Chapter 31
Chaos erupts all at once, loud, and shapeless and impossible to outrun.
People scatter in every direction, screaming, dropping bags, slipping on polished floors as alarms begin to howl overhead, the shrill wail of something pulled too late. The terminal fractures into panic, and threaded through it are the assassins who came prepared for exactly this.
The first one makes the mistake of closing the distance with me.
I pivot into him, drive my knee hard into the small of his back, and feel his spine give with a wet, final sound that never gets old.
He drops before he can scream. At the same time, I fire once over his shoulder, the shot clean and centered, and the man rushing me from the side folds instantly, skull snapping back as he hits the ground.
No time to admire the work.
Saint is already running, moving against the tide of fleeing civilians, drawing the hunters toward her like gravity. They want her dead, and they don’t care how many people get trampled in the process.
One of them reaches her first.
I see her swing a food court chair like she was born with it in her hands, the metal frame cracking into his face hard enough to drop him, then she spins and hurls it at another assassin charging in from her flank. The chair connects and explodes apart, sending him sprawling.
She dives into a convenience store just as a gunshot cracks through the air, glass shattering where her head was a second ago. I angle toward her, firing as I move, dropping the shooter and never breaking stride.
She bursts back out of the store with a phone charger looped around an assassin’s throat, yanking it tight and hauling the woman backward into her body.
The assassin claws at her neck, choking, while another attacker launches a handful of ninja stars that thunk uselessly into the human shield’s abdomen.
Saint doesn’t flinch, just keeps pulling on that cord, her hold locked as the woman in her grip claws uselessly at it while Saint scopes out the next threat.
“ Oh, hey, Derek,” Saint says calmly.
He’s already finishing someone else when he answers, blade stabbed into another assassin’s ribs like this is just a messy office dispute.
The struggles from the assassin she’s strangling turn sloppy, then weak, then stop altogether.
He glances at Saint as the body slumps. “Hey, Saint.”
The woman hits the tile with a heavy, final sound.
He shrugs once, almost apologetic. “It’s nothing personal, you know.” Then he punches her.
The right hook lands clean and spins her halfway around, hard enough that I feel it in my own jaw.
She doesn’t fall, just grabs.
Her hand closes around the meat cleaver sitting on the cutting block of the Chinese fast food counter, and she buries in Derek’s head with a crack, dropping him mid-step like his strings got cut.
“Well, Derek,” she says evenly, already turning away, “it feels personal.”
She’s talking to a corpse.
I still don’t quite get to her.
Someone kicks my gun out of my hand, sending it skidding across the tile.
We collide hard, bodies slamming together, fists flying.
I take an elbow to the jaw and answer with the butt of the gun when I reclaim it, striking his skull again and again until he drops boneless at my feet. “Mother fucking asshole.” I grit out.
I’m almost to her now, near the same Chinese fast food restaurant, when another shot rips through the space and blows out the glass. “Oh, shit.”
Shards rain down, rice and meat and sauce splattering across the floor in a steaming mess.
I grab a massive pan of egg drop soup from the counter and fling it straight into an attacker’s face. He screams as the scalding liquid blinds him, and I’m on him before the sound finishes, snapping his neck with both hands.
Saint sweeps low, knocking a woman off her feet, dodging the snap of nun chucks as they whistle past her head. She grabs the giant pan of fried rice, hefts it once, and brings the edge down with everything she has. “Wrong bitch.”
She growls out as metal hits bone.
The pan clatters to the tile, and the woman’s body goes slack, her head separated so cleanly it takes a moment for my brain to catch up. Steam curls around the corpse, rice scattered everywhere, her eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Saint’s face was probably the last thing she saw.
Saint doesn’t notice the next assassin, gun raised and aimed square at her.
But I do. “Watch it.” I call out. Lunging and ripping the pan back up, angling it just in time as bullets slam into the metal. Sparks fly while I brace us both behind it, my eyes searching her face. “What’s the plan, Saint?”
The clip empties, the gun clicks, and I rise in one motion, hurling the pan like a discus.
It slams into his throat with a sickening crunch, collapsing his windpipe. He drops instantly, hands clawing uselessly at his neck.
I snatch his gun and the spare clip from his belt.
“You’ll see.” Saint is already moving again, cleaver yanked free from Derek’s skull, blood dripping from the blade. She throws it barely looking, end over end, and it passes so close to my shoulder I have to shift to avoid it.
