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Looks like the Lockwood gang never got the memo.
I keep my stance—and keep my aim glued to Paisley, even as she backs into the opposite corner of the room with her men, all of them with their weapons trained on my body.
“Don’t try it,” I say softly. “We might be outgunned, but I promise you that if any one of you pull the trigger, my next shot goes straight between your eyes, Paisley. You might kill me, but you won’t live to celebrate.”
She curls her upper lip at me.
“Don’t underestimate how fast I can shoot, Goliath. I’ll mow you down, slit her throat, and be skipping out the back door before you breathe your last,” she hisses.
“And you’ll be skipping right to your grave,” I retort calmly. “This isn’t Mayberry. Every last one of those men out there is ex-military. I know how they work. They’re surrounding this place right now, and you’ll damned sure get a warm welcome no matter which door you pick. So, try me. Try me, brat, and see how it works out.”
Everyone’s got a tell.
Paisley’s is the narrowing of her jade-green eyes, the tensing whiteness of her knuckles as she takes aim.
And before the shot goes off, I’m already moving.
I crash into Felicity, shoving her down and rolling her to the other side of the open doorway as a bullet whizzes overhead and embeds in the wall—right where we’d been standing a second ago.
Another shot.
A punch to the back that makes my girl gasp.
I only have a second to flick my hand out, assuring her I’m not hurt even though I’ve taken a direct hit. Thank fuck I was able to throw on Kevlar.
“Go!” I hiss, pushing her toward the hall. “Run!”
“No!” she cries. “You have to—”
No time.
The subtle click of the trigger and I’m rolling again, keeping my body positioned like a shield, keeping Paisley focused on me and not on Fliss—and making absolutely sure she stays focused on me with a few strategic shots, just enough to keep them alert and ducking.
One of her guys goes down with a yip like a wounded hyena as I clip him in the shoulder, but she’s a slippery eel, ducking around her boys, using them as meat shields as she fires shot after wild shot at me.
Only her nervous haste keeps me from taking one right in the eye.
Shit.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been pinned down and outnumbered, stacked against impossible odds.
But most of my active shoot-outs were before the good life.
Before Eli.
Before Felicity.
Back then, I didn’t have anyone waiting for me to come home in one piece.
This time’s different.
This time, I have every last reason to fight with everything, to make sure Paisley fucking Lockwood finally pays for threatening the woman I love.
Every shot is strategic.
I fire to push them back, into a corner, even as I angle myself toward the door, inching toward Felicity in the hall.
So close.
Another few feet and I’ll be out of this cramped storeroom, and then I’ll slam the door and punch holes in it with as many bullets as I have left in this clip every fucking time any one of them tries it.
I never make those last few feet.
“Alaska! The rope!” Felicity screams at my back. “Pull the rope!”
Rope?
It only takes me a second to realize what she’s talking about.
There’s a cord dangling down to the left of the door, running up to the ceiling, then down, connected to the shelves with the gold bars.
The same shelves Paisley and her men crawled under for shelter, shoving thick bags of coffee beans in front of them until it’s like they’re bunkered down behind sandbags.
Clever.
Even as Paisley pops out to take another shot at me, I lunge for the cord. Grasp it in my free hand.
And yank.
There’s a mighty, creaking groan that makes me think of a wooden pirate ship splitting apart as the shelf drops down like it’s on hinges.
Everything comes crashing down.
It’s as loud as a whole china shop exploding simultaneously.
I’m airborne, leaping, throwing myself at Felicity and knocking her out of the doorway as glass blows into knives on impact, right behind the metallic thunder of the gold bars landing.
Those huge growler jugs throw glass daggers in all directions like spinning shrapnel.
I wrap my whole body around her, narrowly missing a long, deadly sliver that nearly embeds in my shoulder from behind before whizzing past and slicing my sleeve.
There’s an unholy screaming fit behind me.
A crunch of breaking bone.
The sound of a man sobbing.
Still, I hold Felicity tight, sheltering her with my body.
For a second, this eerie déjà vu sets in.
Whoever would’ve guessed that morning with the flying coffee mugs and a nasty gash to my leg would lead to this?
Only when the cacophony of crashing glass and metal ends do I risk looking into the silent mess.
