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“Yeah. You sure you got your information right, buddy?”
Laura closed her eyes for a brief moment, praying that it wouldn’t make a difference. That Paul would come to the office to see what was going on anyway. That he would still fall into their trap.
“Maybe not,” Paul said. There was a new note in his voice now. Something… something like clarity. “You know what, I probably picked up an old message by mistake. I guess I’ll head to the breakroom instead, get something to eat and then head back home.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
Laura didn’t hesitate to hear the rest of the conversation. She didn’t need to. He was on the move, going in the opposite direction. It was too late. She needed to step out there now, stop him from getting back into his car. She leapt to her feet and threw open the door of the office to the cold air, getting him in her sights immediately.
He was standing only a few hundred yards away, facing her, talking to another EMT in uniform. Laura opened her mouth to say something, but he met her eyes in that moment and he knew. She saw so clearly that he knew.
He took off running before she even had time to get a handle on what to do.
Laura cursed and launched herself forward, practically flying out of the office door and after him. “Stop! FBI!” she shouted. “Paul Payne – stop!”
Of course, predictably, her words did nothing. He was shooting straight back towards the parking lot. Laura blasted past the confused coworker who was standing there nonplussed, only getting a glimpse of a puzzled facial expression and nothing more before he was far behind her. She kept Paul in her sights, but the EMT was young and fit, clearly full of stamina. More than that, he probably knew that he was running for his life – or, at least, his freedom. He was fast.
He ducked and wove between the first few rows of cars, leaving Laura double-guessing where he was going to be, making her lose precious time by trying to follow his unpredictable twists and turns, trying to get an angle that would put her on course to intercept him only for him to head in a different direction.
Laura’s heart was already hammering rapidly in her chest, her lungs burning with the cold air as she tried to get enough of it to power her legs. He darted right at the last second in front of a huge SUV, disappearing behind it for a moment, blocked by the blacked-out windows. Laura lost sight of him as she fought to keep up, running around the same vehicle and floundering momentarily –
Until she spotted him, off to the far right this time, making his way straight down the row of cars and having to slam his hands onto the side of a car that almost ran into him to stop his own momentum.
Laura put on a fresh burst of speed, taking advantage of his enforced pause. The owner of the car he’d stopped was gesturing angrily, shouting something, but Paul dodged around the front end and carried on running. Laura adjusted her own trajectory, taking a wider sweep that brought her around the front of the vehicle without having to pause, success driving her on. She was closer now. Close enough that she felt like she was really going to catch him. Even without a vision, she could see where he was –
He darted right one more time unexpectedly, throwing himself down a gap between two of the hospital’s buildings, making Laura skid against the tarmac to arrest her own motion and throw herself in the same direction.
He was… in a dead end?
Laura kept running as long as he did, her eyes scanning the area as much as she could while still keeping her sights firmly on him. He’d led her into little more than an alleyway, a place that held huge trash bins overflowing with waste from the hospital. She couldn’t see any doors to either side. Where was he planning to escape? Did he know of some secret or hidden –
Laura didn’t have time to stop herself when he did, spinning abruptly right in front of her. She barreled right into him, almost tripping over her own feet as her brain told herself she needed an immediate halt, her arms flying up to cushion the blow. But he was ready. He used his own arms to deflect her, doing little more than grabbing her and moving to the side, letting her own momentum do the rest. He hurled her towards the approaching wall, and without the support of her own feet anymore Laura stumbled, falling to the ground.
She couldn’t stop it happening – couldn’t manage anything other than to brace – almost not even that – and she rolled as she hit the ground, over and over until she was breathless. When she did stop, it was a moment before the world stopped spinning around her –
And then she saw him, filling her whole field of view, moving over her and then dropping. He sat his whole weight on her, pinning her arms, stopping her from reaching for her gun. Laura only had time to gasp out a breath before the blow landed, hitting her in the face, just above her right eye. It snapped her head to the side, leaving her even more dazed than the fall had, unable to process her next action.
Pain – that was all she could process for a moment – and the feeling of the cold floor under her, of how she couldn’t move –
She managed to turn her head, opening her eyes again to a light that now seemed far too bright, looking up at him. He seemed like a giant over her now, his fist drawn back almost comically, like she was watching some far-fetched action movie. Her brain seemed to be moving too slow. She knew he was going to hit her again. She knew she didn’t want that to happen. She just couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it.
And then his hand dropped and instead he grabbed for something else – for something down beside her –
For her gun.
He pointed it at her head, and looked her right in the eye, and Laura knew. She was going to die.
“Freeze!”
The shout seemed to come from nowhere, from everywhere, echoing all around them and bouncing off the brickwork of the two buildings. Laura could barely take it in, couldn’t understand why Paul would shout something like that, only it was him that was frozen, as if someone had suddenly turned him into a statue…
Until he swung around, pointing the gun in the other direction instead.
She let her head loll to the side, and she saw him. Nate. Standing there at the foot of the alleyway with his gun drawn and pointed at Paul, advancing slowly with a scattering of local cops behind him.
“Put your hands above your head, slowly,” Nate ordered. He didn’t take his eyes away from Paul. Reality was coming back to Laura, bleeding back into her head. Which hurt, incidentally.
“Put yours up,” Paul replied. His voice wasn’t shaking. He was steady. Firm. Laura blinked her eyes twice to bring his hands into focus, saw that they were firm too. His finger was on the trigger.
