“One,” I said.
“Derek, shut the fuck up.”
“Two,” I said as I walked down the hallway.
“Derek, please! Don’t do this!”
“Three.”
I opened up the front door, and the gunfire stopped again. The men turned their heads toward me, but I held up my hand to get them to stand down. John was peering at me from behind his car like the coward he was, and once he saw my hand go up, he stood and leveled his gun at my body.
“I knew there was a reason I didn’t like you,” I said as I stepped onto the porch.
“Guess you’ve got better senses than Sam,” John said.
“Maybe. But I’m a shrewd businessman. I have to be able to read people on the spot.”
I watched as John stepped out from behind the car as the team leveled all their guns at him.
“I can’t let you live,” John said.
“I know, I know. You don’t get paid that way,” I said. “But there is one thing you forget. One thing you underestimate about me and Sam.”
“We all know you’re sleeping together. Get off that high horse. She’s not the greatest lay in the world,” he said.
“Like you would know.”
I whipped my head around and saw Sam standing in the doorway. She had a massive gun propped up on her shoulder as she leaned against the doorframe. I grinned at her as she threw me a look, shaking her head before her eyes turned back to John. I looked back and saw him take cover again, but that wasn’t going to happen.
He needed to be exposed for Sam to get a good shot.
Before I could think, I took off from the porch.
I locked my eyes with John, knowing he would take the chance if he saw it. I made myself an easy target, running straight for him as my body ran around his car.
And the moment he stepped out and exposed his entire body to us, Sam shot.
One bullet in the head, and two in the chest.
I stopped in my tracks, leaning up against the car as John hit his knees. His lifeless eyes rolled into the back of his head as blood poured down his skin. He fell face-first as sirens screeched in the distance, and the burning of rubber began as they crashed through my front gate. I stared at his body, his still and stoic body as it lay at my feet.
But Sam’s groan of pain pulled me from my trance.
I turned my head and saw her go down on the porch. I ran for her, sprinting as fast as I could. The shirt tied around her leg was soaked with blood, and I knew she was in a great deal of pain. Her ear was bleeding, and she was still holding her side as she slid down the doorframe of my front door.
“Sam! Can you hear me?” I asked.
“You ... are an idiot,” she said.
“I knew you’d come after me. I knew none of these guys were given orders to take anyone down. If they had been, they would’ve already laid deadly fire into him. Why didn’t you give them orders to shoot?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to kill that son of a bitch myself,” she said.
“Then maybe I’m not the one who’s the idiot,” I said in a whisper.
“You could’ve been killed,” she said breathlessly.
“I wasn’t going to let the woman I love die. No matter what I had to do, that wasn’t happening today. And it’s never going to happen, not while I’m around.”