by Stone, Kyla
With a shudder, she spun away and kept going. Hoped she was headed the right direction and not about to blunder into the barrel of an enemy’s AK-47.
She couldn’t see Sutter. Didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.
That terrified her more than anything else.
It felt like a horrific game of musical chairs, round and round, a death match the moment the music stopped.
Only she couldn’t see the chairs or hear the music.
“There!” Sutter shouted to her left.
In the next flash, she saw it. A door.
Nearly tripping twice, she smashed into another hard pointy machine before shuffling away and fumbling blindly along the wall for the door with her free hand, her bicep burning from her awkward grip on the AR.
Another corridor, this one dimly lit on one end from a window somewhere she couldn’t see. Bundles of pipes ran along the ceiling. Sutter’s presence like a monster lurking at her exposed back.
Nothing she could do about it, just keep running. Her ribs on fire, lungs burning. Her ears tinny and ringing. Keep running.
Finally, they burst out of a back door into an alley between buildings.
Sutter slammed the door shut. The sound of gunfire faded.
Breathing hard, they backed into the shadows behind an overflowing dumpster. Her boots splashed into rain puddles, the air chilly and damp. The stench of wet garbage burned her nostrils.
On high alert, her nerves thrumming, her eyes swept to either side of the alley, peering at the shadowed corners, probing the darkness.
Nothing moved. No one leapt out to accost them.
“Don’t take your eyes off that door,” Sutter ordered, moving toward the dumpster. “I’ll clear the alley.”
A sensation more than anything else. She felt it—a sudden drop in the temperature, a coolness at the back of her neck.
A whispery feeling, like a ghost walking over her grave.
And she knew.
62
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Two
The tables were turning, the net snapping shut.
The hunter about to be hunted.
Sutter was out of her line of sight, checking the opposite side of the dumpster to clear the area. Every hair on Quinn’s body stood on end.
He was still the prey—as long as she acted first.
She stiffened, pulse jumping, tightening her grip on the AR-15 to swing it toward him, to kill him and get the hell out—
Suddenly he was there, appearing from the opposite side of the dumpster, lunging toward her. Five yards away, rifle lifting, aimed at her chest.
Instinct took over. She dropped to the ground.
Boom! A bullet punched over her head, close enough to stir the fine hairs on her scalp.
Boom! Cement shrapnel burst inches from her face. Shards pierced her cheek and forehead, stinging like fire.
She rolled onto her back, gravel jabbing her spine as she twisted around, fumbling with the trigger. Time slowed.
She fired back. Missed.
Sweat and tears in her eyes. Her heart a frantic flapping thing.
She fired again.
He kept coming.
Terror lanced through her. Her thoughts stuttered, everything jerky and slow motion.
She scrambled backward on her elbows, sloshing through muddy puddles and moldy trash, then hit the wall. She squeezed the trigger once, twice.
His body jerked. She’d nicked his shoulder. He plowed forward like he didn’t even feel it.
She fired again. The click of the slide locked back.
Empty. Out of ammo. Done for.
The barrel of his gun filled her vision.
Ten feet away, Sutter halted. He loomed over her, menacing and deadly. An invincible giant carved out of granite.
Her heart stopped.
He squeezed the trigger. Click.
“Guess we’re both out.” He tossed the rifle away and gave her a pitiless smile. “I’d hoped to take you by surprise. Less painful for you. Guess we’re doing it the hard way.”
She dropped the useless gun and withdrew her folding knife from her mud-splattered coat, flicked it open. “Like you care how much pain you cause.”
Using the wall for support, she scrambled to her feet, crouched and panting, teeth peeled back like a cornered animal.
“Put that little knife away, and I promise I’ll make it quick.”
Her heart pumped so fast her temples throbbed. Sweat slicked her forehead, her palms clammy.
Pure terror had a taste, coppery and cloying, like you could choke on it.
“No? Then I’ll be forced to use this.” Beneath his coat, he withdrew a familiar curved blade. “Recognize it? I got it off a mutual friend of ours.”
She stared at the karambit. She hadn’t seen Sutter kill Xander. Hadn’t seen the boy’s body. In the dark and the chaos, she’d missed it.
She felt no elation at Xander’s death. No sorrow, either. Only a cold emptiness expanding within her ribs—a low pulsing dread.
“Thought it would be apt,” Sutter continued. “This was Sebastian Desoto’s blade. Didn’t he try to gut you with it?”
“Liam stabbed him through the throat. Pinned him like a butterfly.”
Sutter scowled. “Too bad Coleman isn’t here to save you now, isn’t it? Guess Superman can’t be everywhere at once.”
A surge of nausea made her dizzy. Her legs shaking and rubbery. She didn’t know how long she could last. “I’ll kill you myself.”
He lumbered toward her, his free hand pressed to his left shoulder. It came away red. “You actually shot me, you little—”
She didn’t hear the rest, the tinny ringing in her ears loud as a freight train.
“I changed my mind.” Sutter’s mouth contorted into a sneer, an obscene grimace in the watery moonlight. “No mercy for you.”
“That goes both ways, jerkface.”
