Drawn in Blood (Burbank and Parker 2)
Wallace knew it.
With a burst of adrenaline, he used his legs to push off, toppling the chair sideways and to the floor. As he went over, he managed to send an elbow into the face of the leader. It was a glancing blow, but it knocked the Albanian off guard for an instant.
That’s all Derek needed. With the skill of an Army Ranger, honed by years of FBI SWAT training, he fired a burst of ammo from his weapon, striking the leader in the chest, neck, and head.
In a matter of seconds, two gunmen were dead.
The two remaining Albanians heard the gunfire. They abandoned their assignment, grabbed their walkie-talkies, and began barking questions into them, demanding to know what had happened.
There was no response.
Panicked, they snatched up their partially full duffel bags and headed toward the staircase that would take them down to the museum entrance.
Derek and Rich rounded the top-floor corner just as the last hooded killer was about to disappear down the stairs. Rich fired his shotgun, the blast taking out a chunk of the wall and shattering the trailing gunman’s leg.
The wounded man fell to the ground, shouting out in pain, while his colleague raced on, desperate to flee the museum.
“Rich, secure him,” Derek called, gesturing at the maimed Albanian as he stepped over his body and kicked his subgun out of reach. “I’m going after the last guy.” With that, he raced down the staircase.
Sloane had inched her way across the first floor of the museum and was at the base of the staircase when she heard the shotgun blast. She halted, waiting for what came next.
Pounding footsteps, descending the stairs in a frenzy and heading in her direction.
She retraced her steps at a run, reaching the museum’s entranceway, then crossing over and hiding in an alcove near the door. The staircase was at the far end of the hall, a full length away from the entrance, but Sloane still had a full view of its base.
A hooded man, dressed in a black turtleneck and tactical pants, rounded the bend and hit the ground floor, turning sharply and racing toward the entranceway. Sloane’s gut clenched when she saw who was flying down the steps in close pursuit.
Derek.
The gunman sensed that Derek was closing in on him. He stopped—about thirty feet from where Sloane had taken cover—and pivoted. Derek wouldn’t be able to see hi
m until he reached the ground floor, where he’d be standing like a human target on a shooting range.
The gunman realized his advantage at the exact time Sloane did. Seizing the opportunity, he wrapped the sling of his subgun around his arm and prepared to open fire.
No matter how fast Derek’s reflexes were, he could never take the gunman down first.
Instinct. Training. Muscle memory. They all kicked in, and Sloane edged her way out of the alcove. No time to aim for body mass. If she succeeded only in wounding the SOB, he’d still get off a round of fire that would blast Derek.
No. This situation required a kill shot.
She raised her weapon, focusing on the back of the gunman’s head, and aimed at the exact spot that would be her bull’s-eye.
Then she squeezed the trigger.
EPILOGUE
“I’d forgotten how much paperwork has to be done after a big case.”
It was a week after the thwarted museum heist, and Sloane was perched at the edge of Derek’s desk as he typed up yet another FD-302. “Or maybe I just blocked out the memory.”
A corner of Derek’s mouth lifted. “You mean you don’t find 302s the highlight of being a special agent?”
“Nope.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But I’d suffer them if it came with the rest of the package.”
“So I gathered, Bull’s-Eye Burbank.”
Sloane’s lips twitched at Derek’s form of address. The story of her dead-on shot that had killed the Albanian gunman at the Jaspar had quickly spread through the New York Field Office. Somewhere along the line, one of the agents had come up with the nickname “Bull’s-Eye Burbank.” And it had stuck.