The kid’s face washed out to a kind of clammy white—Martin could see every drop of sweat and every inflamed pimple standing out on his skin. He must have been so easy to spin up. His hand faltered, the angle of his shot dropping a little lower.
Jamie said, “He said he could get me a helicopter.”
Back behind Martin, Bruce groaned.
“You lied to me?” Jamie said weakly. “You can’t help me?”
“Look,” Bruce said, and already Martin could hear him trying to lay on the charm—the charm Tiffani had said he could switch on and off with a flick of his wrist. “It’s just a prank. No one’s going to get you in any serious trouble for a stupid prank—”
Jamie screamed something inarticulate and swung his whole body towards Bruce.
And towards Tiffani. She was right in his line of fire.
Oh, God, no.
In a cold rush of instinct, Martin launched himself forward.
He hit the kid—and then the floor—so hard that for a moment he couldn’t have said whether or not the gun had actually gone off. His ears were pounding too hard with his own heartbeat, and he was too jarred by their collision.
But a few seconds of desperate grappling, scrambling around for the gun, reassured him a little. He had been shot before, and he could feel nothing of that pain now. And when he wrested the gun away from Tim, the muzzle was cold.
Cold and—not metal?
He snapped on the handcuffs and got up and away from the kid as quickly as he could. The last thing he wanted now was to put Jamie within reach of his own—much more real—weapon.
“Are you all right? Tiffani, are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” She squeezed his shoulder. Her voice was music to his ears. “I’m fine, you got him in time. You’re okay?”
He exhaled. “Yeah.” He held up the gun. “It’s plastic, from a 3D printer. It might fire, it might not. But that must be how he got it in past the metal detectors.”
He didn’t know why he was explaining this—he thought he might be in a little bit of shock. The terror of having his mate threatened and his own life almost taken was slowly sinking in, like cold water had started seeping all the way up his body.
He blinked a few times. “Where’s Bruce?”
“Unconscious,” Tiffani said.
“Unconscious?”
He had almost forgotten McMillan was even there, but then that skull-faced, lipless man said, with perfect serenity, “He tried to run and I cracked him in the back of the skull with my gavel.”
Well. He was still an asshole. Martin wasn’t going to forget that anytime soon. If McMillan had been able to work with people, Bruce wouldn’t have hated him, and if he hadn’t been so harsh, Bruce wouldn’t have been able to find a kid dumb enough and aggrieved enough to complete his plan. A kid who had now subsided into muffled crying.
But he could save all of that for later.
He took Tiffani in his arms and wasn’t surprised at all when she let out a single sob against his chest. The adrenaline was draining away from them both, leaving behind nothing but shakiness and the vertigo-like fear of what had almost happened right in front of them.
All he wanted was to bask in the smell of her hair and the feel of her warm, soft body against his own. Her skin smelled like warm gingerbread.
“You were so brave,” he whispered.
She tilted her head against him in what he thought was probably meant to be a nod. “I think we were both fairly badass.”
He kissed her forehead. This was probably the last still moment they would have for a while, and he wanted to leave her with as much tenderness as he could.
Really, he never wanted to leave her at all.
He went and cautiously opened the main courtroom door about an inch. The last thing he wanted to do was fling it wide open when he had no doubt there was a SWAT team huddled out there, along with all his Marshals at their tensest and most diligent.