Trust me.
I don’t know what that means, but I don’t have time to figure it out because her hand does a lightning-fast sweep of the blade, and then there’s a stinging, foreign, alarming sensation of flesh separating from flesh, and then the sticky warm feeling of blood coating my neck.
My pulse pounds so loud in my ears that it drowns out the sound of Xavier and his men continuing to howl with laughter, but it doesn’t register thatI’m still breathinguntil Natalia jerks my hair again and sends both me and the chair toppling backward.
And then I can hear again, but it’s all deafening chaos.
An explosion of gunfire.
Rapid-fire pistol shots, and shouting in Spanish, and the distinctive, sickening sound of heavy bodies hitting the floor.
I can’t see any of it, but fight-or-flight kicks in, and I shift and squirm, attempting to move the chair while my hands are still cuffed behind it.
It takes about three seconds for it to register that I’m not bleeding out, that I’m still breathing, and that,no, Natalia didn’t follow the plan we discussed at length—because she apparently had one of her own.
Créeme.
Trust me.
I manage to shift the chair around just enough to see what the fuck is happening. More than half of Xavier’s men are scattered on the floor where they were standing only seconds ago, a couple others are clutching wounds while attempting to wield pistols, the rest are drawing, Xavier’s on his knees, coughing and spitting blood onto the concrete, and Natalia is ducking and dodging and shooting.
Another guy takes a bullet that snaps his head backward, and he stumbles backward before collapsing. The knife she used to somehow fake-slit my throat is lying about an arm’s length from me, but my hands are still shackled behind my backandthe chair, and it’s not like bringing a knife to a gunfight has ever worked out for anyone, and there’s literally nothing I can do to back her up.
But she doesn’t look like she fucking needs it anyway.
Xavier’s still hacking, crawling toward a gun now, and another bullet pops off, and another body hits the floor. Natalia’s entire left arm is soaked crimson with blood, but she keeps shooting, undeterred by the wound and holding that same stance I saw her take at the motel.
Marksman.
Sniper.
Mother-fucking female robot soldier, hell-bent on destroying the people who trained her to become this from a young age by attempting to destroy her.
It’s poetic enough to nearly distract and disorient me, but I can’t just lie here in awe of how much of a badass she is, because I gotta dosomething.
Adrenaline lights up my veins, and I thrash against the cuffs and the chair. It finally starts to give, and the back of it steadily slips away from my back, and I manage to contort myself enough to pull my legs through my still-bound arms so that my hands are now cuffed in front of me. I scramble to my feet just as Natalia takes a hit to the stomach that causes her torso to pitch forward, but she pops off a shot at the last second that knocks the shooter off his feet.
And that’s when Xavier makes it to the discarded pistol on the ground. He aims for her, blood sputtering and spewing down his pallid face and soaked goatee. Spanish curses are thick in the air alongside gunpowder and the metallic scent of blood. Grabbing the knife, I charge at him from behind, knocking the gun out of his hands, and flattening him on his back. But I’ve got arms restricted by cuffs, so even though I’m holding him down, he’s still got the upper hand.
We scramble for control of the knife, and in my periphery, I see Natalia on her hands and knees. She crawls slowly, falters, drops the pistol, stumbles, but pushes herself up and feebly reaches with shaking hands in an attempt to grab it. I’ve got a two-hand grip on the knife, shoving it toward Xavier’s neck, but he’s now got a two-hand grip on my throat, and he’s squeezing so hard that blackness is closing in around my eyes.
I slash sideways with the knife, connecting with something, but I can’t see what because I’m going lightheaded and blind, and a last-ditch, guttural growl catapults out of my throat. “Just fucking die already, you piece of shit!”
Another gunshot explodes in the room, the sound ricocheting across the concrete floor and hard, barren walls, and the vise grip on my throat goes limp. I cough and hack my way back to a clear airway, and my vision comes back just in time to see Xavier’s hands fall away.
Half of his brains are splattered across the floor next to his head.
The cavernous room is suddenly silent other than two sets of deep, ragged breathing. I snap my head sideways and see Natalia sprawled out on her side, her bloodied arm clutching her bloodied stomach, and her good arm outstretched toward me and Xavier, the pistol aimed at him. She holds it like that for a second while we sit in a momentary trance, as though we’re both expecting Xavier to make a Walking Dead zombie style return—except that even in the Walking Dead, people that took a bullet to the brain never came back.
And Xavier’s not coming back.
I drop the knife. Natalia allows the gun to fall out of her hand as she struggles to her feet. My stunned brain abruptly spurs me to clamber off Xavier’s lifeless body with my hands still cuffed. She makes it all the way to standing, surprisingly deft for her gravely injured state, and I finally hop to my feet and dart to her.
“Querida…holy shit.” I make it to her after several paces, reaching for her, but she dodges my hands and marches to Xavier, a woman still on a mission.
“Baby doll,” I try again, watching her in a stupor while she crouches next to his body and starts rifling through his pockets. She’s once again robotic, but her mortality is evident from the slight sway on the balls of her feet, and she has to be bleeding out. She might even be dying, but she keeps digging in his pockets.
I march back to her, just as she withdraws her hands and stands upright.
