He glances at Saint as the body slumps. “Hey, Saint.”
The woman hits the tile with a heavy, final sound.
He shrugs once, almost apologetic. “It’s nothing personal, you know.” Then he punches her.
The right hook lands clean and spins her halfway around, hard enough that I feel it in my own jaw.
She doesn’t fall, just grabs.
Her hand closes around the meat cleaver sitting on the cutting block of the Chinese fast food counter, and sheburies in Derek’s head with a crack, dropping him mid-step like his strings got cut.
“Well, Derek,” she says evenly, already turning away, “it feels personal.”
She’s talking to a corpse.
I still don’t quite get to her.
Someone kicks my gun out of my hand, sending it skidding across the tile. We collide hard, bodies slamming together, fists flying. I take an elbow to the jaw and answer with the butt of the gun when I reclaim it, striking his skull again and again until he drops boneless at my feet. “Mother fucking asshole.” I grit out.
I’m almost to her now, near the same Chinese fast food restaurant, when another shot rips through the space and blows out the glass. “Oh, shit.”
Shards rain down, rice and meat and sauce splattering across the floor in a steaming mess.
I grab a massive pan of egg drop soup from the counter and fling it straight into an attacker’s face. He screams as the scalding liquid blinds him, and I’m on him before the sound finishes, snapping his neck with both hands.
Saint sweeps low, knocking a woman off her feet, dodging the snap of nun chucks as they whistle past her head. She grabs the giant pan of fried rice, hefts it once, and brings the edge down with everything she has. “Wrong bitch.”
She growls out as metal hits bone.
The pan clatters to the tile, and the woman’s body goes slack, her head separated so cleanly it takes a moment for my brain to catch up. Steam curls around thecorpse, rice scattered everywhere, her eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Saint’s face was probably the last thing she saw.
Saint doesn’t notice the next assassin, gun raised and aimed square at her.
But I do. “Watch it.” I call out. Lunging and ripping the pan back up, angling it just in time as bullets slam into the metal. Sparks fly while I brace us both behind it, my eyes searching her face. “What’s the plan, Saint?”
The clip empties, the gun clicks, and I rise in one motion, hurling the pan like a discus.
It slams into his throat with a sickening crunch, collapsing his windpipe. He drops instantly, hands clawing uselessly at his neck.
I snatch his gun and the spare clip from his belt.
“You’ll see.” Saint is already moving again, cleaver yanked free from Derek’s skull, blood dripping from the blade. She throws it barely looking, end over end, and it passes so close to my shoulder I have to shift to avoid it.
A wet sound lands behind me.
A woman collapses, the cleaver buried in her chest. I step forward and finish it, driving my boot down until it punches through bone and into her heart.
“Let’s go,” I shout.
Saint doesn’t slow. She was already turning, already sprinting deeper into the terminal.
A gunshot cracks behind us, followed by Tex’s furious voice, thick with pain and promise, but we don’t stop. “You should’ve taken the head shot, Alejandro!” We duck instinctively and keep running, weaving through smoke, alarms, and bodies.
I turn on occasion, sending a bullet or two behind us.One shot hits a fire extinguisher and blasts an assassin in the face. The next shot kills them.
I’m trying to figure out what her plan is when I see it.
Red lettering, bright and unmissable at one of the gates ahead.
