Two and a half hours ago, Owen had left to get the necessities from the city and since then, Jyn had not heard from him, nor had he contacted her. Out of Spain, so their current location was now Genoa, a port city in Italy.
When there was a knock on the door and room service announced itself, even though Jyn hadn't ordered anything, she frowned and put aside the card in her hand. But no sooner had she opened the door than she was grabbed by the throat by a man, lifted up and turned toward the sofa, which toppled backward along with her and she hit the floor hard. A day longer, they both could still stay without it would be noticeable. Was probably nothing.
Groaning, Jyn propped herself off the ground and tried to scramble forward, but no sooner had she advanced a few inches than the stranger grabbed her by the hair and pulled her torso up so she could look him in the face. His lips moved and she could tell that this one was yelling at her, but no sound reached her. A continuous beeping, had settled on her ears since her head hit the ground. Since she didn't answer, he pulled her up anew and slammed her down on the glass table, which shattered into a thousand pieces. Gasping and shaking uncontrollably, she lay backwards in the shards, somehow trying to crawl away.
A shot rang out, blood splattered Jyn's face, and the unknown man landed clattering into the shards beside her.
"Hey, it's all right," immediately Owen crouched down next to Jyn and helped her sit up, "It's over..... Take a breath. What happened?"
"I have...... no...... idea.....," from new Jyn looked at the dead man next to her, but Owen turned her face towards him by her chin so she was finally looking at him and not the corpse, which he had to repeat twice as she kept looking there from new, "..... seriously. What did your stupid brother do. Otherwise you're the one who triggers this kind of thing and ah..... my skull."
"Thank you. Too kind of you," but Jyn couldn't laugh at Owen's words, which brought him back to the seriousness of the situation, "You're okay?"
"Think so," even though Jyn tried to wring a smile from herself and nodded hastily several times, it should be clear that wasn't the case, "Must be."
"For being under Deckard's wing, you're pretty lousy at defending yourself," to which Jyn slapped Owen's cheek in a barely noticeable way; bracing herself off the ground with her hand in the shards and slowly picking herself up, "We can go wherever we want, it won't stop. We are left with only one solution. You can see that nothing works. Tell me I'm wrong and you're right about what you said just a few days ago."
After today, it should be clear that Owen was possibly right. There had been twenty-one incidents in the last few weeks, all of which could have been Deckard's doing. Some of them were just a few hours apart, but hundreds of miles apart. Were there any clues? No. Did any of them bear Deckard's signature? Yes. Was this helpful? No! With so many dead people who could not have been more different, too many 'branches' came into play and who belonged to whom was not obvious. Back to the source. There was nothing else left for Owen and Jyn to do.
》《
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who get along with their partner's parents and those who never will. To which category Deckard belonged should be clear by now, if it wasn't already, after the first few minutes of getting to know each other.
"I think there's another problem," Deckard said, looking down as he walked, rather than at John, because he wasn't quite sure what this meant, "Is there an arrangement, just in case, for Jyn to reach you? Or in case of emergency, how you can contact her?"
"Why?", lately, in John's opinion, there had been enough bad news and he could do without any more, as their current situation was already annoying enough, "What's going on now?"
"I can't get in touch with my brother or Jyn," Deckard wouldn't exactly call this unusual now, but the circumstances suggested possibly worse, "And to be honest, I don't have a good feeling about it. The cartel thing is probably starting to spill over."
"I'm not going to kill you, I'm going to kill the person you love the most. I'm going to torture her, cut her off a little at a time and send it to you," groaning, John ran his hands over his face, pushing his hair back as he did so, leaning back against the table top in defeat, "In all my years, nothing like this has ever happened and as soon as you show up Shaw, I now have to expect the worst. You don't have children, can that be? No matter if they are grown up or not, they will always be the first priority. Whatever you want to do, do it alone because I don't want my daughter back individual packages. I will handle this my way from now on. Alone."
Just as it was planned from the beginning. They all would have been spared all of what happened if Shaw had just stayed with Jyn like John wanted.
•
Bolivia, one week later
There was nothing. Nothing at all. The whole area was deserted. Not a soul to see and not a soul to hear. It was too simple and for this very reason, soothing. Normally, people were on site around the clock, because should something happen, this could be quite expensive for business.
Not five minutes later, it was clear why John did not see a single person on the premises. Every single employee of the Goustavo cartel was dead. Dozens of bodies were lying on the floor of the warehouse and two people were busy repositioning the dead.