That almost made her stumble. But she kept on running. Dodging bodies and debris, firing wildly as she did so. Desperate to get to the man she loved. The man who was gravely injured. She watched in horror, her eyes glued to him, as he sent her a faint smile.
He was saying goodbye.
And she wasn’t going to let him.
“Look up,” Sandi said. “If you can hear me. Look behind Mace.”
She couldn’t help but glance behind him. Only to find a shuttle hovering off the side of the terrace. His sister in the driving seat. As she watched, the shuttle went into a steep dive and disappeared.
“What?” Keiko said as she ran.
Nearly there. She was nearly there. Mace was swaying in place. Clutching his side. Making no attempt to protect himself from the people around him. He needed her. She had to get him to safety.
“Listen to me,” Sandi ordered. “We need to save Mace, and we can’t get to him. I need you to grab him and jump off the building. We’ll catch you.”
This time, Keiko did stumble. She couldn’t be serious.
A shot fired, barely missing Keiko, hitting the wooden pergola beside her head. She turned her weapon, fired back, and kept on running.
Almost there.
She could almost reach him.
His face was gray, and his eyes were closing.
“Jump,” Sandi barked. “We’ll catch you.”
Mace started to wobble. He was going down. Losing consciousness.
“Mace!” she screamed.
He struggled to open his closing eyes. To look at her. And then, he smiled. A soft, sweet, sad smile filled with love.
She saw her name on his lips.
And she made her decision. Throwing the gun away, she launched herself at the man she loved.
And holding him tight, she took them both over the side of the building.
The air rushed up to meet them. The sky surrounded her once again. The agony of falling made her sob against Mace. But she would not let him go. All she could do was close her eyes and pray Sandi hadn’t lied. Pray she’d catch them.
Chapter Forty-Four
Shuttle outside CommTECH Research Facility
Houston, Northern Territory
“She did it,” Ignacio shouted. “Holy crap, she did it.”
He was in the back of the shuttle, the side door open wide. Sandi glanced at the falling bodies, Keiko wrapped around her brother. She’d turned the shuttle, keeping it close to the building, angling it so that—God willing—they fell through the open door.
“A little bit forward!” Ignacio shouted.
She moved the shuttle, careful to keep the stubby wing from scraping the building.
There was a thud, and the craft shook. Sandi fought to control it. To keep it in place.
She glanced over her shoulder, looking through the glass partition that separated the driver from the back. Keiko and Mace had landed on the wing.
Ignacio lunged toward them.
Sandi angled the craft to help them slide inside.
Ignacio grabbed Mace’s flailing arm and tugged. It should have been impossible. They were heavy and sliding off the craft. But Ignacio had the strength of his other half to rely on. He pulled hard, and the three of them jerked inside, landing with a crash on the opposite door of the shuttle.
“Got them!” Ignacio shouted. “Get us out of here.”
With great effort, Sandi struggled to get the shuttle back on an even keel. It veered to the right—just as a drone appeared beside them.
“Brace yourselves,” she shouted. “We’ve got an Enforcement attack drone on us.”
There was a blast as the drone opened fire. The shuttle shuddered and wavered in the sky.
“Striker,” Sandi barked into her comm, “we’re taking fire.”
“I see it. I’m on it,” came the calm reply.
There were more blasts as Striker opened fire from the helicopter. An explosion shook the shuttle, but it was only the drone going up in smoke. Sandi turned them away from CommTECH’s building. They had to get out of there fast. Mace needed medical attention. And that wouldn’t be the last drone Enforcement sent after them.
She was right.
A blast hit their left side.
Every light on the dash in front of her blinked out.
Ignoring the firefight beside her as Striker attacked the second drone, Sandi tried to bring controls back online.
It was pointless. The shuttle shuddered, and the engine went dead.
They were going down.
“Ignacio, we’ve lost electrics,” she shouted. “I can’t get it back online. I’m going to coast us as far as I can, but then we’ll need to evac.”
