just standing, guns resting casually against James’ tall body. They angled him so that it blocked Alex’s shot. The detectives looked ready to shoot through James to get to the women. Alex gave them a warning look through the broken glass in his window.

“Go on, get out of your cars,” Cecilia said with a light accent. Alex obeyed, foggy mind still buzzing at whatever they injected him with. He crawled over to the driver seat sat, body blocked by the car, as he freed his gun from its holster at his side. His colleagues did the same thing. What the Capris didn’t know was that James was a fairly good fighter himself. Not enough to take down two trained killers, but enough to get far enough away for someone to take a shot. At least Alex hoped so.

Emma gave the signal to James to bolt in five seconds. Joseph was distracting the women by babbling nonsensically. Alex lifted his gun. His heart was racing and he looked at James’ terrified face for just a moment, then trained his eyes on Cecilia. She was watching him, as though she understood exactly what was about to happen. He saw Athena’s hand tightening on her gun. They did know exactly what was about to happen. And they were going to kill James before that even started. He had approximately three seconds to save his friend’s life.

Alex jumped out from behind the car. “Wait!” he yelled, directed at both the Capris’ and his team. In that small moment of distraction when both sisters seemed to forget that they had guns trained on them, Alex started walking towards them shooting. He prayed Joseph and Emma were ready for what was to come next.

Athena dropped James. She lifted her gun and before she could aim, the sound of Joseph’s gun firing a fatal bullet through her abdomen. Cecilia’s beautiful face contorting in rage as she aimed to kill Joseph. And Emma firing twice in succession, two clean shots to her chest. They both collapsed, arms groping for each other in their dying moments, final breaths coming to whispering ends. For a few seconds everyone stood there, staring at either Alex or the Capris. James broke the silence, he grabbed his gun off the hood and went back to his team. He stood awkwardly before Alex. “Uh, thanks, for, for that,” he said, averting his cool brown eyes as he made an unsatisfactory apology to the man who just saved his life by risking his own. But Alex knew. Emma ran up to Alex looking as if she wanted to slap him or hug him or both. “What the hell did you do that for?” she shrieked. “They knew what we were going to do. They were going to kill James before he had a chance to attempt escape and then start firing on us. These windowless cars wouldn’t have been a very good shield against those automatic weapons they were packing.” Alex tried to explain, a little concerned that she was about to kill him.

Joseph laughed a little, looking pleasantly surprised. “Nice work kid. Next time a little warning would be nice before you step in front of two assassins.” He turned and put his arm lightly over Emma’s shoulder. “Come on, he’s all right. If he hadn’t done that we might all be dead right now.” Emma looked reluctant to let him off the hook so easily. She lowered her eyebrows over accusing eyes and walked back to the car. She sat down in the passenger seat beside Joseph. “How on earth are we going to drive this back to the Navy Yard?”