Chapter 3
Kira twisted out of Flynn’s arms and ran for the auxiliary bar. Below, she could see the hellhounds and their masters converging on both the spiral staircases, shoving people out of the way. They’d be on her in a minute.
If Flynn stayed out of it, they’d leave him alone. Hopefully he had that much sense. She’d just have to try again with him another time.
She shoved her way through the crowd by the bar, oblivious to the drinks she spilled or the indignant shouts that followed her. If the hounds caught up with her here, there could be collateral damage.
She vaulted for the bar, rolling across the top and missing the bartender by inches. Drinks scattered, leaving more spilled liquor and shattered glass in her wake.
Kira didn’t stop. She glanced behind her, but she couldn’t see how close her pursuers were through the crowd.
Just get to the emergency exit.
She ducked into the storage room behind the bar, and burst out the far door. She was in a bare hallway with several doors—offices, more storerooms.
She raced down the hallway. She could hear them behind her now, their footsteps slapping on the linoleum floor. There was no “Hey you!” or shouts for her to stop, like a normal person would give. Just the slap, slap of heavy boots, and a creepy panting, snuffling sound.
Damn. How had they found her here? She’d been so careful…
She slammed through a metal door and into a maintenance hallway, running the floor plans in her head. Down the end, around the corner, get to the fire stairs…
She could feel them coming up behind her. Faster, faster…there was no way they could catch up now.
She swung around the final corner and stopped dead. The end of the hallway was covered in scaffolding and construction equipment. The entrance to the fire stairs had been boarded up, and a sign said, ‘Please Use Other Stairs.’
Fucking seriously? This never happened to Black Widow.
They were getting closer. The footsteps had slowed—they knew she was armed, and they didn’t want to come rushing around the corner and get shot.
But if they bunched together and rushed her, then they could take her out before she could shoot them all.
And if they had magic, she was screwed.
She pulled a dental mirror out of the pocket in her sleeve and slipped it around the corner. In the tiny reflection, she could see them conferring. One of them was muttering an incantation, a fiery red glow around his hands; two of the others were definitely hellhounds.
Human form, but with those glowing eyes, bending and snuffling at the ground as if following her scent.
They formed into a tight group with the hellhounds at the front, getting ready to rush her just as soon as the sorcerer finished his protection spell.
She reached for her backup pistol in her boot top.
Overhead, just in front of her, a metal vent was punched out of the ceiling and swung down on hinges, like a trap door. Flynn’s head appeared in the opening, and he reached both arms down. “Come on!”
Kira shoved her gun into its holster, took two steps and jumped. Flynn clasped her forearms and hoisted her up into the ventilation shaft. She reached behind her and pulled it back into place.
She whispered furiously, “What are you doing—”
“Shut up! This way.” As silently as possible, they began crawling through the ventilation shaft. Thank god it was a large one, or Flynn wouldn’t have fit.
Below, she could hear the men rush her position, cursing in disbelief and frustration when they found her gone.
“Keep moving,” Flynn said. “They’ll figure out the ventilation shaft pretty quick.”
They made their way up a ladder to another service hallway, and back to the fire stairs, two floors above where they’d been blocked off.
They couldn’t go down. “Up,” Kira said. Flynn was already moving.
They raced up the stairs side by side and burst out onto the roof. The hot, muggy air hit her like a wall. Clouds obscured the stars overhead, and the air smelled like coming rain. The roof was lit only by a couple of dim emergency lights, but Kira could see fine in the dark.
She was pretty sure Flynn could, too. Shifter superpowers.
“Fire escape.” He headed to the right, where Kira knew there was a metal ladder leading down. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one who’d researched escape routes. Damn, she was really starting to like this man. Even if he didn’t have the sense to stay out of this.
They raced for the ladder. Behind them, the access door banged open. Bullets whipped by their faces.
They veered away from the ladder headed in the other direction. A searchlight cut through the air, pinning Kira in its glare. “Stop where you are!”
She froze, mere feet from the edge of the roof. She hoped Flynn had the sense to stay low, though sense didn’t seem to be his strong point.
Of course he didn’t. Flynn hurtled out of the darkness and wrapped his arms around her, swinging her around so their sides were to the gunmen. “Don’t hurt her!” he yelled.
Like that would help.
“Don’t make us,” the man behind the spotlight called. “Just step away from her and raise your hands in the air.”
Kira felt Flynn’s hand slide up under her jacket, to the small of her back where her gun was holstered, and she began to grin. Clever lion. Her arms were around his waist, under his vest, her head pressed to his chest. She could feel the oiled leather of his shoulder holster. There were no safety straps on it, and she closed her fingers around the grip of his concealed pistol.
“I said, step away from the girl!”
But she only heard Flynn’s voice in her ear. “The roof next door,” he breathed. “Can you make it?”
Sure, dude. It was a twenty-foot jump, at least. In the dark, with a seven-story drop below. Who did he think she was, Batgirl?
“Piece of cake,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound shaky at all.
She felt him smile. “Ready?”
She gave a quick nod.
Flynn released her. They both turned in one smooth motion, sliding each other’s guns out of the holsters and opening fire on their pursuers.
The gunmen dove for cover behind the HVAC units. The hellhounds came bounding toward them.
Shit. They were gonna die.
