Midnight Hero - By Diana Duncan Page 0,18
a sound.” He eased his head up for a peek into the bank, and then jerked back down. “Go!”
What seemed like forever in reality probably took minutes. Crawling with Con’s staunch presence behind her, she arrived at the corner of the building and stopped. A huge space in front of the back doors loomed ahead. An empty void affording no shelter to the hunted. They had to cross yards of exposed fake marble to reach the main doors. To Syrone and safety.
Con’s hands settled on her shoulder. “When I give you the green light, I want you to run across,” he murmured. “Stay low. Then hit the floor by the front corner of the shoe store.”
Her nerves jittered. Surely he wasn’t sending her into the open alone. After all, he had the training, the experience. The gun. “Where will you be?”
“Right behind you.” He bobbed up and took another fast peek inside the bank. “Go!”
Exposed, vulnerable and expecting to feel a bullet slam between her shoulder blades any second, she ran. For the first time since the lights failed, she was grateful. Semi-darkness hindered predators and helped prey. She’d once picked up a fallen baby sparrow whose frantic pulse had raced in her cupped hands. Empathy for the tiny bird’s terror thundered through her veins as she huddled in front of the shoe store.
She turned, glancing in trepidation at the bank windows behind Con. Dreading to see the dark silhouette of a man with a machine gun who would snuff out his precious life in a hail of bullets and blood.
Con prowled across the void, his body low, his fluid stride as graceful as a tiger’s. He wasn’t even breathing hard when he reached her side. “All right?” She nodded, and he smoothed back her hair. “We’re gonna be fine. I promise.”
“You can’t promise. You have no control over this situation.”
“The hell I don’t. Those slimeballs just hit the wrong bank. Their last bank.”
“I only saw one slimeball.”
“I saw three, and my guess is there are least three more. I’m betting the power failure isn’t due to the weather. For a job this size, you need a full crew.”
She gulped. Six—or more—against two. The odds against them had tripled. “How come you’re not scared?”
His teeth gleamed in a dangerous smile. “I know what I’m capable of. This little adversity is a chance to learn and grow. Find out what you’re capable of.”
At the moment, not wetting her pants was a major accomplishment. In spite of her abhorrence to violence, admiration washed over her. Instead of wigging out, he saw facing his greatest fears as challenges. Growth opportunities, for Pete’s sake. “You are some piece of work, Conall Patrick O’Rourke.”
His lightning grin flashed for the second time. “Am I in trouble again?”
God, she loved him. Every gorgeous, mischievous, courageous molecule. “Con, if we get out of here—”
“Not if. When.”
She wasn’t so sure. Wouldn’t that be one of fate’s nasty ironies? To die just when she’d decided to really live? “If we get out of here, I’m going to try—”
“Shh.” His hand again covered her mouth as the sinister silhouette she’d dreaded appeared in the bank’s windows. “Freeze.”
No problem. Her blood froze in her veins, her heart stopped.
Another silhouette joined the first, and she held her breath. Though she couldn’t see their faces, like all hunted things, she felt their probing gazes piercing their hiding place.
The silhouettes shrank, disappeared. Con’s hand slid from her mouth, and she sucked in a quivering breath. “Did they see us?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
He grinned again. “Because there aren’t any bullets screaming past our heads.”
“Could you possibly be any more audacious?”
“This is combat, sweetheart. If I lose my head, we both die. The hostages die. And that isn’t going to happen.”
Her gaze snagged on his. Sharp wariness underlying the resolve in his eyes told her he wasn’t nearly as unaffected as she’d believed. High-alert vibrations emanated from his tense muscles. His words might be cavalier, but his mind and body were taut and ready for action. The thought whammed her like a sledgehammer to the skull. He was scared, too. A phrase from the SWAT evaluation report replayed in her mind. Suppression of fear. How much of his bravado was a front for her sake and how much was real? Did it matter? Either way, she trusted him with her life.
“What now?”
“Keep advancing, fast and quiet. Stay on this side until we’re even with the One Hour Photo booth.” He flicked a glance at the empty bank