16. Lena
Lena
One second I’m standing there, staring like an idiot while the glass bursts inward, and the next I’m slammed to the floor so hard the breath leaves my body in a pathetic little sound I will deny forever.
His body comes down over mine immediately. Not awkwardly. Not hesitantly. Instantly. Like he’s done this before. Like protecting someone while bullets are flying is just another item on his to-do list.
Around us, the café loses its mind. People are screaming.
Someone is crying. Cups are smashing. A chair scrapes and tips over.
The espresso machine is still hissing like it has no idea this is a very bad time to keep doing its job.
Glass keeps raining down in little pieces around us, and every fresh gunshot makes the whole front of the diner jump.
But Knox? Knox is calm.
Not relaxed. Definitely not relaxed. But controlled in this terrifying, unfairly competent way that makes everything around him look even more chaotic by comparison.
He’s braced over me, one arm planted near my head, the other shielding me in a way that pins me flat to the ground without quite crushing me.
His weight is heavy, solid, warm, and I hate that some tiny, treacherous part of my brain notices that in the middle of active gunfire.
His face is close. Too close.
His expression is hard and focused, eyes scanning over me once, then the room beyond, like he’s already calculating angles and exits and all the things I very much do not want to know how to calculate.
Then, with one quick movement, he reaches behind him and pulls out a gun.
A gun. An actual gun.
I stare at it. Then I stare at him.
“What the hell?” I gasp. “Why do you have a gun?”
He glances down at me, annoyed. “Really?” he says. “That’s what you’re worried about right now?”
Another shot cracks through the front window, and I flinch so hard I nearly headbutt him.
“Yes,” I hiss. “I mean, ugh, it doesn’t matter.”
His mouth tightens like he’s trying not to say something rude. Or maybe several rude things. “Stay down,” he says.
A bullet smacks into something behind the counter and somebody screams again.
Knox shifts, covering me more fully as shattered glass skitters across the floor. “Lena.”
“What?”
“Now is not the time.”
“Then when is the time to ask why a man who stalked me at work is apparently armed?”
His face actually changes at that. Not much. Just enough to suggest he might be offended.
“I did not stalk you.”
“You found me at my job!”
“I found you quickly.”
“That’s not better!”
Another burst of shots hits the front, and I yelp as Knox’s hand comes to the back of my head, shoving me lower. “Still not better?” he mutters.
“No!”
“Noted.”
This is insane.
This is fully, completely insane.
I’m lying on the floor of the café under a man I barely understand while bullets fly through the windows, and he’s somehow acting like I’m the unreasonable one in this conversation.
“You brought this here!” I whisper-yell.
His eyes snap to mine. “No, I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
His jaw tightens. “Later.”
“You keep saying that like there’s going to be a later!”
“There is if you stop arguing with me.”
Despite literally everything, I almost laugh. Because apparently my brain has given up and decided sarcasm is how we survive now.
Another shot rings out, closer this time, followed by the crash of more glass.
Knox lifts his gun slightly, angled away from me but ready, every muscle in him going tighter.
His whole body changes with it, like some invisible switch flips and suddenly he’s even more dangerous than he already looked.
And still he keeps himself over me. Still he uses his body like a shield.
Mara screams my name from somewhere behind us.
My stomach twists. “My friends?—”
“I know.”
“Knox—”
“I know,” he repeats, but not at me. At the room. At the noise. At the impossible amount of things happening at once. He glances toward the counter, then back to me. “When I move you, you move. No arguing.”
“I wasn’t planning to argue during the gunfight, actually.”
He gives me a flat look. “Your recent performance suggests otherwise.”
I would be offended if he weren’t extremely correct.
There’s a pause in the gunfire. Not silence. The diner is still full of shouting and crying and breaking things. But the shooting stops for half a second, and Knox’s whole focus shifts.
He leans down just a fraction closer. “Ready?”
“No,” I say immediately.
His expression doesn’t change. “Unfortunate.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to brace. The second there’s an opening, Knox moves, one arm sliding around me, and then I’m off the floor so fast I barely process it.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing. Actually nothing.
One moment I’m crouched in broken glass and panic, the next I’m against his chest, my feet nowhere near the ground, his body already in motion.
I gasp. “What are you doing?”
“Saving time.”
