Her hand on my shoulder disappears into her blazer, withdrawing a pistol. Before any of the COs can reach us, her arm wraps tightly around my waist and her leg shimmies in between mine. Pointing the gun at the sky, she pulls the trigger and a projectile attached to a long rope shatters the skylights and sends a shower of glass raining down on the dance floor, peppering the screaming women and men, including us.
Well, notus. I’m screaming. Taylor is silent.
She gives the rope an experimental tug, and her eyes traverse the length with stern focus. As the COs reach us, we rocket into the air. The hold I have on her tightens as we sail through the open, broken pane of glass, somehow managing to avoid gouging precious limbs on the remaining shards affixed to the structure. The propulsion pushes us several feet above the skylights, and for a few seconds we float.
Taylor is solid as we land, and keeps her grip tight, holding me steady. The grapple gun gets tucked away and exchanged for another pistol. I doubt this one has a rope. Her stance shifts, and she positions herself between the COs and me. Before theycan reach or ready their weapons, she kills four guards with four eardrum-shattering gunshots. One CO falls through the glass and makes a sickening thud, which triggers an additional round of screaming from the ballroom. The other three collapse on the ground like marionettes whose puppeteers have snipped their strings. There’s no convulsing, no agonizing death. She has hit them straight in the head.
It’s almost merciful, like an execution. It is an execution.
Three of our mansion’s own guards, a ragtag platoon of unarmed former police, burst from the roof access. Taylor backs into me, holsters her gun, then places her hand on my hip to coax me a few steps back. “Don’t move.”
“Really? Thought maybe I’d cannonball through the skylights.” It’s not like I can move anyway, immobile as I am in fear.
The other guards are unarmed—retrospectively a huge oversight on Papa’s part. They descend upon her like vultures to a carcass, viciously punching and kicking her with such relentless brutality it sounds like tenderizing a steak. One of Taylor’s kicks sends an assailant over the edge of the skylight, back inside. I cover my ears. I’d rather not have two bodily thuds on playback in the stereo of my mind.
A guard snatches her in a chokehold and wrenches her from the others. His knife glints in the light of the moon and my stomach tumbles. The steel blade nicks the side of her face before she’s able to get away. One of the others knocks her to her knees with a savage punch to the face. Another guard kicks her in the stomach a few times, forcing her to curl into a ball.
I take a half step forward in an insane, suicidal, counterintuitive instinct to help her. Taylor catches one of their feet in her hands before it strikes her again. She twists the ankle with a bone-chilling crack, causing the guard to scream and crumble to the ground. Taylor hastily gets to her feet, engagingone of the two guards left in impressive martial arts. It is fluid and violent, precise and bloody. I’m impressed, and I hate myself for it.
The last guard grips her coat from behind, and Taylor rolls her eyes and lets him come away with her suit jacket, revealing her torn button-down shirt and set of light blue suspenders. He swipes at her another couple times with his knife, but she bends her body in such deceiving ways he doesn’t come close to her.
“I’ll kill you, you bitch,” he says with an ugly snarl.
You know what? I’m starting to doubt it.
He swipes at her again and she calmly disarms him. With her left hand on his face, she places the knife still at his throat and forcefully spins his body around to slice him across the jugular. Blood spews on her face and shirt as he collapses on the ground, holding his neck.
I throw up off to the side at the sound of the man’s dying gurgles. “Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? These are real people you killed.”
Taylor wipes blood from her face with her sleeve. “As opposed to fake people?”
Before I can even fathom if she’s serious, the familiar, loud chop of a helicopter fills my ears and the wind picks up at my feet. I look up toward the sky. Rescue! Frantically, I wave to the copter with both arms.
“You’re going to pay for this,” I tell Taylor with a confidence in my voice the rest of my body does not possess.
The sleek navy-blue helicopter makes its landing and Taylor shoves me toward it. Two pieces of information become rapidly apparent: this copter is not Force despite the telltale color and decal, and I am an idiot. Taylor’s gun is leveled at my face when I turn to protest. Mask off, blond hair swirls around a deceptively gorgeous, unfriendly face.
“Get in.” Her voice loses its playful tone, her charming smile gone flat into firm grimace.
However, I am no easily taken bait. I lunge toward the gun with such laughable disgrace I’m disheartened even before she knocks away my hands, sweeps my feet, and forces me to land on my butt with a painful flop. Her foot comes down and digs into my sternum, pushing me against the cold concrete of the roof.
“Never lunge toward a gun, Miss Piccolo.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Her boot remains pressed against my sternum. “Do you mind? Can’t exactly kidnap me if I’m pinned to the ground.”
She removes her foot, gun aimed at my head. “Get up, princess.”
“Don’t call me that.”
I dig my palms into the loose concrete and push myself up. Taylor takes me by the shoulder and spins me around, pressing the gun into my spine.
A hulking man hops off the copter and offers me his hand to step in. Pointedly ignoring him, I climb in without assistance. As soon as the three of us are strapped in, the helicopter ascends into the blackness. My captor and I are provided ear protection, and Taylor removes her heels and flings them out of the open helicopter door before slamming it shut. The man gives her a pair of work boots and a watch that looks like a handcuff. She’s also provided a jacket, which I could use, but I doubt anyone cares.
The city disappears below us and I orient myself via the constellations out the window. It takes me a while to make out the North Star, but I find it and determine we are going west. West over New Jersey, over Papa’s hazy gray factories pockmarking the otherwise lush greenery of the state. Farther west over the Delaware River, over the smoking cities of Pennsylvania and toward dark forests.
I don’t know where they are taking me, but I think I know who they are. Copters are expensive. This one is stolen, but they have enough money to finance its upkeep. This was a highly organized effort, both in my extraction and however the hell this maniac snuck into the party. Also, this maniac has rebel sympathies and is a complete murder machine.
So. Stolen aircraft. Organized effort. Rebel sympathies. Expert killing.
