She crouched next to Womack and drew his 1911 from its holster and slipped the Kalashnikov off him. The man was heavier than he looked, and a part of the strap was trapped under his body. Allie had to grunt to get it free. She opened the pouches around his waist and grabbed two spare magazines, shoving them into one back pocket each. She took a moment to feel Womack’s pulse. He was alive, if just barely, the bloody patch on the back of his head staring at her.
She glanced up at Lucy, the bat looking heavy as it hung from her hand. She’d seen the girl sliding out from under the large king-size bed while she was at the window and Womack was talking. His back was turned to the teenager, and she had been amazingly quiet as she crept up on him, even if Allie could see her trembling with every step. It had been all Allie could do to keep Womack’s attention, to keep those eyes of his focused entirely on her.
Allie put both hands on the girl’s shoulders now and smiled. “You did really good.”
Lucy smiled back. Or tried to. She was shaking too badly to fully commit. “Where’s Dad? He went to find you.”
“I don’t know; I didn’t see him on my way back,” Allie said, hoping there wasn’t still blood on her face to give away the lie.
She hurried past the teenager before Lucy could ask something else, maybe more questions about Walter. Right now, the less the girl knew, the better. Allie drew the 1911 from her waistband and looked through the open bedroom door at the devastated second-floor hallway beyond.
Lucy followed her, almost stepping into Jerry’s blood, then onto Jerry himself, before leaning against the wall next to Allie. Every so often, the girl’s eyes would find their way back to the blood and hair clinging to the end of the baseball bat still clutched in her hand.
“How did you hide from them?” Allie asked.
“I was already on the second floor in one of the other bedrooms when they shot Barnes, so I ran into this one.” She glanced over at Jerry’s body on the floor. “I don’t know when that happened to him, or who did it…”
Barnes did that,
she thought, but asked, “Where were you hiding?”
“There’s a small hidden compartment inside the closet, behind the safe. I found it while I was looking around waiting for you earlier; it’s small, and I had to squeeze in like a pretzel. I hid when they were searching the house, then I snuck out to see what was happening, when you and…the other one showed up. I couldn’t get back to the closet in time, so I slid under the bed.”
“And the bat?”
“It was in the closet. Some golf clubs, too, but the bat was heavier.”
“Good choice.”
The teenager gave Allie another failed attempt at a smile. “Thanks.” Then she looked back at Womack’s body on the other side of the bed. “Did I kill him?”
“No, he’s still alive.”
Just barely,
she thought, but decided the girl didn’t need to know that part.
“Oh,” Lucy said, and Allie detected more than just a little bit of relief in that one simple word. Then, “How are we going to get out of here, Allie? They’re everywhere.”
“We’ll improvise.” She looked around the room before settling on the back window. It was the most obvious route of escape. “Ten feet,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Ten feet?” Lucy repeated.
“From the second floor to the ground below.”
“Oh.”
Allie smiled at her. “You can do it.”
Lucy didn’t look convinced, but she walked over to the window, hiding against the wall on the other side from Allie so the lone dark figure walking out there couldn’t spot them. But the man hadn’t looked in their direction once; he seemed preoccupied with something in the wood, and she wondered what he was seeing that she couldn’t from the window with the naked eye.
“I opened the window so they’d think I jumped out,” Lucy said.
“Smart.”
“I heard what the man said. I guess they didn’t buy it.”
“No, but it was still a smart thing to do.”
She took a moment to peek out at the back of the mercenary about fifty
(sixty?)
yards from them. The problem wasn’t taking the man out; she could do it, if she had to. The problem was how long before the others responded to the gunshots. The thought of shooting it out with the rest of Dan’s men, with Lucy in the middle, made her queasy. She didn’t just worry for the girl’s safety, but her own, too. Allie had training—a lot of it—but none of it covered how to survive a firefight with a half dozen mercenaries.
“It’s really far down,” Lucy was saying while peering through the curtains at the ground below. “Are you sure it’s only ten feet?”
More like twelve, or thirteen,
Allie thought, but said, “About ten feet.”
