Page 56 of Shadow Secrets
Sebastian had seconds. The alley was still empty. No sign of CB yet. Garrett was twenty minutes out at the compound.
He pressed close to the window again. The shooter’s back was still to him. Sutton was still braced against her station. She was looking past the shooter, scanning the parlor for something—an exit, a weapon, a miracle—and her eyes moved across the window.
Then they came back. Her gaze locked onto Sebastian’s through the glass. She didn’t react or give him away.
Sebastian held up three fingers against the glass so she could see them. Then he pointed down. Hard, deliberate, unmistakable.
Drop. On three.
Her chin moved. A millimeter. Okay.
He checked the angle. The window was single-pane—a full-body impact would shatter it, but the frame would take a second to give. He’d have to go through it on the count rather than before, and the shooter would pivot on the sound.
Sutton needed to be on the floor before Sebastian hit the glass.
He raised his first finger. One, he mouthed. Sutton’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Second finger. Two. He shifted his weight, pistol in his right hand. His left shoulder braced to take the window. His lungs filled for the impact.
Third finger. Three.
Sutton dropped.
Sebastian hit the window.
The gun went off.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sutton
Sutton’s knees let go before the count finished leaving Sebastian’s mouth through the glass. The pistol discharged—a flat, hard crack—and something punched into her left shoulder, knocking her sideways. Her temple hit the edge of her station.
The glass exploded behind the shooter as Sebastian came through it—a rain of crystals, the screech of a frame giving way, a body landing hard on the floor with a grunt.
Her forehead connected with the scuffed wood floor, bounced, and smacked down again. Her shoulder was on fire, and a sticky wetness spread down her arm and across her chest.
The room spun. White lights bloomed across her vision.
The shooter was shouting. Sebastian was shouting. A second gunshot split the air. She curled into a ball, unable to tell who’d fired. She tried to turn her head to see, but the room spun harder. Nausea rose fast and hot, pushing at her throat.
She managed it anyway. The shooter was sprawled on the floor between her and the front of the parlor, one leg bent at an angle that didn’t look right, his pistol knocked loose. It lay a few feet short of her face, its muzzle still hot enough to smell.
Sebastian lunged toward them, glass snapping under his boots. The man scrambled, rolling over, even with a leg that wasn’t working.
Sebastian fired. The shooter grunted when the bullet struck him in the chest, but he didn’t stop moving. He scrambled for the pistol.
Sebastian closed the distance between them in two strides and drove his boot into the outside of the shooter’s knee with the full weight of his body behind it. The knee cracked with a sound Sutton would hear in her sleep for the rest of her life.
The shooter screamed. His hand slapped the pistol anyway—adrenaline was a hell of a drug—and the pistol skidded further across the floor, past her.
Blood now ran from her temple into her eyes. More blood was spreading under her.
“Sutton!” Sebastian’s voice came close. He reached behind her and came up with her attacker’s pistol. He slid it into the back of his waistband.
She tried to answer. Her mouth didn’t cooperate. The words came out as a slurred sound, something thick and airless. Her cheek was pressed to the floor. It’s just my shoulder, she wanted to tell him. It’s not bad. Don’t panic, Lynx.
But her mouth was full of wool and her head was screaming. The room wouldn’t stay still long enough for her to organize the words into a sentence.
