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“Let her go,” Razor said in the voice he’d been trained to use as a negotiator. He crept closer still.
“Nyet,” he said, emphasizing his long-since-gone accent. “I didn’t give up my own life, all those years ago, to lose it again now.”
Razor saw the flash of the infrared pulse through his NOD and dove, knocking Petrov and Ava to the ground while instantaneously, the snipers took out the other four men.
“Move!” he yelled at Ava, as her father reached to where his gun had landed, but she didn’t move.
“No! Don’t shoot him!” she screamed back.
Before Razor could react, another shot rang out of the woods, hitting just outside of Petrov’s reach of the gun. It didn’t appear he’d been hit, but the gun had been. There was no way of knowing from this distance whether it remained usable.
Razor raced forward. He pulled Ava to her feet, and got between her and her father. He heard another shot at the same time he felt the bullet’s impact in his side.
—:—
“No no no!” Ava screamed as Tabon fell to the ground.
She watched in horror as her father stood, grabbed the gun that had been knocked out of his hand, and pointed it at her.
She dropped to the ground near Tabon and closed her eyes, knowing that in the next few seconds, she’d be dead. She laid her body over his as more gunshots rang out, but she didn’t feel anything. Nothing hit her.
She looked up, expecting to see her father, either lying dead on the ground, or about to shoot her, but she didn’t see him at all.
“Call HEMS,” someone yelled from behind her.
“Let me get a look at him, Ava,” said Gunner, moving her away from Tabon. He checked for a pulse, and then rolled him to his side. “Get that fucking helicopter here!” he yelled.
“Ava!” she heard her sister scream. She stood but kept her eyes on Gunner holding Tabon’s listless body.
“You fucking hold on, Raze. You fucking hold on,” she heard him repeat again and again.
19
Ava stood with her arms around Aine as they watched the helicopter take Tabon away, and Gunner with him.
“Let’s go, Miss Ava,” Monk said, ushering her to a waiting SUV.
“I need to go to the hospital,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.
“That’s where we’re going. We need to get you and your sister checked out.”
He did his best to shield her from the carnage that lay along the pathway to the vehicle, and Ava tried hard not to look.
“Where are Pen and Tara?” she cried when she didn’t see them in the SUV.
“They’re already on their way,” Monk told her, gently grasping her arm and helping her inside. She moved over so Aine could get in next to her.
“I’ll stay in the back with them,” she thought she heard Monk say as he climbed in behind her sister.
The man she recognized as the pilot got in the driver’s seat. What was his name? Was it Onyx?
Everything around her seemed to be happening in slow motion and something was wrong with her hearing. Voices were muffled, words were unclear, even her own.
Ava clung to Aine’s hand as she rested her head on her sister’s shoulder and cried.
When they walked into the emergency room, the first two people she and Aine saw were Penelope and Tara. The four ran to each other, crying, and gathering into a group embrace.
“I’m so sorry,” Ava repeated.
