LITMIR.BIZ

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thing—dry ice penetrating his bloodstream. Muscles cramping. Tendons splitting. He had a weird, unnatural quiver in his bones. All the angles he’d been trying to work evaporated because of one thing:

       Fear.

      Sara wasn’t standing anymore. She was on her knees, but now she was facing Will. Her fingers were laced behind her head, the position a cop would put a suspect in so that he could search and cuff them.

      Hank was standing behind her. Another woman was at his side. Separate from him, not with him. She had short, almost white hair. Her cheeks were sunken. She held up her unzipped khaki pants with both hands. Blood stained the inside seams, making a lurid, upside down V between her legs. She looked up at Will, her eyes begging him to make this stop.

      Michelle Spivey.

      The scientist had been abducted a month ago. She had worked at the CDC.

      Not an explosion from a gas leak.

      An attack.

      “All right,” Hank shouted at Will. “I need you to slowly get your head out of the car and put your hands up.” He had taken a gun out of his pocket: PKO-45. The muzzle barely extended past his finger, which was placed above the trigger guard the way a cop would hold it. The extended magazine peeked out from the bottom of his fist. Tiny, but powerful. It was called a pocket cannon because it could blow the brain out of a woman’s skull.

      Sara’s skull.

      Because that’s where the gun was pointing.

      Will felt a physical illness rack his body. He did as he was told, his hands slowly going into the air. He looked at Sara now. Her bottom lip trembled. Her eyes filled with tears. Her fear was so palpable that he could feel it like a fist squeezing the blood out of his heart.

      Merle jammed his revolver into Will’s side. “We got no beef with you, big guy. Just need to borrow the doctor. You’ll get her back eventually.”

      Will’s eyes found the blood dripping down between Michelle’s legs. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t draw air. Sweat streamed down the sides of his face. He looked down at the Smith and Wesson revolver that was prying apart his ribs. If he was shot in the gut, could he still grab one of the guns? Could he give Sara cover so that she could run?

      From four armed men? Across open space?

      Broken glass filled his throat, his chest, his lungs.

      They were going to take Sara.

      They were going to kill him.

      There was nothing Will could do but watch it or make it happen faster.

      Clinton loaded Dwight into the back of the BMW. Dwight was still out, slumped over to the side. His holster was empty. Vince was too far away for Will to take his gun. He had already slipped behind the wheel of Sara’s car. The key fob was inside, so he was able to turn on the vehicle by pressing the button. The battery turned on, but not the engine.

      Vince laughed. “Stealing a hybrid. We’re owning the libs.”

      Will forced his shaking hands to still. He flooded out the fear with rage. This could not happen. He would not let them hurt Sara. He would eat every bullet in every gun if that’s what it took to stop them.

      “Careful, bro.” Clinton’s palm rested on the butt of his Glock.

      “I’m a cop,” Will said. “You’re cops. This doesn’t have to go sideways.”

      “We need a doctor,” Hank called across the chasm between Will and Sara. “No offense, brother. Wrong place, right time. Let’s go, lady. Get in the car.”

      Hank tried to pull Sara up, but she wrenched away. “No.” Her voice was low, but she might as well have shouted the word. “I’m not going with you.”

      “Lady, that wasn’t a gas main that exploded at the campus.” Hank glanced up at Will. “We just blew up dozens, maybe hundreds of people. Do you think I give a shit about having your blood on my hands?”

      Will could see the anguish on Sara’s face. She was thinking about the hospitals, the sick patients, the children, the staff who had lost their lives.

      Will did not care about any of them. All he cared about was Sara. These men were cold-blooded murderers. If they took her, she would be dead within a few hours. If she refused to go, she would be dead where she knelt on the ground.

      “No,” Sara repeated. She had already made the same calculations as Will. Tears ran down her face. She didn’t sound scared anymore. She was clearly resigned to what was going to come next. “I won’t go with you. I won’t help you. You’ll have to shoot me.”

      Will’s eyes burned, but he would not look away from her.

      He nodded his head.

      He knew that she meant it.

      He knew why she meant it.

      “How about I kill her?” Hank pressed the gun against Michelle Spivey’s head.

      The woman didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry out. She said, “Do it. Go ahead, you spineless piece of shit.”

      Clinton laughed, though the woman sounded as resigned to her fate as Sara.

      “You still think you’re a good man.” Michelle turned her head toward Hank. Her hands had clenched into fists as they held up her pants. “What’s your father going to say when he hears about who you really are?”

      Hank’s calm composure started to slip. Michelle’s words had hit their mark. She had spent a month with these men. She obviously knew their weak points.

      “I heard you talking about your dad, how he’s your hero, how you wanted to make him proud,” Michelle said. “He’s sick. He’s going to die.”

      Hank’s jaw clenched.

      “His last breath, he’s gonna know what kind of monster he helped bring into this world.”

      Clinton laughed again. “Damn, girl, the way you’re talking makes me wonder how tight your daughter’s pussy is.”

      There’s always a moment right before bad things get worse.

      Split second.

      Blink of an eye.

      Will had been in enough bad situations to recognize when it was coming. The air changed. You could feel it when you breathed in, like your lungs were getting more oxygen, or that percentage of your brain that was never used was suddenly awake and processing and preparing you for what was coming next.

      This is what came next:

      Hank’s finger slid from the trigger guard down to the trigger.

      But the gun wasn’t pointing at Michelle Spivey when he pulled back. Neither was it pointing at Sara. Hank’s arm had swung in an arc toward the man who had joked about raping an eleven-year-old girl.

      Then—

      Nothing.

      Just a metallic click-click-click.

      Here was the big problem with pocket cannons: pocket lint.

      The gun had jammed.

      Clinton screamed, “You son of a—”

      Everything got slower.

      Clinton jerked the Glock out of his holster.

      Will felt the sweet relief of the Smith and Wesson revolver being excised from between his ribs as Merle reached out to stop him.

      Will grabbed the revolver. It was almost easy, because that wasn’t the gun Merle was worried about.

      The Smith and Wesson didn’t jam. The six-shot was one of the most reliable weapons on the market. As far as accuracy, that depended on the shooter and the range. Will was a good shooter. A three-year-old could kill a man at close quarters.

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