Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [56]
But it wouldn’t stop them for long.
I blew a frantic second or two wondering how many bullets I could take before going down. In a moment of crisis? I mean, absolute and pure desperation—still having the stamina to run like hell? Maybe three or four to the torso, more if they just winged me. But man, that kind of worst-case-scenario thinking wasn’t going to help me. Not then. Not when it was far too late for any preventive measures.
Right. No time to wish for what I didn’t have (solitude) and think instead about what I did have (a .38 Special inside my Useful Things Bag).
I didn’t want to open fire back. Not immediately. Not while they still were foggy on precisely where I was, apart from “up there someplace.” Any gunfire would tell them my exact location immediately and with great clarity.
So I left it stashed for the moment, and writhed around in the snow until I had my bag slung across my chest, leaving both hands fully free and maneuverable. I tightened its strap to keep it close—I didn’t want it flopping around during any of the acrobatics I was about to try—and I kept my head low while the bullets clipped shingles closer and closer to where I was hunkering.
This sucked. How had they found me? Had I missed a camera? Had they found my car? What easy fuckup had I committed this time? Jesus.
I guess they could’ve been expecting me. After all, someone, somewhere knew what was in that PDF and knew what it’d tell me. All I could do was hope they didn’t know what, exactly, they were dealing with.
Me.
I couldn’t make a forty-yard hop to the barn. It wasn’t going to happen. But I could make it in three or four good hops, especially if the first hop came from an elevated position—or that was my reasoning, anyway. Maybe starting from a rooftop only made me feel better. I couldn’t say, and it didn’t matter, because I was going to have to make a run for it.
And people were still shooting at me.
They weren’t shooting a lot, at least. Nobody was wasting much ammo. Mostly they were taking potshots. I could hear them below, splitting up and surrounding my hiding spot—at least it was a big little building—and closing off my avenues of escape. Or so they thought.
I rolled over flat, facedown in the snow, and lifted my head enough to peer out over the compound. The crew that’d surrounded the shed … I couldn’t see those guys. They were too close, and I’d earn myself a bullet up the nose if I looked over the edge to get a gander at them.
Pulling myself up to the lowest of all possible crouches, I took a deep breath. I braced myself. I dug my boots deep into the packed snow and ice, and I jammed my knees down into it, and my hands as well. I needed traction. I needed to jump.
Shit, what I really needed was to leap a tall building in a single bound. But since we all knew that wasn’t in the cards, I’d settle for a good launch and a mad dash. If I moved fast enough, and if they didn’t know to expect a vampire, I might surprise the hell out of them.
They might not even see me. I might appear as nothing more than a streak, and those very far-spaced footprints over there someplace.
Below I heard them talking into tiny microphones, and receiving instruction through their tiny earbuds. They were close enough that I could hear whoever the honcho was. He was giving hand signals, and I could hear the rustle of his clothes as he fired them off.
Someone was forcing the shed door.
They were going to come inside and shoot through the ceiling to get me if they had to, and that meant I’d officially hit the “now or never” moment.
One more deep breath. I tensed. I held my head low, checked my bag one more time, then shoved myself off with such force that half the snow slid off the roof … collapsing onto the guys who’d been lurking underneath it.
I’m going to go ahead and pretend I knew that would happen, and I totally meant to do it.
The victims