Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I let him go, grabbed Olivia and pulled her to me. I slid my hand into her hair and kissed her deep, one last time. Then, as I let her go, I said, “You…you take care, okay?”
Olivia frowned. “What—” She read my body language and started to scramble to her feet in panic. “Wait, where are you going?!”
“To be a hero,” I told her.
And I jumped over the barricade and ran towards the soldiers.
48
GABRIEL
It’s strange what goes through your head when you’re running into certain death.
As I looked down the barrels of fifty rifles, I didn’t think about the gold I’d lost. I didn’t think about the heists I’d pulled off, the paintings and the cash and the jewelry. I thought of moments. My first kiss. Getting drunk with my high school buddy. Hugging my dad. Stuff that mattered.
And a lot of those moments came from the last few weeks. Like the first moment I’d seen Olivia. Comforting her when she told me about how she got fired. And that night in the mansion, touching her in the darkness.
Other moments, too. Like sitting in a stolen truck with Bradan as he told me his problems. Passing the cup of coffee around at dawn. Hearing what food everyone wanted when they got home.
Being a team.
It was a hundred feet to my target. I managed to cover ten while the soldiers just stood there staring at me in shock. They weren’t expecting one of us to just run straight at them, unarmed and alone. But then they woke up and started shooting, and I heard the bullets zip past me. Shit. I covered another ten feet, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone hit me.
That’s when I heard gunfire coming from behind me. JD, Bradan, Colton, Danny…they all opened up. They had no idea what the hell I was doing, but they threw everything they had into supporting me, using their last few precious bullets to take down anyone who was shooting at me. I covered another thirty feet as the soldiers ducked for cover, and now I was halfway. Then I heard Cal’s rifle fire and saw a soldier fall: he was clearing a path for me, shooting the ones who looked like they were about to fire. I sprinted on: forty feet to go, then thirty—
Pain exploded on my left side, level with my navel. I thought I heard Olivia cry out. I took another step and the pain got worse, but I was still running so I figured it couldn’t be too bad. Push on.
Twenty feet to go. The soldiers were looming close, now, and they had panic in their eyes. They couldn’t believe I’d gotten this far. I saw soldier after soldier raise his gun to take a shot…and then one of the team would hit him and he’d go down. Fifteen feet. Come on. Ten feet. Come on!
But the odds weren’t in our favor. The team needed to hit every single soldier who tried to take a shot at me. The soldiers only had to get one good shot off…
There. I could see it happening in slow motion: a young-looking soldier snapped off a good, clean shot before anyone could hit him and—
All the strength went out of my right leg. A fraction of a second later, the pain hit, boiling up through my body like lava. Jesus!
I stumbled. Took another step. When my right foot hit the ground again, it felt like every bone exploded into dust. I cried out, and this time I was sure I heard Olivia scream. The pain was so bad I couldn’t breathe.
But my target was only six feet away now. I was so close I could see the disbelief on his face: I was coming for him?!
I launched myself forward, and as my right leg collapsed under me, I slammed full-length into Major Zamora. We hit the ground together, me on top. We rolled over and over…but he wound up on top and as I lay there, bleeding and spent, he pulled out his handgun and pointed it at my head.
Then he frowned and looked down at his other hand. At the shining metal cuff that surrounded his left wrist and the jangling chain that connected it to mine.
I imagined JD watching this, cursing, patting the empty handcuff case on his belt and realizing why I’d really hugged him.
Major Zamora scowled at me, confused. “Take it off,” he demanded. “Where’s the key? Take it off or I’ll shoot you and take the key from your body—”
“You shouldn’t be worrying about that hand,” I panted. I was in so much pain, I was going floaty, and I wondered how much blood I was losing. “You should be worrying about what’s in this one.”
And I showed him the hand grenade I’d pulled from my belt, while we’d been rolling over and over. Then I pulled the pin and tossed it away. “Oopsie.” Now my thumb was the only thing holding the grenade’s lever down. If I let it pop up, the grenade would start its countdown.