“His word.” I almost laugh. “Karpov runs a criminal shipping operation, deploys surveillance teams to track pregnant women, and orchestrated my kidnapping from a public restaurant. You’re staking my life on his word, and he’ll betray you the moment you stop being useful.”
He doesn’t answer. He looks at his hands, and the anxiety underneath his composure is visible now in ways it wasn’t during our first conversation. He’s in deeper than he planned. He built this operation around the assumption that Karpov would honor their agreement, and he’s only now calculating the odds that Karpov won’t.
“Do you really believe Karpov will let either of us leave?” I ask it almost gently, because the question is more effective delivered without heat.
He doesn’t respond. His silence is the loudest admission he’s made since he walked into this room.
“Eric, you traded your badge, your career, and your freedom for a deal with a criminal whose primary skill is breaking deals. You brought me here to save me from one dangerous man by partnering with another, and now you’re sitting on a concrete floor while your business partner sets a trap designed to kill the father of my children.” I lean toward him slightly. “Is this really what you planned?”
“I planned for us to leave.” His voice is quieter now, and the bravado has drained out of it. “I planned to get you away from him, away from all of it, and start over. I didn’t plan for this to be the way it happened.”
“You never plan for what actually happens. You plan for what you want to happen, and then you get angry when reality doesn’t cooperate.” I hold his gaze. “That’s what you did during our entire relationship. You had a script, and every time I went off-script, you punished me until I got back on it. You’re doing the same thing now with higher stakes and worse partners.”
He opens his mouth to respond just as the first gunshot echoes through the building.
The sound is muffled by distance and concrete walls, but it’s unmistakably a sharp, suppressed cough followed by a second one, and then shouting from somewhere on the far side of the building. Eric is on his feet instantly, and he reaches for the weapon at his hip.
“They’re here.” He looks at the door, then at me, clearly deciding between the plan and the woman, between Karpov’s operation and his own obsession, and I already know which one wins because Eric always chooses possession over strategy.
I move.
I bring my right hand from behind my back with the bracket gripped point-forward, and I drive it into his left shoulder before he can turn back toward me. The metal bites through his shirt and into flesh, making him shout and stagger sideways. While he’s reaching for the wound, I’m already on my feet and running for the door.
I make it three steps before he catches me. He closes his hand around my arm, the same arm he bruised earlier, and yanks me backward hard enough that I stumble. I pivot and slash at his hand with the bracket. The corroded edge opens a cut across theback of his wrist, and he releases me, swearing through gritted teeth.
I run again. I reach the door and wrench it open. The corridor beyond is dim and empty. More gunfire comes from deeper in the building, closer now, and the shouts have multiplied. I turn right because the sounds of fighting are coming from the right, so Adrian is somewhere in that direction.
Eric catches me in the corridor. He wraps one arm around my waist from behind and drags me backward. I claw at his arm with the bracket until he grabs my wrist and twists until I drop it. The metal clatters on the concrete floor.
“Stop fighting me.” He’s breathing hard, and the wound on his shoulder is bleeding through his shirt. “Karpov will kill you if he gets the chance. I’m getting us both out of here.”
“There is no us!” I scream it because I’m done moderating my voice for his comfort. “Let go of me!”
He doesn’t let go. He drags me toward what looks like a secondary exit at the end of the corridor, and I fight him every step. I kick, twist, and drive my elbow into his ribs twice, but he outweighs me by sixty pounds, and he locks both arms around me.
Then Adrian appears at the far end of the corridor.
He rounds the corner with his weapon raised and stops. The sight of him is an immediate relief but also immediate danger because Adrian is fifteen feet away with a Glock aimed in our direction, and Eric is behind me with one arm locked around my chest, holding his own gun at his side.
We freeze. The three of us stand in the overhead light with the hum of the fixtures and the distant sound of water against the dock pilings filling the silence. Adrian’s gaze is locked on Eric, and the expression on his face strips away everything else. It goes beyond anger or calculation.
“Let her go, Eric.” His voice is low and steady, and every word sounds final. He’s clearly already decided the outcome and is giving Eric one chance to accept it.
Eric doesn’t let go. Instead, he shifts behind me and draws his weapon. He points it at Adrian, then at me, then at Adrian again, with his hand shaking and his breathing ragged. The wound on his shoulder is bleeding steadily, and the blood has soaked through his shirt to drip onto my arm where he’s gripping me.
Eric shifts the gun between Adrian and me. I know with absolute clarity that Eric won’t surrender. Surrender is prison, and prison is the end of him. He’d rather die controlling the outcome than live without power over it. He’ll kill me before he lets Adrian have me, because killing me gives him the final control in an argument he’s been losing since the night I left him.
Eric points the gun at Adrian as he shoves me backward to clear his sightline, and the push sends me stumbling toward the wall. I hit it with my back, and in the same second, I see a dropped guard slumped against the wall two feet to my right. His sidearm is on the floor beside his limp hand.
I freeze when I recognize him as the man who’d followed me at the university and at the restaurant, but I shake off the shock and lunge forward, grab the weapon, turn, raise it with both hands, and fire. It happens in one smooth motion, born more from necessity than the training Adrian gave me.
The shot hits Eric in the chest. He looks at me with an expression I’ll carry for the rest of my life. He’s betrayed, and he finally seems to understand that I meant every word I ever said about leaving him, and there being no us. With his mouth still open in surprise, he falls toward the floor.
The gun slips from his hand and clatters on the concrete. He hits the floor a second later, and the sound of his body is heavier than I expected. The corridor gets quiet. The distant gunfire has stopped, so I assume the building has been cleared.
I stand with the weapon still raised and wait to feel something I recognize. The emotion that arrives is a flat, ringing emptiness that feels like the space between one life and the next, between the woman who survived Eric Hayes and the woman who stopped him.
Then the relief hits, clean and carrying no guilt at all. Eric forced this outcome. Every choice he made from the moment he joined forces with Karpov led him to this corridor, and every choice I made led me to the gun in my hand. I chose survival over mercy, and I’d choose it again. I did what I had to do.
