Page 13 of Bullet Unleashed

Oh great. Chase? I don’t have time for this.

There’s a tingling in my limbs, and my chest tightens making it hard to breath. Scanning over his shoulder, my two pursuers have entered the aisle. “Excuse me, but I have to go.”

He won’t let go. This guy will not release his arm around my waist. This should add to my fear, instead his arm around me is somehow comforting. He pivots and faces the two men, holding me behind him and pressing me into his back. He’s made himself a human shield.

“Evening fellas,” he addresses them. “You guys looking for something in particular?”

“Move out of the way,” the smaller man without the scar growls.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Chase answers.

He steps back and uses his arms to guide me into the shelves in the aisle and presses his back into me. His body is completely covering me now. It’s muscular and hard and smells like the woods after a hard rain — primal but clean.

My pursuers advance till each stands on either side of my shield.

“Move,” the scarred face echoes. They’re both arms-length away from him.

“I’m sorry,” Chase answers again.

“We said ‘move.’ We won’t say it again,” the smaller pursuer declares.

“Well then, seems like we have a problem. See, I think you’re stalking her as if you mean her harm, and I’m not about to let that happen. So, if by ‘move,’ you mean for me to stand aside so you can have your way with her, then guys? You’re saying the wrong thing.”

The two pursuers eyeball Chase and then seize him, each grabbing one of his arms. They pull, and he’s wrested from off of me.

That’s when Chase acts.

He uses the two men’s strength against them. When they pulled, he used his forward momentum and rips his arms up and through their grasp, forcing their hands at unnatural angles and causing them to release him. He bends his arms at the elbows and delivered two simultaneous elbow strikes to their faces, staggering them. Three sharp, quick punches to the scarred man’s inner thigh, groin and chin follow, forcing the scar face to drop to his knee. Chase spins on the ball of his foot and delivers a spinning heel kick to the side of the man’s face, launching him into the shelves on the opposite side of the aisle and knocks the entire row over. Products fly through the air and the metal aisle falls to the ground with a loud crash.

The second pursuer recovers from the initial elbow strike, surveys the scene, and rushes forward. Chase sidesteps the charge, and drives two lightning fast punches into the side of his face, eviscerating him and driving him to the ground.

“Hope,” Chase calls to me.

My eyes are wide at the carnage before me.

“Hope!”

I blink hard and stare. Chase extends his hand out and I nod, grabbing it and holding on for dear life. He brings me to him and with a quickened pace, leads me towards the front of the store.

We reach the front and the teenager at the counter has a look I can only surmise mirrors mine.

Chase reaches into his gray sweatpants, pulls out a bill and sets it on the counter. “This should cover it,” he says and pulls me through the entrance to the parking lot.

My mind races faster than a sports car. “That was crazy!”

“Which car is yours?” Chase grunts.

I point to the little white compact car waiting for me in front of the store. Chase ushers me to the driver’s door and pauses—waiting. I wish I could be more helpful to him, but my body is trembling so violently, my teeth chatter.

He places his hands on mine and the warmth of his touch helps settle me. “It’s okay,” he says in a soothing voice. “You’re going to be okay. Do you understand?”

My head nods even though I don’t understand any of what just happened.

“I want you to get in your car, and go home. When you get home, make yourself some warm, relaxing tea, and take a bath. Forget about everything that happened to you tonight.”

“How can I?”

“These things happen.”

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