My hands shake as a sob lurches up my throat. "No, please," I beg. Because I know Dane will come out. He'll walk out with his hands up and his guns down and he will let Cal Maddox shoot him right between the eyes if it means saving me, and Cal will kill us both.
"Twenty seconds!" Cal calls.
I can't let that happen—I won't.
My mind is racing trying to figure out what to do. He's bigger than me and has my weapon, but I have a knife tucked into my waistband in the back, sheathed in leather. Dane had one, so I took one too, the one I gave him. He left it on the nightstand and I saw it on impulse and sheathed it on my belt.
"Ten seconds!" Cal's voice rises and he sounds almost giddy. The fucker is getting off on this, the terror he's inflicting on us even when half of his men lie dead or dying on the cobblestones.
I shift my weight slightly, testing whether he'll react, and he doesn't. His focus is split between me and the square, watching for Dane to appear. That split focus is my opening.
I reach behind me slowly, my hand sliding beneath my coat. The handle of the knife presses against my palm, and I wrap my fingers around it and pull it free, keeping the blade hidden against my forearm.
"Five seconds!" he screams louder than before, and my heart is hammering now. I'm really going to do this—attack a maniac with a gun and all I have is a knife.
"Wait," I say, my voice cracking. "Please. Don't do this."
Maddox snaps his full attention to me with an angry glare. "You took everything from me. My father. My family's respect. My future." He scoffs and turns his gun sideways like he's a gangbanger or something. "You owe me."
"I owe you the truth," I tell him. "But you won't listen."
Then I hear Dane's voice cut through our conversation. "Let her go, Cal!"
He's at the mouth of the alley with his gun raised, his face twisted with rage and fear. He looks ready to tear Cal apart with his bare hands and I believe he could do that quite literally.
Cal smiles. "There you are, Mr. Barrett. Welcome to our little party."
He swings the gun toward Dane, and I don't even think. I move as fast as I can, driving the knife into the flesh of his back. There’s no Kevlar vest with plates to stop its plunge and his gun wavers in midair, firing off a shot that ricochets off the building over Dane's head.
Cal's body goes rigid as my hand grows warm with his blood, and I pull the knife back and step away, cowering against the wall as sobs erupt out of my throat. I'm trembling, shaking so hard my knees give out, and I slide to the ground faster than Cal collapses. Blood blooms across his coat and begins to puddle in the alley's slush. He looks down at the snow, then at me, and the shock in his eyes turns to fury.
With jerky movements he raises the gun again, trying to spin toward me, but Dane's faster.
Three shots ring out as crisp and piercing as alarm bells, and Cal jerks with each impact, his body crumpling. The gun falls from his hand and drops to the snow, then he collapses onto his knees and pitches forward into the snow.
Dane is beside me in seconds, his hands on my face, my shoulders, checking for injuries. "Are you hurt? Did he?—"
"I'm okay." My voice shakes. The knife in my hand is slick with blood. "I'm okay."
He pulls me against himself, and I feel the tremor running through his body. Relief or rage or both. His heart pounds against my chest, and I realize how close we came to losing this.
"You stabbed him," Dane says, pulling back to look at me. There's something almost awed in his expression.
"I did."
"Where did you get a knife?"
"It's the one I bought for you." I hold it up with a trembling grip and he takes it from me. "I thought one of us should use it."
He snorts out a laugh and then kisses me hard, and when he pulls back, his expression has shifted into focus. "We need to get you out of here. Can you walk?"
"Yes."
He keeps one arm around me as we move back toward the square. The gunfire has finally stopped, and I feel like it's over. Bodies litter the cobblestones, and the townspeople are emerging from cover, dazed and bloodied but alive. Varenstands near the fountain, talking into his radio, and Miles is helping Mira carry someone toward the diner.
Dane guides me to a bench near the tree, and I sink onto it, my legs finally giving out. He's taken the knife from my hand, but it's still coated in Cal's thick blood. I can't stop staring at it knowing I stabbed him. He may have lived from that, but Dane killed him right in front of me.
"Hey." Dane crouches in front of me, his hands on my knees. "Look at me."
