Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107079 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I kept frantically swinging, panting with effort, drywall dust filling my lungs and sticking to my dripping face. I finally broke through the second layer of drywall, and I could see Finn’s room. He was still acting as our decoy, jumping forward to catch the attention of the machine gunner upstairs, then pulling back as the bullets chewed up the floor by his feet. “What’s the matter, you fucker?” he was yelling as he danced back. “Can’t shoot straight?”
I felt a little more of the hate slip away. He was brave as hell.
I swung the bed leg again and again, shoulders burning. I had a person-sized hole in my side of the drywall, now, and I was just getting started on the second layer, when suddenly everything went quiet. The gunner must have gotten suspicious because I heard him shout in Russian. Check what they’re doing. Fuck. The hole wasn’t done.
I backed off from the hole just as the guy in the hallway peeked in. He saw my half-finished escape route, and his eyes widened. Then he raised his gun.
Blyat’! I’d had to put my gun away to work on the hole. I was so close! I felt the anger rise, blossoming outward in a slow-motion explosion...and for once, I let it. I poured gasoline on it, thinking about Alison, alone downstairs, about Valentin and Mikhail…
Sometimes, you have to be calm and smart. Sometimes, you have to get angry.
I hurled the bed leg at the guy in the doorway, put my head down, and ran at the half-finished hole. A shot rang out, but missed. I was running full speed, now, too angry to worry about how much it would hurt. I hurled myself at the wall, a human wrecking ball…
I crashed through the drywall and went tumbling across the floor in Finn’s room, trailing a cloud of drywall dust. I lay on my back for a second, coughing, my head and shoulders throbbing from the impact. Then Finn reached down and offered me his hand, and I grabbed it and let him pull me to my feet. On the opposite side of the room, Mikhail and Valentin were climbing through their own hole. I nodded to them, relieved. Together again.
With four of us, we actually had a chance. When the machine gunner upstairs stopped to reload, we rushed out into the ruined hallway. Finn, Mikhail, and I dealt with Grushin’s other men while Valentin raced up to the next floor. There was a single shot and I heard a body fall. A moment later, Valentin came back downstairs. “It’s safe,” he told us. “But Grushin’s not up there.”
My chest tightened. That meant he was downstairs...with Alison. “Come on!”
I led the way back down to the first floor, only to find it swarming with Grushin’s men. And there, coming through the front door, was Grushin himself, Alison held in front of him as a shield. She was grimacing in pain and—Blyat’!—She’d been wounded. Blood was dripping from a wound on her back, a lot of it.
The fear clawed at me, and I rushed forward, but Grushin and his men opened fire, and Valentin had to pull me into the shelter of the kitchen. The bullets meant for me shattered a stack of plates by the sink, scattering porcelain shards.
We tried to force our way out of the kitchen door, but a barrage of gunfire drove us back. Even when Finn’s remaining men joined us from upstairs, it wasn’t enough. We were outnumbered and pinned down. My chest went tight. Alison! She was bleeding out; she’d die if I didn’t get to her!
Grushin’s voice came from the entrance hall, coldly mocking. “I told you this is how it would end, Gennadiy. Your whole empire destroyed and everyone you loved dead.”
I looked desperately at Finn, Valentin, and Mikhail, and they looked grimly back at me. There was no way to reach her, and we were probably dead ourselves in another few minutes. I took a deep breath and stuck my head out of the kitchen for a split second. Bullets shredded the doorframe, and I had to pull back, but for a brief instant, I locked eyes with Alison through the carnage. The fear I saw on her face made my heart go cold. She could feel it. She knew she was running out of time.
71
ALISON
It’s funny how undramatic dying can be. I’d always thought I’d go quick: one misjudgment on my bike and a truck slamming into me, or some criminal emptying his gun into my chest. But this was like a heavy, warm blanket settling over me, coaxing me to sleep as the life drained out of me drop by drop. My ankle and the stab wound in my back still hurt, but it felt like the pain belonged to someone else, at the other end of a long tunnel.