NOVEL WEB Chapter 166: Stillness.
"Finally it's over…" Linda let out a long breath as she saw that Marco was finally captured.
"Yeah, actually it was a good call that you made." Benjamin said, smiling at her. "The right time, the right moment. If you didn't do it, Marco fucking goes on the run."
It was Linda herself who called up not just Thomas to go but James too, and her reason for it was, well, she was in fear that this whole thing would go on for hours and hours, and she knew that even the news can pull up and report on it, and it would be the worst thing to happen to them. So she made the right choice and called up both Thomas and James to do something… well, more precisely, she shouted at Thomas to go now and make the raid, then called James to tell his men not to shoot at the IF agents.
This call was the reason that James himself decided to go, because he felt that Linda's voice was too urgent, like something bad was happening at Marco's house. The reaction to it was not too much, everybody somehow felt that something would eventually happen, because James's moves were something that nobody could actually calculate, so they prepared for it… the only one who didn't was Mike himself, who at first just stood frozen like, what the fuck is actually happening, but he feared to say anything to James.
In his mind, the best option was at least for James just to stay at home while a team goes to help Hector and Ferucci, but how could he say that to James? So he just flowed with the others and got ready to leave the house with everybody.
Then came the luck, that Thomas and James as well chose the exact same path to go toward Marco's house, and they just stumbled upon each other, and the convoy that consisted of more cars than you can even count was speeding toward the estate.
The second luck was Marco's timing… at least the driver who decided to steer the car to the main road, where the convoy came and hit him… and that happened because of Linda too.
She called Thomas again and shouted that Marco was running away in an SUV, so he informed his agents in the front of the convoy to crash into the car that would come, and they did their job properly, crashing into the SUVs so hard that they themselves almost flew out of the windshield.
But at least Marco now was captured, and they could play along with the raid story, which also had one good factor to it, it was James's men who were equipped exactly like the IF or any other raid team would be. The only difference was there wasn't any patch on them, which Linda knew she could play off as a special force.
The plan was perfect.
"Call up James and tell him to get out of there because I'm a hundred percent sure a fucking journalist or somebody will pull up." Edward said, and Linda did exactly that, calling up James's number, but there wasn't an answer.
She looked at the screen to see what was happening, but they were just standing there.
"He doesn't pick it up…"
"Call then Thomas quickly." Edward said, and he was confused as to why the fuck they aren't moving and just staring at each other.
Linda called again, this time Thomas, but he too just stood there without even looking at the phone.
It seemed like everybody got frozen in place… and they were.
It was one single question that made everybody just stop, that made Thomas incredibly stressed, that his hand started shaking.
The question was simple, and it was asked by James:
"Whose blood is that?"
Eric first didn't answer. No, he didn't want to tell the truth, and well, he didn't even know whether Ferucci was still alive or not. He didn't hear a word from Dilian since they went away. His pulse quickened as he was stared down by James, waiting for the answer, but he already knew that it was somebody's blood he knew. Yeah, the silence told more than any word could do.
"James!" Hector's voice came from the house, and he ran toward him. "What are you doing here?" He asked as he stepped right beside Eric, but the silence told him that something was off… he felt it even though minutes ago bullets were ripping past him. But this feeling was scarier than those fucking fights were, it felt like something big was going to happen, or rather something really bad.
"Where is Ferucci?" James asked as he looked at Hector, while Eric's head was still bowed down.
"He was here with—" He looked at Eric, and that's when he spotted it.
The blood. So much blood on his vest and legs, even his hands were covered in blood. Hector's demeanor in that moment totally changed. He wasn't happy, he wasn't smiling, he was furious, he was angry, he was fucking upset by the fact that the smiling motherfucker was nowhere to be found while the man he was in the team with was covered in blood.
For the first time ever, Hector was panicking. The feeling… it was unfamiliar to him, because he was the one who said it with his own words, that he doesn't care about others, that he doesn't connect himself to anyone and yet now… the feeling he had long forgotten, or at least thought he'd forgotten, was coming up.
He panicked… he didn't want to lose him.
Or maybe it wasn't about that.
It wasn't about his feelings, deep down, but something entirely different… the selfish Hector, the egoist, wasn't panicking beacuse of that, but more over the fact that if Ferucci died, he left James at the wrong fucking time.
Yeah… how does he dare to die when he needs to live the most? When James is left alone? When Hans already died? When they're the only ones left to truly stand beside him?
"...Where is he?" He turned to Eric and immediately grabbed him by the vest, literally pulling him from the ground. "Ferucci… where is he…?"