Page 59 of Falling Fast

Allan was talking on a cell phone as he watched him run. He lowered it, and their gazes locked. Then Allan raised something in his hands.

A rifle. Pointed right at Dean through the open side window.

Dean slowed, instinctively ducked. But in that split second as he stared at the man who had flown him wherever he wanted to go for the past four years, Dean realized that Allan wasn’t aiming the rifle at the two people chasing him.

Allan was aiming athim.

Electric terror forked through him. He yanked his pistol upward, preparing to fire.

A bullet slammed into his chest.

White-hot agony engulfed him as he dropped to his knees, slumped to his side. He opened his mouth to suck in air, but couldn’t get any. His lungs weren’t working.

His right arm was limp, unresponsive as he tried to reach for the gun, just inches from his outstretched fingers. A spreading pool of blood covered the grass. His blood. Because Allan had shot him.

Over the scream of denial locked in his throat, over the hideous anguish, the sound of the helicopter’s engines powering up penetrated his brain. He opened and closed his mouth like a landed fish, starved for air, his eyes bulging from the lack of oxygen.

As the gray fog began to close in on him, he had only one thought.

Someone higher up the cartel food chain had ordered this.

****

Baker was down and he wasn’t moving. Because his own pilot had just fucking shot him with a rifle.

Was he one of theirs? Someone sent by the DEA maybe?

Charlie kept running after Jamie as the helicopter nosed forward, locking her jaw at the pain stabbing through the soles of her bare feet. The rotor wash hit them. She leaned forward, squinted to minimize the dust and grit blowing into her eyes.

When Jamie reached Baker, he paused to kick the fallen pistol out of reach, then dropped to one knee facing the fleeing helo and raised his rifle. Charlie dropped next to him, panting, her entire body juiced with an overflow of adrenaline. Baker’s chest had a golf ball-sized hole in it, just to the right of center. He was still alive, his eyes half-open, but judging by the slight movement in his chest and the pool of blood forming around him, he wouldn’t be for long.

Fuck that. I want you to answer for what you’ve done.

She hadn’t risked all this for him to die and take all his dirty secrets with him. She wanted him to live, so that the DEA and FBI could spend months cracking him, and then have the satisfaction of knowing he was rotting inside a prison cell for the rest of his life.

Leaning over him, she managed to wrench off his tux jacket, then wadded it up and shoved it against the wound in his chest. Those glassy brown eyes rolled toward her, focused for a moment, his face a kind of bluish-gray color.

“You don’t get to die, you son of a bitch,” she snarled at him over the noise of the helo. “Not unless it’s in jail.”

His eyes went unfocused again, his head lolling toward the helicopter.

She jumped when a gunshot pierced the sound of the helo’s engine. Glancing up, she saw the pilot had swung the aircraft around to hover about twenty feet off the ground to fire at them.

Okay, the pilot wasn’t one of them.

Next to her, Jamie had already taken aim. Before she could reach for her own weapon, he fired twice.

His bullets smashed through the cockpit windshield. Blood spattered over it.

The aircraft swung wildly to the right and lurched toward the ground like a wounded animal. Jamie was on his feet now, circling around in a wide arc, following its movement. It angled forward, the engines still screaming, nose tipping toward the earth.

Charlie stood frozen as it limped along, never pulling up, inching closer and closer to the surface of the field.

The tip of the main rotor caught the ground. Dirt and plant matter sprayed in the air as the blades chewed up the field, then the momentum flipped the aircraft onto its back.

Charlie gasped and took a step back. It spun around in a deranged circle like a dying bird. The tail plunged down, sending it into a roll, engines still going full tilt. It flipped twice then hit the ground with a bone-shaking thud, and burst into flames.

Jamie grabbed her and dragged her down to her knees, wrapping his arms around her, angling his body to shield her. A blast of heat rolled over them both.

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