Then shouting erupts somewhere outside the container.
Boots. Voices. Metal clanging.
His head jerks toward the sound.
I move.
I throw myself at him before he can think, before he can aim, before he can do anything but react. We hit each other hard enough to slam him back into the wall of the cage, his wounded side smashing against the metal with a grunt torn out of him.
The gun goes off.
The sound is so loud in the enclosed space it doesn’t even feel like sound. It feels physical. Like the air itself punches me.
Something slams hard into my middle. A blunt, brutal hit that steals my breath for half a second.
My ears ring.
He curses. The gun jerks in his hand.
I don’t think.
I catch his wrist with one hand and shove it up, sideways, anywhere but at me. With the other, I keep the knife tight in my grip. He’s bigger, but he’s bleeding and off-balance and I’m past fear now, somewhere meaner, hotter, all adrenaline and instinct and the ugly certainty that if I stop moving, I die here.
He snarls and tries to wrench the gun free. I drive the knife into his throat.
It isn’t clean.
The blade catches wrong, tears, then punches through.
Hot blood bursts over my hand, my wrist, the front of my shirt.
His mouth opens on a wet choking sound. The gun slips. I rip the knife out and stab again, lower this time, savage and fast and blind with the need to make sure he stays down.
He collapses to his knees.
The gun clatters from his hand.
I shove him hard.
He topples sideways, hits the floor of the cage, twitching, choking on his own blood.
I don’t wait for him to finish dying.
I snatch up the gun, nearly dropping it because my hands are shaking so hard.
Move.
The word cracks through my skull like an order.
I stumble over him, shoulder clipping the cage door hard enough to make it rattle, and lunge out into the container, breath tearing in and out of me, knife in one hand, gun in the other, heart trying to punch through my ribs.
The voices outside are louder now. Closer.
I run for the container door.
The light outside hits me like a blow after so long in the dark, bright enough to make me flinch. My vision swims for half a second before a hand wraps around my wrist.
Chapter 58
