Chapter 60
elaine
“Elaine!” Vera cried out, her hand on me trying to push me aside, but my gamble worked. Quayle moved his finger to the trigger, and Glenn shouted.
“Stop! Not one scratch on Elaine.”
Quayle didn’t move—didn’t lower his gun, didn’t pull the trigger. I could feel Vera’s tension—her gritting her teeth, desperately wanting to move me out of the way, out to safety, knowing that doing that would only get us both killed.
But she couldn’t be the only one to protect me.
She was my wife.
“Glenn,” I said. “I told you I’d consider working with you. And I will. But only on one condition.”
Glenn narrowed his eyes, but slowly, a smile spread over his features. “I do love a woman with a bit of… nerve. All right. Let’s negotiate. What do you want?”
“I want a promise you won’t do anything to Vera,” I said. “Your word that you and all the other Blackbirds won’t hurt her.”
“Elaine…” Vera gripped my shoulder tighter.
Glenn’s eyes darkened. “Vera betrayed the Blackbirds. There’s only one way that can end.”
“And there’s only one South Yard. I’m asking you to make an exception.”
Glenn smiled wider. “I hear your request. Then I have an additional request,” he said. “You leave Vera and come stay with me, instead. As long as you do that, we won’t lay so much as a finger on her.”
Vera clutched my shoulder tighter. “Don’t…”
I let out a sigh. “I understand,” I said, and I held out my hand, beckoning him closer, for a handshake. “We have a deal.”
His smile grew sick, twisted, cruel, and he started towards me. “Well, then it’s a pleasure doing business,” he said.
Quayle stepped aside, out of Glenn’s way, but he spoke in a low voice. “Sir.”
“You don’t understand, Quayle,” Glenn said. “You never would have. There’s a difference between leaders… and killers. This is a long-term investment. And now, at last… what rightfully belongs to me… will be—”
A gunshot rang. Blood arced through the air, painting across the wall, and it felt like the oxygen disappeared from the room.
Glenn stopped, his eyes wide, his lips parted, almost like for one impossible second, he was alive and cognizant of what had just happened.
And then he collapsed, falling forwards, a bullet hole in the back of his skull. And behind the bullet, Quayle’s gun, held out towards us, where Glenn had been just a second ago. My heart stopped at the sight.
“I won’t let the Blackbirds be compromised by a weak old man,” Quayle said. “I’m afraid the deal is off, Whitner. If Farkas’s family is four in the end… I’ll kill all four.”
“Elaine, move!” Vera shouted, pushing me, and I did move, but not in the direction she pushed me.
I lunged in the opposite direction, pointing the gun Vera had given me. Quayle pulled the trigger, and a gunshot exploded through the hall, and burning pain filled my senses as I fell to the floor.