A barrage of Spanish curses was the reply.
“I’m heading for Buffalo Bayou Park,” Sandi told him.
“Can you land this thing on the grass over there?” Ignacio called back.
“No.” It wasn’t built for emergency landings. Not like this one. There would be no gliding in for a long ride over soft grass. As soon as they touched the ground, they’d roll, and the shuttle would crumple like a cheap tin can. “We have to go into the water. Prepare Mace as best you can. I’ll come back to help when it’s time.”
In the meantime, she had to steer a craft that was dead in the air, using only the manual controls that utilized the directional flaps on the wings. And hope like hell they didn’t hit any of the buildings between the research center and the park.
Chapter Forty-Five
The shuttle had stalled. They were gliding silently past Houston’s downtown skyline. And Mace was unconscious beside Keiko.
She felt bruised and stunned from the leap into the shuttle. She’d hit it hard and knew they’d both feel the aches for days to come.
If they survived.
She couldn’t think about how they were going to get out of the shuttle. All she could think about was Mace.
She held him tight as she faced the stranger who’d helped rescue them. “He’s dying. We need a hospital.”
Ignacio’s expression was compassionate. “That isn’t gonna happen, bonita. You heard Sandi—the farthest we’re going is the bayou. But I’m a medic, and we’ll make sure our boy is patched up enough to live through this.”
Beneath her fingertips, she could feel Mace slipping away from her, his breathing becoming shallower by the second. She couldn’t lose him. Not after everything they’d been through. Not now.
Ignacio reached for Mace, feeling for a pulse. “Too fast. He’s struggling to breathe.” He lifted the shirt. There was a massive black bruise on his side. He felt his way along it. “Broken ribs.” He kept his hands flat on Mace’s chest for a minute. “Uneven breathing. Punctured lung. Probably internal bleeding.” He seemed to be listing what he found purely for his own benefit. He ran his fingers down Mace’s throat. “Trachea is shifting to the right. We need to relieve the pressure on his lung.”
“What does that mean?” she said.
He smiled at her and touched his ear, obviously activating a comm link. “Doc? I got a situation here. Looks like a tension pneumothorax, possibly a hemothorax. I don’t have any medical supplies, and our boy’s heart rate is right up, breathing’s labored, and his trachea has started moving right.”
Keiko reached for Mace’s hand and held it tight, her eyes on Ignacio, wishing she could hear both sides of the conversation.
“No can do,” he said. “We’re in engine failure. Sandi is trying to glide as far as she can, but we’ll have to bail. Right now, state he’s in, he won’t survive a jump.” He listened, his jaw tightening, and then his head hung forward. “Damn. Okay. Yeah, I’ll see what I can find. Stay on the line.”
“What is it?” she demanded.
Ignacio’s head came up, and his dark eyes hit hers. “We need to get the air out of his chest cavity. It’s compressing his lungs and heart, and it’s killing him. There’s blood in there, too, but only surgery will fix that. Right now, the priority is getting th
e air out.”
“How?” She looked at Mace. His face was pale, his lips turning blue. They were running out of time.
“Normally, I’d shove a fourteen-gauge needle in his chest, but we don’t have one. If I cut into him with my knife, the hole will just seal when I take it out, keeping the air inside. We need something tube-like that can keep the hole open and let the air out.”
She looked around, frantically searching for something, anything, that would fit his description. Ignacio started opening and shutting the various cubbies.
“I can’t see anything.” Panic made her voice thin.
“Me neither. Sandi,” he called, “we need something tube-like.”
“There’s nothing up here. Don’t even see a med kit.”
“How long have we got until we need to bail?”
He meant jump from the shuttle. Keiko’s stomach spasmed at the thought. But she’d already leaped from a building, right? She could do this. Only, the building hadn’t been moving at the time. Don’t think about that. Think about helping Mace.
“Five minutes, max. Probably less. We got some air currents that are helping keep us up here. But we aren’t going to get much more time than that.”
