Page 93 of Hard Hitter
“Let’s make a little deal,” Vince’s voice proposed. She could hear his fear through the wall, and it fueled hers.
The other voice just laughed.
She put shaking fingers to the crosspieces of the window and pressed upward. Slowly, the window opened a little ways and then stopped. Two inches of sunshine was all she’d gained. But the cool air hit her face and she tasted victory. She braced her hands again and pushed. Nothing. So she relaxed for a second and then pushedhard.
A horrible wood-on-wood squeal filled the air as the sash raised another three inches.
“Who’s that?” the strange voice demanded.
Ari inhaled sharply, terror streaking through her chest. She braced her arms again and pushed, but fear made her inefficient. The window didn’t budge.I need to break it, she thought, her mind wheeling. And maybe that would have worked in the first place, but now it never would. The stuck window’s wooden sash divided the escape route right in two.
The sound of footsteps outside the bathroom crawled right up her throat, and then the bathroom door rattled as someone tried to turn the knob. She froze, listening. Outside she heard another squeal, this one metal against metal. What the hell was that? She stuck her face into the six-inch window opening, getting an awkward view of the fire escape that ran past the bathroom and bedroom widows. A facepopped into view at the far end of the fire escape, scaring her half to death until she realized it belonged to Patrick. He’d climbed the ladder.
Their eyes locked even as someone began to kick at the bathroom door.
Patrick pointed at the bedroom window, silently asking a question.
NO!she mouthed. The man with the gun was there.
He began to move, crawling across the narrow metal ledge, trying to stay beneath the sightline of the window.
Behind her the kicking got louder, and she heard the first splinter of wood beginning to give out.
Frantic now, Ari shoved at the window again. It moved a tiny fraction of an inch. And then all at once it gave way, slapping upward and out of her hands as Patrick forced it from the other side. Then his hands were reaching through the opening, grabbing her, pulling her through to the other side.
She made a terrifying headfirst dive toward the metal fire escape, which shook as Patrick caught her. There was a crash inside the building, and then loud cursing, and it was coming closer.
“Oh my G...” she started to say before Patrick’s hand closed over her mouth. In this, the most jacked situation she could ever remember being in, that rough palm was actually calming. Then it moved to her shoulder, asking her to stay put.
The next two seconds seemed to take a year. Patrick crouched over her as someone moved through the bathroom. She tensed as the moment of their discovery approached. Except Patrick suddenly sprang upwards. There was the sick sound of his fist connecting with a face, and an enraged scream. And then breaking glass a few feet to the side of her head.
Apparently Ari wasn’t the only one who’d thought of leaving the premises via a window.
But nobody came through the broken bedroom window, and Patrick was urging her toward the ladder at the end. “Stay low,” he barked in her ear. He had her by the shoulder and by the waistband of her jeans. “Go.”
She crawled on command toward the other end. When the ladder came into view she turned her body around and scrambled down it. As she moved, a single gunshot rang out, which was followed by a scream. Her feet connected with the asphalt, but she wasn’t ready. She folded onto the pavement, bile in her throat.
Patrick landed on the ground a few seconds later. He scooped her up and parked her against his side, drag-carrying her to the front edge of the building. He peered around the corner while she tried to catch her breath. “That restaurant.” He pointed across the street. “Run. Now.”
She did it, because it was so much easier to follow his instructions than to think about what was happening. She ran, his footsteps right behind her. He threw open the door and they slipped inside, startling a skinny man in a waiter’s apron who was rolling silverware into cloth napkins at a table just inside the door.
“Dial 911,” Patrick ordered the man as he flipped the lock on the restaurant’s front door.
The waiter’s eyes got huge, but he slipped a phone out of his breast pocket and lit it.
Patrick must not have thought he was moving fast enough, because he grabbed the phone out of the guy’s hands. A moment later he spoke rapidly. “Gunfire on Hudson Ave. Number seventy-one. Two or three men inside the house, at least one of them armed. Handgun. Shots fired.”
Two or three men?
“No, I’m not inside the house. I’m at the restaurant across the street.” He dropped his gaze to look at Ari.
She was seated on a wooden chair that she didn’t remember pulling out from the table, her chest heaving. She was so disoriented. As if her mind had become jet-lagged by the last ten minutes. Looking up into Patrick’s cool blue eyes helped a little. She found her center as he stared back, reminding her that they were both still here, and both okay.
Okayish. She couldn’t stop shaking.
Patrick let out a huge breath and dropped the phone ontothe waiter’s table. Then he knelt down in front of her and took her wrists in his hands. “Baby, you’re bleeding.”
She looked down to discover that he was right. Her hands had many vicious scratches across the palms and the undersides of her fingers.
