Page 68 of Love on the Run

When Skinner burst through the door, he found himself confronting a German shepherd with bared teeth and a low growl in its throat.He froze. Jake slipped to the side of the doorway. He grabbed Skinner’s arm and twisted his gun free. Skinner jerked in reaction, finally seeing Jake, and then Ty. ”Oh shit,” he muttered, his eyes widening.

“Hi,” Ty growled. To Jake, he said, “Go. I got this.” He reached out and flung Skinner to the ground.“Move and you’re dead.” Skinner froze.

With the gunshot and the commotion, they’d lost the element of surprise.Jake turned around, crossed the hallway to the room Skinner had come from, and peeked through the partially open doorway. Two shadowy figures, one painfully familiar. There was a dim sort of light on a table, coming from what looked like a camp lantern.Jake caught a flash of red—Callie’s hair. His heart leaped, but his attention shifted to the other person in the room.Foster. He was standing right next to Callie, and now he was pointing a gun at her.

“I don’t know who you are,” he yelled out to Jake. “But if anyone so much as steps through that door, I will spatter her brains all over this room.”

Jake froze, unable to think of a new strategy in the face of this threat.But Callie herself wasn’t frozen.She said calmly, “How is that different from what you were going to do before?”

“It’s not,” Malcolm admitted, grinning cruelly. “But now they get to watch.”

“And then shoot you next, you moron.” For someone about to die, Callie suddenly felt lighthearted. She was no longer alone. Jake was there!

“Drop the gun, let Calista walk out, and you get to walk out too,” Jake said, falling back on formula.

“No,” Foster said. “I’ve gotten way too far to just stop now.And I’m not alone.”

“You are now,” Jake said coldly. “You had four friends. We’ve met them all. They can’t help you now.”

The news clearly angered Malcolm. “Idiots!Never mind.” He grabbed Callie and pulled her closer in front of him.

“You can’t go anywhere,” Jake said, aiming anyway, hoping for a clear shot to open up.If only Ty hadn’t been hurt, he fumed to himself.This was not a one-on-one situation.

“Don’t bother. This room has two ways out,” Foster smiled, pushing the gun into Callie’s back.“That’s why I picked it. I didn’t get this far by being stupid.”

He began to back away from Jake, toward another corner, where the dark shadow of a fire escape doorway could just be glimpsed.

Callie, being dragged along, deliberately tangled her feet together.She wanted to slow Malcolm down, but he just pushed the barrel of the gun more firmly into her spine.“Try anything, and you’ll never walk again,” he whispered into her ear.

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” she hissed back.

“But you want to live, Calliecat. Even for five more minutes, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes locked on the doorway.She couldn’t see Jake, but she knew he was there.She had to get to him, or figure out how to trick Malcolm.

“You almost got away, you know that?” Malcolm said coolly. “It took a lot of work to find you. If you hadn’t stopped here, we might have lost you entirely.”

“You did lose me.”

Malcolm grabbed her hair, pulling her head back.“No, you’re still mine.”

Callie suddenly experienced a flash of rage so intense she forgot all her fear. “No. I’m. Not!” Angrier than she’d ever been in her life, Callie used all her strength to push away from Malcolm.He stumbled, yanking a handful of her hair when she escaped his grasp.Everything seemed to happen at once. Malcolm screamed and aimed the gun back at her, squeezing the trigger. A shot sounded so incredibly loud, she was deafened by it. Callie fell to the floor, instinctively flinging up her arms. But Malcolm didn’t shoot again.He just stood there, and Callie saw a tiny dark spot on his forehead grow into a line.A line of blood. Then he slowly crumpled and fell into a heap, dead. Finally.

Jake pulled her up from the floor.

"Are you hurt?"

Bruiser slipped into the room, whining anxiously.Callie kept staring at Malcolm in shock. “He’s dead?”

“Yes,” a voice confirmed. Callie saw a strange man appear from the corner. He glanced at her, then turned to Jake.“I got up to the top floor, and heard noise here.I came down the stairway and waited.”

“Lucky,” Jake said. She felt how tense he was, and how fierce his expression was in the strange light of the room. He didn’t smile at her. He didn’t hold her. Was he angry that she’d gotten herself caught again? That she’d put him and Ty in danger? The other man stepped over Malcolm’s body to cross the room, scanning all around. He and Jake conferred in low tones, each man supplying a short account of what had happened. Then Quinn knelt down by the body, checking the pulse as a matter of form. Mal wouldn’t be going anywhere again.

Ty joined them in the room, holding his side. Callie saw him, and he grinned at her. Then grimaced.

“You’re ok!” she exclaimed, exhaling in relief.

“I’m pretty hard to kill,” he said. “Though that one guy was really trying.” Ty walked up to the body, surveying the small hole in the middle of the forehead. “Nice shot. You learn to shoot like that in some sniper unit?”

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