I didn’t wait to see his reaction. I lunged over the tiny counter, feeling the cut in my hand rip open when I landed on the other side. More bullets lodged themselves in the wall, counter, and one shattered the window.
My hand closed around a shoe lying nearby, and I chucked it across the room and took off for the window. The bullets followed the shoe, and I jumped on the tiny table to scramble out the window.
The glass was jagged, the frame small, but I shoved through it anyway, pain slicing through me as I went.
A few more shots, then a couple curses. “I’m out of bullets.”
I dropped onto the fire escape, and the man I bit put his arm and head out the window. Since I was already on my ass, I reared back and kicked him with as much force as I could muster.
His head flew to the side, and I scrambled to the ladder, scurrying down, not bothering to look up until I was a few stories down. When I did, they weren’t there, and I found their absence almost as scary as their presence. I continued down, ignoring the pain I felt all over, skipping the last section of ladder to leap into the alley.
“This way!” a deep voice said, appearing around the building.
I took off in the opposite direction, racing to the end of the alley to slip through a small opening in the fence. It shook and clanked behind me as I kept going, steering around the corner and out of sight.
I didn’t stop. I ran until vomit chased itself up my throat and my feet ached from slapping the pavement. I weaved through alleyways and cut through a construction site. I ran until I couldn’t anymore and ducked into a boat docked at the marina on Lake Erie.
Below deck, I fell onto my ass, my lungs working overtime to get air. I’d run farther than I intended, but once that survival instinct kicked in, it was all I could do. My entire body was sweaty and hurting, but I was too pumped full of adrenaline and whatever else to be able to check myself for injuries.
Instead, I rolled onto my side, pulled my knees in, and rested my overheated cheek against the cold floor. The boat swayed with the water’s movement, and the only sound was my ragged breathing. I couldn’t stay here long. I couldn’t risk whoever owned this boat coming aboard and finding me.
But I could stay long enough to catch my breath and try to process the fact that someone was trying to kill me. I realized then that my name wasn’t all that was mine.
My life was too.
And whoever those guys were, they wanted to take both.
I curled a little closer into myself, trying to feel comforted by the gentle rocking of the boat. But all I could think about was how I wished I’d taken Kieran’s phone number.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Kieran
The bell on the door chimed when I walked into the Neon Reef. Most of the light from the place came not from the shitty overheads but from all the tanks lining the walls. There were even tanks in the center, walls of them forming their own rows. It was like a library, but instead of books, there were fish.
Music played through overhead speakers, likely from the local radio station.
Passing by a rack of food and another of tank accessories, I went to the counter and hit the bell. No one came, and I hit it again.
“Coming!” a voice that did not belong to Haz called, and a man stepped from the back of the store. “How can I?—”
I cut him off. “Where’s Haz.”
The man who was probably not even twenty-five seemed surprised. “Haz?”
“Don’t play stupid. I know he worked today because I dropped him off.”
The man rubbed the back of his neck. “Right, Haz. He, ah, already left.”
“He left,” I reiterated.
The man nodded.
I pushed past him to go into the small, cluttered room in the back.
“That’s for employees only,” he said, following me.
