Larry let loose a spurt of gunfire, and we heard someone drop outside the door. He’d hit at least one of them, but it was clear that there were more right behind him to pick up the fight.
I watched as another volley of bullets tore through the door. When there was a brief pause, I let off some rounds myself. Another thud and a loud “Fuck!” and I knew someone else was down.
Their return fire gained in intensity, and the windows in the room were blown out. The sound of shattering glass was accompanied by a large Crack! as the door splintered and one of X’s men tried to Rambo his way into the office. Knowing it would only be a matter of seconds before the others came charging in, I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, expecting to see a hail of bullets coming out of the muzzle. My heart dropped when all I heard was a clicking sound.
I heard Larry cry out in agony.
I looked over to see him lying on the ground. The Rambo dude was lying dead next to him, but Larry had obviously been shot in the process of taking him out.
Acting purely on instinct, I threw my useless gun in Larry’s direction and dove back under the desk just before two more soldiers burst into the room, weapons drawn.
I placed my hands over my ears and began crying. “Please, don’t shoot me! Oh, God! Please!” I forced tears out of my eyes.
One of the men turned sharply in my direction, his finger on the trigger of his weapon.
“Wait! Hold up.” Had his partner spoken up one second later, I would have had a bullet through my head. Even as the shooter lowered his weapon, he looked disappointed, like a shark who’d just missed a bloody feeding frenzy.
“Who are you?” the man who’d saved my life asked.
“I’m Sasha,” I answered quietly. The fear in my voice was only partially an act at this point.
“Sasha who?” he asked.
“Duncan. Please, what’s going on? Don’t hurt me.”
The men eyed each other, and the one with his gun on me smiled like he’d caught the big fish of the day.
That’s when a man in fatigues wearing schoolboy glasses appeared. “What’s going on?”
“She’s a Duncan,” the shooter said with a sinister grin, raising his weapon and aiming it at me. “Elijah, man, you gotta let me do her.”
“A Duncan, huh?” Elijah said. “Go check her out.”
The shooter walked over and snatched me up off the ground. “You got anything on you?”
I sniffed and choked back my tears, willing myself to keep up with the damsel in distress act. My life depended on it.
“Woman, I said do you have anything on you?” He flung me around like a rag doll as he started patting me down to look for weapons. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my gun lying next to Larry, and I thanked God I’d had the impulse to throw it away before I hid.
“Yo, careful, man,” Elijah said to him. “She’s just a woman, not one of the Duncans’ thugs. No need to manhandle her like that.”
I looked over at Elijah and made eye contact with him, wanting him to understand my gratitude. Obviously my tears had an effect on him, so I knew he was the one I needed to play up to. He could keep me safe in the presence of this thug who was itching to shoot me.
“She’s clean,” the trigger-happy one told Elijah, backing up and pointing the gun at me again. “What now?”
Elijah stared at me for a minute, then pulled out his phone and hit a couple of buttons. He kept his eyes on me as he placed the phone to his ear and waited for whoever he was calling to answer.
I shivered for added effect.
“Hey, Xavier,” he said into the receiver. “I have a Duncan.” He paused briefly to listen, and then ended the call with “Okay.”
“What did he say?” the gunman asked.
“Just what I thought he would,” Elijah responded. “He said to bring her to him now.”
Vegas
32