Page 177 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Keller came out of the rear section at the same time with one of the missing women beside him, his left hand lightly guiding her elbow while a female officer followed close behind. The woman was barefoot and wrapped in a gray emergency blanket. Blood marked one side of her face, though I could not tell whether it belonged to her.

Keller looked toward me.

“Mercer, this is Ana. Serbian.”

I recognized the photograph clipped to my board. One of the two women he had asked me to find. I started toward them but a steel door slammed somewhere behind Keller.

He turned.

Kade came through the opening.

The long hair and freckles were the same ones I had studied across a cabana table in Stuttgart, except now his hair had come loose around his face and a compact black submachine gun hung low in his right hand. The squared receiver registered a second later. MAC-10. A hard-sided black briefcase was in his left hand.

Keller saw the gun. “Stop!”

His hand moved toward his holster.

Kade turned and brought the MAC-10 up sideways.

I saw his face before he fired, clear enough that I searched for hesitation and found none.

The burst tore through the corridor and the sound inside the concrete was colossal. Keller’s body jerked backward. One round hit the wall beside him and threw powdered concrete into the air. Another burst caught him before his pistol cleared leather.

He went down. The woman beside him screamed and dropped against the wall.

The burst left my ears ringing so hard that the next few seconds came through muffled. Keller was on his back, blood spreading beneath his jacket while the female officer dragged Ana down and fired toward the doorway.

Kade disappeared behind the steel frame as voices flooded my headset.

“Shots rear medical corridor,” Raven said in a panic.

Wolf’s voice cut over him. “Fuck. Mercer!”

I looked toward the doorway Kade had vanished through.

“Mercer, stay where you are.”

I moved before I answered Wolf and dropped beside Keller. His eyes were open, but there was nothing in them that recognized me. Blood covered the front of his shirt and ran beneath his shoulder onto the concrete. I put both hands where the worst of it seemed to be because training had taught me to do something, anything, even while the rest of my brain stalled.

“Keller!”

He did not answer. A paramedic reached us and shoved my hands aside.

“Move. Move!”

I had been reading about Kade’s violence since my flight over here. Watching him turn the gun on Keller and fire erased whatever distance the reports had left between me and it.

“Mercer.”

Wolf again. I looked down the corridor and caught Kade at the far end, moving through another door toward the rear lot with the black case still in his hand.

I stood.

“Mercer, do not move.”

I started after him.

Raven shouted, “Mia!”