By no means was this the first time he’d been shot. And here was the thing that Sebastian had learned over the years about bulletproof vests:
They’re not all that fucking bulletproof.
Most people had it in their heads that if you wore a vest, you were fucking Superman.
Bullshit.
Finney had shot him with a Glock 9 mm, the muzzle velocity of which was somewhere on the order of thirteen hundred feet per second. Sebastian had been standing close, well within ten feet. Two of the four shots had been direct hits: one to his abdomen and one to his chest. The other two had missed.
So, okay, yeah: The vest had stopped the two bullets. But at that range, it had been like getting hit twice by a baseball bat.
Swung by a major-league home-run champion.
On steroids.
The abdominal hit had knocked the wind out of him, and now it hurt like a son of a bitch, nearly eclipsing the pain from his broken nose. It was going to leave one hell of a mark, for sure. But from what he could tell, at least it hadn’t done major damage.
The chest was a different story. Maybe the angle at which the bullet had struck him: at the thin border of the armor’s protective material, near his armpit. It felt like a broken rib, maybe two, on his right side. Each breath was an agony, a thousand knives sticking him in the side at once.
Ignore it. Suck it up. Move your ass.
Lying on the cement floor out of the light, he heard someone moving, back near the makeshift operating area, but couldn’t see a goddamn thing from where he was.
Training and instinct had to be his guides. He slipped the conduction gun from its holster (dammit, why hadn’t I brought a real goddamn gun?) and, staying low and quiet, using stacked construction materials as cover, stole through the shadows to reconnoiter and gain position on Finney.
He heard scuffling, a shout, more scuffling, a second shout.
He peeked around the corner of a large crate.
And couldn’t believe what he saw.
Finney had picked the wrong chick to mess with!
Wu had pulled the goddamn tube from her own throat! Jesus, was there nothing that slowed this woman down? Now, slippery with her own blood, she was grappling like a demon with Finney, trying to wrest the gun from him, her jaw clamped onto his hand. It was clear she didn’t know the first thing about fighting, but he’d be goddamned if she wasn’t wrestling him to a draw, and he had at least fifty pounds on her.
Neither one spotted him as he crept around the corner of the crate and raised the conduction gun.
Dammit.
Wu was too close. He couldn’t get off a clean shot. The damn gun was like a crossbow—it could be fired only once before it required tedious reloading. He couldn’t risk hitting her and wasting his one good shot.
So he tiptoed closer …
RITA
… I’m not going to win.
The thought came to her with remarkable clarity.
She hadn’t been in a fight since high school, but she remembered what it felt like to lose. He was bigger and stronger. And, pumped as she was with fury and adrenaline, she knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer: Weakened by the drugs, her lungs and limbs were starting to fail her. She wasn’t scared: At least she would go down fighting. But she was sad, so sad, that she would fail Darcy.
Her teeth were still in his right hand. He tried to transfer the gun to his left as he reached with it to gouge at her eyes.
And then …
… the gun clattered to the floor!
She saw her chance and let go of him to grab it. He tried to push her away. She flailed out, and felt a thrashing of arms and legs. The gun slid away. He kicked her in the belly. Stunned, she coiled herself around his foot, and dropped to her knees. He drew back his foot and kicked her belly again, viciously. She gagged and coughed and fell on outstretched hands.
Then he was facing her, grinning with triumph, as he stooped for the gun.
So that’s it, then.
She lay panting on the floor, waiting for it to end …
SEBASTIAN
… there.
Perfect.
Smile and say cheese, asshole.
Sebastian pulled the trigger.
The four electrodes of the conduction gun fired, like harpoons from the prow of a whaling ship, and embedded themselves into Finney’s perfectly exposed ass …
RITA
… and she saw Finney suddenly jerk up, his hands on his butt, a ridiculous expression of surprise on his face.
Surprise collapsed into a bizarre grimace. His limbs launched into a violent dance, flailing this way and that, and he collapsed—no, hurtled—onto the cement floor. His arms and legs twitched for several seconds before becoming motionless.
Now, sprawled out on his belly, she saw four metal prongs sticking out of his butt, each attached to a wire. Her eyes traced the wires back to a black, gun-shaped device held by the man called Sebastian.
Sebastian strode over, grabbed Finney’s gun, flicked a small lever above the trigger, and stuffed it into his belt.
“Didn’t he shoot you?” Rita asked, hacking and coughing.