Wildcard (Warcross #2)(8)

An alarm starts to wail overhead.

Satisfied, the girl reaches into the broken display counter to grab a miniature mochi cake adorned with gold flakes. She shakes off bits of glass before popping it in her mouth.

“What are you doing?” I shout at her above the noise.

“Clearing our path,” she replies through her mouthful of dessert. She waves her arm impatiently at the ceiling. “Alarm should scare some of them away.” She tightens her grip on her gun and raises her other hand to make a subtle series of gestures in midair. An invite pops up in my view.

Connect with [null]?

I waver for a heartbeat before accepting. Neon-gold lines appear in my view, directing us along a path that she has set for us. “Follow it if you lose me,” she says over her shoulder.

“What do I call you?” I ask.

“Is that really important right now?”

“If someone attacks me and we’re separated, I’ll know what name to scream for help.”

At that, she turns around to face me and gifts me with a smile. “Jax,” she replies.

A scarlet shape appears in our view, hiding behind a pillar at the other end of the floor.

Jax turns her head in its direction without slowing down. She lifts her gun. “Duck,” she warns. Then she fires.

I jerk down to the floor as Jax’s gun sparks. The other person returns fire immediately, the bullets lighting up against the pillars and shattering another glass counter. My ears ring. Jax continues moving with the same exacting motions as before, stepping out of the line of fire each time, cocking her gun, bracing her shoulder, and firing back. I race near her with my head hunched down.

As a bullet zings past her, forcing her to shift sideways, she tosses her gun effortlessly from one hand into the other. She fires back.

Her bullet makes contact this time. We hear a yelp of agony—when I glance up past the counters, I see the shape outlined in red collapse. The gold line dictating our path turns right, but before we take it, Jax strides over to the figure on the floor.

She points her gun straight down at the person and fires one efficient shot.

The assassin convulses once, violently, before going limp.

It’s over in an instant, but the sound of the shot echoes in my mind like ripples disturbing a pond, the memory overlapping repeatedly over itself. I can see blood sprayed against the wall and the scarlet pool spreading under the body. The gaping wound in his head.

My stomach gives a violent lurch. It’s too late to stop it, so I just fall to my knees and spill the contents of dinner on the floor.

Jax yanks me hard to my feet. “Calm down. Follow me.” She tilts her head and signals for me to keep moving.

The blood on the wall splatters over and over again in my mind. She killed him far too easily. She’s used to this. I think about bolting away—but Jax had defended me and hadn’t tried to kill me herself. Is there a higher ransom on my head if I’m taken alive?

A thousand questions crowd the tip of my tongue, but I force myself to stumble dizzily after her. There is no sound now except for the echo of our boots against the ground. Police sirens and ambulances must still be at the scene of the shooting upstairs, and maybe someone has already discovered the dead body Jax has left behind.

The seconds drag on like hours before we finally reach our destination—where the gold line ends in front of a narrow utility closet.

Jax types in a code on the door’s security lock. It glows green, lets out a single beep, and opens for us. She ushers me inside.

The room looks like a standard utility closet, filled with wooden crates and cardboard boxes stacked up to the ceiling. Jax leans against a counter and starts to reload her gun.

“Can’t take you through the regular exit,” she mutters as she goes. “There’s a police barricade up there blocking the car. We’ll go this way.”

The car. Maybe she really is with Zero.

I huddle in a corner and squeeze my eyes shut. My throat still feels coated with acid. The killing shot echoes in my mind. I let out a long, shaky breath and attempt to compose myself, fixing my eyes on the girl’s gun, but my hands keep quivering, no matter how hard I clench my fists. I can’t seem to gather my thoughts properly. Every time I try, they scatter apart.

Jax sees me struggling to steady myself. She pauses, takes a step toward me, and holds my chin with one gloved hand. Blood stains the leather. I hold still for a moment, wondering how she can be this firm and calm after she just shot someone in the head. Wondering if this is when she’ll snap my neck like a twig.

“Hey.” She locks her stare on me. “You’re okay.”

I pull away from her grip. “I know that.” A quaver lingers in my voice.

“Good.” At my reply, she reaches behind her back and pulls another gun from her belt. She throws it at me without warning.

I fumble the weapon. “For chrissakes,” I blurt out, holding the gun in front of me with two fingers. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

“Fire when needed?” she suggests.

My blank stare continues until she rolls her eyes at me and snatches the weapon back. She replaces it on her belt before picking up her own gun and clicking the old cartridge out of its magazine. “What, you’ve never shot a gun before?”

“Not a real one.”

“Seen someone die?”