beaten out of him by the fucking huge albino in the middle of Dylan’s living room. Lancaster was dead, and Jane was headed to a very nasty end in the elevator shaft.
There was only one solution: to tattoo his fucking name across MNK-1’s forehead with his .45.
Piece of fucking cake.
Bam, bam, bam. The sonuvabitch was fast, faster than Red Dog, which was ungodly fast, fast enough to keep Dylan from getting solid hits.
So he adjusted, without ever taking his finger off the trigger or pausing in his shots.
Bam, bam, bam—he landed those in the guy’s chest, which didn’t slow the bastard down or get him to release Jane.
Bam, bam … Dylan released the empty magazine out of the pistol, letting it fall to the floor as he slammed a fresh mag home … bam, bam.
He never stopped shooting, but he did change his mind and his target. Those last four shots had gone into Lancaster. Sure he was dead, but Monk was dragging him around like a teddy bear. The old man had value beyond reason—a good guess that turned into a cold fact when Monk roared and dropped Jane to pull Lancaster in closer, protecting him.
Dylan liked tough girls, and despite looking like she’d been wrung through the wringer, Jane scrambled like a true street rat. The instant Monk released her, she dropped low, out of his line of fire, and took off like a shot.
And there were plenty of shots. Dylan never let up.
Bam, bam, bam—and Monk roared again. Bam, bam, bam … reload like a fucking speed demon … bam, bam, bam.
Then bambambambambambam. Red Dog had arrived. There were no “grazing” shots delivered by Red, or by Kid, who had entered the room a mere second behind her.
Two more guns came into play—Quinn and Hawkins lining up on either side of him and Red and Kid, cutting the pie, widening the kill zone.
Lancaster was a pile of mush in a bloody, shredded shirt and there was no reason on earth for Monk to still be standing. But he was.
They had him locked down in a crossfire with only one way out: the elevator shaft.
Good luck with that, pendejo, Dylan thought, reloading for the last time. Bam, bam, bam.
Monk fell to his knees at the open doorway of the elevator shaft, and Dylan hoped the guy’s little personal struggle with getting shot about a thousand fucking times wouldn’t deter him from what must look like a pretty good plan.
It didn’t.
With a final roar, Monk tightened his hold on Lancaster’s limp body and lofted himself onto the elevator cable.
It was a short ride.
The first claymore exploded inside of a second—Boom!—and the rest came in quick succession—Boom! Boom! Boom!—all the way down to the sixth floor as the beast and his maker fell down the shaft.
Nobody holstered their weapons. They were SDF, and they never took death for granted. If Monk had a head left, Kid would put a bullet in it. The bastard had proven damned difficult to kill. They wanted to make sure they kept him that way.
True to form, Kid leaned into the open elevator shaft and squeezed the pressure plate on the tac light bolted onto his subgun.
Pop, pop—he threw a couple of rounds down the shaft, then turned and headed straight for J.T.
“Call Loretta,” Dylan said to Hawkins. “Sweet-talk her into sending her best cleanup crew.” It was going to be a mess in the elevator, but the bulk of the building was damn near indestructible.
Taking long strides across the loft, he made his way to Skeeter’s side. He deliberately did not reach out and pull her in close, and without him saying a word, she answered his questions.
“I’m fine. It’s just the shoulder. I swear.”
He looked around, saw a chair, and pulled it over for her. “Sit,” he said, then gave her a quick kiss on the side of the face.
The last two people to reach the scene finally made it to the thirteenth floor—actually in damn good time, considering where they’d come from.
“Creed,” he said, working his way back over the debris strewn all over the place. “Go get the Humvee and bring it up to the seventh floor. We’ve got injuries.”
Skeeter’s wasn’t life threatening, but he couldn’t say the same for J.T.
Jane had raced to his side and was all over him, one of her hands on his face, the other on his chest as she leaned close, talking to him with tears running down her cheeks. Kid had knelt and taken