“David, stop! You’re doing exactly what she wants! You’re helping her stall for time!”
He looked to Hannah with wide-eyed revelation. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” He tossed a cynical laugh at Melissa. “Wow. I was told you were smart, but you’re downright brilliant. You played me like an amateur.”
Melissa silently cursed Hannah. She’d hoped the stunt would buy a few more minutes.
“Well, I’m impressed,” David said. “Feel free to keep talking. I’m no longer . . .”
His smirk disappeared when he noticed Carter standing ninety feet up the road. Though the agent’s hands were still cuffed behind his back, he grinned like all was right with the world.
David raised his collar mic. “Mia?”
Now Zack and Hannah joined him in worry. Hannah tested her own mic. “Mia, are you there?”
Zack turned pale. “Uh, Hannah, can you please—”
She shot up the road in a dusty blur. Zack traded a wary glance with David. “I don’t like this.”
Neither did Melissa. She had a dark feeling that Carter and Ross were pulling a two-man rounder, a risky tactic used to turn the table on armed aggressors. Unfortunately, its success relied on the enemy’s ability to drop their weapons. These people were their own weapons.
She bent a knee in nervous readiness. “Zack, David, I need you both to stay perfectly still . . .”
Thirty feet behind them, Ross emerged from the shadows, his hostage still muffled in his grip. He raised the gun. Mia forced a scream through his fingers, loud enough to turn David around.
Melissa jumped to her feet. “Wait!”
Ross Daley had been fully prepared to shout a warning. The words had moved from his mind to his throat. Don’t move! Don’t move!
Unfortunately, David was quicker. He raised his palm and hurled the first loud noise he could find, the warning shot he’d fired two minutes ago. The ghosted echo struck Ross like a cherry bomb, rupturing both eardrums.
It also prompted him to fire.
David watched helplessly as the bullet cut through his right hand, severing two fingers at the base before continuing into the night. The shock of his wound kept him mindless and frozen for three and a half seconds, through the many events that happened next.
The moment he spied David’s bloody hand, Zack lost hold on all reason. For the second time in his life, he focused his weirdness on Rebel’s gun without any concern for the hand that wielded it. Melissa shoulder-barreled him before he could launch his attack. They tumbled together to the dirt.
Mia worked her teeth around Ross’s index finger, biting him deep enough to draw blood. The agent yelled and threw her to the ground. He aimed the gun at her head.
“Goddamn it! Goddamn! You little bi—”
A sudden windy force slammed him from behind. He flew eight feet through the air, then skidded six feet across the road.
Hannah de-shifted at the place of impact, her stunned gaze fixed on her victim. She’d shoved him in the back at 120 miles an hour, hearing and feeling the snap in his spine. Now he writhed on his back, wide-eyed, broken. The actress covered her mouth with both hands. God, what did I do to him? What did I do?
David remained in shell shock at the two gushing stumps on his hand. Once the agony of his wound caught up to him, he fell to his knees and screamed.
Mia pulled off her sweatshirt and ran to him. She tried to wrap the garment around his hand. He savagely struggled away from her.
“David, stop it! Stop! You’re bleeding!”
Melissa clambered back to her feet. She glanced down the road at her fallen agent.
“Oh goddamn it. Goddamn it. Zack, you need to let me out of these cuffs.”
The cartoonist kept his tense stare on David. “Go to hell.”
“Zack, I have a seriously injured man—”
“—who shoots at unarmed kids!”
“Not unarmed! And not a kid! I don’t know if you’re deliberately blind to your friend’s nature, but it’s moot now. Look around you. It’s over. Your only choice now—”
A loud and echoey thump seized everyone’s attention. They all turned to look at the truck. A second thud bulged the gate as if an angry rhino pounded at it.
Melissa closed her eyes. “Shit.”
Now a huge tempic fist knocked the door from its track. It dropped to the road in a resounding boom.
Theo and Amanda stepped out into the night, their broken shackles dangling on their wrists. The relief of escape lasted three short steps before Mia cried from the side of the truck.
“Amanda! Help us!”
She rushed to David’s side. “Oh God. Mia, we need alcohol. We have to disinfect this.”
“W-we brought a first aid kit. It’s in the car. I can get it.”
“No. Help me get him there. Backup’s coming. We need to go fast.”
Hannah kept a wide and unblinking gaze on her victim until Theo gripped her shoulders and gently turned her around. She took a trembling moment to process him, then wrapped him in a tight embrace.
“I didn’t mean to . . .”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t know how fast I was going.”