Page 110 of Double Shot
“If Gwen can’t handle a single skinny girl, she has no right to lead the Cartel, now does she?” His fingers were open and loose. I prayed that Lach remembered that Kurt had been one of the fastest hands in the regiment, taking pride in his almost cowboy shootout lightning speed with pistols.
I held out a hand for Kyle to back down. He did, but only reluctantly.
“It’s been a long time, sir,” Worthington said.
“It has, Corporal,” I said. “Damn shame aboutLe Generale,” I added. “Things were about to get back to normal.”
“It was a lot of work to convince him to let it go, and that everything with him and his brother was pride,” he said.
“Frogs and humility go together like Yanks and modesty.” I smiled.
“Sharp as ever, Sir,” he said without a smile. Kurt wasn’t the expressive sort.
“You remember that debt you owe me, Kurt?” I asked.
“Aye, and it’s a black mark I never paid back.” He nodded.
“Walk away and we call it even,” I said, calmly.
“My contract was withLe Generale,not some degenerate with a biting fetish,” he said. Kurt took his hand away from the butt of his pistol and gestured for us to go on. Lach didn’t hesitate and bolted for the doorway. I held a moment, making sure this wasn’t some sort of Fallujah feint, but Kurt was true to his word and I felt a pang of regret for not trusting him.
I charged into the room. The gold knife floated through the air, almost suspended in slow motion. Thrown.
Kaijin had a pistol in one hand, a fucking Crusader sword in the other, and looked like she had gone in and come out the other end of a wood chipper.
Sadie’s armor was split across the breast, dragonscale missing and the Kevlar ruined. The sword must have had a wicked edge.
I recognized the blade in Kaijin’s hand – Joyeuse, the sword of Charlamagne.
A replica to be sure, the original was eleven centuries old and held under great security somewhere in France, the Louvre, I supposed.
Each of us are only afforded a few perfect moments in our lives, as short or long as they may be. In that specific second, I knew that this was one of those such moments, for Sadie, as she plucked the blade thrown by Lach from the wall between herself and Kaijin…
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sadie…
I was really starting to get a taste for blowing shit up. I mean, it wasfun. Like,reallyfun. What’s the old saying, though? It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye?
While I didn’t almost lose an eye, Idefinitelyfucked up.
I spotted her first, she was on the second floor with her bodyguard guy. I snarled into the mic that I’d spotted her and was going after her. She tucked tail and ran through a set of fancy looking doors and I thought for a moment that the man in the suit with her was going to stop me, but as soon as he’d seen she’d cleared the door and he was out of his sight? He just cocked his head like I was something interesting that he didn’t see every day and hand on the butt of his pistol, he stepped aside, inclining his head.
My dumbass went through the fucking door and damn near got shot. The report went off but apparently small arms fire wasn’t her thing, because she missed and I tucked and rolled, coming up behind a bookshelf or desk, orsomething. It hadn’t quite had the time to register what sort of room we were in. All I knew, was that I had my back pressed up against something wood.
She shot at it, and while whatever it was slowed the bullets down, it didn’t stop them. It felt like she socked me in the back twice, and I meanhard.
“Motherfucker!” I cursed, and she laughed.
Laugh at this, you fucking little bitch.I thought savagely, and I popped up andwhump, pause,CRACK!I set off a flashbang.
Glass shattered, and she screamed. I moved away from the display case. I’d been ducked down behind the wooden pedestal that was decorative with no real substance a splintered ruin from her shots - the glass from it and several others shattered and littering the thin business boardroom carpet. They didn’t like the concussion from the flashbang at all and couldn’t hold out against it.
I took cover behind the more substantial, heavy wooden desk and called out, “Check!”
Pop! Pop!
The desk vibrated at my back as it took the two slugs to its top, and paper fragments rained down on top of me. I gritted my teeth. She had a weird looking semi-automatic of some kind but it was small, and it couldn’t hold too many rounds. I took a gamble and popped up over the desk and she raked fire across where I was.Most of the shots missed me, thank fuck, but my overreaction to getting myself out of the line of fire knocked me flat on my ass. I hit the floor hard enough to knock the fucking wind out of myself and saw stars for a second as I tried to get my damn diaphragm to work. My mask was grazed by a round, and the faceplate was ruined. I tore it off so I could see.
