Reflexes kick in.

Faster than a breath, my body moves in front of Molly, standing as broadly as I can while my hand whips my gun out, and within a second, I’ve fired three rounds in front of me. There’s no thought involved, no time to plan. Just pure instinct.

I don’t think even Molly had time to register what was happening.

Working security goes against everything biology tells the human body to do. When a gun is pointed at you and you’re staring down a barrel that can end your life, instinct and basic strategy tells you to make yourself as small a target as possible, to shrink away.

A bodyguard has to do the opposite.

The fact that the three men ahead of us are taken by almost as much surprise as we are is what saves my life.

Each one of my bullets hits true. The first man takes the shot to the crook of his elbow, and he cries out in pain as his weapon falls to the ground. The second man gets hit in the shoulder, and when he shoots back at me, it’s a wild miss. The next second, he grabs his injured friend, and the two of them struggle to cover behind an air unit.

The third man gets hit in the leg, but while his two comrades move right, he starts to move backward, keeping his gun level.

He would have gotten a shot off at me, if the unexpected hadn’t happened.

Molly slips out from behind me.

“No!” I shout.

Immediately, I reach out to grab her back, but she moves too fast for me to grab, closing the short distance between me and the mercenaries in an instant. And in that moment, I see the logic in what she’s doing.

The mercenary turns his gun up, away from Molly’s person. They must be under strict instructions not to harm her, much less shoot her.

He takes one hand off his gun, preparing to grab her and wrestle her, but he’s as surprised as I am when her hands flash forward, clapping around the wrist of the gunman and twisting. He cries out in pain as the gun clatters to the ground, and she kicks it far away from them as she twists his arm around his back.

My mind flashes back to the sight of Molly climbing up into the vents like she was born doing it. This little brat is full of surprises.

I don’t have any time to watch her, though, because the men behind the air unit will be finding their courage again in a few moments.

Wasting no time, I dart for the unit, knowing that right now, keeping up the element of surprise and staying on the offensive is what will win this fight for us.

These mercenaries came here expecting to have to capture a scared, defenseless girl. We have to use that to our advantage.

Caution to the wind, I haul myself up on top of the air unit and come at them from above. I leap over to see two stunned, masked faces below me, each ready to fire around the side of the unit.

Immediately, I descend on the one I shot in the shoulder, diving head first into him. There’s a bang, and I hear my ears ringing--his gun must have gone off next to my head, but I don’t feel pain, so I keep at him. His body slams back down into the concrete, and I grapple with him.

His reflexes are better than I thought, and it’s not easy to get behind him, but his injury makes it hard for him to resist as I turn him around.

Next to me, the other man with the elbow injury tries to kick my head in, but I put the shoulder-guy in a headlock with one arm while I grab the other man by the ankle, stopping his kick. With a solid twist, I bring him to his knees with a howl of pain.

Still holding onto the one man’s head, I stand up with the second one’s leg in my other hand. With a swift motion, I lift my foot and bring it crashing into his knee. There’s a sickening crack and a scream of pain as his knee caves in. That’s the end of his mercenary career.

While he writhes on the ground, I turn my attention back to the man I have in a headlock, who’s trying to elbow me in the kidney. With a grunt, I haul him up, facing the air unit, and I bring his forehead crashing into the cold metal.

With a loud clang of skull against metal, he goes limp, knocked out cold.

As his body slumps down, I seize the gun from his hands, turning around to the man with the injured leg. I grab him by the collar, and he opens his eyes in time to see me bringing the butt of the handgun down onto his forehead, pistol-whipping him into unconsciousness as well.

I don’t need bodies on my hands tonight.

Both my gun and his in hand, I swiftly move to help Molly with her fight, but when I round the corner of the unit, I see her with a high-heel planted firmly on the man’s chest, and she’s pointing a pistol at him. His hands are up, and he looks terrified.

I have to admit, it does look like something right out of a movie.

“Good job,” I grunt as I move toward them, putting one gun away and holding the other in position to put the third guy’s daylights out like the other two. “Let’s get him knocked out and get out of here.”

“Hold on,” Molly says, glaring down at her prisoner. I arch an eyebrow.

“What? I mean, we can kill him, but it’s a lot messier than the movies make you think-”

“I want to let this one go,” she says, and both me and the mercenary look surprised.

“Seriously?” he says.

“Shut up,” both me and Molly say at the same time, then glance at each other.

“I want one of these fucks to go back to Eddie with his tail between his legs,” she says, and even I’m surprised by the fire in her eyes. It...suits her, I’m surprised to find myself thinking. “If he wants a war, he’ll get one.”