Around us, the diner is still chaos. People crying, shouting, glass crunching under shoes, somebody yelling for everyone to get down. Knox doesn’t hesitate. He carries me through it like he’s done this a hundred times, one hand keeping me steady, the other still holding the gun low and ready.
“Back door,” he says. “Where?”
It takes my brain a second to catch up. “W-what?”
He looks at me once, impatient. “Lena. Back door.”
I point past the counter, toward the narrow hall by the bathrooms. “There.”
He doesn’t waste another second. He sets me down just enough that I can run and then his hand is at my back, steering me hard in the right direction. The force of it startles me. Not rough exactly. Just certain.
We sprint through the hall, my shoes slipping a little on the tile, my breath tearing in and out too fast. Knox is right behind me, then beside me, then somehow ahead enough to shove the door open and pull me through into the night.
Outside, it’s already dark. The alley behind the diner is narrow and damp, lit only by a flickering security light and a weak spill of yellow from the back door. The air hits my lungs cold and dirty, smelling like old grease, wet concrete, and exhaust.
Then I see them. A few dark cars parked without markings near the mouth of the lane. Four men, maybe more, spread out around them like they’ve been waiting. One of them turns at the sound of the door banging open.
He sees us.
“Go,” Knox snaps.
I don’t argue.
We run.
My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s in my throat, in my ears, in the soles of my feet.
Knox keeps me moving with one hand at my arm, guiding, pushing, pulling me around puddles and trash bins and the uneven patches of pavement.
The alley narrows, then breaks into another lane, darker than the first, hemmed in by brick walls and overflowing dumpsters.
Behind us, footsteps. Fast.
They spotted us immediately, and now they’re coming. I can hear them closing in, shoes pounding concrete, one of them shouting something I can’t make out. I risk one glance over my shoulder and instantly regret it. Too close. They’re too close.
“Knox—”
“I know.”
He turns us hard into a side alley so tight I almost slam into the wall. My shoulder scrapes brick. Pain flashes and vanishes under the adrenaline.
One of the men catches up first.
Knox wheels around so fast it barely looks human. One second he’s running, the next he’s driving his fist into the guy’s throat. The man folds with a horrible sound, and Knox grabs him, throws him into the wall, then down to the ground in one smooth movement like gravity itself is on his side.
Another one is already there. He comes in from the left, and Knox meets him head-on, brutal and efficient. A punch, an elbow, a knee. The man stumbles back and Knox finishes it with the butt of the gun across the side of his head.
I’m pressed against the wall, shaking so hard I can barely feel my hands.
“Move,” Knox says.
But before I can, a third man barrels in. This one is bigger, faster. He gets closer than the others, close enough that I see the glint of something metal in his hand as he swings for Knox.
Knox twists, but not fast enough. He’s about to get hit.
My gaze drops and I see it.
His gun.
Not in his hand anymore. It must have fallen in the struggle, slid across the wet concrete almost to my feet.
I don’t think. I grab it.
It’s heavier than I expect. Cold. Wrong in my hand. My pulse is a scream inside my body.
The man is still going for Knox.
I lift the gun with both hands the way I’ve seen people do in movies, which is ridiculous because this is not a movie and I have no idea what I’m doing and my arms are shaking and I can barely breathe.
I pull the trigger.
The sound is enormous.
The recoil nearly tears the gun out of my hands.
The man jerks sideways with a shout, grabbing his shoulder as blood blooms dark against his jacket.
For one frozen second, nobody moves.
Then everything slams back into motion. The wounded man stumbles, swearing, and Knox is on him immediately, disarming him, driving him into the wall and down. Hard. Final.
My whole body is vibrating.
The gun is still in my hands. I stare at it, then at Knox, then at the man on the ground clutching his shoulder, and my breath comes in short, ragged bursts that don’t feel like enough air.
“Oh my God,” I say, but it barely comes out.
Knox turns to me. There’s blood on his knuckles. His chest is rising hard. His eyes flick to the gun in my hands, then to the man I hit, then back to me.
And for the first time since I met him, he actually looks surprised.
“You hit him,” he says.
My mouth opens. Closes. “I shot him.”
“In the shoulder.”
“I shot him!”
“Yes,” he says, like we’re calmly reviewing a test result instead of standing in a dark alley with men trying to kill us. “Very good shoulder placement, actually.”
I stare at him. “Are you insane?”
“Frequently.”
Behind us, more voices. More footsteps.