Chapter 4 #2
He raced toward the man holding Eve. The man slammed her against the Transit’s side again and reached inside his jacket. His reactions showed he’d had training, but he didn’t have enough training to stop Harry. There wasn’t enough training in the world for that.
Every instinct as a soldier told Harry to go for the armed guy first. It was practically written in stone. When facing an armed man and an unarmed man reaching for the gun, go for the gun that’s in sight.
But Harry couldn’t stand to see Eve manhandled for even a second longer. He ran straight up to the guy holding Eve, moved sideways fast in a smooth leg sweep, catching him as he lost his balance, pressing against him hip to hip, then rolling his hip to hold the guy in front of him as a shield.
Armed Guy had started shooting, controlled bursts from his automatic, but he was hitting the man in front of Harry. Harry braced against the impact of the bullets hitting the body he held in front of him.
The armed man stopped shooting and turned his gun on Eve, but Harry’s gun was up and firing. A double-tap to the head and he dropped like a stone, only a star of pink mist dissipating in the air marking where he’d stood.
The whole thing had taken no more than three seconds.
Eve was on the ground, unconscious, but there was one more guy to worry about before Harry could help her.
The van door slammed shut on the other side—the driver’s side.
Harry dropped to the ground and put a round in each ankle, watching bone splinters pepper the ground.
Ignoring the screams, he raced around the front of the van and placed a round in the screaming man’s head without a second thought.
There was no doubt that these fuckers’ orders had been to bring Eve in alive if possible—dead if not. All three were armed—flipping back the jacket of the man who’d manhandled Eve showed a well-used holster and a Glock 17 seated in it, undrawn. He’d trusted his big fists to subdue a lone woman.
Harry gave him a vicious kick in the side, sorry that the fucker was dead because he wanted to kill him all over again.
He told himself the kick was to see if he was still alive, but that was bullshit.
Some primitive part of him wanted to cut the fucker’s chest open, rip his heart out and feed it to the dogs. Touch Eve and you died.
He looked down and his heart stopped. Just stopped for a long, horrendous second.
No.
This couldn’t be. He closed his eyes for a second, sure that when he opened them again, he’d see bare asphalt at his feet and three very dead men scattered around the vehicle and that was all.
Life couldn’t be that cruel. In the nanosecond in which this thought flashed through his head, every cell in his body rejected it as false.
Life could definitely be that cruel. The cruelty of the world was neverending, fathomless.
The fact that something would break your heart was almost a guarantee that it would happen.
He opened his eyes again, the scene unchanged.
Eve, lying on her back, utterly still, blood staining her white shirt, staining her arm, pooling around her back.
As he watched, a rivulet of blood broke from the pool and followed a groove in the asphalt invisible to the naked eye down to the edge of the curb, where it started dripping into a grate.
Harry dropped to his knees, because his legs wouldn’t hold him up any more.
No, no, no. The words were a heavy drumbeat in his heart.
No.
He refused even the thought of it. He hadn’t been able to save Crissy, but by God he was going to save Eve, whose voice had saved his own life.
He was supposed to save her! That was the way it was supposed to be. Not once in the wild ride here, or while fighting Montez’s goons, had it occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to save her.
He had to save her. He had to save her to save his own soul, because it felt like his own life’s blood dripping down onto the street and draining into the gutter, instead of hers.
He couldn’t let the monsters win all the time. His life had to have some meaning, some ability to stop the monsters, at least once.
Kneeling, Harry bent over her, tears pricking his eyes. The last time he’d cried had been over Crissy’s lifeless body. The sweetest little girl in the world, destroyed by a monster. He’d cried until he’d blacked out.
He hadn’t cried at the grinding, unbearable pain he’d suffered for all the long months of his recovery. All the pain in the world, concentrated in his body, but it hadn’t made him cry, not once.
Now tears simply spurted out of his eyes as he gathered up Eve’s limp body, bowing over her bloodied torso.
Oh God, why couldn’t he stop it, just once? What the fuck had he been born for, if not to save Eve? To save all the Eves?
If only he’d been a couple of seconds faster in getting out of the building, if only there hadn’t been traffic on the road, if only he’d reacted instantly when she’d left the office instead of waiting like an asshole…the if onlys piled up, as high as the sky.
Eve felt nearly weightless as he held her in his arms, tears dripping down, watering the blood on her chest. He held her and felt like howling, railing against the sky, the world, fate.
The dim sound of sirens penetrated his head. He’d been in some timeless zone of grief, but the world rolled on. Someone had called in the shootings and the police were on their way.
Harry looked down at the woman in his arms. The police were coming. That meant they’d figure out who she was and her death would be all over the newspapers.
Montez would read it and rejoice.
No, no way would Harry let Montez know that he’d won. That once more, sheer evil had prevailed. Let Montez think she was alive and out there, an ongoing and neverending threat to him. His men sure wouldn’t talk. Harry’d take her away and…
He froze, frowning. Eve’s eyes had moved behind her lids.
She was…she was alive!
Oh God, she was alive!
And she was fucking well going to stay that way, he promised himself and her as he rose easily with her in his arms.
The sirens were coming closer. He placed her carefully in the lowered passenger seat of his SUV, rounded the vehicle and fired it up.
He was two blocks away by the time the cop cars arrived. He watched through the rear view mirror as six cops emerged from three cars, guns drawn, checking the perimeter. One reached down and put two fingers against the neck of the fucker who’d held Eve.
Harry rounded the corner and lost them, driving at exactly the speed limit so he wouldn’t be pulled over.
He glanced over. Eve was still as death, skin pale as ice except where blood flecks marred the smooth skin, her shoulder and side a deep red. Even grievously wounded and unconscious, she was beautiful. With a voice that was magic.
She wasn’t going to die. Harry wouldn’t let her.
He’d die himself first.