Page 13 of Just George

“I’m—oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” she whispered beside me, and I leaned sideways, looked where they were dragging the kid, and returned fire, my Glock 19 sounding loud in the parking structure as I squeezed off shot after shot, the men retreating behind parked cars.

“You’re so lucky,” I told her, moving sideways, hitting one guy, dropping another, thrilled that, even though they were all shooting, there didn’t seem to be even one guy with any real training. They were filling the air with lead, hoping to hit something, but from where Hannah and I were, behind an enormous Chevy Suburban, we were pretty safe.

“Drop the gun.”

Turning to my left, I saw a guy with an Uzi pointed at Hannah at the same time I heard someone else coming around the right side of the SUV to reach me. “You’re supposed to be watching my six,” I growled at her.

“You’re mad at me?” She was indignant.

The way she answered me made the guy really focus on her, and seeing how young she was gave him pause. That was good, gave us more time, but she’d already kicked her shoes off when she ran after David, so she didn’t really need it. She easily swept his legs out from under him and put him on the pavement.

I shot the guy on my right in the foot, and when he crashed to the ground beside me, put one in his head, then shot in the temple the guy Hannah had taken down.

It took seconds, and she was quick, pulling the Uzi away and passing it to me. With the machine gun in my right hand and my Glock in my left, I stood, shot out the rest of the tires of all the cars around us so nothing was drivable, then ducked back down before I heard squealing tires, which meant more people were coming and their arrival was imminent.

I would not allow Hannah to be grabbed, and she could not be in a larger firefight.

Taking hold of her chin, I had her face me. “You go back inside and get help, you understand me? I’ll cover you, you run.”

“No, no, no,” she whimpered. “I can’t leave you. I just saved your life.”

“I don’t give a shit. You’re gonna get me killed. You go now, or God help me, if I get outta this I will never speak to you again for as long as I live.”

“Oh,” she cried softly, weighing her options, and I stood and emptied the Uzi into the van that pulled up between the SUV we were taking cover behind and the original kidnappers. I threw the useless gun away as she flew back to the door of the hotel and disappeared inside as more bullets filled the air.

The sound of an AK-47 being fired was imprinted on my brain after so long, and though I was glad more people with submachine guns had not appeared, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I could hold off everyone alone, especially if more and more people showed up. By the same token, if this was the extent of their men and arsenal, and if my backup arrived soon—there were many cops outside—it was possible that I’d get out of the parking structure alive. My present concern was that I needed to get David out with me.

At that moment, someone with a brain yelled over to me.

“We’ll kill him if you don’t put down your weapon.”

I was glad Hannah wasn’t there to see me put my Glock on the ground.

They were on me fast, and because nothing anywhere near us, not even the van that had arrived seconds before, had working tires—I was trained to always shoot those out first—I was marched down ten cars to a Lexus SUV that was opened fast, hotwired even faster, and I then was shoved into the back seat with an unconscious David and two others like stone-faced bookends on either side of us.

“Why am I here?” I asked. I wasn’t stupid. They didn’t need me.

“You’re gonna get us out of here or the kid dies now,” the driver informed me. “We know you’re Sutter’s daughter’s bodyguard, so I know you can make it happen.”

People always thought Hannah was Aaron’s daughter. All they had to do was a bit of research to discover the truth.

“We would have grabbed her instead of the Chan heir, but we knew he had no bodyguards, and between you and Sutter’s people, that wasn’t gonna work.”

I was sure that, between all the uniformed police officers and it being Aaron Sutter’s event, David Chan’s mother hadn’t seen the need for bodyguards. I was betting that going forward he’d have a whole contingent of muscle.

“It was easier to grab Chan than your girl.”

I loved it when the bad guys explained themselves. I didn’t understand why they did that, and I used to think that no one monologued in real life, only in Bruckheimer summer blockbusters, but they did. Or, realistically, guys who weren’t terrorists did. The men I fought when I had first been deployed, and now when I went out on missions, never explained themselves. They didn’t need to. Everyone understood their agenda and what our part was. This was different. These were guys who had decided to kidnap a young man for ransom and hadn’t counted on me and Hannah getting in the way.

The issue was that I couldn’t let them take David out of the parking structure. As soon as we were on the street, they’d put a bullet in me, drop me out on the road, and he’d be alone. If we got to the entrance and I couldn’t convince the attendant to let us out, they’d kill whoever it was and leave the officers who came to help dead on the sidewalk. That couldn’t happen.

Taking a quick breath, I threw an elbow into the throat of the thug on my right, leaving him hissing like a broken radiator. The guy to David’s left was on me in seconds, but I led with my head, catching him under the chin. The momentum sent the back of the thug’s head through the glass of the rear driver’s side window.

The guy in the passenger seat turned, drew his nine-millimeter, and instead of firing, just shooting me, he thought about it for a beat too long. Those were the moments I’d been trained to live in.

I saw him hesitate, which gave me a second, before I saw the muzzle flash, to make the decision to turn into it. I felt the bullet graze the meat of my shoulder, the left one, the bad one that somehow always took the worst of whatever I got into. I came up out of my seat and punched the guy in the face. When he tried to shoot again, I shoved wildly at the man’s arm, spoiling his aim as he fired. The bullet passed through the side of the driver’s head, painting the window like a gruesome Pollock. A marionette with his strings cut, the driver slumped, pulling the wheel to the right and sending the Lexus careening into a row of parked cars.

The sheer force of the impact surprised me even as the back of the Lexus lifted into the air, launching me into the front before the wheels found the pavement again. All my wind left my body at once as I slammed against the console. Thank God David was belted in. He would have gone straight through the windshield otherwise.