“It looks higher…”
“See those bushes?” she asked, pointing at the shrubbery below them.
Lucy nodded hesitantly.
“They’ll cushion your fall,” Allie said. “Trust me.”
The girl’s face paled.
“
Trust
me, Lucy,” Allie said.
Lucy flashed her another forced smile. This one, like the others, had no chance of being even semi-believable. “What about you?”
“Once I’m sure you’re safe, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Allie, where’s Dad?”
“We’ll find him together, later.” She gave the girl another reassuring smile. “But we have to get out of here first in order to do that, right?”
The teenager nodded, and Allie looked out the window again to make sure the dark figure still had his back to them. He did. What the hell was he looking at, anyway? Whatever it was, she hoped it would keep his attention for the next few minutes, or else this was going to be a very short escape attempt.
She turned back to Lucy. “Remember, I’ll be right behind you.”
Lucy leaned her bat against the wall and, swallowing hard, climbed up onto the windowsill with all the care of a woman preparing to do a high-wire walk with no safety nets.
“Just let yourself drop down, feet first, right into the bushes,” Allie said.
Lucy nodded nervously, her legs dangling out of the house now. She gave Allie a slightly terrified look, then rocked slightly forward and disappeared out of view.
Allie quickly raised the rifle to her chest and aimed it across the yard at the mercenary. The world looked different in fluorescent green—it was brighter and clearer, and she thought she could see patterns on the back of the man’s black sweater through the night-vision scope mounted on Womack’s AK-47. Her forefinger tested the trigger and she kept waiting for the man to turn, to discover Lucy somewhere in the bushes below. It was the last thing she wanted, but what were the chances he hadn’t heard Lucy falling, or the (too) loud
whump!
as the girl landed?
But the man didn’t turn around, and if anything he seemed to be leaning slightly forward, as if he was trying to get a better look at something in the woods.
What the hell is he looking at?
“Allie,” a voice whispered from below her.
She lowered the rifle and leaned out, looking down at Lucy as the girl stumbled awkwardly out of the bushes. She was brushing at her clothes and glancing worriedly back at the guard the entire time, her legs becoming tangled with branches. Allie swore she could hear every
crunch
and
snap
as Lucy struggled her way forward.
Allie slung the assault rifle and climbed onto the windowsill—
“Come in,”
a voice said loudly.
She almost jumped at the sound, but managed to grab the window frame first. She didn’t have to go very far to find the source of the voice: it was coming from the radio clipped to the back of Womack’s belt, inside the master bedroom behind her.
“Womack,”
the voice said. It was Dan.
“Report. Did you find the girl yet?”
Now or never,
Allie thought, and dropped down from the window.
Despite all the assurances she’d given Lucy, Allie was shocked her legs didn’t snap as soon as they vanished into the bushes below her. Instead, branches poked at her ribs and arms, and something long and green rushed up at her face, but she raised both hands to protect herself just in time.
She found her footing and scrambled out of the thicket, Lucy giving her a helping hand while snapping terrified looks back at the lone figure across the backyard from them. The man still hadn’t turned around, and Allie thought,
Just keep looking and don’t turn around. Whatever you do, don’t turn—
She hadn’t finished thinking the word “turn” when the man did exactly just that—he started to turn around. He was holding something
(a radio)
up to his face as he did so, and she knew without even having to think about it that Dan had just sounded the alarm.
Allie stumbled out of the bushes, brushing past Lucy, and was unslinging her rifle at the same time the man lowered his radio and reach for his own slung weapon.
Neither one of them got a chance to fire, because something burst out of the woods behind the man first. The mercenary whirled around, sensing the incoming, and had his rifle halfway up when Apollo knocked him to the ground and sank his teeth into the man’s neck.
“Run!”
Allie shouted.
“Apollo, stop!”
The dog had clamped down on the mercenary’s left arm, which the man had lifted in a futile attempt to defend himself against the charging animal. The two of them were on the ground with Apollo perched on top when she screamed her command, and the dog stopped what he was doing and looked up at her.
