“That’s her problem,” Simon said grimly. There was a smear of blood on his cheek and his mouth as more shots pinged off the bridge. They chipped the red paint and scraped raw lines in the metal. “You’re mine. Follow me.”
Dark head ducked under the level of the railings, he headed toward the stairs down to the park. Jacob glanced after him, and some irreverent part of his brain wondered how Simon made crab-walking appear elegant and dangerous. Then he looked back down at Nora.
Simon was right. After everything Nora had done to Jacob, it was hardly his problem that her chickens had come home to roost. Except she looked shaken and small, and he’d been there. Mostly because of her, but still.
“I never even thought to make a rule against this.” He pulled her arm over his shoulder and helped her up into a crouch. Her weight settled on his shoulder, and she muttered something grateful between clenched teeth. Jacob snorted and got her moving. He ducked as they stumbled after Simon. “Yeah? You want to pay me back? Anyone asks, you offered me money.”
Jacob’s mouth was so dry his tongue tasted like felt, and he could smell the blood and sweat coming off Nora. Her fingers dug into his shoulder, and she gasped raggedly. It made him want to apologize for hurting her, but there was no way for him not to.
He took his gaze off Simon’s broad back for a second and glanced down through a gap in the bridge. There were two men walking across the grass at as close to a run as they could get without drawing attention. They carried their jackets draped over their arms. It looked awkward, but good for hiding things.
“Did it never occur to you, when you were hiring these guys, that you’d gone too far?” Jacob asked.
Nora snorted. “I didn’t hire them,” she said. “Laramie, my contact at the DoD, put me in touch with Shaw when I found out you’d robbed us. I hired Shaw, and he found the others. Like I said, without you none of this would have happened.”
“If you hadn’t conned Clayton, none of this would have happened,” Jacob shot back.
They reached the steps down where Simon was waiting for them. He gave Jacob an annoyed look, and he answered with a shrug. It wasn’t like Jacob had any good reason for what he was doing. Simon shook his head, gave a barely there twitch of his chin, and dropped the issue.
He sent Jacob and Nora down the steps ahead of him. Jacob had to half drag Nora, and her weight nearly toppled them both as she tripped over her feet.
“We need to get out of here,” Simon said as they reached the bottom.
“We need to call the cops,” Jacob protested. “This is the one time they’d actually be useful.”
Simon handed him his phone. “Feel free, as soon as we’re out of range of their cell jammer,” he said. His mouth twitched with annoyance as he looked at Nora. “When your rent-a-thugs started trying to kill people, didn’t it occur to youthenthat things were getting out of hand?”
She huffed a laugh between clenched teeth. “Like I said, they aren’t listening to me anymore,” she said. “Shaw went behind my back to Laramie, and now he’s been put in charge. I answer to him.”
“So none of this was your fault?” Jacob asked skeptically.
“No,” Nora said quietly. “It was my fault, but it’s not what I had planned. I told Shaw I didn’t want anyone hurt, that we didn’t need to hurt anyone. If I’d just had a chance to talk to Harry, none of this would have happened.”
Simon shook his head and shoved them into motion. He was limping, Jacob noted. Worry tweaked at him, but their current situation seemed more pressing. As they reached the edge of the trees, he saw one of the two men stop on the grass. The man dropped his jacket and lifted a weirdly long gun.
It coughed. From where Jacob stood it sounded like a polite “ahem” when you blocked the aisle in a mall. Nora dragged him down to his knees as she swore and clutched her shoulder and fresh blood welled from the injury. The bullet hit a tree instead of him and spit out splinters.
Simon turned and raised his gun in one smooth movement. He went still, and his shoulders dropped as though he’d just found an opportunity to relax. Then he fired back. The crack of the gunshot was a lot more like what Jacob expected from watching TV.
The shooter staggered and fell over. He clutched at his leg with one hand, and blood soaked into the grass in a rapidly spreading puddle that suggested something important had been hit. Someone screamed. Maybe, Jacob thought woozily, the same people he’d seen earlier. The shooter’s friend was frozen in place and hesitated as he tried to work out what to do.
“Move.” Simon spat the order at them. He twisted at the waist and kept the gun pointed at the man still on his feet.
Stones dug into Jacob’s hands as he pushed himself to his feet. Although it increasingly looked like a bad idea, he helped Nora back up as well. She put her weight on him for a second and then pushed him away.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I don’t need help.”
It was a lie. Her voice shook and her skin had gone a washed-out taupe color—gray under the soft topaz brown of her skin tone. Jacob thought he might challenge her, but decided he’d done enough. He stepped to Simon.
“Si….”
“Go,” Simon said, but didn’t shift his attention. With the hand that wasn’t holding the gun, he gestured toward the path. “Walk fast. Don’t run. I’ll be behind you.”
Five steps later it occurred to Jacob that he should have waited or made some sort of protest. The whole “no, not without you” moment. Except that wasn’t in Jacob’s nature, not even for Simon. Besides, he wasn’t the badass.
He walked quickly along the path and occasionally broke into two steps worth of a jog before he managed to slow down. It didn’t make him stand out. A few people headed toward the sound of gunfire, but most had the good sense not to. Nora had paused to kick off her heels and stumbled along doggedly behind him with her shoes in her hand.
Jacob glanced over his shoulder. The tight knot in his chest relaxed a couple of notches when he saw Simon loping along after him, although he still favored one leg.
