The alley was dimly lit by a yellow light over the club’s back door that flickered and buzzed. Lance was on the ground, blood matted in his hair, as a man in a black hoodie dragged him toward a car that was parked, open trunk first, in the mouth of the alley.
“Let him go,” Cade said.
The man in the hoodie let go of Lance’s arms and swung around. He pulled a gun from the small of his back and aimed in one smooth motion. So did Cade as he dropped into a crouch on the trash. A bullet tore past his head as he went down, close enough he could feel the burn of it kiss his temple, and a bottle cracked under his knee. The dumpster rang like a cracked bell as bullets punched into it, and the metal dinged in shiny puckers.
Cade counted three shots. Most people, unless they were in a frenzy, paused at three. The first spike of adrenaline had worn off, maybe they had second thoughts, or their hands hurt. It didn’t last long, but if you needed a window, it was a way to pick your moment.
He pushed himself up and fired twice. Once at the space where he’d last seen the hoodie-wearing thug, and then he corrected and shot the man in the torso. The man staggered back into the wall as he absorbed the impact, one hand up to clutch his chest.
After a moment, the man’s knees gave way under him, and he slid down the wall, his legs folded at awkward angles. He wheezed for air, his face gray, as he dropped the gun by his feet.
On the ground, Lance rolled over and tried to prop himself up on his elbow. He touched his head with one hand and flinched away from the sting of raw flesh.
“Lance,” Cade said. “Come here.”
He braced his hand on the edge of the dumpster and boosted himself up and over. The smell of the dumpster came with him. Something slimy and halfway to rancid had soaked through the knee of his trousers and plastered it to his leg. Cade had woken up after the full moon and smelled worse.
Sweat itched on the back of his neck as he kept the gun pointed at the man in the hoodie. Cade’s shot had hit the man in the center of his body mass. If it had penetrated, the man would be well on his way to being dead. At this distance, even with a Kevlar vest, he’d have broken ribs at least. He could still get back up once the numb shock of a hammer blow to the sternum wore off.
Cade held his free hand out and crooked his fingers. “We can’t help you if you don’t come here.”
Lance lifted his head enough to stare at Cade, his eye narrow and grim with suspicion. He spat a thick wad of phlegm on the ground, the strings of spit dangling from his lips, and scrambled gracelessly to his feet. For a second, it looked like Lance was going to make the smart choice as he half-turned toward Cade; then he bolted for the mouth of the alleyway.
It was a clumsy run. Lance bounced off the brick wall twice as he staggered woozily, but he managed to squeeze past the bumper of the car there to kidnap him. Cade glanced quickly at the man in a hoodie—still down, still gray about the mouth, all that was really visible under his pulled-down hood—and took the risk. He went after Lance and was almost close enough to grab his shoulder when the idling engine revved.
There had to have been someone to pop the trunk, Cade realized with a flash of frustrated self-recrimination. He’d spent too much time behind a desk. That wasn’t a mistake he’d have made when he was in the field more often.
The car screeched forward, veered at the last minute, and clipped the back of Lance’s leg with the corner of a bumper. He was thrown into the air and came down on the windshield. It shattered on impact, cracks spiderwebbed across the glass, and Lance rolled off to the side. He bounced when he hit the ground, and this time he wasn’t going to push himself back up anytime soon.
Cade leaned down and tucked his fingers under Lance’s jaw to check his pulse. It was thready—and something in his jaw felt gritty and loose under Cade’s fingers—but it was there.
The car turned sharply onto the street outside, reversed backward, and the back door swung open. Cade cursed under his breath, grabbed Lance by the collar, and hauled him unceremoniously over toward the wall. A woman, hat pulled down over her ears and leather jacket zipped up to her chin, climbed out with a gun.
Bullets stitched at Cade’s heels as he ducked behind a couple of old, charred oil drums. It wasn’t much shelter. It would have to do. Cade propped Lance up against the wall and crouched there for a second.
“For fuck’s sake,” the woman yelled. “Get him.”
Through a crack between the drums, Cade saw the man in the hoodie grab his gun and drag himself up the wall. The woman stayed by the car, ready to jump back in for a quick getaway.
Cade weighed his options. He could get out of this. Not unscathed, but alive. Lance wouldn’t, though. And apparently, he was more valuable than any of them had expected.
The sound of the door as it hit the dumpster interrupted his grim calculations.
“Put your hands up,” Marlow’s voice snapped.
Cade rolled his eyes at Marlow playing by the rules as the man in the hoodie swung around, one hand still clutched to his chest as he raised the gun in the other. Before he could fire, Cade kicked the oil drum out of the way and shot the man in the leg.
No Kevlar there. A plug of flesh blew out the back of the man’s thigh, and he gave a high-pitched wail. He staggered backward and fired wildly in Marlow’s direction. For a second, Cade’s heart seized in his chest. It wouldn’t be as bad as when he thought he’deatenMarlow, but he didn’t want him killed.
The woman at the car screamed, shrill and a bit hysterical, and strafed bullets along the alley.
“Get in the car!” she yelled. “Get in the fucking car.”
Hoodie lurched down the alley in a hobbled lope and was shoved unceremoniously into the back of the car. The woman scrambled in after him and slammed the door. Smoke belched out from around the tires as the driver hit the gas and reversed back into the wall with a crunch.
Marlow stepped out into the middle of the alley and shot at the car. Bullets punched shiny-edged holes along the back panel and through the doors. Both side windows smashed and sprayed glass into the interior.
A yelp of pain escaped through the broken window—it sounded like the woman—and then the car fishtailed over the road and was gone.
