Page 121 of Creep

The girl’s foot caught on the edge of the stairs, causing her to stumble back. I held onto her before she could fall down the stairs and make a loud enough noise to alert the guards, pushing her back until she was standing on her feet once more.

The woman she had been clinging to pulled the girl into her arms and looked at me, a cross between determination and fear in her eyes. I smirked.

How brave.

“Keep walking,” I said.

They nodded and kept going. The girl didn’t turn back to look at me again.

Getting all the women out of the basement had been the easy part. Getting them to walk along the wall on the main floor of the building was something else.

I pulled out my gun.

I didn’t expect us to be able to get out of here undetected.

Sure enough, we were halfway through the front door when a guard came and turned around the corner.

He looked confused for a moment, as if he was unsure whether the women were supposed to be out or not.

Stupid fucker.

I pointed my gun. My aim proved true when I fired, and it hit him in the forehead. But I hadn’t been fast enough. The fucker still managed to scream for help.

I pushed in closest to the people in front of me. “Time to go,” I said, moving up the line. “Grab each other’s shirts. Now!”

They did as I asked, grabbing onto the shirt of the person in front of them. “There are ten of you. I’ll be fucking pissed if by the time we make it out that door, there’s less than ten. Now run!”

Theo took off as soon as he felt the woman behind him grabbing hold of his shirt. I stayed behind for a beat to ensure they were well on their way to escape, just as more guards rounded the corner, their guns out.

Fuck.

I fired the first shot, hitting the fucker running closest to me. He went down, but there were more of ’em.

They fired their shots. I hid in the corner, blindly blasting my gun just as the women’s screams erupted, annoying the shit out of me. This would no doubt attract more attention.

The guards hid to dodge my bullets, temporarily stopping them from giving chase. It wasn’t going to buy Theo much time, but it would have to be enough.

I looked back just as Theo reached the front door. There would be more fuckers waiting for him outside. My grip tightened around the handle of my gun. If anything happened to him…

No fucker would be safe from me. I would guarantee it. I kept firing, taking down as many guards as I could until I ran out of bullets.

I looked around, my eyes catching on the dead body of the guard within reaching distance, his gun by his side.

I chanced a look out from where I was hiding. The bullets were still flying, but not as frequently as they had been. They were probably reloading. I moved quickly, jumping out from my hiding spot and over to the dead body. I grabbed the gun and moved across the space to a new hiding spot as the bullets came faster.

Bits of drywall splattered down on me from where the bullets had hit.

I tried to time it. If Theo was successful, he and the group would be a good distance away now.

I grabbed the bomb I had in my pocket and pulled the safety pin out, throwing it in the general direction of where the bullets were coming from.

I didn’t wait.

I hauled ass out of there, running in a zigzag line to prevent the bullets from catching me. It took the fuckers some time to realize what was happening, and I smiled when I heard their worried shouts coming from the back. It took half a second for me to realize they weren’t speaking English but Italian.

Italian guards?

The bomb went off with a boom just as I jumped out the front door, covering my head as I hit the ground.

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