AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Down! Down!” Jack yelled as he threw me bodily to the floor. “Try not to breathe and crawl back toward the kitchen.”
My eyes watered from the tear gas and I started crawling while Jack covered me protectively. I looked back to see if Jane was behind us, but all I saw was smoke. Blood rushed in my ears so the screams and coughs of the other people were muted. My hands and knees bled asI crawled across broken glass, but I kept moving forward.
I coughed as we crawled through the swinging doors to the kitchen, but breathed in the fresh air as soon as it was available.
“Where’s Jane?” I choked out. Tears streamed from my eyes, and I noticed Jack had his weapon out and trained at the door, though his eyes were red and watery as well.
“She didn’t make it. A shot came in with the tear gas. It was long range and directed at Jane. Someone didn’t want her to talk.”
“Oh, my God.” I realized then how close Jack had come to dying. If Tydell had been able to get a second shot off then Jack would be just as dead as Jane. He was a target, and nothing was going to stop these men until they’d met their goals.
The kitchen was in chaos. Foodhad been left on the stove and was burning in pots and pans. Dishes had been dropped and plates lay broken on the floor.
“We need to get out of here. The police will take care of the people out front. Tydell’s shot hit its target, but they’re not going to want to let me go since I’m already here and separated from my protection. Stay close behind me. Do you have your gun?”
“I’ve got it.” I’d gotten in the habit of carrying it in my jacket pocket instead of my purse whenever I was out in public. I grabbed the gun and felt the weight of it in my hand. I wasn’t sure how accurate I’d be because my eyes still watered and my vision was blurry, but it made me feel better to have it just in case.
Just in case happened before we made it to the kitchen door that led to the area where trucks unloaded the food. All I saw was a blur out of the corner of my eye right before Jack crashed into a rack of cookware with the weight of a man dressed in BDUs on top of him. Jack’s gun skidded across the floor and my heart stopped as the other man pulled a knife long and sharp enough to cut to the bone with one slice. I knew without an introduction that I was looking at Lester Grimm. And he was here to kill us.
The man was heavier than Jack, but Jack managed to use his leverage to roll them across broken dishes and food.Metal shelving crashed down as they rolled. They moved too quickly. My gun was trained on them both, but they were so close together I couldn’t risk taking a shot without hitting Jack too.
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” I prayed over and over again. My eyes still watered and the two of them blurred together as Jack struggled to dislodge the knife from the man’s hand. Their positions reversed again and Jack was on bottom. Both of his hands gripped around the wrist of the hand holding the knife, but it moved closer and closer to his neck,nicking the flesh so a thin stream of blood ran in a single rivulet. I didn’t have any choice but to try and take a shot or Jack would die right in front of my eyes. And then I’d be next.
I used my shirt to blot my eyes and try to clear them a little, but it didn’t help much. I decided to aim high and below the waist just in case my vision was worse off than I thought. I didn’t think as I pulled the trigger. Couldn’t think or I would’ve been paralyzed with the fear.
The gunshot echoed in the cavernous kitchen and I saw the man on top of Jack jerk slightly, but he didn’t lose his focus on the task of cutting Jack’s throat. I moved around to see if I could get a better angle and my eyes started watering again. Though this time it was with tears.
“Come on, Jaye.” The pep talk wasn’t working.My hand shook as I took aim again and I noticed the blood pooling beneath them from the wound in Grimm’s leg. I was afraid to fire again and was glad I didn’t when their bodies shifted and they rolled once more so Jack was on top. He slammed his elbow into Grimm’s nose and I heard the sickening crunch of bone and cartilage, and then I winced as Jack’s knee pressed into the man’s groin.
An unearthly scream filled the air and brought chills to my arms, and the sound of gagging filled the room. Jack slammed the hand holding the knife against the floor and the man grunted as his wrist broke and the knife slid across the floor.
I ran over to the knife and kicked it farther away as Jack got up and picked up his gun, training it on Lester Grimm.
“You’re under arrest. Roll over and place your hands behind your head. You have the right to remain silent.” Jack finished reading his rights and cuffed Grimm’s hands behind his back before he looked at me. “Nice shot, Tex.”
“It’s probably not a good time to tell you I wasn’t really sure what I was shooting at. There was two of both of you.” I still pointed my gun at Grimm and it weighed like lead in my shaking hands, so I put it back in my jacket pocket.
“Yeah, I probably could’ve gone without knowing that.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Blood dripped down Jack’s throat and stained the collar of his shirt, and I grabbed a dishtowel that was lying on the counter and went up to staunch the bleeding.
“I guess Lauren will be happy,” I said to try and distract myself from the fact my hands were shaking. “You’re bringing him in alive.”
“Yeah, he’s alive.” He hissed out a breath as I blotted at the wound. “But I wouldn’t feel too bad about it if he had an accident somewhere along the way.”
“You don’t need stitches. It’s just a knick.”
“Are you going to kiss it and make it better?”
I took his face between my hands and kissed him gently on the lips. “You scared me. Let’s not do that again.”
His arms wrapped around me and I buried my face against his chest. “If you want to know the truth I was pretty scared too. I’m probably going to need a lot of comforting later on.”
“We’ll comfort each other then.”
