“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Nothing. I need you to behave as if everything is normal while I sort it all out. As soon as it’s time to eliminate a threat, you’ll be notified.”
“Okay.”
“And whatever you do, do not talk to Avion,” I said.
Milli nodded, a dark smile crossing his face. “Of course not. I’m not giving that traitor anything else.”
53
AVION
The sound of bullets piercing in the distance was more unsettling than I wanted to admit. Part of what I was hoping to get used to during my time with the Raines, was the ability to hear bullets and see them flying through the air without getting my nerves shot, but it wasn’t going well so far. I was ducked down behind a tree, trying my hardest to keep my breathing quiet and my mind focused, but my heart was beating so hard I was certain it could be heard.
“Oh, Avion,” a voice sang through the woods. “Come on out. I won’t hurt you.”
“Right,” I whispered to myself.
The woods surrounding Giovanni’s new estate had more than a few places to hide. I knew them better, thanks to my training with Milli. Whether I thought he was a traitor or not, the things that he’d taught me were invaluable. I knew how to walk around a forest without alerting someone else to my presence, which was exactly what I needed to do here, or my game was over.
A fairly thick tree a little to my left with a rotted-out hole would give me the coverage I needed, but I still needed to reload my gun and that was going to make some noise. It was so stupid fo me to let the clip empty when I knew I was going up against a master tactician. If I didn’t want to die, I needed to be a little more sparing in how I used my bullets, but preferred I needed to just find the advantage somehow.
Staying crouched low to the ground, I started to push my way through the early morning fog towards the tree with the hole. My feet were making little to no sound, apart from the very quiet crunch of breaking frost. Afraid that I was going to attract too much attention, I snagged up a rock from the ground and tossed it in the opposite direction from where I was running, hitting it square against a tree. I heard a loud shift as my pursuer no doubt faced the noise I made, and then I could just faintly hear the sounds of their footsteps quietly stepping towards it.
Just as I was ducking into the hole, I saw a gun come poking slowly around one of the trees, but I managed to get my head ducked inside before I was seen.
I hoped.
With the quiet precision of someone disarming a bomb, I pulled my spare clip out of my pocket and started to quietly reload my gun. The muted clicks seemed thunderous in the silence. I kept pausing along the way to throw someone off who might be listening. My hands were shaking, which was frustrating, but against the odds, I managed to get my gun reloaded and ready to go.
So this time I had to be smarter about what I did.
Peeking out from the hole in the tree, I looked to the right and the left, but I didn’t see anyone there. The edge of Gio’s estate was in the distance, but I didn’t think that I could make it there without attracting any attention at all. Escape wasn’t going to be the way out of this, I was going to have to win in a battle against someone I’d never beaten before.
It was hard not to be pessimistic.
I closed my eyes and tried to tune into my surroundings. I listened for the smallest snap of a twig or slightly too-loud breath, and heard what I was searching for a little to my right. My pursuer was close, so getting out of the tree wasn’t going to be easy. I had to get to my feet before I was found.
I carefully stuck one foot out and leveraged my weight forward out of the tree, moving slowly and silently, then I lifted my back foot and planted it just outside the tree so that I could spring myself to my feet. The action made all the leaves around the hole of the tree rustle, and I immediately heard footsteps from the other side of the tree starting to move in my direction.
“There you are.”
“Shit,” I hissed.
I took off running and could immediately hear footsteps behind me, followed shortly thereafter by the sound of bullets flying. I kept ducking around trees, running in a very indirect and serpentine pattern, before I finally realized I only had one chance.
To shoot and hope I got lucky.
I kept running until I found a fairly large tree, then I looped around it, but rather than just rounding it and continuing straight, I ran all the way around it in a circle, until I was looking at my pursuer's back. I was so excited I could puke, but I didn’t let that distract me as I jumped forward and wrapped my arms around her neck, hemming her up and bringing my gun up to her chin.
“Gotcha,” I said. Tamryn started to laugh and I released her, doubling over then to try and catch my breath. “Fuck. That was hard.”
“Yeah! But you got me.” She tapped the top of my head. “If that were real, you absolutely would have been able to take me out. Good job, Avion. Your training is paying off. I didn’t see that coming.”
“I think I just got lucky,” I moaned.
“Not at all,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with using what others aren’t expecting to your advantage. There’s nothing I love more than when someone looks at me and thinks I won’t shoot. It means I can fire without hesitation because their guard is down.”
