But she will.
The guy approaches me on my left side. He’s tall, maybe my height. He looks like he works out — he has a big frame, but he’s an amateur. The guy’s arms are fully extended, meaning his gun will be within reach of me long before his body. I almost feel bad; it’s that easy…
With a quick movement, I grab his gun hand by the wrist with my left hand, pushing his palm toward him with my thumb. This puts a strain on the tendons, causing an involuntary reflex that straightens the fingers, which consequently forces him to loosen his grip on the weapon. As it falls from his hand, I lean left and catch it with my right. Then, I turn his wrist away from him, forcing him to follow it with his body to relieve the pressure. As he does, I whip my left leg across and kick him hard in his right knee. With his body going left and now his legs going right, he quickly falls to the floor.
In the same motion, I raise the gun and point it at Clara.
“Step the fuck away from her, now!” I shout.
“One more move and she’s dead!” she screams back at me.
I smile and shake my head. “No, she’s not. You’re a mercenary, Clara, not an extremist. You’re not willing to die for this cause and, right now, she’s the only thing keeping you alive. You’re not going to kill her, no matter what I do. Not until you’ve gotten out of here. Which isn’t happening, by the way.”
I casually lower the gun and aim left, firing three times at the guy on the floor without looking. All three bullets hit him in the chest. His body jerks from the impact and then slackens in death. I re-aim at Clara.
“See?”
I look in her eyes. Panic is setting in. It’s just her and me now. Yes, she has a hostage, but she knows me, and she knows there’s no way out of this that doesn’t involve her dying. Is she spiteful enough to kill Tori anyway, knowing she’d die but making sure as her final act that I suffer regardless?
Of course she is.
But that doesn’t mean she will. The Armageddon Initiative will have paid her a significant sum of money for helping them put this attack together. She won’t want to risk losing that if there’s a chance she can get out of here. No matter how small the odds.
“It’s over, Clara,” I say, more calmly now. “Let her go, and maybe you get out of here.”
“How’s that?” she snaps back — her gaze darting around the room, as if looking for a new solution.
“You help me get to El-Zurak and stop the hijacking of the Cerberus satellite, and I’ll do what I can to make sure your help is taken into account when this is all handed over to the FBI.”
She laughs loudly, exaggerating it to show she’s actually insulted. “Fuck you, Adrian. Fuck you! Do you think anyone would be lenient with me if all this failed?”
“Honestly? No. I think they’d give you the chair. But I said I’d do what I could for you, and I mean that. Just let Tori go.”
She glances at Tori and smiles that sick, evil, emotionless smile I remember seeing years ago. I clench my jaw muscles as I sense what’s about to happen.
“So, explain to me how the brooding, tormented soul of the legendary Adrian Hell has found it within him to get himself a girl,” she says. “What about your dead wife? Huh?”
There it is…
Bitch!
The ‘Try To Make Tori Hate Me’ card.
And not only that, but she said my name like she was air-quoting it, which is infuriating on a whole other level.
I see Tori’s eyes widen, before narrowing as she frowns with confusion. She stares at me in silent enquiry, and then turns to look at Clara, scornfully.
“Oh, did you not know?” asks Clara with feigned innocence, before looking over at me and smiling. “Adrian, does she not know anything about you?”
I feel my finger involuntarily tighten on the trigger as I fight the urge to risk shooting her while Tori’s so close.
“She knows everything about who I am,” I say, feeling the need to justify myself. “She doesn’t need to, or want to, know anything about who I was.”
“It looks to me like she’s very curious…”
With the gun in her right hand, aimed at Tori’s body, she puts her arm around her, and pulls her close like an old friend.
“How about us girls have a nice talk about our man over there? Eh?”
Tori turns to her and looks her dead in the eye. “Go to hell,” she says.
“Oooo, feisty!” She turns to me momentarily. “I can see why you like her. But seriously, Tori, there’s so much you should know about Adrian… Like, for example, did you know he’s one of the greatest assassins ever to pull a trigger? Did you know he killed my father?”
Tori’s livid with Clara, staring a hole through her with wild eyes, and she must be frustrated knowing there’s little she can do to stop her. But, to be honest, I wouldn’t want her to try. Clara’s a trained killer, and very capable of hurting her, or worse. I’m just grateful Tori and I have already had the conversation, and she’s said she understands why I don’t want to talk about it and accepts that. She’s always said she loves me for who I am, so anything Clara says won’t have the intended effect on us. It’ll just make me want to shoot her more.
“And another thing,” continues Clara, oblivious to Tori’s stare. “The thing that made Adrian tick all those years he spent alone… the guilt of being to blame for the death of his wife and daughter.”
That makes Tori look at me, her eyes asking me a thousand questions all at once. I look at her apologetically; genuinely sorry she has to go through all this. But I take exception to Clara’s statement.
“Hey, I wasn’t to blame for their deaths, and I’ve since killed the guy who was! Don’t…”
I stop myself as I see the sick smile creep across her face. She just suckered me into that exchange and got a reaction out of me that I shouldn’t have allowed. The look on Tori’s face confirms it.
Shit.
Josh was right — I allow myself to get too emotionally involved in a situation, and it sometimes clouds my judgment. That wouldn’t have happened if he’d been here.
Let’s not mention it, though, eh?
“Well played,” I say, trying to recover gracefully. “I know what you’re trying to do, Clara, and it won’t work.” I look at Tori. “Sweetheart, if you have any doubts or concerns about me, or us, after this, I completely understand. I swear to you, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But can I please ask that, for the time being at least, you trust me and let me get us out of here?”
If ever I needed more proof that Tori is my ideal woman, she struggles to suppress a smile and winks at me.
“Lead the way, Action Man!”
Clara’s face contorts with disgust. “Oh my God, really?” she says. “I think I just threw up in my mouth.”
Still holding Tori with her left hand, she points her gun at her mouth and makes the vomiting gesture, doing her best to ridicule us both and get more of a reaction out of me.
I’ll give her a fucking reaction…
Without thinking, I whip the gun up and fire in one movement. The bullet catches Clara at the bottom of her neck on the left, where it meets the trapezius muscle. Tori jumps out of her skin in surprise as a thin spray of blood hits her face. Clara is equally caught off-guard, clawing at thin air with both hands as she tries to stop herself from falling backward. Not wasting the opportunity, Tori quickly puts some distance between them. I dash over, kicking the gun out of Clara’s hand the second she hits the ground, before taking aim and covering her.
“Put pressure on the wound so you don’t bleed out,” I say to her. “Both hands. Now!”