Chapters (84)
But then his chest suddenly expanded and he rolled off de Galdiano onto the blood-soaked carpet. She froze, staring at him for a moment before looking up at the one surviving monitor bolted near the ceiling. It took a moment to make sense of the image made hazy by the smoke, but finally she managed to combine the shapes and colors into something coherent: Christian Dresner facedown on the floor.
Bullets continued to hiss overhead and security kept punching through the steel wall with their goddamn elephant gun, but all that seemed to fade away for a moment. Jon was alive and they’d done it. They’d actually pulled it off.
The moment of elation wasn’t particularly well reasoned, she knew—her chances of survival had actually just taken a turn for the worse. After his partial heart attack, she’d be lucky if Smith could operate at half speed. And he was almost certainly going to frown on her plan to use him as a human shield. But why question the sudden surge in her mood? Better to just enjoy it while it lasted.
She slithered forward and rolled over de Galdiano’s body, landing on her back next to a very confused Smith.
“You got him, Jon! Dresner’s dead. But we will be too unless—”
A gun appeared over the steel wall and she aimed at it, waiting for the top of the guard’s head to appear before firing her last round. It got close enough to make him drop behind cover again but confirmed her initial impression that the manufacturer had exaggerated the accuracy of her weapon.
She shoved Smith onto his stomach and pulled the pistol from his waistband, then started dragging him toward the empty window frames at the back of the room. There wasn’t much time. If one of the security men had made it to the wall, the others weren’t going to be far behind. And when they all got into position, they’d jump up in unison and spray the entire office. Game over.
“Marty!” she shouted as Smith came around enough to start providing some of his own propulsion. “Get off that damn computer and go to the windows. We’re leaving!”
He ignored her and she swore under her breath, knowing that she’d have to go back for him. There was no time for this crap.