“I let you out of my sight for one second and this is what you do?” Tavish asks.
“W-What I do?” I choke out between coughs. “You act like I asked this guy to choke me for the kicks. And you act like we’re buddies! You put me in this shitty situation!”
“You have a damn gun, do you not?”
I do… have a gun… and I did… choose to just lie down and die instead of use it. But how the fuck was I expected to kill a man!
“He wasn’t going to kill me. They need me alive,” I say, like that’s some excuse. Like why am I over here defending the bad guy?
The guy is no longer moving on the ground and I’m not quite sure if he’s A-okay or absolutely dead. But Tavish pays him no mind as he grabs my wrist, stepping on the man before hurrying on his way.
I rush after him as he sees something that makes him skid to a halt. I’m not expecting it and end up slamming into his back. He stumbles forward a little before veering hard to the left. He lets go of my hand, pulls out his own gun, and shoots the guy watching the door so fucking fast it makes me jump. The man drops to his knees, hole in his leg as I try to decide if I’m actually with the bad guy.
The wounded man grabs his gun, but another perfectly timed shot tears it out of his hand and causes the gun to go skidding across the floor.
“If you don’t want another bullet in you, unlock the door.”
The guy grits his teeth, like he’s going to fight against this, until Tavish shoves the toe of his shoe right into the wound on the man’s leg. It horrifies me, but the man eagerly points at the keypad by the door.
“28415,” he barks out.
Tavish waves me over to it and I quickly type it in. The screen flashes that the system has been turned off. Tavish shoves me hard and at first, I assume he’s just bullying me for some fucking reason until I realize someone’s trying to shoot at us. I trip over the guy who’d been hovering on the ground and go skidding across the floor with absolutely no finesse. Tavish fires a shot that knocks the gun out of the shooter’s hand before his gun clicks.
“Fuck,” he says as he tucks the gun into the back of his pants and goestowardthe man instead of away from him.
That’s when I see him rub his eyes a moment before the guy punches Tavishrightin the face.
NINE
TAVISH
My head snaps back as I realize how shitty of a job I just did dodging that. It might have something to do with the fact that sweat is causing the spray that’d coated my face to run down into my eyes.
With my eyes burning with renewed vigor, I go in for another strike as tears begin to run down my cheeks.
“Why the fuck did you blind me?” I hiss at Ellis, who is just lounging on the floor like he’s going to take a fucking Sunday afternoon nap.
“Because youabducted me,” he snarls.
“I swear we’ve gotten over this by now,” I say as I see a blurry image of someone swinging something at me. I dodge a fraction too late and the hit grazes my ear. That’s when I remember that I’m not the only one with a gun. “Ellis, shoot him!”
“I can’t shoot him!” Ellis yells.
“I can shoot him,” the guy who’d given me the code says from where he’s still on the ground. “Just give me the gun.”
He lunges for Ellis who pops up and starts running, but he doesn’t seem to want to run back into the mansion and the only way out is through the door that’s between him and the guy I’mbrawling with. He ends up doing a little jig in the hallway while trying to avoid the man coming after him. It really is a good thing the guy has a hole in his leg or I’m afraid he’d have caught up to Ellis by now.
“Don’t you dare. I will kill you,” Ellis threatens, but it’s wildly ineffective as he runsfromthe man while shouting it.
“Shoot him,” I yell as a cascade of tears falls down my cheeks. Why the fuck did I rub it in? Why did I do that? The burning is so much worse now! It’s like the fucking Niagara Falls coming out of my eyes.
The guy I’m brawling with seems to notice my bandaged shoulder and heads for it as I catch one of his legs and swoop it out from under him. Not expecting the sobbing man to do anything, he staggers and slams into the wall.
“Now! Shoot now!” I urge Ellis.
“What if I kill him? I can’t kill him! Come on, sir. Please. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will! I will!”
There’s absolutely no one here who seems to believe him.
