The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(70)

I would’ve missed the muzzle flash if I hadn’t been staring so intently at the suspicious building. The crack of the gunshot sounded loud in the quiet street, and I whirled back toward Tim with a cry. But he was still standing. In fact, he was nonchalantly approaching the next barrel, this one near Alejandro.

“Shooter—fourth floor, third window from the left!” I transmitted.

“How the hell did he do that?” Mags cut in, and I could hear the alarm in her voice—and maybe a touch of awe.

Another gunshot sounded, and this time I kept my eyes on Tim. If I hadn’t, I would never have believed it. One minute he was holding an undersized garbage lid out over the barrel, and the next moment, he had moved back a step, so quickly that it was hard to see—a ping sounding from behind him where a bullet bit into some trash near where he’d been standing.

Tim moved the step back and dropped the garbage lid into the can, covering most, if not all, of the flames. Then the gunfire began in earnest. Tim went low, leaping back and forth in a zigzag as he raced for the third barrel. He made a graceful roll, holding his collection of firefighting objects tightly to his chest, and ended in a crouch behind the third barrel.

I recovered from my amazement, the feeling that I was watching some kind of scripted dance. “Give him covering fire, NOW!” I shouted at my team, and began to shoot at the windows where the muzzle flares had come from, randomly, just to put up some resistance, even though the chances of hitting someone blind like this were incredibly low. The gun kicked against my shoulder as I depressed the trigger, shells ejecting from the side and clinking against the pavement.

“Margot can’t see anything,” reported Cad. “The building isn’t lit inside, or if it is, it’s only giving enough light to benefit them.”

“Just keep firing—anything helps. Give Tim a chance to get those fires out!” I ordered, coming back around the corner to eject the magazine. My hands moved almost automatically, working the gun as they’d done hundreds of times before, as my eyes found their way back to Tim. He was still hiding behind the third barrel. Bullets bit into the pavement beside him, but he didn’t panic as he carefully lifted up a third flat object. I couldn’t tell what it was, but he slowly, almost leisurely, slid it over the rim of the barrel, pushing it with his fingertips.

A bullet pinged off the lid, and Tim yelped, dropping his head back down. In the orange light, I could see enough sweat on his skin that it glistened in the firelight, but he didn’t stop. He reached back up with one arm and finished pushing the object across. The flickering light cut off immediately.

Tim turned around slowly, placing his back to the barrel. “Tim, come back!” I shouted at him, knowing he was eyeing the last barrel. And while most of me was growling in a protective conniption fit… part of me wanted, somewhere deep down inside, to see him go for it—to see him win.

But the gunfire from the building was increasing, a hail of bullets hitting the pavement on either side of him, and I continued shouting at Violet’s brother to stop. Tim ignored me, and, in one fluid motion, stood up and began racing toward the final barrel. He seemed to weave himself through the air, his body flowing sinuously around bullets, pulling himself out of the way of the oncoming fire with incredible grace. He had flipped over the barrel and dropped to a knee behind it, preparing his last cover, when something caught it and flipped it toward him.

Almost without ceasing his motion, the young man flipped backward in a controlled flail as a red-hot spray of embers and flames crashed out from the mouth of the barrel, spreading in a flurry across the street. The barrel right in front of me went next, spinning wildly across the intersection toward the one closest to Alejandro, the contents getting dumped everywhere. Clanging and hissing added to the unending barrage of rifle shots echoing across the intersection.

Still upright after all of that, Tim darted right as the other two barrels fell to a similar fate, vaulting over the hood of a burnt-out car and diving for one a few feet away, tucking up under its trunk. Bullets pinged all around him, but his cover held, for the time being.

I realized I’d been holding my breath. Staring at the fire pit that now made up the intersection, and Tim’s position just beyond, I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach. The fear, hope, and startled awe I’d felt as Violet’s brother had braved the intersection were subsiding into a much more practical, uglier fear. With all these obstacles, I just wasn’t sure how I was going to get him out, or us through.





25





Violet





“Stay on this road, Amber,” I said, studying the screen. “You’re in the clear for about five hundred feet.”

“Copy that,” Amber said, and I watched as she and her small team fanned out in the street, moving from vehicle to vehicle. Now that Amber’s team was making its way through the city to meet up with Logan’s people, I was splitting time between Viggo and Amber. It was becoming a little bit of a headache, especially with Viggo nearing Porteque territory. Every part of me just wanted to be by him, being his mechanical eyes, keeping him safe… but right now, according to Thomas, Amber’s team needed me more.

I manipulated my fingers, and the drone slowly moved forward. I tilted it back and forth, so that the belly swung up toward the buildings on either side of the road, and switched my thermal scan back on, rechecking each structure for any sign of movement.