Which was good because he had to pivot even more quickly.
Darius dropped his hold on the woman and switched his hand over to Eve. Timing wasn’t on his side. He trained his new gun down the hallway on the bedroom door, hoping the man who had gone searching inside was slower than him.
He wasn’t.
The man came out of the main bedroom, gun already up.
Darius shot the second he could. He missed but knew he would.
He was too busy yanking Eve by the shirt backward into the kitchen with all the force he had.
The sound of fabric tearing was overshadowed by the man’s returning fire.
“Stop!” the woman on the ground yelled out.
The man didn’t listen. Darius jumped backward into the kitchen, out of sight, while the man continued to unload his clip with no obvious regard for his partner lying in the way.
She tried to make herself flat, yelling out for the man to stop, eyes closing at each shot. Pain already etched into every syllable from her broken wrist.
Whoever the man down the hall was, he was unaffected.
Darius wasn’t.
He reached down to grab the woman’s leg and pulled her back with him into the kitchen. She didn’t fight him, but she sure yelled.
Darius didn’t join her as the man thundered into view, eyes wide and gun up.
The fact of the matter was Darius had already decided to pull the trigger the second he saw the gunman. He had been after Eve, and he had no issues about shooting at her, at his partner, and obviously no issues with killing Darius too.
This was no longer a defensive play.
He was only waiting for a kill shot.
So the nanosecond the man showed his face—sharp lines and stubble and rage—Darius’s index finger flexed, pulling the trigger with certainty.
The gun, however, had other plans.
For the first time in Darius’s career, his gun jammed.
The shot that tore through the house after was deafening.
Chapter Sixteen
Eve only saw one of three things that happened all at once.
The woman lying on the floor between Darius’s legs gave the man a look of such acute concern that, for that moment, it seemed she had forgotten to be angry or in pain or that fighting them might have been in her best interest.
Instead, it was worry.
She could see something that Eve, at Darius’s back, couldn’t see.
And that was before the shot went off.
After her gaze went from concern to blatant confusion.
Then Eve’s attention split to the other two things that had happened while her focus had strayed.
A heavy thud and a slight shake of the foundation let her know that the man in the hallway had taken the single shot. At least, Eve knew it wasn’t Darius. Her hands were already against his back, as if touching him let her know he was still standing. Theo had been more proactive.