There’s a pause from all of us, and Molly breaks it by aiming her gun further south, between the mercenary’s legs, and I can see him seizing up. “Got that, jackass?”

“Yes m’am!” he barks back.

“Good,” I say coming forward and gesturing with my gun. “Now get on your feet, hands where I can see them.

He obeys, and I pat the man down, disarming him of his side-weapons and a knife, including his wallet and phone. Once he’s totally clean, I step back, and Molly lowers her gun.

“Go,” I bark, “straight down and out of here, don’t talk to anyone.”

He nods, and as soon as he has our permission, he darts for the nearest door and heads downstairs.

The moment he’s out of sight, I look to Molly, and almost at the same second, her hardened expression melts away to the shaken, terrified one I was expecting.

“Oh my fucking god they had guns,” she breathes, letting a sob out of her chest as she tries to keep a hold of herself. “They had fucking guns--they almost shot you!”

“You handled yourself...surprisingly well a second ago,” I say, eyebrows raised.

“It’s called acting, ass-hat,” she says as she sniffs. “I literally do it for a living.”

I nod. “Huh. Fair enough. That move with his wrist sure as hell wasn’t acting, though.”

“Self-defense classes,” she explains, rolling her shoulders back and handing me the gun, suddenly uncomfortable holding it. “I mean, I took that for myself, but it helps with acting, too. I do my own stunts, remember? And I want it to look real when I do, y’know, stuff like that.”

She looks over at the two unconscious men by the air unit. “Not that I ever expected to have to use it on actual kidnappers with actual military training. Jesus.”

“Life imitates art, I guess,” I say with a chuckle, and that earns a sincere smile from her.

Maybe it’s the adrenaline pulsing through my veins, but the sight of those lips of hers smiling makes my heart pick up. I feel movement between my legs, watching her chest rise and fall with her quick breathing, eyes still lit up from the action. Shit, get a hold of yourself, Wes.

But when I get a hold of myself and tear my eyes away, I realize she was giving me the same look, and I catch a hint of red in her cheeks before my eyes fall on the unconscious men.

“So what do we do with them?” she says suddenly after clearing her throat.

“Give me a hand,” I say, and together, we drag the two of them to the metal ladder and a pipe running up the side of the water tank. I tear off some of their clothes and use that to tie them to it with practiced ease. Back to business, my reflexes make my demeanor cold and calculating once again, and I move with machine-like efficiency.

Within a couple of minutes, their hands and feet are bound, and their mouths are gagged.

“When these two wake up,” I say, tightening their bindings, “they’ll be useful as hostages. NSS is a mercenary company, but they take care of their own. The fact that we’ve got these two guys in our hands is the only thing keeping that coward we spared from ratting on us and having the rest of the kidnappers running up here to take us down.”

“Oh shit, I didn’t even think about that!” Molly gasps, suddenly looking terrified, but I put a hand out.

“That’s why we keep these guys here. If your little messenger doesn’t talk, then these two might be here long enough to wake up and give us some information while they’re still useful to us.”

There’s a cold edge to my voice, and I feel Molly’s gaze on me. I look over at her, and she gives her head a little shake.

“Sorry. I just didn’t realize bodyguards could be so...um…”

“Ruthless?” I finish with a lopsided smile. “Sure, I’m a regular Al Pacino. Look, I’m just keeping our bases covered. And I’m not half as bad as these mercenaries can get.”

What I don’t tell her is that the whole reason I know about NSS is their connection to some of the most dangerous mafia leaders in the Southwest.

“Sure,” she says, nodding, then she takes a breath and puts her hands on her hips. “So, what now?”

I frown. “We wait. Eddie might be desperate, but judging by how these mercenaries are acting, he doesn’t want this to become a public battle any more than you do. If the mercenaries stick around the hotel too long, they’ll tip someone off that they’re suspicious, and then it’s only a matter of time before police get called.”

She nods, following my logic. “Okay, but...where do we wait them out? You said the hotel room’s not safe. Do we just stay on the roof all night?”

“Even if I really wanted to put you through hell, I wouldn’t do that,” I say with a laugh, but she doesn’t seem to find the idea as funny. “No, that’s putting too much faith in the guy heading downstairs. There might be more people coming up after him. We can’t stay here. There’s only one place in the hotel we can ride out the night.”

“What’s that?”

I point to a utility elevator across the roof. “That’s part of why I brought us up here. That’s an access shaft that leads right down the spine of the hotel. It’ll lead us right where I want to take us, but you’re not going to like it.”

I start to walk toward the door I pointed to, and I hear her heels clicking after me as she asks, “What do you mean though?”

I glance back at her. “We’re spending the night in the safe room. Together.”