Page 23 of In Her Blood
“Absolutely fucking not.”
Evelina ignored him and hunkered down so that she could just barely see over the rim of the door. She could already feel sharp pinpricks poking through the fabric of her coat and into the denim of her jeans. There was nothing to be done about that, though, so she shoved the sting from her mind and brought the 9mm up, barrel out. “That was an order, Otto.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat that was no word at all.
She didn’t wait for him to respond before opening fire. These bastards had found her, somehow, and cornered her. But she would not go down without a fight. She would not die cowering beneath furniture or sobbing over the corpse of the last person she loved. They werebothgoing to survive this. Somehow.
She had too much to lose.
Otto couldn’t remember the last time Lina had given him anorder. He was precariously close to losing his goddamn mind over her wildly reckless, dangerous behavior.
Fortunately, somehow, they’d fallen into something of a standoff.
Lina had pretty much blown out one of the three remaining Morozov’s knees with an early shot, dropping him. The man was still alive, but his gun had fallen from his grasp as his body hit the asphalt. And instead of helping him, his brothers were apparently so startled by the sudden evening of the number of shooters that they retreated. The cowards were using the open doors of their SUV as shields, periodically popping up and firing half-blind shots. Most of which pinged off the side of the car or sank into the already deflating tires.
If Otto were a betting man—and he did occasionally like to run some odds—he’d bet they had also called in another car. The other car would serve as a way to haul off the one guy Otto was sure he’d capped, as well as their newly crippled sacrifice. It would also severely imbalance the situation in the Morozov’s favor. It didn’t take a genius to realize that was how these guys preferred things.
Lina shifted over the broken glass behind him. “Do you think this means they’re finally out of those terrible bullets?”
Otto blew out an aggravated breath. He wanted to yell at her more than he could ever remember. He wanted to tie her to a bed, in a room with padded walls and furniture with rounded edges, and never let her leave.
He also sort of wanted to pin her to one of those walls and explore every centimeter of her body for injury, to kiss her every bruise and soothe her every scrape with his tongue.
The odds of either occurrence were equivalently low.
“I sure as shit hope so,” he replied. He twisted as best he could behind the solid frame of the sedan as one of the men fired off a shot in his general direction. Of course, the bastard was out of sight again by the time the bullet sank into the cracked windshield.
Lina snickered. “They’re like that old game. Whack-a-mole. Except we gotta whack ‘em with bullets.”
Otto blinked. His lips twitched and he gave his head a shake. “I gotta get you out of that house.” He trained his sights on the other SUV window, expecting that to be where the next Morozov-mole popped up. This wouldn’t end in time if he didn’t take the risk, and he would much rather the risk be his than Lina’s.
But he’d forgotten she’d also made a call.
A vehicle he barely recognized rolled loudly up to the scene, boxing the Morozov SUV in as four armed men poured onto the street. Artem led the way, a semi-automatic held against his shoulder and a handgun holstered at his hip.
Otto thought he saw a flicker of movement beyond the SUV’s window, but no one stood so it was hard to be sure.
Artem leveled his weapon, then shouted across the distance, “Miss Nikolaev, Mr. Voronin, are you alive?”
Lina let out a dramatic sigh. “Yes!” she called back.
The injured man in front of the SUV suddenly pitched himself forward in the direction of his not-so-forgotten gun.
Otto reacted on instinct, kicking his damaged door open with a snarl and shoving from the car entirely as he swung his gun around. He had one, maybe two bullets left. He’d put both of them in the fucker with glee. And he did, as soonas his foot stomped down on the man’s outstretched hand. He squeezed the trigger once and the man went limp, blood spurting up even as it spread out beneath the man’s throat. He squeezed again and put another in one of the bastard’s unseeing eyes. He squeezed a third time, aiming for the bastard’s heart, but the gun only clicked.
Empty.
He blew out a hard breath, his chest heaving and adrenaline still pumping.
Someone shouted, words like a plea forming in the air a heartbeat before two more shots in rapid succession silenced everything.
Otto looked up and noted two slumped forms against the still-open doors of the SUV, blood pooling beneath them. Men whose faces he’d only seen in passing lowered their weapons, taking a more neutral stance.
Artem rounded the SUV, his sharp gaze quickly taking in the scene, and he nodded. “Hell of a mess. But those are sometimes unavoidable.”
Otto tucked his gun away and grunted. He turned to the car and ripped open the back door, unsurprised to find Lina had shifted far enough back not to fall forward. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t disappointed about that.
She was scowling at him, the 9mm in her lap and her purse hanging off her shoulder by one strap.
