Page 165 of Intent to Kill
“We gotta take him out!” Carlos shouted over the noise.
“Carlos, cover me. Dan, throw the C4,” Paul said.
Dan’s eyes widened. “What?! We can’t throw explosives!”
“Just fucking do it!”
Carlos reached his arm out, only his arm, to lay some half-hearted cover fire.
Paul kept his hands on his gun and his eyes on Dan as he watched his friend wire up the explosive. With a nod of his head, Dan launched the C4 in the air and dove for the floor, covering his head.
Rising to a knee, Paul braced against the couch, tracking the explosive with his eyes. With a single, perfectly placed bullet, he shot the C4 just as it settled in the air above T.B. and the remaining guards.
The C4 exploded in mid-air, knocking all those around it to the ground and throwing Paul backward, too.
Taking their cue, Dan, Carlos, and Paul rushed from their cover to finish off their enemies, shooting the last of the guards.
Coming up behind the desk, Paul stood over T.B., finding him writhing on the floor with deep wounds in his stomach and head.
Paul pressed his foot down on T.B.’s wrist, gun trained at his head. “Where the fuck is she?”
“I told you,” T.B. said, coughing blood. “She’s gone. You’re too late.”
Paul crushed T.B.’s wrist with a shout. “Try again.”
“There’s nothing either of you can do,” T.B. said. Paul frowned. What was the look behind his eye?
“Try again!!”
“Why?!” T.B. spat. “It’s over for me anyway. He fucking left me here.”
Dan launched over Paul’s shoulder, covering T.B. and punching him until his face was unrecognizable. Carlos hefted his friend away as Paul watched on, gun still trained at T.B.
T.B. spat blood from his mouth. “Warehouse. Cold storage on Connell.”
Paul’s shoulders relaxed, in despair or relief, who knew?
“But,” T.B. began, “like I said, it’s too late. She’s already gone.”
Paul roared, his anger overcoming him for once. He reared his foot into T.B.’s face, and the man’s eyes glazed over with glassy stillness. Blood seeping out onto the carpet as the rising of his chest slowed.
“Do you think he really did kill her?” Carlos said, whispering, though there was no one left alive to hear him.
“He’s full of shit,” Dan said.
For a moment, the three of them just stood standing over the last dead Second. The silence was deafening. All the servants had fled the mansion. The fight between their own people and Blake’s men had long since died out.
There was only one person left to kill.
* * *
They were locked in a stalemate. Blake hiding behind one stone bench. Adam behind the other. Both stuck in a cycle of quick jumps, dives, and missed gunshots.
They’d circled around the firepit at least three times, swapping cover for cover until Blake, now sheltered behind the bench nearest the river, and Adam closest to the house.
Every time Blake’s ugly fucking face popped up, Adam delivered an onslaught of bullets. He was a slippery fucker, though, and like the return shots, they all missed.
He had to end this. Drawing out Blake’s death wasn’t an option. He just had to finish it before his emotions ate him alive. It was a barely restrained effort to keep them down.
