Page 51 of Antonio Miles

The door opened again almost the second my hands came free. Same guard, gun still holstered because he hadn’t expected trouble from his “cargo,” moved fast toward Mercy first since she was closer to the door.

I didn’t think. I came up off the floor and drove my good shoulder into his back before he’d fully cleared the frame. Pain exploded through my other shoulder and I couldn’t stop the cry that exploded from me. Mercy was already moving, her own hands free, both of us on him before he could turn his weight into anything useful. Even though I couldn’t do much more than wrap my legs round his and tangle the bastard up, the fight was fast and ugly. Mercy kicked his head. When he flipped to his back to defend himself, she stomped his throat twice as hard as she could. He thrashed a couple seconds before he stilled, his windpipe crushed.

I pried the gun from his holster and stood there over him with the weight of it heavy and familiar in my hand.

Mercy gave me a crisp nod. “We doing this now?”

“I mean, what have we really got to lose?”

“You know the best way?”

“Left,” I said, already moving into the corridor. “This hall runs past three holding rooms before it leads toward the stairs and splits toward the main floor. I’ve been through it.”

“We’re on the same page.” She grinned at me, then we headed out. Mercy fell in behind me, quiet and quick, her bare feet silent on the tile where I still had shoes. Once we made it to the ground floor we moved toward the bigger bay area the exit. Gunfire kept rolling in from the direction of the loading bay, farther off now, punctuated by shouting that sounded like someone was getting an ass kicking.

We hit the T-junction and a man came around the corner fast, reaching for Mercy’s arm before he’d even registered what he was grabbing. Mercy twisted into him instead of away and drove her elbow up under his jaw. I closed the gap and brought the butt of the gun down across the back of his skull. He dropped. I pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger, snarling as I did so.

Antonio came around the same corner that same instant. He had blood across his jaw and down the front of his shirt, dark and drying, and his eyes looked completely wild, like the most rabid dog ever and he’d slipped his leash. He didn’t stop moving until he was close enough to touch me, and then his hand came out toward the gun in my grip, the same motion I’d seen him make with Kass and Finch a hundred times. Take the weapon. Put himself between me and whatever came next.

“No,” I said.

One word. His hand stopped an inch from mine, hung there a second too long. Then he pulled the hand back and stepped sideways instead of forward, so he was at my shoulder instead of in front of it.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Give me the rundown.”

“Main floor’s straight through that door. Stairs up are past it, second corridor on the right.” I kept moving, and he kept pace beside me.

A man came out of a side room with a rifle half-raised and Antonio put two rounds in his chest almost before I registered the guy. Another appeared at the far end of the hall and Antonio fired again. The man folded against the wall and slid down it, leaving a dark smear behind him.

I looked behind us where Mercy followed. I stopped and looked from Tonio to Mercy and back. The other woman wasn’t hurt and she could obviously handle herself. “My shoulder’s shit,” I said to her. “Can you…”

She held out her hand and I gave her my weapon. Mercy ejected the clip to check the rounds, then reloaded and made sure there was a round in the chamber. “I’m good.” She addressed Tonio. “You have a team?”

“I do.” Tonio lifted his chin.

“Then you don’t need a wild card. I’ll have your back but won’t engage unless you tell me.”

Tonio narrowed his gaze. “You military?”

“Was.” She held his gaze, but I could see the defiance.

“Next hall bends right, then there’s a door that used to have a keypad,” I said. “Might not anymore, way it sounded earlier.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

We hit the stairwell at a dead run, Mercy still close behind, and found it blocked. A man stood two steps up, broad through the shoulders, gray hair cropped close to his skull. I recognized the fucking bastard too.

“Rainman,” I breathed out softly, my words quivering. The man who’d stood at the edge of the room the first time I ever saw Denton work a buyer, the most dangerous person in any room he occupied. He held a pistol steady in both hands.

Carrie hit him from the side stairwell landing, moving low and mean. Hawk came in from the other angle a half second later. Rainman got one round off that punched into the wall a foot from my head, plaster raining down, and then Carrie opened his forearm to the bone with her knife, and his gun clattered down the steps. Hawk finished it fast, two shots at close range to his head. Rainman went down against the railing, gray eyes open and fixed on nothing.

Carrie wiped her blade on her thigh, glanced at me, and gave me a short nod.

The stairwell stood open above us, empty now, amber light bleeding down from the landing where the next floor waited. “Top floor,” I said, looking at Antonio. “I’ll take you.”

We didn’t encounter anyone else on our way to the office. Once we reached the door, we stopped.

“Knight says the back stair’s sealed.” Hawk glanced at Tonio. “Sealed it an hour before we ever hit the loading bay. He’s got nowhere left to go but that door. And we know for a fact he didn’t make it out.”