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Laura had to get the upper hand to survive this. She reached lower down his arm to try to restrict him, pulling her legs under her to try and flip him over so that she could keep him down, but his other hand whipped around, the knife still in his grasp. She felt it slash over her left arm, slashing through both her jacket and shirt and then the skin, and drew back her right arm to punch him in the face. He took the blow full on the nose, forcing a sound of pain and surprise out of him as the impact pushed him back.
Laura didn’t have time to register how badly her arm was bleeding or how much it hurt. She yanked with her feet again, pulling one of her own legs back up toward herself, knocking him further backward. He hit the coffee table again, dislodging a rain of coasters and old magazines and the bottle of beer Thomas had been drinking.
Ed snarled as he looked down on her, recovering his balance enough to plunge forward, the knife outstretched in his hand. He had her now. She was trapped, pinned down—he lunged downward—
Laura twisted to the side, but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t have enough leverage, enough room to get out from under him. But the trick with the coffee table had given her what she needed to stop the knife plunging into her heart. Instead, it hit her ribs, glancing off them. Ed left it stuck in her, like it was all over.
“I’ve got you now, Agent Frost,” he croaked, his voice calling as if from the grave. “Now all that’s left for you to do is die.”
And he was right. She wasn’t fatally wounded, but that didn’t matter. She would bleed out here, from her arm and her side, and Ed wouldn’t let her get help. It would be slow, and maybe he would get impatient and speed things up a little, raining down more wounds on her exhausted body. But it was a sure thing. She was going to die.
The gloating smile on his face showed her he was sure he had won.
But he didn’t know she had backup.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Laura felt the shadow of death filling the room. It made her as sick as the pain did. Burning in her arm, her ribs. It was so close and so strong that she couldn’t even work out where it was coming from. From Ed? From herself?
But then she saw a flicker of silent movement over Ed’s shoulder, and she knew.
Nate was here, and the shadow of death around him was so strong she could feel it even without a touch. This was it. This was the moment that he died.
Nate made some kind of noise, kicked some small thing that had fallen off the coffee table and rolled toward the door, hard to see in the dark. Within a flash, Ed’s sneer was no longer above her face, and Laura realized that he had snatched up the gun and moved quick as lightning.
He stood above her now, facing Nate. Her gun in his hand. Pointing at her partner.
“Looks like the cavalry’s here,” Ed rasped, and Laura could see him now: her brave, loyal, strong partner, holding his gun up in front of him, the two of them locked in a Mexican standoff.
“Drop the weapon,” Nate barked. He was steady and true, but Ed was unhinged. He had his revenge. There was no way to know if he cared about his life anymore.
“You first, Agent,” Ed said. “Or your partner here doesn’t get the help she needs to survive.”
Laura saw with absolute clarity how it would play out. She didn’t need a vision. She knew Nate too well. He was going to look at her and see the blood, and he was going to put down his gun. Just like she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ed wouldn’t play fair.
The second Nate let down his guard, Ed would kill him.
The shadow filled the whole room, making it hard for her to concentrate on anything else. The air was thick with it, like it was a visceral smoke she would breathe in when she inhaled. It was happening now.
She couldn’t let Nate die here.
Laura found some last reserve of strength, reached with her right hand for the blade that was still sticking just out of her ribs. She grabbed it, gasped with pain and the renewed spurt of her blood as she pulled it out. She couldn’t wait. Couldn’t let the pain take over. Couldn’t acknowledge that yes, in return for saving Nate’s life, she might be ending her own.
She sat up. She stumbled to one knee, then the other. She pushed herself upright. Her vision went black for a moment, but she fought through the nausea, the dizziness, the pain.
She brought her right arm up, and just as Ed’s muscles moved, signifying his hand tightening around the gun, she stabbed the knife into his back.
Her aim was true. She knew the right angles to use, had been through all of the training. She didn’t hit a rib. She hit his heart. She twisted the knife as she dragged it down, opening it up wider, causing more damage.
The first thing she felt was the warmth of his blood, splattered over her and beginning to pour down from the gaping wound in his back.
The second was the weight of his body as he fell backwards onto her, pinning her back to the floor.
And the third was relief, when she heard Nate calling her name and rushing to her side.
***
“You’re lucky,” the doctor said, which made Laura want to laugh in his face. “With these stitches, I don’t think you’re going to have a scar on your arm. Just make sure to keep it clean, and get yourself to your local hospital next week for a check-up. As for the wound on your side, it will take a little longer to heal, and you’ll have a scar—but it’s sewn up and clean, so if you keep it that way, I don’t foresee any complications.”
