Playing God (Helford #2)

(40) Geronimo

They crept in slowly, inevitably—like an oncoming storm. They had tracked us as far as this set of commercial buildings on this street, but they weren’t sure what building we had holed up in, but it wouldn’t take them that long. I glanced at Valerie on the other side of the room, each of us leaning out of the way of sight on the street, and she glanced back at me, obviously anxious but her determination was set in stone—she would not leave me, and she would not back down, and there was something to be admired in her stubbornness when it came down to it. I was breathing a little heavily, clutching my side, careful of ripping the stitches before it was time to run—I watched in reflections as shadows of black wandered past silently, like reapers in the night, searching for the souls. I peak around the corner, spotting them up the street, far enough away that they wouldn’t catch us on foot before we barricaded ourselves across the street, and it was now or never. I nodded once at Valerie, uncertainty creeping into my bones, and she smiled weakly back, pulling her gun arm up into a more defensive position.

We moved a lot faster than we thought we might, what with my wound. We shot out of the craft store and sprinted a couple of doors down and across the street to the small Do It Yourself handyman shop I had spotted on our way in. The assassins up the street yelled and aimed their weapons, but I had timed it well enough that they didn’t get a good enough shot until Valerie and I threw ourselves through the doorway of the store, diving behind the large concrete counter in the back when the gunshots started.

I hadn’t always experienced luck in this business, but we got lucky enough tonight with the hardware store—there was no glass front, only small panels of glass in the wooden door, probably due to a home having been converted into a shop. I breathed out heavily and leaned against the wall, thanking the lord for the smallest of miracles, I guess, wincing as my abdomen pulled, and I glanced down to see that the wound had ripped back open, and the bleeding was back up significantly. I hissed through my teeth.

“Hold on,” Valerie whispered to me helplessly, evaluating the wound again. “Hold on, okay? I’m going to go look for something to stop the bleeding. Stay right here.”

“Where would I go?” I joked weakly, but it fell flat. Valerie ducked into the back storage room, silent as a cat, and I only waited a couple of seconds before she emerged with a rag, looking a little bit relieved.

“There’s only one entrance back there, and it’s through a window in the bathroom,” she informed me. “So if we cover the front of the store, they could only come one at a time through the back, and that would be too easy to pick them off. They’ll probably cover that exit, but it’ll be easier to get out that way.”

“That’s good news for us,” I told her, glancing around. “Now, what we need are some weapons. Grab some weapons and grab some ammo, quickly—they saw us come in, and them and Shawn will all be surrounding us in a matter of minutes.”

Valerie nodded dutifully, doing what I commanded of her mechanically, because I guess it was hard to argue with a dying man. I watched her pull sawed-off shotguns and handguns from locked cages, finding slight amusement in how casually she was handling firearms that were rarely allowed for ownership in this country, and I was surprised that the store even owned them at all—guns weren’t the weapons I had in mind when it came to the shop, but I knew Valerie wouldn’t like it when I told her what was, so I let her think this was it. She slid a couple of handhelds toward me, small calibers, before glancing back toward the front of the store, listening.

“I don’t hear them,” she said.

“They’re there,” I assured her, looking in their direction as well. “We might not be able to hear them right now, but they’re out there, biding their time, looking for any way to get in.”