Page 85 of Holiday Hostage
“And likely get caught in the crossfire. Those men are primed to shoot at anything that moves.” Tucker kept hauling me toward the blue truck parked underneath a large overhang of pine boughs.
My breath staggered in and out so fast that dark spots danced in my vision.
“What if they’re waiting for us at the car? It could be a trap.”
They could kill Tucker and take me hostage, and Mav and Reed wouldn’t know until they discovered Tucker’s body.
I’d been willing to turn myself over if it saved them, but this would only make things worse.
I twisted to look back at the cabin. Bullets peppered the air, turning it thick with the acrid stench of burned gunpowder.
Muzzle flashes spotted my vision, taking over the blackness creeping in.
Men crept out of the trees and angled around to the sides, trying to get a better line of sight on Mav.
Reed stopped firing.
I’d marked his gunfire last time I looked, but it stopped, and so did my heart. Had he been shot?
My insides shriveled. “Tucker.”
He ignored the pleading in my voice and reached for the door handle.
Mav slipped out of the house and approached the soldiers.
His lithe movements carried him forward in that military run I’d always found incredible to watch.
His legs churned, but his upper body remained still, the gun in his hands expelling bullets at a fast clip.
The return barrage of bullets came so thick and fast I couldn’t tell if there were a hundred or five hundred.
My hands flew to cover my mouth to smother my scream, when one of the bullets landed in Maverick’s leg.
Blood spurted in an arc beneath the sunlight and covered the snow in a crimson spray.
He dropped to a knee, grasping his leg with one hand. He never stopped shooting.
Seeing him go down twisted something inside me.
Fuck escape.
Fuck everything except getting to Maverick and helping him.
I tore out of Tucker’s hold, my adrenaline spiking so high my ears roared.
I’d never experienced tunnel vision before, but I recognized it when everything else in my line of sight disappeared except for Maverick.
I burst across the space, going as fast as I could in the thick snow.
My lungs burned, and it took way too much effort to fill my lungs.
With every step I made toward him, I expected to be yanked backward.
Tucker called my name, but he did it so quietly that I couldn’t be sure it was real.
“I can’t watch him die.” The words scorched the air around me and put a new burst of energy in my throbbing legs. If the men I loved were going to die, then I would too.
I would not survive the pain of losing them. They couldn’t ask me to make that kind of sacrifice.
