‘You learn fast.’ Ryan smiled before turning his hips under Jaz and throwing her to the mat and quickly rolled onto her, holding her body belly down. ‘But here’s another one, don’t ever let your guard down. Never think you have won and relax.’
Ryan had her pinned tight to the ground. ‘Okay, you win let me up,’ she begged.
‘No.’
‘NO?’
‘This isn’t over. Anything is still possible, as everything has more than one option. Think hard, Thomas! Don’t just give up because you think you’re in an unbeatable position.’
Jaz did as he said and begun to assess her situation. Quickly she latched her legs up behind her as she arched her back up towards him. Thank God for the bendy yoga moves. She grabbed him around the neck with her feet and dragged him off to the side. It was enough to be able to roll on her side and, rather scrappily, she pounced back on him. She would not win any awards for that graceless move, but like he said, when it’s life or death, me or them, you do what you have to. Jaz trapped his legs down under hers and held his arms down.
‘Like that,’ she puffed just inches from his face.
His eyebrow arched up cutely. ‘Yes, just like that.’ Ryan was also breathing heavily.
Jaz tried not to realise just how close he was, and just how much of his body lay pressed against hers. She diverted her eyes to the side and saw Ryan’s tattoo on his inside arm. ‘Forever’, but it was the initials C.C. under it that she couldn’t see that held her thoughts. ‘Your mate Chris, was he an agent?’
Ryan nodded slightly. ‘Remember how I told you my last operation was to go in and rescue an agent that had been compromised?’
‘Yeah.’ Jaz was still trying to bring her breathing back under control.
‘It was Chris and I…I couldn’t get there in time. I saw the whole thing through my scope.’
Ryan’s body tensed underneath her and his eyes went cold with anger.
‘You saw your mate die?’ she whispered. Jaz relaxed her grasp on Ryan as the reality of what he’d just said gripped her. ‘Oh, Ryan…’ She went to say sorry but he cut her off.
‘They had obviously found out he was an agent and he’d been summonsed out to see the boss man. I was casing his huge house, which is on a big block in the bush on the outskirts of the city. His pool area is edged in a glass fence that over looks a steep cliff off the side of a hill. I was on a nearby hill just casing out the joint, seeing where I could get in to find Chris, unable to act but I could see them clearly.’ He swallowed with difficulty. ‘Chris and the boss were leaning against the glass fence, looking out over the bush, talking, when the boss’s right-hand-man, they call him Franko, pulled out a gun from the other side of the pool and shot him in the head. So quickly, I didn’t have time to get a shot off. The boss then walked away while Franko pushed him over the fence and watched him fall down the cliff face.’
Jaz released his arms and sat up covering her mouth with her hand. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the words to express her horror. She slid off Ryan to the mat as he sat up. ‘What…?’ Her eyes probed his.
‘What happened next?’ he asked for her. ‘Well Franko and the boss no doubt dusted off their hands, had a drink and probably ordered someone to clean up the mess they’d left. I didn’t stick around to find out. I took off down the hill to get to Chris.’
Jaz’s eyes just about fell out of her head. She couldn’t imagine what state Ryan would have found Chris in. She couldn’t imagine seeing a wound in his head, let alone broken bones and scrapes from the fall. She shivered with repulsion. ‘Was he alive when you found him?’
Ryan turned his head, as if he was looking out the front windows of the gym, but his expression was blank and unseeing. ‘No, he would have been dead the moment he went over the railing.’ He paused, only their steady breathing could be heard in the empty gym. ‘It took me over six hours to carry his body back out to where my vehicle was hiding. We’ve been best mates since I was recruited. I will not rest until I can avenge his death.’ His words were venomous.
Jaz saw Ryan swallow, his eyes set hard while her own eyes filled with tears. She reached out for him, rubbing his arms and rested her chin on his shoulder. His pain was still so raw. She remembered him when he’d first came to the gym. They’d had some fun together and he obviously could hide his pain. Right now she realised just how well he’d hidden it.
She wanted to ask him how they’d covered up Chris’s death for his family, but knew that it didn’t really matter. They would have found a way to hide the truth and after all, it wouldn’t change the fact that Chris was gone. Jaz wasn’t going to learn anything by that, so she swallowed her question and just sat there silently with Ryan as she blinked away her own tears.