School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,122
SUV full of bad guys….” He frowned and looked into the school bus. “Have you checked on the kids?”
“Constance is waiting for your friends from the DA’s office,” Burton said, his leathers so stiff and shiny they creaked as he shifted his feet. “He doesn’t want to get the kids out until it’s safe.”
Jackson grimaced at the bullet-riddled side of the bus. “Anybody hit?”
Burton sucked air through his teeth. “Jason,” he said softly. “I stuck my head in, and he’s lost a lot of blood. He’s not looking great. The chatter at the moment is that if he comes in right now, he’ll be court-martialed for disobeying orders. Did you mean it when you said you had a safe place for him?”
Jackson nodded. “If we can promise that the guy won’t lose his residency for not reporting a gunshot wound, I might even get him his own personal-care physician. But you’re right. First the DA needs to get here, and we need to make a record that the kids got here safely.”
“Good,” Jai—the giant Russian bear—said. “These children were abducted. They belong with their families.”
Jackson nodded, watching the route from which they’d come. He saw a minivan, an unmarked SUV, and three cop SUVs all headed in their direction, as well as the flash of ambulance lights about two blocks behind the other vehicles.
Good. Ellery needed medical attention, and Jackson’s entire body hurt. Of course the children and Jason Constance would have priority, but just the knowledge that there was help coming reassured him.
“I think we’re in luck, then, because—fuck!”
If he’d been standing still, the bullet would have hit him center mass and possibly stopped his heart because after last night’s blow to the back he’d been lucky not to feel any signs of arrhythmia. But he’d been in midturn, and it caught him in the shoulder, a graze, enough to send him off balance, and he fell to his knees while the next bullet hit Burton square in the chest—and the substantial body armor he was wearing under his leathers.
“Fuck!” Burton snarled, pulling out his gun. “Ace, Jai, get down!”
But Ace and Jai were never great with orders, and before Jackson could even register what he was seeing, Ace had cleared a bigassed knife from a sheathe at his belt and hurled it with force and deftness that bespoke long practice. Jackson followed the trajectory to where Ziggy Ivanov stood, just in front of the small shuttle that Ace had co-opted, gun in hand.
He looked like hell—battered, his clothes torn and bloodied—and Jackson had time to wonder which of the two wrecked SUVs he’d been in. Probably the second one, the SUV that had rammed Ellery and Jackson. They’d been close enough for Ziggy to see the trajectory of the giant school bus and to make it there on foot.
Ace’s knife embedded itself deeply in Ziggy’s shoulder, near his chest center mass, but not quite. Ziggy’s arm fell, the gun still clutched in his hand but his arm useless to aim. He turned abruptly, the haft of the knife still sticking out of his body as he swerved into the street and started to run toward the school bus on the outside of the parked cars. Jackson and Burton were the first on their feet to give chase, Jackson dodging between the school bus and the Tank to intercept whatever he had in mind for the driver of the school bus, while Burton circled around the front of Ace’s stolen shuttle to keep him pinned.
Jackson had the shortest route, so he saw what happened next, and because he’d seen Ellery’s probably broken arm, his swollen wrist, he knew what true heroism was.
Ziggy came hauling ass alongside the parked line of cars, limping, yes, his arm dangling almost uselessly, the gun practically falling from his fingertips. As Jackson came out from between the vehicles, his own gun drawn, he watched as Ziggy transferred the gun from his right hand to his left, raising his left hand to aim at the driver of the school bus even as he ran.
He got off one shot, so intent on using his last strength in his pain to get revenge on whomever had stolen the children from their intended destination in the first place that he wasn’t paying attention when Ellery shoved open the driver’s side door of the Tank. Ziggy charged into the open door full bore, driving the knife farther into his shoulder and flailing backward onto the pavement.