A wet sound lands behind me.
A woman collapses, the cleaver buried in her chest. I step forward and finish it, driving my boot down until it punches through bone and into her heart.
“Let’s go,” I shout.
Saint doesn’t slow. She was already turning, already sprinting deeper into the terminal.
A gunshot cracks behind us, followed by Tex’s furious voice, thick with pain and promise, but we don’t stop. “You should’ve taken the head shot, Alejandro!” We duck instinctively and keep running, weaving through smoke, alarms, and bodies.
I turn on occasion, sending a bullet or two behind us. One shot hits a fire extinguisher and blasts an assassin in the face. The next shot kills them.
I’m trying to figure out what her plan is when I see it.
Red lettering, bright and unmissable at one of the gates ahead.
It’s another Emirates flight to Dubai and the plane is already pulling away from the gate.
I bark a laugh I can’t stop, breath burning in my lungs.
Fucking genius woman.
She found us a faster way out.
Now all we have to do is catch a plane…
and leave a small army of very angry assassins behind. Preferably dead.
The terminal is almost empty now, the chaos having burned itself out into echoes and alarms. A few unlucky souls are still hiding behind rows of bolted-together chairs near the gates, peeking out like prairie dogs deciding whether the world is safe again.
Every other door is slamming shut, metal shutters dropping, the airport finally realizing this is not, in fact, a customer service issue.
Lockdown is starting.
Saint cuts right, eyes already locked on the gate for the Emirates flight to Dubai. The plane is there, nose angled, already turning away from the terminal like it’s had enough of America for one day. If it starts its taxi, we’re done.
And Saint knows it too.
She hits the closed gate door at full speed, shoulder-first, and it bursts open with a sound like a gunshot.
She’s through instantly. I’m right behind her.
I wrench the door shut again, fire once into the locking mechanism, and hear the satisfying grind of metal jamming metal before I take off after her down the jet bridge.
Minutes ago, people were rolling suitcases down this tunnel, arguing about overhead bin space and seat assignments. Now it’s empty, echoing, the hum of the plane vibrating through the floor beneath our feet.
At the far end, the door to the stairs explodes open.
A bald biker charges straight at Saint, face twisted with rage, fists clenched like he thinks this is a bar fight instead of a suicide note. Black leather vest flaps open over a chest webbed with tattoos. A leather studded collar sits tight around his thick neck.
“This is for my dog!” he roars, like that explains anything.
Saint doesn’t give him a syllable.
She jumps, grabs the metal bar overhead, and swings herself clean off the ground. Both feet slam into his chest with brutal force, and I don’t think he was prepared for just how hard it lands.
It’s a deadly mistake to underestimate Saint James. One he’s finding out right now.
He goes flying backward, smashes into the door he just came through, arms windmilling as gravity finishes the job. Twenty feet down, he hits concrete with a sound that tells me there’s nothing left to argue about.
Saint is already turning for the stairs.
I reach the end of the tunnel, raise my gun, and put two bullets through what’s left of his skull for good measure.
“What did you do to his dog, Picarita?” I call after her as she starts down.
“Not a damn thing!” she shouts back over her shoulder, already jogging toward a Harley idling on the tarmac below. “That snaggletooth cotton ball ran away on its own.”
Seeing the bike, I let out a sharp, heartfelt “Hijo de la chingada.”*
It’s big. Loud. Angry. And very much a one-seat situation.
Except for the sidecar.
Of course there’s a fucking sidecar like this is the goddamn motorcycle outlaw version of the Wild West.
“I’m driving,” I say flatly.
She swings her leg over the bike and settles into the seat like she was born there. “The fuck you are.” She pops open a saddlebag, pulls out two silver revolvers, and tosses them to me. “Hop in, sweetheart.” She nods toward the sidecar, grinning. “If he’s here, his club is too.”
Right on cue, the sound hits us. Engines. Deep, rolling, unmistakable. A dozen bikes at least, growling somewhere beyond the terminal, closing fast.
I climb into the sidecar with another curse, folding myself into it with all the grace of a man being punished by the universe.
“I feel like a fucking empanada,” I half yell, half growl.
Saint laughs, wild and bright, and guns the engine.
We tear off across the tarmac, alarms screaming, engines roaring, and behind us, a pack of hunters finally realize their prey has stolen their leader’s bike. And it seems they are quite pissed about it.
* “Son of a bitch.”