Keiko looked out the window at the downtown skyline. They weren’t far from the park, but she wasn’t sure how much control the pilot had over a shuttle without an engine. They could only coast for so long. The chances of them crashing into one of the buildings seemed awfully high to her. And even if they made it to the park, what then? How would Mace survive the jump? How would any of them?
She turned her attention back to Mace. But as she did, her eyes caught something outside the shuttle.
“There.” She pointed. “The telescoping antenna. It’s a hollow tube, right?”
Ignacio’s head snapped around. “Genius. Hold on while I open the door and get it. Sandi, I’m going outside. Keep it steady.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she called back.
He slid the door open, held on tight to its edge, leaned over the back of the shuttle, and snapped off the antenna. A blast hit the side of the shuttle. They hurtled sideways. Ignacio slipped. Keiko threw herself at him. He grabbed her hand, and she tugged. The shuttle evened out, and Ignacio crashed back inside.
“Thanks,” he said as he knelt beside Mace.
Rapid gunfire sounded off their left side, and Keiko glanced away from Mace long enough to see that there was an Enforcement armored drone chasing them, a black helicopter close behind.
“Striker,” Ignacio snapped into his communication device, “keep them off us. I’m about to cut into Mace.”
The chopper opened fire on Enforcement, forcing the drone to engage them and abandon the shuttle.
“Help me.” Ignacio had a knife out, the blade cutting through Mace’s shirt on the right side of his chest.
Keiko knelt beside him. “What do you want me to do?”
He flashed her a smile. “Apart from pray, bonita? Hold him down as best you can. This is going to hurt like hell, and it might be enough to rouse him. We don’t want him striking out and ruining our effort to save his sorry life.”
She looked for a way to pin him down without causing further damage. She couldn’t lie across his chest, so she lay over his hips, using her slight body weight to keep him still. Her hands curled around his left arm, holding it tight in case he struck out. He didn’t move.
She turned her head to watch Ignacio. He’d cut Mace’s shirt away, showing laser burn on his shoulder. The sight made her feel nauseous.
“I think that might have been me,” she confessed. “I didn’t look where I was firing.”
Ignacio grinned as he felt his way down from the top of Mace’s chest, counting off ribs. “I’ll be sure to let him know that once he wakes up.”
“He’d better wake up. He’s completely screwed up my life, and I need to make him pay for it.”
“You’re a little bloodthirsty, aren’t you? I can see why he’s enamored.” He snapped the bottom part of the antenna, leaving him with a metal tube. “Ready?”
She nodded and tightened her grip.
A loud blast sounded from outside the shuttle. The craft dipped.
“Two minutes until we bail,” Sandi shouted. “I can’t land this thing. Even on a slide, it will crumple like aluminum foil. We have to jump.”
“Little busy here,” Ignacio called. “I’m trying to save your brother.”
He didn’t hesitate after that. He sank his blade into Mace’s chest in the spot he’d marked; then, as he withdrew the knife, he wedged the tube in its place, holding the edges tight to stop the blood from spilling.
Mace didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound. Keiko’s stomach shot to her throat.
“Is he…?” She couldn’t say it.
Ignacio felt for a pulse. “He’s alive. His heart has slowed slightly. The trachea has moved back into position.” He looked up at her. “It worked, but I need tape or something to keep this in place and stop the bleeding.”
“I don’t have tape. Wait. Can you use my bra? Can you pad the area around the tube with it and use the elastic to keep it in place?”
Amusement flashed in his eyes. “Sure. That would work.”
Keiko dug under her shorn dress, unhooked her bra, pulled it out through her sleeve, and handed it to him. The tiny piece of red lace looked ridiculous in his grasp.
“Good thinking, bonita.”
Working fast, he wrapped it diagonally, under the arm nearest the tube, then over his opposite shoulder, like a sling. “We need some padding for around the tube. Take my knife and cut some material from the seat.”