“Go!” Flynn barked. Thank god the woman had the sense to listen, taking two running steps and leaping across the near-impossible gap between the roofs. The moment seemed to stretch out forever—her flying through the air, Flynn firing at the hellhounds, forcing them to dodge and weave. Damn, they were quick. He got one in the lower leg, knocking it to the ground, howling.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her clear the parapet and land on the roof, rolling to one knee.
She’d made it with room to spare. What the fuck was she? Some kind of shifter, to make that jump, but he couldn’t tell what—not from her scent.
Bullets whipped by. She had both guns out now, Flynn’s own and her backup piece, and she was covering his retreat. The handguns were wildly inaccurate at that distance, but it didn’t matter—all she had to do was get close enough to keep their pursuers from shooting straight.
Better if she didn’t hit them—dropping bodies would draw even more attention than a damned rooftop gun battle.
Her hail of bullets scattered their pursuers, and Flynn took off for the edge of the roof. Bunching his leg muscles, he called on his cat to give him extra spring. The alley rushed by below him—way, way too far down. Bullets whistled by, and one slammed into his left shoulder. It was nearly spent, but it still twisted him and threw his trajectory off. The parapet of the neighboring roof was coming up too damn slow, and he was falling too damn fast.
He stretched out his right hand and grabbed the edge of the parapet, using his remaining momentum to vault his legs up and over. He landed on his feet, overbalanced, tucked his head and rolled.
The second hellhound leaped across the gap, but it didn’t quite make it. With a howl, it slithered down the wall, raking it with thick claws, until it slammed onto a ledge two stories below.
The woman was already running, stopping every few seconds to get off another shot, keeping their pursuers off-balance. She handed Flynn’s gun off to him as he caught up with her, and he shoved her little pea-shooter into the back of his pants.
His Colt felt good in his hand.
They dashed across the rooftop. A bullet pinged off a ventilator shaft as they dodged around it. The hellhounds’ handlers had come to the edge of the other roof and were shooting, but no one jumped across.
Not shifters, then. Who?
And what did they want with his mystery woman?
They found a door that led to an access stairway. They took the steps three at a time, grabbing the rail on the turns and vaulting past the landings. A couple of floors down, they burst out of the stairwell into a long hallway with old-style office doors on either side, scarred wood with pebbled glass panels in them.
At the end of the hall was a sash window, leading out to a fire escape. Flynn flipped the lock and shoved it open. His companion threw one leg over the sill, ducking out onto the metal platform. Flynn followed, squeezing himself through the opening. She was already sliding down the ladder to the next level, her legs clamped on either side of it, not bothering with the rungs.
Flynn followed, his injured arm protesting. The rough metal burned his hands, leaving flakes of paint and rust painfully buried in his palms. Faintly, in the distance, Flynn could hear sirens—and, closer, a chilling howl.
Someone had called the cops. And the hellhounds were still on their trail.
Now that they were on the ground, the woman seemed to know where she was going. He followed her through back alleys and over chain-link fences, always just far enough behind that he wondered what the fuck he was still doing here.
His blood was pounding through his veins, adrenalin dumping into his system, dulling the pain of his injuries. Her scent, that tantalizing scent, was just out of reach. He knew he should turn aside, let her go. She could be leading him into a trap.
But he kept following.
She led him into one last smelly, garbage-filled alley, through a pair of slanted metal doors set at ground level, and into a basement crowded with discarded junk. They threaded their way through it, their breathing the only sound in the sudden quiet.
Finally, they came to a freight elevator with dented metal doors. She punched in a code, and the indicator lit up. He could hear the ancient mechanism creaking.
“Hold up,” Flynn said. He didn’t even know where they were going.
“Almost there,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Not scared, are you?”
Not scared. Fucking stupid was what he was. Stupid, and pumped on danger, and following the hottest woman he’d ever met into god knew what kind of trouble. He fucking deserved to die in an ambush.
The elevator doors opened. The car was empty. No ambush.
Time to make his own. The doors shut and Flynn pounced, backing her up against the wall and flipping the emergency switch that stopped the elevator.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What did you do with Fletcher? And why the fuck are we dodging hellhounds?”
She made a quick movement with her right hand, and he felt the point of a blade somewhere around his kidney.
“Kira, Fletcher who, and I wasn’t staying to find out,” she said. “And if you don’t let me go right fucking now, you’re going to be missing some vital organs very very soon.”
He twisted his arm to grab her wrist, and hissed at the shooting pain that lanced through his injured shoulder. It didn’t stop him from disarming her, though.
He backed up, holding her knife. Nice weight. He wondered if it was custom. “You don’t know Fletcher?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Did you notice that you’re bleeding? A lot. I’m pretty sure they shot you.”
“It’ll heal,” Flynn said.
“If the bullet’s still inside when it does, it’s going to fuck up that shoulder.”
“Thanks, Doctor. I’ll have it looked at.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You really don’t know Fletcher?”
“I really don’t. Now are we going to stay in this elevator all night, or are you going to come up to my room and let me take that bullet out?”
Flynn flicked his gaze over her one more time—gorgeous and lethal and badass. This still might be an ambush, and he was still stupid. But hell, he wanted her like no one else he’d ever met. If this was how he was going to go out—what a way to go.
He hit the emergency switch, and the elevator started rising.