Page 84 of Boneyard HEA

Shawn had also taken a step toward the door. Instead, he hurries back to the open bag, pulls a Glock from somewhere among the dildos then a shotgun. He tosses the shotgun to Zasha, who snatches it from the air and swaps weapons.

Juniper has sat up and is trying to stand, though she looks wobbly, and is pushing up off the floor with her hands.

She’s not cuffed. That sears itself into my brain.

Somewhere in the house there is an intruder. Hopefully a friend.

Delay Zasha. Do something!

I roll and get onto my knees. With both hands at my back, it’s difficult to stand but possible. I’m halfway up, on one leg, ready to sprint over and help her when Zasha returns to kick me, flattening me onto my side.

“Stay! Or you get a fucking bullet.”

Incongruously I’m thinking, it’s a shotgun. It doesn’t have bullets.

Juniper cries out and I look over and find she’s again cuffed with hands at her front, and Shawn is stalking in my direction.

“We go. Come on, fella. Let’s go fuck someone up.”

Zasha burns the room with a glare. “All of you, stay. We will be back to finish this.”

The door he’s partly opened is booted open again and a man is there in dark tactical gear, helmet, mask, and clothes, silhouetted and tossing in a small cylindrical object that spins. He ducks out of view.

A flash bang.

Casually, Zasha catches it and tosses it back through the door. A second later there is a bang. The shock and sound sledgehammers into my body. Dust and smoke billow in.

The man staggers partway into the doorway, framed there, raising a long weapon like SWAT employs. Is this Tomás?

He gets off a few rounds that spin Shawn before Zasha hammers him with a shotgun blast. As he falls away to the side, a second blast peppers the hallway wall behind, pocking it with dust and holes. There is blood on the wall.

Tomás? For a microsecond, I hesitate.

I’ve trusted him with my life, before. Fuck this. How can I help him?

Zasha wavers and seems slower. The blast must have rocked him.

Desperation lends me strength as I rock onto my back and try the hands-to-the-front trick that’s never ever worked. Shock spools in when my cuffed hands squeeze past my feet to my front.

I roll-jump to my feet. Roaring, I sprint at Zasha, arms outstretched. He’s lifting his shotgun as I launch through the air into him then grab the barrel, twisting it.

His knee connects with my thigh with an immense thud. The pain reverberates as he heaves me sideways, but I hold on until the force of the throw wrenches my hands off the gun. He’s off balance, drops to one knee while I’m skidding and flipping onto my back. Zasha still holds the gun but it’s askew. He sways, eyes bleeding from what must have been the metal of the shotgun banging at his face.

Dazed and torn between firing at me and shooting Tomás, who is on all fours and bloodied, Zasha hesitates.

Shakily, Tomás rises. Recovering his footing, he props his back against the hallway wall and lifts his rifle.

30

Juniper

Head buzzing and on my knees, I choke in a breath. The room is in chaos. Yelling, and there is the echo of that bang. The air drifts with white dust. Aaron and Zasha were wrestling for the shotgun and that other man is making a target of himself in the doorway. I’m sure he’s going to die any second. Either Zasha will get him, or Shawn.

A loose cuff swings on my wrist.

Seconds ago, I stuffed my panties into the lock of the cuff as Shawn thought he locked them, unsighted and by feel, for he was intent on getting to the weapons. He shoved me down, cuffed again, he thought. I was not. The cuffs sprang open with the slightest pressure.

Blood weeping into his shirt, Shawn extends his arm and aims his pistol across the room—over the top of Aaron. He and Zasha are yards away.