Keiko didn’t hesitate. There was no time. As he carefully wrapped the elastic part of the bra around Mace like a sling, she cut strips out of the seat behind her. She handed them to him.
“You’d make a fine field medic,” he told her.
“If I never see another wound, it will be too soon. Now, hurry up.”
He packed the wound around the tube, cut a hole in one of the lace-and-satin cups, and then threaded it over the tube to keep it all in place. “It shouldn’t move around too much. It’s the best we can do. If your implants still work, take some photos. They’ll come in handy later.” He grinned at her.
She didn’t find it funny. “His color looks better.” Maybe less blue around the mouth.
“We’ve vented the buildup of air, but there’s nothing I can do about the blood. We’ve bought him some time, but he needs a surgeon.”
The door on the side of the craft opened, and Sandi the Amazon appeared, clinging to the outside of the shuttle. “Damn dividing partition won’t lower because we lost electrics. It was either this or smash the glass, and I didn’t think that would help Mace.” Her eyes were on her brother, but there was no sign of emotion. “Good job packing the vent. Red has always been his color. Now help me get him up. We need to bail now.”
“I’m glad the bayou is deeper than it was when we were kids—otherwise, there wouldn’t be enough water to cushion our landing.” Ignacio looked down as he helped lift Mace. “Scratch that. The water is filthy. I’d rather die from the jump than get a bacterial infection that will take me out later.”
“Stop whining. Take more of his weight.”
“You’re serious,” Keiko said. “We’re going to jump into the water with Mace like this? It could kill him.”
“At least this way he has a chance,” Sandi said coldly. “We’re about to hit Waugh Bridge, and he sure as hell won’t survive that.”
“Waugh Bridge. You mean bat bridge?” She felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. The bat. She’d forgotten about the bat. “Where’s Mace’s bat? We need to get his bat. He won’t survive without it.”
“You know about Mace’s bat?” Ignacio gaped at her.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Sandi said to him. “You get under his left side. I’ll take the right. We’ll jump together.”
They lifted him to his feet, slid their sh
oulders under his arms, and wrapped one arm each around Mace’s waist. He just hung there between them like a rag doll.
“Hold the tube,” Ignacio said. “Try to stop it from jerking on impact.”
Sandi nodded and turned to her. “If you don’t jump, you die. Your choice.” And then she nodded at her teammate. “On three. One. Two. Three.”
They launched themselves from the shuttle, taking the man she loved with them. Keiko gasped and rushed forward to hold on to the open door. They hit the water with a splash, emerging seconds later, Mace between them.
“Jump,” Sandi shouted.
Keiko looked at the water. Would she survive? They were level with the bridge now, and people died jumping off bridges all the time. She looked at the bridge. It was coming up fast.
“Get out of there, now!”
There was no other choice. She took a deep breath and threw herself from the shuttle. Part of her brain told her to keep an eye out below for rocks or alligators. The rest of her brain told her to shut her eyes and hope for the best. So that’s what she did. She couldn’t stop herself from hitting a rock or getting eaten by a stray gator, anyway.
The water wasn’t cold. But hitting it was still a shock to her system, and she had to fight the reflex to gasp, because it covered her head in a second. She plunged down into the murky depths—straight into the middle of a tree that had fallen to the bottom of the river.
She was stuck.
Chapter Forty-Six
A fury like no other raced through Keiko’s veins. She was not going to drown in a river. Not after everything she’d already survived.
The water was too thick and brown to see through, but she couldn’t help opening her eyes and looking down at her foot. All she could make out was the shadowy shape of the tree her ankle was caught in. Using her other foot, she kicked at the branches digging into her ankle. Pain seared through her. All she’d done was force the jagged wood farther into her trapped foot.
Lungs burning, she bent over to get to her ankle. The water was thick. Dark. Cold. She felt like she was moving in slow motion. Each second an agony of knowing her time was running out fast. Frantically, she felt around her ankle. Her fingers scraped against bark and slime and sharp little twigs that dug into her ankle, holding her in place.
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