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Chapter 6
Claire
His lips have a strange, calming effect. My heart’s still desperate to escape my chest, but a clarity washes over me. It relays the objectives of our mission:
We have to escape.
Because we have to be together.
I gasp as he pulls his mouth away from mine. I gaze into his dark, honey eyes as he smirks and winks. Then the door bursts open, Ajax sweeps me behind him and he fires two shots into the intruders. He twists around and his eyes fall on the window. It leads out onto the roof of the back porch. “Out,” he says, crossing to it and throwing up the window.
As I duck and emerge outside, I hear Ajax fire another bullet before he joins me. With my hand in his, he approaches the edge, but Cody and Ben await us on the ground. Despite a bloody gunshot wound in his shoulder, Cody looks hungry for more action. Ajax pulls me back just before a shotgun blast from Cody fires over our heads.
Ajax looks back into my bedroom. Another armed intruder hops over his fallen brother to chase after us.
Ajax thrusts me against the wall and flatens himself alongside the window. When the gunman steps through, Ajax snatches the pistol away, then pulls him forward and sends him tumbling into the backyard.
Ajax turns around and glances to the ledge of the roof. “Up,” he says, then helps me climb onto the roof. He stuffs the gun in the back of his jeans then jumps up after me and pulls himself onto the sloped roof. From our vantage, we see a full 360 around the house. We’re surrounded. Someone in the neighborhood might have called the cops, but in the time it takes them to get here, Ben and his goons will have finished the job.
Behind Ajax, I see Cody making his way onto the roof. “Ajax!” I shout.
He spins around just in time to receive a wallop to the chin. It turns him around, but he keeps upright. He faces Cody again just as Cody slips the shotgun strap from his shoulder to take aim.
Ajax grabs hold of the dual barrels and points them skyward. Cody’s finger squeezes the trigger and the report sounds like dynamite. Sparks fire over their heads, but neither relinquishes control.
Ajax kicks his foot into Cody’s shin. The giant cries out, their arms swing to the side and the shotgun flies from their grips, tumbling across the shingles. Cody watches it disappear over the edge with a grimace that Ajax plugs his fist into. As Cody stammers back, Ajax retrieves the pistol tucked into the band of his pants.
But before he can fire, Cody slugs him again. As he twirls, the gun flings from his hand. I follow its arc through the air, chasing after it. In my periphery, Ajax dodges a second blow from Cody, then sweeps his legs. Cody collapses, then rolls past me, catching himself on the ledge at the same moment I catch the gun.
Ajax appears beside me, correcting his cut on his shoulders. “Good catch,” he says as I hand him the gun.
“Thanks,” I reply, stabbing my heel into Cody’s hand.
His grip releases and he drops onto the driveway with a heavy thud. His skull raps against the pavement and knocks him out cold.
Ajax and I both turn to find more pulling themselves onto the roof. I look down to the driveway and consider jumping, but it's just high enough to break something.
When I turn to look at Ajax, he’s already tearing the cable away from the side of the house. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh,” he says, wrapping an arm around my waist, entwining the other in the cable, “but I am.”
As they fire on us, we leap from the roof and I pray the telephone pole the cable connects to is high enough. I expect us to collapse on the ground, our four broken legs entangled beneath us. Instead, we swing through the air like a James Bond movie, Ajax firing on the goons below.
We land in the street and Ajax rushes back for his bike in the driveway. As he turns the key, Ben rushes forth from the front door. “Ajax!” I call out.
Ben advances on Ajax, pistol raised.
I feel my heart stop, watching, waiting for the gunfire.
BANG BANG BANG.
Smoke drifts from the barrel of Ajax’s pistol and in the front yard, ten feet away, Ben’s face turns ashen. The gun slips from his grip. Weak fingers pull the two sides of his vest apart to reveal the blood soaking into his white t-shirt. Ben Reed looks back at me with shock before dropping lifeless into the grass.
Ajax revs the engine and swings the back wheel around to face the street. He burns rubber into a thick, white cloud that rises between us and the men on the roof, then he pulls ahead. “Care for a lift?”
I jump on the back and we high-tail it out of there.
As we listen to the distant sirens descend on my house, I think to myself I’ve never felt so alive. Every part of me tingles, like each individual cell is enlivened by the experience.
