Page 79 of The Diamond Thief
“I did.” I pull my taser from my boot.
The guards approach. Jacob is a blur of brown silk as he tackles one. I zap the other with my taser the moment he gets close. When Jacob gets his man to the ground, I tase the hell out of that one. The rest of the hallway is clear.
We turn down the hall to see four people running for us. I pull a smoke bomb from my boot and toss it. On impact it shoots out a foul-smelling fog.
“This way!” Jacob says.
We turn and head back the other direction. These are offices, as I recall. One has a huge, ornate wooden exterior, which I seem to remember belongs to Antony himself.
“Wait,” I say.
I use the heel of the heavy boot to kick in the door. Antony is in there. His guard stands up.
“A parting gift,” I say, and pull a small sleep bomb from my boot. I pull the pin and toss it right to him. He catches it like a ball, and then quickly chucks it to the corner of the room.
Doesn’t matter. It releases the chemical at first impact.
He’s already starting to slump over the desk. The guard covers his mouth, but within two steps, he’s stumbling. We run on past the door, laughing. Jacob holds my hand.
There’s just one exit to go. Nothing flashes or alarms. They don’t upset the paying clients when something like this happens. All the alerts are going out through earpieces. People will be heading this direction. They’ll know now to use gas masks, but that will take them a moment to arrange.
“God, this place is a maze,” I say. I don’t know it well enough to take us directly to an outside door.
“This way,” Jacob says. “It’s how I came in.”
Two more guards head for us as we spot the exit.
We look at each other.
“I got the tall one,” I say.
He gives me a grin. “I want the big one for myself.”
The men pull guns on us, so we instinctively leap for them before they can properly aim. The guns fire, but nothing hits me. I take my guy down and use the zapper on his arm where the nerve runs through, forcing his fingers to release the gun. I snatch it up.
“Come on, Jacob,” I say.
He’s on the ground with his guard in a tight tussle. There’s blood. I can’t tell whose it is.
I circle them, looking for an opening in their wrestling match. The guard flips on top of Jacob, exposing the back of his neck. I tase him at the base of the skull so long that he slumps down.
“Are you hurt?” I ask Jacob.
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
When he stands I see he’s hit in the shoulder. Hopefully, it hasn’t done anything more than wreck some muscle.
I take his good arm and pull him toward the exit. He’s running a little less quickly than he was before.
I push out the door. There are two guards there, but with Jacob injured, I don’t even hesitate. I shoot them both in the legs with the guard’s gun. It will keep them from coming after us, but it shouldn’t kill them.
Jacob is definitely slowing down. I start to panic that he’s been shot in the heart or the lungs or something that will kill him. But I have to get him away.
I jerk the key fob to the Aston Martin out of my bra and immediately start clicking the Morse code.
Jacob is wheezing. Dammit. It’s a lung.
He slows down more and more until he’s stumbling, bent over.
