Page 102 of Ezra
“If anyone tries to follow us, they’re dead,” shouts the person bringing up the rear, pushing the red-faced Mr. D’Angelo along. Out of my peripheral vision, I see Oliver turning to face our retreat into the kitchen, where the chefs and waiters don’t dare intervene, frozen.
We’re brought through an exit and into an emergency stairwell for the entire building. Suddenly, there’s acrunch, and the first gunman falls unconscious to the ground.
The captors throw us back against the wall. One gunman keeps us in the sights of his rifle as the others swing their weapons over the side of the railing and open fire. I can barely think, my entire body strung tight. My ears ring.
The gunmen shout and curse at one another. “Motherfucker! Light him up! Light him?—”
The Loft’s exit door behind us flies off its hinges.
Oliver crashes into the closest shooter before the gunmen can even register what’s happened. One punch knocks a shooter out cold. Another gunman fires at Oliver. The shots hit Oliver’s chest, but he just stands there and takes it, glancing down at the bullet holes in the surface of his synthetic skin beneath his tuxedo.
Without a word Oliver stalks forward and knocks the gun from the masked assailant’s hand. He grabs the man by the neck, lifting him effortlessly off the ground.
“Kitty.” My father is breathless, sprawled on the stairs, and disoriented from where the first man fell. His temple is bleeding. “Kitty, run. Get to the lower floor. Get out of here.”
The thought of abandoning my father here is something that doesn’t even register in my mind. It’s not an option, no matter how anchored by fear I feel. I’m disjointed from any sense of logic, filled with adrenaline. I dart toward him, wanting to put myself between him and our attacker. But the remaining gunman snatches me when I reach for my father.
She yanks me by my hair and holds me in front of Oliver, gun to my throat as she backs up toward a corner of the stairwell, her attention fully fixated upon him. In the corner of my eye, I see the nearby exit door begin to slowly open. “Fucking bot! Fuck off!” She sounds almost hysterical. “Back the fuck up! I’ll blow her brains out if you don’t get back! I’ll?—”
A gun discharges,causing me to jump. Her grip loosens on me as she falls to the floor in a heap, breath robbed from her lungs.
Ezra lowers his weapon as he stands in the open exit door of the lower floor beneath the Loft, brow furrowed, and swiftly disarms her. She’s bleeding on the floor from a shot to her shoulder.
But she’s down. That’s what matters. Ezra is here. He and Oliver stopped them.
Dad has staggered to his feet, and though he seems unsteady himself, when my knees buckle he becomes my anchor and steadies me, slipping his arms beneath mine. The room is spinning. “Kitty!”
“How did you make it here so quickly?” Oliver asks Ezra.
“I went down to the floor beneath this to intercept them in the stairwell from the opposite side. Are you all right?” Ezra demands with urgency. He’s worried about me, I can see it. But he’s also concerned about the other assailants, lying in various stages of unconsciousness on the stairs.
Swallowing down a very dry throat, I nod. “I’m fine.” Except I’m not, and by the way Ezra stares me down, he knows it’s a lie. I feel a tremor in my hands, rubbing them against my gown to try and steady them. “Really, I’m...fine. I’ll be fine.”
Ezra checks on the other hostages. D’Angelo is flushed and sweating, while Flagler’s girl trembles against the wall with a loud, strangled sob.
I fixate on Dad and instantly begin to fret. “Your head!”
“I’m fine,” he insists, pushing aside my hand. “We need to get back to your mother and get out of here.”
I try to process what’s just happened. Everything went from wonderful to terrifying so quickly. There are so many frightened people in the Loft—my friends, my mom. I think of the people we were trying to persuade to help our cause. The victims relying on us to come through. What’s going to happen now? I can’t think straight.
Why won’t my hands stop shaking?
I nearly lose my balance, but through sheer will alone, I keep myself upright. Ezra’s hands slip beneath my arms to steady me. “Kat.”
“Sorry, I?—”
“I’ve got her,” my dad tells him, without anything but concern for me. “Do what you need to do, Detective.”
In the street outside the tower, emergency personnel and reporters are already showing up in droves, blue-and-red lights twirling and casting their colors on the ground, skyscraper windows, and across faces of onlookers. Someone draped a blanket over me to protect me from the chill.
I’m shaken, but I’m all right. My mother and my friends all stand with me. My father will need stitches. The young woman who came with Flagler has had a nervous breakdown. D’Angelo has been rushed to the hospital after a complaint of a shooting pain in his arm, at risk for heart attack.
Reporters clamor for some kind of news from the police. They’re booking the perpetrators who are well enough to be taken straight to the station, while the others—Oliver and Ezra’s work—are being lifted into the ambulance, having suffered concussions and one bullet wound.
My eyes feel heavy with tears I haven’t cried yet. Among the onlookers, Nicholas Kane has his arm wound tight around Sophie. Her eyes meet mine, and I see relief register in her face, her mouth moving with words I can’t hear at this distance.
I want to apologize to her. This was supposed to be a mission of peace. Instead, what happens? Everyone’s at risk again. Despite my every effort, it’s not safe to be around me. Us. My family. Humanity First.