“Did you know a karambit’s hooked blade is designed like a raptor claw? It’s made for ripping, slicing, and tearing. I’m going to use it to disembowel you. I’m going to spill your guts on the ground and let you watch.”
The short curved blade sliced in back-and-forth X’s. He took his time, advancing slowly, letting that curved blade do the work of instilling terror, panic reducing her to a quivering puddle of despair.
Fleeing was no longer an option. She could barely walk, let alone run. He would hunt her down within twenty yards.
Neither was fighting. Sutter was quick on his feet and outweighed her by a hundred and fifty pounds.
One swipe of that blade, and it was lights out, forever.
Never underestimate the element of surprise.
A wave of fire shot through her ribs. Weakness washed over her, sucking the strength from her limbs. Her back pressed against the wall.
Your action beats his reaction. Every single time.
If she died here, Sutter would win. He would use the General to enact his revenge on the people she loved. That. Could. Not. Happen.
The only way to win is to commit to violence of action, and commit fully.
Outrage kindled a flame somewhere deep inside her, a desperate energy. It drove her to her feet, drove her onward. Just a little more. Just a little longer.
With all her coiled strength, with every ounce of courage she had left, she planted her feet, crouched low, and sprang at Sutter.
Sutter’s synapses couldn’t respond to the new stimulus swiftly enough. His arm was still finishing a wide high arc meant to intimidate and terrify, not attack.
She plunged in below his strike zone. Slashed hard at his upper thigh beneath the groin. A short, savage stroke. Vicious, all her strength and will and fury behind it.
Growling, screaming, crying, her mouth open though she couldn’t hear herself, couldn’t think but for blinding desperation. Hands wet with blood, his and her own, fingers like claws clutching the slippery handle. Again. Again. Again.
It happened so fast
, Sutter’s brain still processing the fact that his prey was no longer cowering before he realized she’d stabbed him—and more than once.
With a startled grunt, he faltered. He tried to lunge for her, but her momentum had carried her past him, beneath the swing of his arm.
Then she was behind him, whirling to stab the back of his knee. Ripping through his pant leg into his popliteal artery, relentlessly slashing with that little knife.
Again, he lurched at her, attempting to twist around.
She rolled out of the way, her shoulders striking the pavement. Mud splashed her face. Gravel in her hair, her mouth.
Sutter hacked at her, the curved blade slicing empty air.
She scrambled to her hands and knees, retreating, scrabbling across concrete, damp weeds, and soggy trash, her palms stinging.
She hit the side of the dumpster. Backed against the wall. No escape.
Looming over her, he raised the karambit again. But only halfway. His entire arm quivered. He wobbled on his feet, sagging like a puppet with its strings cut.
Abruptly, his right leg gave out on him.
With a tremendous groan, Sutter dropped to his knees. Dark red liquid spurted from multiple slash and puncture wounds.
A stunned look crossed his granite slab of a face. He’d miscalculated. He’d cornered an animal meaner and more dangerous than he was.
Quinn rose. Hobbling, swaying and dizzy, she circled behind him just out of his reach. Her hair plastered to her scalp, blood oozing from her split lip, the cuts on her hands. Her jaw swollen, ribs bruised, but she was up. She was on her feet.
“Don’t do this!” he gasped. “You don’t have to—”
Quinn bared her teeth. And drove her blade into the back of Sutter’s neck.
63
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Two
The adrenaline dump hit her like a semi-truck.
Quinn collapsed to her knees, the world coming back to her in fits and starts. The night cloaked in darkness, the moon a veiled glow behind the shroud of clouds.
The rusted dumpster in front of her, the stench of rancid trash strong in her nostrils, the brick walls of the buildings closing in on either side.
The crackle of gunfire had slowed. Only sporadic shots boomed here and there, like pops of firecrackers.
Her palms throbbed. She’d cut herself. She didn’t know how bad it was, and she was too exhausted to check.
With trembling fingers, she closed the bloody folding knife and got it into her pocket without dropping it.
Kneeling over Sutter’s corpse, she fumbled for the curved blade in his slack hand. How much smaller he seemed, diminished. The body seemed to collapse in on itself in death.
She curled her thumb through the safety ring. “This is mine, you ugly jerkface.”
The man who’d executed her mother was good and dead. Deader than dead.
It didn’t feel like it was supposed to.
There was no sense of victory, no gloating, no satisfaction. Only a hollow ringing in her chest. An empty finality.
It was done. It was finished.
Climbing to her feet was a towering act of willpower.
Her hands hung at her sides, the karambit dangling from limp, blood-slicked fingers. Her ragged breath felt torn from her lungs. Her ribs on fire, every bruise pulsing its own brand of pain.
More gunshots. From the south. Heading closer—
She never heard the threat coming.
A shadow dropped over her from behind.
Before she could react, powerful arms enfolded her in a viselike grip and struck the knife from her hand. It went spinning into the dark.
She struggled, writhing and flailing, summoning everything she had, but it was gone. She was utterly spent. Finished. Her battered body had nothing left.
Quinn was caught like a fly in a spider’s web.
She was dead. She knew she was dead.
