Page 35 of The Reaper

Roper roughly shook her. Hannah tried to kick backwards, lurch sideways out of his grasp. She was gagging, gasping. She was suffocating. She would fight to her last breath.

“Are you going to stop me from shooting her?” Roper rasped.

Jack merely looked on, wild eyes but a cool, calm exterior.

“Shoot her, she’s nothing to me,” Jack’s voice quietly said.

Tears stung her eyes, but she could see less and less anyway. There was a ringing in her ears, the lack of oxygen getting to her. Let’s pretend, let’s pretend, she muttered inside her head.

Roper froze, his grip loosened a fraction of an inch. “What?” he muttered, confused.

Jack’s voice was ice cold. “I’ll do it myself if you keep fucking about like this, Roper.”

Jack gun raised at Roper, hand rock steady. Hannah looked right down the barrel of the gun in Jack’s hand. She looked past the gun to his deep, dark eyes, fixed on her.

Roper’s voice jarred in her pounding ears. “Oh come on Jack, you’d really send your little blondie to her grave with a Bratva bullet in her head?”

Then, bang. Louder than any sound she’d heard in her life.

Jack fired the gun.

The air left her lungs. She spun. Bang. Another, a cracking of the air around her. She was aware the ground came up to her face. And then she wasn’t aware of anything else, everything went black.

She blinked. She could blink. Thank God. If she could blink she was still alive. She drew a breath in shakily. She could breathe. She moved her fingers a little. They were in a puddle of something hot.

Blood. She heard people shouting.

“Police, drop your weapons!”

“On the ground!”

“You’re surrounded! Get down now!”

Jack’s voice, commanding and clear. “I’m MI5, undercover. Don’t shoot! I repeat, I’m an undercover operative!”

Then a rush. Footsteps running over. People grabbing, shouting.

“You shot her?” A police officer’s voice. “You’re not a Reaper? You shot Hannah?”

“She’s wearing a bulletproof vest.” Jack’s voice was full of emotion now. All the emotions, Hannah heard it clear as day. “She should be just winded-

“She is? Where… how-”

“You shot Roper?” Morris’s voice now.

“Nicked him, he’ll live if he gets medical attention. We need him alive. To clear our name,” Jack said.

Hannah watched the puddle of blood inching towards her mouth.

It wasn’t hers. It was Roper’s. She heard a groan on the ground near her. She turned her head to see Roper sprawled on the ground, holding his arm, cradling it, his top bloody and damp.

“Hannah?”

She was rolled over, carefully, strong hands on her.

She looked up. He was there.

“Jack.”

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