CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GABE
I’ve been so caught up trying to find her I never considered how it would feel to have Shannon back in my arms again.
In a word, amazing, but there’s no time to dwell on it.
Triss is standing not fifteen feet away, a SIG Pro semi-automatic aimed at Shannon’s back. “Don’t you move a single fucking muscle,” she warns.
My first priority is to keep Shannon safe, but Triss is on edge here. The last thing I want to do is provoke her into doing something stupid.
I keep my voice low and calm, speaking slowly as if to a child. “Triss, just let me take Shannon and go.”
“Go?” she laughs, the pitch of her voice spiking. “No, I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Triss.”
“You’re damn right about that. It can be you and me again, baby, just like old times. We have unfinished business. We need to teach those fuckers a lesson.”
“We can talk about it all you want, I promise, but you have to let Shannon go first.”
At the mention of Shannon’s name I see something snap inside Triss. I’ve been around her long enough to know her ticks, the small, imperceptible cues that give her away.
Time slows. I see her face harden, the muscles in her arm tense and her finger add weight to the trigger.
I act, pushing Shannon out of the way just in time.
A gunshot rings out. I feel the weight of it shifting the air apart, barely missing Shannon’s head to drive into my upper arm.
I grimace and drop, a hand coming up to cover the wound.
Yep. Still fucking hurts.
I drop low as two more gunshots follow from the doorway, Triss managing to take cover behind a stack of pallets, the bullets sending chips of wood spindling through the air.
Jason pushes Shannon behind him and hunkers down, gun raised.
I signal I’m okay and direct him forward towards Triss.
I look down the side of the pallets and realize Triss is boxed in. She’s got no way out without exposing her position.
Jason gets Shannon to crouch down beside an old generator behind us, tells her to stay put.
I take out my weapon and lift it, Triss’s round burning in my arm.
I see a raised platform running above us. I motion Jason to take up position there. He moves away, headed for the stairs.
Triss steps out from her cover and fires, the bullet ricocheting off the back of the warehouse.
She moves back behind the pallets.
“Let’s end this, Triss,” I shout. “You’re outnumbered, with more on the way.”
I’m bluffing, but she doesn’t need to know that. Then again, I don’t want to feel like the only way out of this for her is with guns blazing either. I have to talk her down.
Good luck with that.
“You want to end this?” she shouts back, not a hint of exhaustion or panic in her voice. “You owe me, baby. You know you do. You left me there. Everything that happened to me in that fucking shithole was because of you. It’s all your fault. You touch something and it turns to shit. You know it, I know it, but at least if we’re together we can deal with it.”
“That’s never going to happen, Triss. We’re done.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Jason is only just getting into position. I signal for him to engage, but Triss has already spotted him. She fires, three times in quick succession, the shots hitting him square in the chest. He buckles forward and goes over the railing, the sickening thud of his buddy hitting the floor following.
Shit.
I can’t get to him without exposing myself. Even so, I can feel the wet heat of blood running down my arm, the dull tapping in my head telling me I’m going to have to deal with this, and soon.
Not yet.
Shannon’s pressed up hard against the back of the generator. I notice something’s wrong with her hand, her thumb.
Triss screams and rushes out towards our position, firing as she comes.
I return fire, but she’s coming too fast, managing to snake around the other side of the generator and drag Shannon away.
Fuck!
I stagger up and follow with my gun in front of me, rounding the corner carefully.
Triss has Shannon pressed up against her, one arm around her throat, the other holding the gun to the side of her head. I can see Shannon’s chest puffing in and out. She’s terrified.
I narrow the distance to twelve feet, maybe less. “Let her go, Triss. This is between you and me.”
It sounds so cliché, so predictable, but I don’t know what else to say. Give her what she wants. “You win,” I tell her. “I’ll go back with you to Iraq. We’ll find every fucker who hurt you. We’ll kill them all, fuck up everyone they hold dear. You have my word. Is that what you want?”
She’s smiling. “Yes. Let’s be together, just the two of us.”
I know she’s going to do it. She’s going to take out the only obstacle standing in her way.
A moment passes between us, a look. We were good together, unstoppable, but whatever Triss has been through, it’s changed her.
Shannon closes her eyes. She knows what’s coming.
I’m not going to let it happen.
I have to put Triss down.
Before Triss fires, I squeeze the trigger.
The round hits Triss right in the shoulder, pinning her arm back against the wall, the SIG dropping away.
I run for her, separating Shannon and taking hold of Triss’s arm, forcing her to the floor with my knee in her back.
She’s screaming—not from the pain, but the defeat. “Why?!” she screams at me, thrashing on the ground. “Why?!” She’s hysterical.
In kick the pistol away.
I glance down to my vest, looking up to Shannon. “The cable-ties there. Take them out, put them around her wrists.”
Shannon steps over and removes them, placing one around Triss’s wrists while she continues to twist and thrash. She pulls.
“Tighter,” I instruct her.
I tell her to do the same with her ankles, hauling Triss up and placing her against the wall, but any will she had is gone. She knows it over’s, continuing to mumble “Why?” staring straight ahead, lost in her own thoughts.
I take the pistol off the floor place it behind my back, keeping my weapon trained on Triss while I head over to check on Jason.
He moans when I roll him over. His vest took the bullets, but he’s going to have one hell of a bruise-fest come morning.
“My arm?” he says, grunting.
“Broken?”
“I think so. Triss?”
“Immobilized.”
I pat him twice on the chest. “Sit tight.”
I have Shannon call nine-one-one, have her wait outside while I watch Triss, her lips moving but whatever woman I once knew is gone for good.