Page 103 of The Triangle

Then again, maybe not.

So we crawl. And every inch we move forward I wait for it. I wait for the bullets to rip through my body. Or worse, Christine’s.

But it doesn’t happen. And if I didn’t just live through a hailstorm of automatic gunfire, if there wasn’t a whole room behind us ripped to shreds from bullets, and a piano reduced to shards of wood, I’d think there was nothing happening here at all. It’s that quiet.

We make it to the next stairwell, get back on our feet, and wait. All crammed into a six-by-six-foot landing space that leads down into the glass hallway.

“OK,” Alec whispers. “Decision time.”

I want to laugh at that. Because Alec’s not typically in a democratic mood when it comes to war zones.

But he knows we could all die here. We could be dead in seconds if we walk into that hallway and they’re waiting for us.

But if we don’t walk into that hallway and get to those guns, we’re dead anyway. So what the fuck.

“Let’s do it,” I say.

“Go,” Christine says. “Just run.”

Just run.

Her words echo through my head as Alec steps out into the hallway like he’s invincible. He’s running, so not quite Mr. Invincible. But it’s one of those fuck-it moments.

We die. We don’t die. We can’t really control that right now.

But if we get to the other side. If we get to the guns…

Yeah. It goes like that through my head as I take off after him. I want to look over my shoulder, make sure Christine is behind me, but that’s when a stream of bullets slaps against the glass.

Thoop. Thoop, thoop, thoop.

Unlike last time, it’s not a barrage. Just one guy, probably. Just one guy left behind.

And the reinforced glass holds. For like two whole seconds I think, Fuckin’ hell. We’re gonna make it. We’re really gonna make it.

I’m about halfway across when that thought hangs there in my head.

And that’s when the barrage comes.

That’s when they open up. Not one guy, but the whole fuckin’ team.

I just run. I run the fuck out of that hallway. And when I crash into Alec on the other side and see his face, I know.

Christine didn’t make it.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - ALEC

Christine is ducking her head forward and then pulling it back. Ducking forward and pulling back. Like one of those plastic birds they sell to tourists at the ocean. The kind that are weighted to dip their heads into a glass of water and then spring back, making it appear that a fokken plastic bird is drinking from your tumbler.

The glass walls have lost their battle against the gunfire and sit defeated and shattered on the floor of the hallway. It is not, however, the decking of tiny glass daggers that is keeping Christine from running down to join us. It is the unrelenting wave of hot metal pouring in that is keeping her pinned down.

The fire will abate for a moment, but then it commences again the moment Christine ducks around to see if she can make it. The laser sights, which betray their owners’ positions and indicate that the shooters can’t see what they think they can as well as they’d like, disappear and reappear every time Christine disappears and reemerges. The fact that I don’t respect their flippin’ lasers doesn’t make the after-effects of using them any less deadly.

And in the blink of a gnat’s eye, Danny steps out into the hallway, ready to dart back in the direction from which we just ran. I grab him and pull him back.

“Fok are you going, man?” I shout to him, sotto voce for some reason. It’s loud, we’ve already been found, and quieting my voice now won’t give any cover or prevent us from being shot to ribbons, but I do it anyway. Habit.

“Christine!” he screams to her, not nearly so self-conscious.