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“Numbers! Look at me,” Chase pleads. My eyes snap to his. “Remember what I gave you?”
My mind draws a blank, too caught up in my fear.
There’s so much shouting going on around us, it’s hard to hear what he’s saying. I stare helplessly at him as he motions with his eyes to my midsection and mouths, “Knife.”
The pocket knife.
I give a small nod, all the movement I can manage in Cynthia’s tight hold.
“Cynthia,” Trent pleads on a cry, pushing his way to stand beside Chase. He holds up his hands in a surrendering gesture. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Yes, I do!” she shouts.
With Cynthia distracted, I release one hand from her death grip on my hair and slide it down my body to the pocket in my blazer. I hurriedly dig with my fingers in search of the knife.
Trent shakes his head in a panic. “No, you don’t want her. You want me, Cynthia.”
She stiffens behind me, her grip on my hair relaxing a fraction.
My fingers curl around the knife, dragging it carefully from my pocket to avoid alerting Cynthia.
“You can have me,” he says soothingly. “Let me take Simone’s place, and we can be together.”
Cynthia sniffles. “You chose me?”
I drop my other hand from her grip on my hair, working the pocket knife open with both hands close to my body. Chase tracks my movements with his eyes, as do the FBI agents.
“Yes,” Trent nods encouragingly. “Let Simone go, and I’ll come to you.”
For a moment, I feel the gun ease against my head. The moment is short-lived.
Cynthia tightens her grip again. “You still care for her well-being before mine.”
Sensing my time has come, I rotate the knife in my grip and swing it back into her thigh.
She howls in agony, letting go of my hair. I stumble forward onto my hands and knees, with only enough time to look behind me as she swings her gun in my direction.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Plumes of blood ricochet from Cynthia’s chest, while wider arches of blood explode from her back onto the glass window behind us. The gun slips from her grasp as she falls back against the ground.
Oh, my God!
The room erupts into action. Agents rush forward to remove Cynthia’s weapon from where her prone body lies. They kneel around her where she gasps for life, starfished on the ground.
Cynthia may be a thief, deeply disturbed, and wanted to end my life, but I don’t wish the same for her. I don’t want her to die. Not like this, gasping for precious air to fill her perforated lungs.
“Someone help her,” I cry weakly, only to be drowned out by the hysteria swirling around the room following the shooting.
One agent calls for paramedics, while the others do what they can to stop her bleeding. Their hands try to cover the blood pouring from her bullet wounds on her chest as more pools underneath her in a thick crimson tide.
I’m tugged away from the scene, pulled into the powerful arms of the man I love. “I got you, Numbers. Look away.”
But I can’t. My eyes are frozen on the horror lying in front of me.
Cynthia’s head faces me, staring back at me with alarm on her beautiful features as she realizes this is her end. She claws at the agents’ hands like they can somehow save her from her sad fate.
“It’s okay,” I whisper through tears, trying to sound convincing. “Help is coming.”
