His bellow could be heard in New Jersey. The big black gun clattered to the ground as he brought both hands to his eyes, roaring with pain and rage.
What she saw next defied belief. Dark Hair had moved almost too fast for her to track. Before her hand was in front of Leather Coat’s face, he was in the air, twirling, foot lashing out, striking his adversaries with meaty thunks! Barely landing lightly on his feet before twirling again.
Grace staggered back, hoping the dark-haired man knew what he was doing, because she’d just put her life in his hands. Leather Coat would surely shoot to kill just like he said he would if he caught back up with her.
They went down like felled trees: one-two-three-four. She still hadn’t registered what she’d seen when the man straightened, and—completely non-winded, completely in control—pulled out something sleek and black from his pocket and spoke into it quietly in a language she didn’t understand, then flipped it closed.
Leather Coat lay on the ground in a fetal position, his desperate gasps for breath echoing off the walls of the alley. The man who had attacked Dark Hair was on his side, eyes rolled up in his head. The man in the fleece track suit lay still, unconscious, his arm bent at an unnatural angle. The man in the bomber jacket had gleaming white bone showing through his jeans, blood pooling under him. The kick had smashed his femur. He was bleeding profusely, the rain sluicing the blood-red water under him into the drains.
Grace stood in the rain, shocked and shivering.
The dark-haired man looked down at the four men for a heartbeat, his face cold and remote, then bent calmly and snapped their necks with an efficient twist of his huge hands. She could hear cartilage crack, four times. Then he calmly scooped up his two guns and his knives.
Grace bent over, ready to vomit her guts out, when a strong hand took hold of her arm. “We don’t have time for that,” the dark-haired man said. “Sorry.”
She straightened and looked him full in the face, wincing, expecting a monster, expecting to see brutality and savagery. What she saw instead was a weary kind of gentleness and what looked an awful lot like remorse.
“I’m so sorry.” His deep voice was low as he wrapped a huge hand around her arm. “For everything. But now we must go.”
Though his voice was calm, he moved fast. In a moment, they were at the mouth of the alley, moving out into the street. He still had his hand around her arm. He wasn’t holding her tightly enough to hurt, but he seemed to be able to propel her forward through the rain as if she had wheels instead of feet.
In an instant, they were out on the sidewalk and the man was checking the street carefully, the kind of survey a soldier would give to enemy terrain.
The bell over the gallery door rang and Harold appeared in the doorway. He clutched the doorjamb for support. One eye was swollen shut and his face was blood streaked. He blinked, then saw her. Grace’s heart clenched as she saw relief flood his face. His free hand reached out to her, shaking, half in and half out of the doorway. “Grace. Oh my God, you’re alive.” Harold’s trembling voice cracked, barely audible over the rain.
Tears flooded her eyes. Harold, her friend. She started forward and was held back by the dark-haired man’s strong hand around her arm.
She met his eyes. “Let me go.” She wanted to shout, but her voice came out a hoarse whisper. She pulled against his hand, but it was like pulling against a steel pillar. He wasn’t letting her go.
“Grace,” Harold quavered, hand outstretched.
Every muscle in her body was tense and shaking, including the muscles in her throat. She had to cough to speak. “Please.” She was trembling so hard she could barely stand. “Let me go to him. He’s wounded, he needs help.”
The rain was pelting down hard now, moving in sheets down the street. She was soaked and chilled to the bone. She was scared and she wanted to get to Harold right now. If she was scared and hurting, he would be doubly so.
The man had maneuvered himself so that he was between her and the street. His shoulders were so broad she couldn’t see around him, he blocked off her entire visual horizon. He scrutinized the surrounding buildings again.
The rain was making the blood on Harold’s face run, his white shirt splashed with pale pink color, plastering his sparse gray hair against the skull. He swayed.
“Oh God.” Grace’s heart was pounding. She put her hand over the man’s where he was grasping her upper arm, his hand so big it met around her arm, coat and all, and nearly snatched her hand away at the heat. It was freezing cold outside, but his huge hand was so hot it felt like an iron against her wet coat. “Let me go to him, please.”
Another tug, the man’s hands tightening further, and then suddenly…Harold disappeared. Or his head did. Where his head had been there was a pink mist dissipating fast in the rain. Half a second later, Grace was facedown on the sidewalk and a ton of male was on top of her. Something was pinging, gouging holes in the pavement, in the walls of the gallery. Shards of concrete rained down on her.
Grace was so shocked, it took her long seconds to realize what the sharp cracks were.
“Goddammit. A sniper.” The deep, low voice was speaking right into her ear, so close she could feel the puffs of his breath. He lifted and pulled her closer to the curb until she was resting against the front fender of a big black vehicle. “The engine block should stop a bullet. Stay here and don’t move.”
Another crack sounded and his heavy body jolted.
Grace lifted her head slightly to look at him. She didn’t process his words in any way. She looked back down the street to where a limp collection of clothes lay sprawled across the doorway to the gallery, the rain washing red, then pink, into the gutter. None of this made any sense, least of all the remains of her best friend, a shattered mass of pink-and-gray flesh.
“Harold,” she whispered, her voice shaking so hard she could barely articulate.
“Is dead,” the man said brutally. “Now we have to stay alive. No, dammit.” He brought an arm like iron over her back. She’d been blindly trying to rise up, putting her shaking hands on the ground to lift herself up to…to go to Harold.
To do something.
“Stay down, dammit,” the man on top of her hissed. One huge hand covered the back of her head and pressed until her cheek lay on the rough pavement. She watched the big raindrops ping and bounce off the concrete, her mind completely blank, empty.
The heavy man on top of her shifted and started talking in a low, deep, urgent voice. What was he saying? Whatever it was, there was no possible response in her. She was too shocked to make out more than a few words here and there. Sniper…west side of Lexington, second-story window, come from Park…
It took her several seconds to realize that he wasn’t talking to her but into a cell. He was discussing some kind of strategy. The words flew into her head and then right back out again. The only thing that penetrated the fog in her head was the deep calm of his voice, the assurance. He could have been a man discussing the menu of that night’s meal. It was amazing to think that voice came from a man under fire.
Even his body was calm. His coat must have been open because she could feel the heat of his wide chest against her back. His heartbeat was strong and steady, unlike her own trip-hammering one, beating wild and high in her chest. His breathing was calm, regular, while she was gulping in great gasps of air that choked her and burned her lungs.
A click and the cell phone closed.
Tears were running down her face, lost in the rain.
“My men are coming.” That deep, calm voice next to her ear again. It was insane, but somehow it calmed her, just a little. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”