Page 46 of Alik
I’m going to have to jump for it.
Right on cue, a ski-masked man sticks his head out the window. “Making work simple, huh, bitch?” He laughs, amused at my predicament instead of angry like before.
His accent… What is it?
It isn’t Irish.
He points a gun out the window, his smile never wavering. My eyes widen at the gun just before I jerk my head to the fire escape.
Now or never.
A scream rips from me as I shove off the wall toward the ladder, my arms stretching desperately just as the gun goes off. My fingers find metal and grasp with a grip that takes all my strength to summon, and the extendable ladder flies down with my weight propelling it.
I screech as bullets fly my way, clinging to the ladder for dear life, but when the ladder lurches to a stop, my grasp slips.
There’s never been a time in my life when I’ve felt so close to death. I’ve come close, but barreling to the ground, my arms and legs flailing as I reach for the imaginary to latch on to, I feel as though death locks me in its icy grasp and squeezes until I’m suffocating.
My eyes clamp shut as I land, but when a firm, protective embrace registers instead of the unforgiving flat concrete, I open them. Alik stares down at me, his strong arms cradling my trembling form.
His lips lift into a grin. “Talk about timing, huh?”
When the gun blasts again, he rushes us behind a dumpster and lowers me to the ground while I just stare at him in shock.
What is he doing here?
How did…?
He caught me?
He caught me.
Hesavedme.
“Alik,” I whisper, the tremble in my voice as pronounced as the one in my hands.
He pulls a gun from his waistband then creeps around the dumpster.
I reach for him. “Be careful.”
There are three of them. Three against two. One, really.
My back slams into the dumpster as Alik’s gun fires, and I press my palms over my ears.
Movement up ahead catches my eye, and when I spot the man in the shadows, his gun pointed right at me, I scream, closing my eyes so I don’t see the bullet coming. Gunshots rain, but no pain follows. When I open my eyes, the man is lying on the ground twenty feet away.
“Pavel!” the man in the window shouts, his voice pained. He spits something in another language before firing at the dumpster in rapid succession until his gun clicks.
Alik runs to the man he shot and drags his body to us while I shift onto my knees, wondering if there’s something I should be doing.
Alik doesn’t look at me. His eyes are wide, his lips parted as he removes the ski mask from the man who was blocking the stairs.
He stares at the man, wasting time it feels like we don’t have, and I can’t quite figure out why he stopped shooting when the other man did.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, darting my eyes between him and the man. “Did you know him?”
Footsteps coming from the other direction, Alik answers my question with a shake of his head before pulling on the ski mask and crouching against the dumpster, his gun at the ready.
“You son of a bitch!” a man shouts. It sounds like the one from the window. “Come out and die like a man, motherfucker.”