“Fuck.”
“They want me,” Nora said. Her body turned into dead weight as she stopped helping him. “Just go.”
He yanked her along with him. “You aren’t getting out of this. You’re going to testify against your ‘friend’ Laramie and clear Dev’s name. You owe Becca that much. You owe Callie that much. She’s lost her mom, she’s losing you—you can’t take her dad away too.”
Invoking the kid worked. Nora’s shoulders slumped as the defiance drained out of her. She dredged some energy up from somewhere and staggered along with him toward the ramp. Two steps down the oily concrete slope, and a familiar black Jeep rolled up to block their path. Behind the tinted glass, Simon could see Shaw’s smug smile. The car settled back on its tires as the brakes were pressed and the door cracked open.
Simon drew his gun in one easy movement and fired. Bullets pocked the reinforced glass and pinned Shaw behind the door. The sound echoed back off the walls and made his already-compromised ears ache.
“Back up.” Simon pushed Nora with his shoulder.
They retreated just as the puffy-mouthed Milo and two other men burst out of the stairwell. Simon snapped off two shots, scattered them, and hit one in the arm. The injured man staggered, tripped his companions, and fired back blindly. Simon dodged into the cover of an old blue Toyota, glanced around, and tried to focus through the smog of old actions as they jostled for primacy in his brain. Fire above, enemies here, and below….
“You got a plan, Ramsey?” Shaw asked as he appeared at the top of the ramp. He was wearing a bulletproof vest buckled tight under his jacket and carrying a semiautomatic. Simon cursed and pushed Nora farther into the cover of the car. “Because I can’t see how this is going to end well for you.”
The odds hadn’t been good. They had just gotten worse.
“You blew up my car.”
“Yes,” Shaw agreed cheerfully. “With your history and that VA file, no one would have questioned it. Taking Nora along with you is a bit odder, but once it came to light that you were working together to destroy Dev Porter…. Well, then it’s just tidy, isn’t it? This, though, ah… this is more of a mess. Come out.”
Simon blinked dust out of his eyes—sandy boots and loose trousers approached the Jeep, framed by the starburst of shattered glass. He snorted.
“Get fucked.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Shaw said flatly. “You’ve already made this messy. I can make it very messy. That’ll be painful.”
Simon fired around the bumper of the car. He missed and gouged a chunk out of the ground. Shaw jumped back. He spat out a curse and stitched gunfire across the front of the. The tires popped in ribbons of rubber. The chassis shuddered under the impact and jarred Simon’s bones.
“Can you run?” he asked Nora.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Try.”
He crawled to the back of the car. Shaw said something, but it didn’t seem worth it to pay attention. Simon crouched at the bumper, tried to ignore the tearing ache in his thigh, and then lunged out. He fired off three shots in quick succession, scattered the goons, and caught Shaw square in the chest. The vest stopped it from being fatal, but it still knocked him back on his heels.
Impact with the ground ripped something loose in Simon’s shoulder. It felt like hot wire pulled the joint apart, and the arm went loose and awkward. He switched the gun to his other hand and took another shot as he rolled onto his knees. Milo went down with a shattered shin and dropped his gun like an amateur.
Shaw hadn’t.
The impact caught Simon in the chest and knocked him off balance. He grunted out a ragged noise that gave on being a curse halfway through, and he tried to lift the gun. Neither arm would cooperate. Shaw stepped forward and roughly twisted the weapon out of his hand.
“You’re a loyal bastard,” Shaw said mildly. “I’ll give you that. It’s not going to do you any good, though.”
“You think Dev will let this go?” Simon asked raggedly and clenched his jaw against the pain. “Trust me. That’s not one of his strengths.”
Shaw pressed the gun against Simon’s temple, hard enough to bruise. “Then I guess I’ll have to kill him too.”
Simon closed his eyes. A shot rang out. Since blackness didn’t follow—just the bloody throb he already had—he opened his eyes again.
“Put your hands up,” a woman yelled. “Hands in the air. San Antonio PD. Get those hands where I can see them.”
Black-clad figures in SWAT gear burst out of the stairwell and up the ramp, guns up and ready. Milo made a move for his gun, and his fingers closed around the butt. When a barked command to drop it didn’t work, one of the officers shot him in the head. The rest glanced from the messily dead man to Shaw, put their arms up, and tossed their guns compliantly.
Simon looked up the barrel of the gun to Shaw and bared his teeth in a miserable grin. He could taste blood on his tongue. “Go for it.”
After a second Shaw smiled thinly and stepped back. He obeyed the yelled commands to drop the gun, went down onto his knees, and folded his arms behind his head. One of the SWAT officers grabbed him and wrenched his arms back to cuff him. The rest of the men were cuffed and pushed flat onto the ground, and two officers helped Nora up from where she’d been hiding.
