Then he stopped moving altogether. His regrets floated away.
Swallowing hard, she stole his gun, then aimed again toward the crowd of mercs. The press of bodies made them easy to hit, but this time her target fell before she’d even managed to fire. A little dart had struck his head, rendering him far luckier than he might have been.
Tristan had rushed the table and snatched the last tranq.
A wetness creep down her cheek.
Perhaps she’d been hit.
Squeezing her eyes, she breathed out sharply. Most of the mercs had pointed tranqs at her and her friends, scattering now that they had weapons. The ones who hadn’t scored a tranq fumbled for their guns. Bullets would come from both sides, and the sides were still uneven. There was nothing to hide behind, nothing that a bullet couldn’t burn through.
She was moving too slowly.
Time was moving slowly.
Dixon fell nearby.
Raising her gun, she called upon every lesson she’d ever taken from Commander Sutton, every hour spent at the range with Sergeant Jenkins. She gritted her teeth and began to fire as she’d been taught.
Rapid. Efficient. Accurate.
Head shot.
Sutton’s chuckles when Lila’s time was a tenth of a second too slow to best hers.
Head shot.
Jenkins spinning his wheelchair and popping a wheelie, chanting that neither of them would ever best him.
Head shot. A row of little paper targets.
Head shot. The wetness creeping into her eyes, making it harder to focus.
Head shot. Moans and groans and screaming and writhing on the floor.
Head shot.
Head shot.
Multiple times in the same body if the merc didn’t go down.
Click. Click. Click.
A switch of guns.
Pulling the trigger until ear-splitting bursts turned into clicks once again.
Lila looked at her guns, empty of bullets. She looked around the room, empty now of anything more to shoot. She felt as though she’d knocked back a few shots of whiskey, and she embraced the warmth that loosened her muscles.
It was like walking on a cloud.
It was like breathing a cloud.
She was a cloud. Transparent. Weightless. Floating through space and time. Raining.
Her legs did not touch the floor.
Tristan leaned over his brother, tying a gray bandana over his leg. Blood trickled down the length of it, wetting his black trousers. Dixon didn’t seem to mind. He panted a bit, grinning like a man happy to be alive after a storm churned through the city, leaving nothing but his home, perfect and untouched in its wake.