Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Nate felt this weird glow inside his chest, like he’d been breathing in sunrays. “Well… if that isn’t the best news I’ve ever heard. And it’s been twenty minutes, female. Give me your mouth again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Run, run, quick like a bunny. Fast, faster, fastest, you can do it, honey.
As Evan’s brain tagged along with his body’s explosive sprint, the refrain from his childhood stuck with him, the syllables landing in his head like his boots on the ground. Meanwhile, the wind was whistling in his ears, and he was vaguely aware of the streets that he crossed—two, or was it three?—and the alleys he ducked down—two, for sure.
Just as he started to wonder if he was just going to work out for the rest of the night, he heard the shooting.
A last right-hand turn, and he arrived on scene.
It was the short woman with the braids, whose apartment the tunnel bottomed out at. She was down in a crouch, both hands holding a pair of autoloaders in front of her—and like she sensed him, she looked over her shoulder.
As a bullet ricocheted off a brick wall and shot right by his temple, she glared at him. “You fucking sonofabitch—you took my shit, didn’t you. My—oh, fuck you,” she spat as she refocused ahead of herself and went back to shooting. “Will you fucking help me you fucking asshole!”
Evan’s first instinct was to run away and protect himself. He had a body disposal job to do, and this was not his fight—
His own body took over, his palms finding the guns that, yup, he had stolen from her, as his legs took him right beside her. While she knelt, he stayed standing, and he started shooting before trying to see what the hell was firing back at—
There was a sudden pause in the exchange of bullets, and he peeked around the corner. Across a narrow break in the abandoned buildings’ lineup, an inset doorway appeared to be where the shooter was taking cover. He couldn’t see anything more than that—and as everything stayed silent, he squinted his eyes.
They must have taken off, he thought. Into the building—
“You fucking asshole!”
The punch to the balls was a left hook from outta nowhere, and as he grunted and doubled over, the woman went for the guns in his grips—
It happened so fast. One minute, he was gasping from the pain and she was pulling at the weapons. The next, he had her in a choke hold with the barrel of what was in his right hand pushed into her temple.
In a voice he had never heard before, he said, “Don’t ever come at me again. I will stab you back to the maker. Are we clear?”
“Fuck you—”
He pulled the trigger.
As the gun went off, he was so shocked at what he’d done, he recoiled and dropped his hold so he could jump back.
The woman landed facedown in a heap, her arms out like she was trying for something just beyond her reach.
“What the fuck am I doing,” he said under his breath as he stood over his second dead body. “I’m a fucking feminist.”
Before he could—well, he didn’t fucking know what he was going to do—there was movement. The woman dragged her arms back. Gathered her torso. Slowly raised from the dead.
Her head cranked around to him, and the black blood that oozed out of the alarming exit wound gleamed. “What fuck.”
Um… yeah, he thought. That about covered it.
“Why the hell you do that.”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Like he’d scraped her car or maybe insulted her hair. “But you punched me in the balls.”
“You think this”—she motioned to the bullet wound in her brain—“equal to slap in sac?”
“To be fair, you don’t have them, so you wouldn’t know.”
She spit off to the side, more annoyed than anything else. “I got knuckled in the boob once. It was not that big a deal.”
“You weren’t going to stop at the sac,” he said grimly. “Don’t front.”
She was silent. Then she cursed in Spanish, and against everything that made any kind of sense, she stood up—and because she had both of her weapons back in her hands, he pointed his at her. Or… hers at her.
“We don’t need to do this.” He stared at her eyes, stared into her. “And I will make it all up to you.”
“How.”
“I’ll give you what you want. I’ll give you something worth killing.”
He didn’t know what the hell he was saying. What he was clear on was that he didn’t want that happening on half of his skull.
“You make good on your promise,” she said as she narrowed her eyes, “and you keep the guns. But no steal from me again.”
Evan thought of the additional weapons he had at Mickey’s. “Done.”
The woman turned back to the corner they were taking cover behind. As her matched pair of autoloaders pointed back in the direction of the doorway, he felt compelled to acknowledge her little boo-boo.