Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(34)

I let him go and bent to pick up the gun. My vision grayed out as pain swamped me. It felt as if I was being ripped in half in an airless chamber. My lungs—particularly my right—felt impossibly heavy and I had the most peculiar sensation of breathing and drowning at the same time.

I dropped to one knee to get the gun. My hands were shaking as badly as Frankie’s had, and I tried to breathe to calm myself. But my breath only went halfway.

I stumbled out of the office, stopping to press one hand against the wall until the dizziness passed. The back of my shirt and jacket were wet. I could feel my blood warm on my skin, and it wasn’t stopping. Bones ground together when I breathed, which was becoming harder and harder to do.

I didn’t have much time left.

Not yet, I thought and forced myself to hurry to the lobby, where I saw Drac holding Alex, pressing a gun to her head in the glare of a small army of police outside the bank’s walls.

I held the gun in steady hands and strode up to Drac. I had one more promise to keep.

#

Alex



Relief and terror warred within me to know that Cory was there. I didn’t dare try to move but I could just see him in my left eye’s peripheral vision, as he stood behind Connor but with his back to the empty bank, out of the line of the monster squad’s fire. Somehow Cory was holding a gun to Connor’s head the same way Connor held one to mine.

I felt Connor’s body tense. “And to whom do I owe this lovely surprise? Nick? Your best buddy, Wolfman?”

“I said, let her go.”

Cory’s voice sounded strange now. As if he were choking. Probably from fear. I couldn’t blame him, I could hardly think for the terror.

“It’s over, Connor,” said the megaphone. “You’re done. Put down the gun and let the hostage go.”

Behind the teller counters, I heard mutterings from the monster squad. It felt like the moment before lightning strikes, or before the starting gun for a race blasts.

I felt Connor loosen his grip on me and I started to sink on watery limbs.

“This is far from—”

A sound like something tearing the air whizzed over my head. Connor’s body jerked, the remainder of his words unsaid. For half a second I thought he’d pulled the trigger and this moment was my last. A drawn out heartbeat of life before the darkness descended. Instead, his painful grip on my hair fell away, and I was free.

One heartbeat.

Two.

Then my world imploded.

Heavily armored S.W.A.T. team members stormed the bank lobbing cylindrical objects that whizzed over the hostages’ heads to land behind the teller counter. Soundless explosions erupted—as if the bank had been hit with voids of airless nothing. Concussion grenades, I would later learn. My ears rang and I stumbled, suddenly drunk and clumsy.

Cory tackled me to the floor, shielding me with his body as a cacophony of gunfire, shattered glass, screaming and cursing erupted all around us. An armored S.W.A.T. team member jogged toward us, shouting “Stay down! Stay down!” through his plastic face guard, though I read his lips more than I heard him. My hearing was tinny with a reverb, as if someone were playing a Theremin in my brain.

Cory drove me to the left, toward the area of desks and chairs, keeping me beneath him, as we half-crawled, half-ran, to duck for cover. The S.W.A.T. team members streamed past us, fanning out to all corners of the bank.

We were nearly there—only five feet or so—when I felt Cory’s body shudder and I was buried under him as his body went slack.

“Cory? Cory!”

I crawled out from under him and the first thing I saw was hole in his jacket on the right side of his back, under his shoulder blade. A dark swath of blood had spread around it, down to the waistband of his jeans. My blood rushed to my ears, drowning out the tinny sounds in terror.

“Oh my god!” I grabbed his arm and helped haul him to his knees. “No, no, no! Get up! Come on, we’re almost there!”

With agonizing slowness he made it to his hands and knees, and then I nearly screamed as he coughed and a spray of blood stained the floor beneath him.

“Can’t…breathe…” he croaked.

“Keep moving.” I sensed the chaos was subsiding, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I sat him up, and maneuvered my way between he and the desk, trying to ignore how ashen his face had suddenly become, and the blood staining his lips.

I wrapped my left arm around in front of him, holding him upright and pressed my right palm to the gunshot in his back. The blood was hot and there was so much of it. Punctured lung, I thought, remembering a case I’d once had over a botched tracheotomy. Cory struggled for breath and frothy pink spittle leaked from the corner of his mouth. I pressed harder, as if I could prevent the life from leaving his body.

“Stay with me,” I murmured into his ear. “You stay right here.”

He said nothing. He couldn’t. Judging by the harsh, labored wheezing it was all he could do to draw breath.

“Help! Help us!” I screamed, my voice ragged with fear.

S.W.A.T. members were now milling around without the urgency of before, calming frightened hostages who had scattered like birds all over the lobby. The battle had ended and it looked as if the monster squad had been defeated. Connor lay in the center of the lobby where the sniper had taken him out. I averted my eyes from the exploded mess of his head.