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Kreshnik rocks with each bullet that passes through his body. The final one cuts straight through his head—in one temple and out the other.
Blood showers over me. I taste the metallic bite of it coating my tongue.
Then Kreshnik drops to the floor, his mouth slack. An ocean of blood pouring out of him.
52
TIMOFEY
Benjamin is screaming.
The sound makes it almost impossible to focus on anything else. But there is so much to focus on.
Kreshnik Xhuvani dead or dying on the floor. And Piper…
“Piper!”
I jump over the metal pipe she used to attack Kreshnik and drop to my knees next to her. Kreshnik’s blood soaks into my pants. It’s still hot.
“Piper.” I sweep my hand over her face. My thumb smears the fine mist of blood on her skin into a kind of war paint under her eye. “Are you okay?”
There is blood on her lips and her teeth. She’s covered in it, and I have no idea how much is Kreshnik’s and how much is hers.
“Piper, fucking talk to me before I go insane.”
“I’m fine.” She is trembling from head to toe. She’s in shock.
“No, you’re not.” I haul her up. The moment she’s on her feet, she runs for the corner. I try to grab her, but she’s too fast.
She reaches into the basket and pulls Benjamin out. His crying gets even louder. They are angry wails that pierce my ears in the best kind of way.
I thought I’d never hear them again.
“Oh my God, you’re alive.” She hugs him to her chest and tips her head back, eyes squeezed closed. “You’re alive.”
He’s alive.The information has barely had time to register.
I shift behind Piper and hold Benjamin’s soft head in the palm of my hand. “He’s alive. Thanks to you.”
“Thanks toyou. We were both going to die in here, Timofey. If you hadn’t shown up—”
I press a kiss to the back of her head. The smell of iron is overwhelming. “Don’t even talk about that. I did show up. It’s all over.”
“And Sergey?”
“Dead. As he should be.”
Piper glances over her shoulder at Kreshnik’s dead body and immediately looks away. “Can we… can we go somewhere else? There’s so much blood. It’s… Oh God, it’s everywhere. It’s on Benjamin, too.”
Her voice is growing frantic, the words rushing out of her. Carefully, I pluck Benjamin from her arms.
“There’s an employee locker room. There are showers. We can clean up there.”
Her chin is wobbling with the effort not to cry. “Okay. Okay, we can… Yeah, it’s okay. I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not,” I repeat, pulling her tightly against my chest. “But you will be.”
The locker room is at the end of the secret hallway and through another hidden door. This is the first time I’ve navigated these secret tunnels, but I know the layout of the rest of the building well enough to be able to reverse engineer a floor plan in my mind.
