Page 18 of Dragon Bodyguard
Not an accident.
An attack.
She reached out to grab for any part of Misha that was closest, getting hold of his upper arm and finding herself clinging to it for all that she was worth. The gratitude that he was the one by her side was overwhelming, enough to make her knees weak. Her head was beginning to spin.
“I might… I might faint,” she said, leaning against him.
He wrapped his arm back around her waist, tugging her to remain standing rather than slouching against him for purchase.
“No, you’re not,” he instructed. “Do that and those guys get what they came here for.”
“What?”
“You,” he said. “They’re clearly here foryou.”
“Why the hell—?”
“No time for that,” he interrupted her bid for any further explanation, looking around for the best escape route, or so she assumed.
She felt so completely useless in that moment. She barely had any training in self-defense and here she was about to be kidnapped…
Could that be right? Who on Earth would want to kidnap her? Sure, she’d tentatively climbed the ranks of her family, but she wasn’t an acknowledged daughter. She wasn’t a Kuznetsova. And her father wasn’t going to pay ransom for her, or he’d risk his legitimate children’s safety. Word got out Ilya negotiated with kidnappers, and they’d be lining the block to get a piece of the action.
Who in the world would be stupid enough to even attempt something like this?
The impact of the crash had brought both cars skidding to a halt almost in the very center of the intersection, and though traffic had slowed on one side, it continued to flow unencumbered on the other. It would soon be cut off by emergency vehicles and police tape, she had no doubt, but for the time being, people were barely fazed by the shootout or stand-off. Too busy getting to where they needed to go to even hear the gunshots. It was a small miracle a passing car hadn’t been hit yet.
The other men were advancing around the smashed-up Rolls. Oliver was dead. Either he’d died on impact, or he’d been pierced by the bullets. The thought was crystal clear in her mind and it barely fazed her. Was this another side to the shock? Her mind switching off an emotional response entirely? Was this what disassociating meant? Would she ever snap out of it or was she stuck like this now, beginning to feel numb to her core?
The enchanted bullets Misha was letting fly from his gun had held the other men off until now, but she knew he was running low on ammo. They were quickly coming to the point where they would have to turn and high tail it the hell out of there.
“Which way?” she hissed, still clinging tightly to him, his arm still around her waist. He seemed loathed to let go. It added to the adrenaline already pumping through her. She didn’t want him to let go. The drama of the moment made that small truth easy to admit. Their old baggage seemed minuscule compared to what they were facing.
“Come on,” Misha said, slipping his arm from around her waist to take her hand instead. She almost made a noise of protest, but accepted the grip in exchange for his closeness, knowing he had her and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.
It was time to run.
Misha tugged on her, and he didn’t need to tug hard. She followed his incentive without much further encouragement, and they legged it, straight into the trafficked side of the intersection.
“We’re going to die, we’re going to die, we’re going to die,” she chanted, closing her eyes and letting him lead her.
“No, we’re not,” he reassured her.
He ran forward, slowed them down, made her stop, then ran forward again. All the while she squealed with every new movement, feeling like an idiot and a half, but being wholly unable to open her eyes to even squint at how far they’d come. It wasn’t until she could tell, by how the noise of the cars was now coming from behind them rather than around them, that she opened them to meet his gaze. She stared at him, mouth half-open, in quiet awe.
He merely smiled, then made her duck out of the way of an oncoming bullet.
“Keep going?” she asked, both of them looking back at the advancing attackers who were slowly crossing the road, following in their wake.
“Yup,” Misha agreed, hand still holding hers.
Without any further discussion, they turned and ran down the sidewalk.
It wasn’t a very long stretch of sidewalk as the intersection was basically in the middle of nowhere and the asphalted path that helped form the cross where the two roads met led straight into the dirt by the roadside. There was a ditch and on the other side of it a scraggly bit of forest
She supposed if they ran fast enough, they might find a place to hunch down, out of sight from the attackers, but there was wide space between the trees and barely any bushes to speak of. They’d have to run very far, very fast if they were to stand a chance at getting away.
“In there,” Misha said without hesitation, tugging on her hand again, leading her down to the ditch.
