Page 88 of Harmless
“Come on.” I felt Devin tug my sleeve to start running in the opposite direction, but I resisted.
A wave of euphoria came over me, along with an urge I couldn’t fight.
An urge for revenge.
“Hudson, comeon!”
I ignored Devin and kept looking the same way Santos was. He had started approaching the woman, saying her name over and over. She wasn’t listening to him, of course. They never listened.
I wanted to escape this hellhole more than anything, but not until I had a chance to put one ofthemin excruciating pain. Or, preferably, kill one of them. It was the least I could do for all they did to me.
I pulled my arm out of Devin’s grip and went up to Santos. He was still holding his pistol with a silencer but had another gun tucked into the waistband at the small of his back.
It was pure instinct that guided me, not thought, as I went for the gun. Old habits kicked in as my hand settled on the grip, my thumb flicking off the safety before pointing it at the woman roughly fifty yards ahead of us. Santos didn’t even notice until it was too late.
I lined up the sights on the back of her blonde head and squeezed the trigger just as I heard a shout and something crashed into me with the force of a freight train.
I hit the dirt, but so did the woman.
“What the FUCK, Hudson?” Santos screamed in my face. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
His face was clearer than ever before. Hair shaved closed to his scalp, stubble surrounding his mouth and jaw, brows slashed down over his eyes in a bewildered expression.
I realized the mistake I’d made then. In giving into the impulse to shoot one of my torturers, it woke everyone up. Santos’ face was lit up because lights were turning on.
“Fuck. They know we’re here.” Devin had run over and was kneeling next to the fallen woman, hastily tying a length of fabric around her lower leg, and I couldn’t understand why. She was the fucking enemy. Were we taking her prisoner?
“Just let me finish her off.” I went to sit up and search for the gun I’d dropped, but Santos didn’t budge. When I shoved at him, he shoved me back into the dirt. Then I felt the sharp edge of a blade under my chin. Santos had whipped out a mean-looking machete and looked more than ready to behead me with it.
“She’s with us, asshole!” he hissed in my face. “You’re not going near her. You’re not even to look at her, understand?”
“No.” I was confused beyond measure. “No, I don’t understand. Why not just leave her then?”
“I’m more tempted to leave you right now,” he growled, sheathing the machete with reluctance. “But then this mission would be for nothing, so let’s fucking go.”
Devin had hauled the woman into his arms and started to run. “You’re gonna have to cover us,” he told Santos.
“I can still cover.” It was the woman who spoke as she slapped a magazine into a handgun while cradled against Devin’s chest. She aimed behind him and started firing at the armed women coming out of their houses. At the sight of that, my confusion only increased tenfold.
Santos grabbed the front of my thin shirt and jerked me upward. “Your one job is to run,” he said. “No more shooting. You steal my gun again, you won’t have a hand to shoot it with, alright?”
“Okay.” I’d fucked things up, that much was clear. And even if there was a woman around, wherever they took me had to be better than here.
We were up and sprinting through the lane between houses in an instant. “Go, just keep running!” Santos shouted. He went slower to cover my back, turning around to return fire with both handguns.
I passed Devin and the woman on my way toward the hills, and she gave me a look of pure venom as I ran by. I’d have to make sure to avoid her at all costs, least of all because I fucking shot her.
“Watch out!” someone shouted.
A couple of sentries jumped out in front of me, their automatic rifles trained directly on me. Panic flooded my nervous system and I skidded to a halt, ready to run in the other direction, but Santos and the woman were shooting at the ones coming from that direction.
We were fucking trapped.
The rapidrat-a-tat-tathit my ears, and I brought my hands up, a reflex that wouldn’t do anything to save me.
“Hudson, run!” It was the woman screaming at me. “Keep going!”
I looked down, expecting to see my abdomen riddled with holes. But I was somehow perfectly intact. And once I looked up, I saw the sentries motionless on the ground. One had a knife handle in the center of her forehead, the other bleeding out from a knife wound in her throat.