She pointed frantically toward the trees. “Follow Lucy! Go!”
The dog let go of his victim, whirled around on a dime, and bounded in the direction he had come. He was already nipping at Lucy’s heels before Allie had the chance to take four more steps forward.
She didn’t know why she did it—ordered Apollo to stop attacking the mercenary. The man was clearly still dangerous, and he proved it when he wasted no time scrambling to his knees while simultaneously searching the ground for his fallen rifle. Maybe seeing Apollo attacking
(killing)
Jones had more of a profound effect on her than she wanted to admit, but there was a very real part of her that didn’t want Apollo to kill again.
She picked up her speed when she saw the mercenary going for his rifle. The man had wrapped his fingers around the barrel of the AK-47 when Allie lunged forward and kicked him in the side of the face and heard something break. The man rolled away from his weapon and Allie kicked it, watching it skid into the shadows.
Apollo and Lucy were almost at the tree line when the girl threw a look over her shoulder and opened her mouth to say something, but Allie cut her off first: “Keep going! Stick to Apollo!”
A second later, the girl vanished into the woods with Apollo next to her. Allie knew very well that the dog could have outrun the teenager, but he was sticking close.
Ever the protector,
she thought, her lungs burning from the short sprint. God, she was out of shape. Two years of city life and eight-hour work days had made her soft. It was a miracle she had managed to survive this long tonight.
You’re lucky, girl. You’re so, so lucky.
She pushed through the pain as the wall of dark trees rushed toward her—ten, then nine, then eight yards from salvation—when the first gunshot
cracked
and she felt the bullet
zip!
past her right ear and saw it smash into one of the trees dead ahead.
She couldn’t help herself and glanced over her shoulder.
Two men in black clothes were coming around the right side of the house, while a third was rounding from the left. Two more burst out of the back kitchen door, and one of them was wearing a suit.
Dan.
A sixth man was leaning out the second-floor master bedroom window with a rifle—
She dived just as the man fired—
crack!
—and something small and fast sped past the left side of her head, vanishing into a bush directly in front of her.
Jesus, that was close!
She managed to stick her arms out at the very last second, just in time to stop herself from slamming face-first into the ground. That would have hurt. That would have really hurt.
Even so, the breath rushed out of both lungs as she crashed back to earth, and began rolling away from the spot in case the shooter sent more rounds after her. Pain shot through her body as Womack’s slung rifle dug into her back.
Seconds later she was pushing up onto one knee, then was back on her feet, all the while waiting for more cracks of gunshots from behind her. But for whatever reason, there were none, and she wasted exactly half a second wondering why before launching into a full spring, dodging trees and ducking branches, and gasping for breath with every step.
I’m out of shape. God, I’m so out of shape!
“Lucy!” she shouted. “Apollo! Where are you?”
She hadn’t finished shouting when Apollo burst out of the bushes in front of her, and Allie finally
(finally!)
slid to a stop. She doubled over, hands on her hips, to catch her breath as Lucy stepped out from behind a tree next to the dog.
“Are you shot?” Lucy asked.
Allie shook her head, smiled, and struggled to respond. She managed to gasp out, “I’m fine. You?”
“I’m okay.”
Allie unslung the rifle and gripped the weapon tightly in her hands as she turned around, looking back toward the two-story house. She was ready for the fight of her life, because there was no way Dan would let them go. Not now, not with millions within reach. She listened, but couldn’t hear anything that sounded remotely like a small army of men pouring into the woods after them.
In fact, it was amazingly quiet.
Too
quiet.
“Shouldn’t we be running?” Lucy asked anxiously.
“Yeah,” Allie said, turning back around. “We should definitely be running.”
They ran, with Lucy to her left and Apollo to her right. They hadn’t gone very far when she noticed there was something wrong with Apollo’s stride, and Allie began to slow down.
“Wait,” she said, stopping.
Lucy did too and looked back. “What’s wrong?” Unlike Allie, she didn’t seem to be breathing hard at all.