Still, she fought. Screaming, clawing, and scratching with her bloodied fingers.
A firm hand covered her mouth. Then a voice hissed in her ear, “For Pete’s sake, stop trying to kick me in the balls! It’s me. It’s Liam!”
64
Liam
Day One Hundred and Two
Liam glanced in awe at the body at Quinn’s feet. Sutter was dead.
Damn, but that girl was something else. She’d managed to take out a man twice her size and far more experienced, and lived to tell the tale.
Gunshots exploded in the distance.
He’d praise her later. Right now, they were still in the lion’s den, surrounded by ravenous predators.
By his count, at least four or five of the paramilitary hostiles remained at large. He could sense them, prowling like wolves just outside his line of sight, circling, circling.
They’d scented blood and were closing in.
Quinn stared at him blankly, the whites of her eyes enormous. Her arms cradled her ribs, like she feared moving too fast in case she shattered. She just might.
Liam picked her up, scooping her into his arms like a child. She smacked weakly at his chest, leaving smears of blood across his chest rig. “Put me down.”
“You’re hurt.”
“What was your first clue, Sherlock?” She grimaced at him, her teeth streaked with blood. “Put me down.”
At least she’d kept her snark. That boded well for her odds of survival. “How do you feel?”
“About how I look.”
She looked like hell. Even in the darkness, he could see her face was bruised purple and black. Her clothes were ripped, muddy, and stained with blood splatters. And her palms were sliced and bleeding profusely.
Her nose might be broken, and someone had torn out her lip ring; he decided now was not a good time to mention that fact.
It was the injuries he couldn’t see that worried him.
“You look fine,” he lied.
She snorted, then winced. “Save your flattery for Hannah.” She turned her head and spat a glob of phlegm and blood. “Put me down.”
“You’re in no condition to walk.”
“You’re gonna carry me through a hailstorm of bullets without shooting back? Heroes only get away with that in the movies. I didn’t come this far to die tragically in your arms, Wolverine.”
His chest constricted at the use of the nickname. How could he argue with that? “Okay.”
“I can walk. I can do it.”
He set her down gently between the dumpster and the wall to shield them both from potential incoming fire and retrieved his IFAK, his individual first aid kit, from his chest rig.
“We need to go,” she said, shivering. “They’ll come back. They’ll find us.”
“You’re bleeding. Wrap this around your hands, then we go.” He handed her two Quik Clot blood-clotting bandages and flipped down his NVGs, examining their surroundings while she took care of business.
The gun battle was raging, though the rat-a-tat became more sporadic as the fighters in the game dwindled. Cold fog drifted between the buildings, obscuring anything past a hundred feet. At least he had his night vision.
He’d have to figure out another exit route. He’d planned to exfiltrate the way he’d come in, infiltrating through an access hatch in the warehouse roof after taking out the perimeter guards.
There were no snipers on the roof with night vision, so he’d taken the high ground and worked his way down, eliminating targets as he went.
It was like being dropped into the bowels of a great ship. He’d had a hell of a time locating her, despite Luther’s recon advice. In this case, the flawed intelligence wasn’t his fault. Quinn had escaped her captors and done most of the hard part herself.
In his search, Liam had come across two of the paramilitary soldiers. Trained, they were more difficult to dispatch, but he’d managed. They hadn’t expected to deal with ex-special forces on their little night raid.
The roof was the safest and easiest route back to the stashed ATV, but
one look at Quinn told him she wasn’t going to be scaling drainpipes anytime soon.
They’d have to fight their way out.
A shuffling sound as Quinn moved, and then she was beside him, fumbling with her sweater and coat as she hooked the karambit blade to her belt.
She reached out a bandaged hand. “I need a gun.”
“Just focus on staying with me—”
“I can help!” She raised her chin defiantly, glaring at him through the slits of her swollen eyes. “Let me help.”
Here she was, beaten, half-dead, still too reckless and stubborn for her own good. Also, not entirely wrong.
He would need to help her walk, though. She was swaying on her feet.
Liam did a tactical reload of both the M4 and the Glock, leaving the M4 on its sling and keeping the Glock for himself for better accuracy one-handed.
He unholstered the HK45 and handed it to her. “The magazine’s full, ten rounds. Point and shoot.”
A barrage of high-caliber ammunition shredded the brick wall to the south. Rounds struck all around them, spitting bits of masonry and dust. More rounds pinged against the dumpster.
Liam pivoted, sweeping with his weapon, and glimpsed a muzzle flash down the end of the sidewalk thirty yards away. He fired and took out the threat.
More gunfire to the south, the direction they needed to go. Green shapes stacking up behind the corners of two buildings, about to launch an attack. A half dozen at least. Probably more.
Too many for him to take on like this. Fear curdled his guts. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
It was far from his first choice, but since Quinn couldn’t run, they’d have to seek shelter in the massive five-block office building between them and the parking lot. He glimpsed a set of shattered glass doors forty yards to the north.
Once through the structure, they’d hit downtown St. Joe and could lose—or eliminate—any pursuers.
It sounded simple enough. In reality, it was anything but.