Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [185]
Roberto, struggling to stand, pulled the trigger again!
Blam!
Ortega went down in a heap, his shot going wild, his blood oozing dark against the snow.
Meeker was running forward, the site of his weapon now trained on Missy Albright as she struggled to climb to her feet in the slick snow. Shay, breathing fire, dancing on her toes, hands still uselessly cuffed behind her back, was ready to kick the living hell out of her.
“Don’t even think about it, bitch!” Shay snarled, her eyes bright with hatred.
“No…” Missy started to argue but took one look around, to Roberto gasping for breath and Eric obviously dead. “Oh, God,” she whispered, defeated. Tears slid down her face as she crumpled, disheartened, to the snow. Curling into a fetal position, snow clumping in her hair, she whispered, “This is all wrong. It’s not the way it was supposed to be.”
“Too friggin’ bad,” Shaylee said.
The other soldiers in Spurrier’s sick little army, Takasumi, Slade and Donahue, stared at the muzzle of Meeker’s gun and the bodies littering the snow. One by one, they dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Takasumi was stoic, Slade defiant, and Kaci Donahue shaking, her teeth chattering so loudly they rattled. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “Please, please! Don’t shoot!”
None of these three, the second tier of soldiers, it appeared, had gotten off a shot, nor been part of the action. Thank God. If they’d started shooting, the outcome of this battle might have turned out far, far worse.
As far as Trent was concerned, they all deserved to face a judge and long prison terms.
Thank God, Jules and Shaylee were safe. Finally. He rolled to one side, looking down on Jules, her dark hair fanned in the snow, her face pale in the moonlight. “Are you okay?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘okay.’” She managed a bit of a smile, then looked toward her sister. Tears filled her eyes as she saw that Shay was alive and unhurt. “Have I ever been okay?”
“Never.”
“Didn’t think so.” She pushed herself to a sitting position where she could see the damage. “Such a horrid waste,” she said as if to herself, then to Trent, “I could’ve taken care of myself, you know. You didn’t have to tackle me and pin me to the ground.”
“Maybe I wanted to. Couldn’t control myself.”
“Give me a break.”
“I think I just did!” He winked at her as sunlight began to stream over the mountains, the long-awaited dawn chasing away the night.
“Okay, okay, so you saved my life,” she mocked, somehow pulling herself together. “I suppose now I’m on the hook of owing you for the rest of my life.”
“You got that right.” Trent gave her a squeeze with his good arm, helping her to her feet. He spied Meeker, still training his gun on the group of TAs who had survived. “We okay?”
“Yeah. These are good kids,” he mocked. “They do what they’re told and right now, they’re cuffing each other. Just like I ordered.” Sure enough, he was standing close enough to the group so that they wouldn’t run and make a break for it, while watching them place handcuffs over their peers. He’d already collected their weapons and stood over the rifles and handguns.
Trent asked, “So why didn’t you stay put, safe at Stanton House, huh? What the hell were you thinking?”
“That maybe I could help. If you haven’t noticed I’m not all that great about just sitting around when there’s trouble.” She shook some of the snow from her hair. “Your turn. What the hell were you thinking, taking off and trying to take down Spurrier?” she said.
“Actually he was taking me down, I just got lucky. But what I was thinking was just one thing. That if we ever lived through this nightmare, I was going to make damned sure that I never lost you again.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“Seriously,” he said, sunlight catching in his eyes.
“Funny, I was thinking just the opposite,” she teased. “I told myself that if I had any brains at all and if I got through this and saw you again, I should run the other way as fast as my feet would carry me.”
He arched a skeptical brow. “I’d catch you, you know.”
“Oh, I know.” She buzzed his