Luka Horvat.
The man staggered as Bourneville thrashed her whole body.Fresh blood splattered over his boots.He tripped and went down on his knees.There was a wound in his other arm too, blood soaked down the front of his T-shirt.
“Do something!”he screamed.
One of his men, jacked and balding, raised a gun.The other man slapped it down.
“You wanna shoot himagain?”he asked as he grabbed a heavy metal rod off the golf cart.He swung it in a short, vicious practice swing as he started forward.
“Federal!”Javi yelled as he stepped out into the open.“Drop the weapon.”
They didn’t.
The big guy cocked the cheater bar back, the flared end scraped with old paint, to swing at Bourneville.Meanwhile, Baldy apparently didn’t have any qualms about shooting Javi.He did a half-turn on the ball of his foot as he raised the gun.
Javi shot the thug with the cheater bar first.The bullet hit the guy’s shoulder, high enough that it splintered through his collarbone and splashed out the back of his neck, and staggered him back a step.He dropped the bar from suddenly numb fingers to clatter on the ground.While he decided whether he had any fight left in him or not, Javi threw himself to the ground in a skidding slide.
Baldy’s hands jerked as he tried to track Javi’s motion.It was bad luck more than good aim that his first shot caught Javi’s calf.
It wasn’t the first time someone had shotatJavi.It was the first time he’dbeenshot.
He registered the impact first.His leg felt like a truck had driven over it, a heavy, crushing pain that radiated from his calf up the back of his leg to his knee.Then it went numb.
That wasn’t going to last.
“Fuck,” he spat through clenched teeth.
Baldy steadied his aim as Javi tried to get his leg under him.The man’s nostrils flared, and his mouth twitched as he readied himself to be a cop killer.Javi was a good shot.He had always been solidly in the top ten, but never the best.Even the best—Alvin Cowper, an ex-Mormon who always looked vaguely surprised other people thought it was hard—wouldn’t be able to aim, fire, and drop Baldy before the man was able to finish squeezing the trigger.
What else was there to do but try, though?
Javi tried to bully his shock-heavy arms into cooperating.Before he could fire, Cloister lunged in from the side and looped his cuffed hands under Baldy’s chin.As six-foot-three of bone and muscle yanked him off his feet, Baldy’s finger jerked instead of squeezed.The bullet skimmed the air next to Javi’s ear, a hot whine of noise and sharp, itchy pain.
He glanced quickly toward the guy who’d had hold of Cloister.The man was laid out on the ground, his scalp split open down to the bone where Cloister had smashed it against the side of the cherry picker.
The blond woman has sunk to the ground, head buried in her knees and hands over the back of her head.As Cloister grimly strangled Baldy, the man’s face red and swollen all the way up to his hairline, Javi braced his hand on the ground and pushed himself to his feet.
Oh yeah.He bit down on the inside of his cheek, as ifthatpain would help.That hurt.His leg felt like someone had poked a hot iron into it.
Bourneville yelped.It was a high-pitched, raw sound, and something about itsoundedbad.Javi had never had a pet when he was a child and definitely not as an adult, but it didn’t matter.That was the shocked noise that something in pain it didn’t understand made.
He staggered around, trying not to put his weight on his leg.Luka Horvat was back on his feet.The cheater bar that his goon had dropped was in his hand, cocked back, and Bourneville staggered back from him on three legs.Her side looked wrong, caved in, and her breathing was uneven.
Luka peeled his lips back from bloodied teeth in a grimly satisfied smile as he swung in a brutal arc at her head.
“No!”Javi yelled as he dragged his shock-heavy arm up.He wasn’t sure he could feel the trigger, but he tightened his grip anyhow.
“Fass!”Cloister snapped.
And even bloodied, broken, and three-legged, Bourneville did as she was told.She lurched forward under the swing of the bar and grabbed Luka’s wrist.The muscles in her shoulders stood out as she shook her head like a terrier with a rat.Sharp white teeth tore through the leather cuff and dug down to bone that gave with a dull, distinct snap.Luka’s hand bent the wrong way, and he howled as the bar slid out of numb fingers.
Javi shot him.
He went down like a sack of wet meat.Bourneville stood over his corpse and shook it, snarling through the mouthful of crushed bone and flesh, until Cloister told her to release.Then she let go, backed up a few shaky feet, and sat down.
Cloister dropped the choking, half-conscious Baldy and staggered over to her.He dropped down on his knees next to her and ran shaking hands over her head and, carefully, down her ribs.She snapped at him weakly, teeth clicking in the air, and he grimaced.
“Backup is on the way,” Javi said.“Is she—”
