see, right? Make good with your boss? Come get me.”
Felicity took a step forward. “Deon!”
“I’ll meet you near Concrete!” I screeched, then I turned around and bolted back into the fray of the car show.
A couple of gunshots cracked against the music playing in the background of the show, and all of the attendees started to duck and run for cover. There was no longer anywhere to hide, only do the one thing I’d mastered in the past year.
Run.
I leapt over anyone that got in my way, including shoving people aside to get around them. The good news was, they weren’t openly shooting at me, at least not while I was around everyone. As long as I could keep a few people between them and me, I could keep from getting shot in the back.
The car show was surrounded on all sides by barrels turned into a fence with the use of white poles that had been bolted to connect them. Some of the dirty cops that were on guard were standing near the perimeter, and I was hoping that maybe getting closer to them would turn my pursuers around. I ran straight in their direction, even after they locked eyes on me, but then they pulled their guns too.
“Stop!” One screamed.
“That’s the one,” the woman who had captured me screamed from behind me. “Grab him!”
I should have expected that they were all in on it together. Connor had more influence than anyone anticipated. Looking to the left and right, I considered turning around and dodging back into the show, but there were more people stepping away from the screaming, running people, all set for me. The longer I stayed in the show, the worse things were going to get.
I had to get out.
So I continued to run straight at the police officers. They had their guns drawn and were screaming at me to stop, but I didn’t slow. Similarly to the man and woman behind me, the cops weren’t shooting, so the public was working to my advantage. Once I was on the other side of that fence, that protection would be gone, so hopefully my limber wouldn’t fail me now.
I shoved between the two cops that were looking at me, and braced my hands on the top pole of the fence and vaulted myself over. I immediately threw myself into a serpentine movement, and not a moment too soon, as bullets immediately started to fly at me. Outside of the show, the warehouse district was nothing but shadows and shipping containers. Plenty of places to hide.
“Deon,” the woman who snatched me sang from behind me. “Don’t make me chase you. It’s only going to make things worse.
I could hide behind any one of the shipping containers, but there was only so much I could do before they found me again. However, the coast was directly in front of me. Thank god I didn’t have any electronic devices on me. I continued to charge forward, despite the people behind me screaming after me not to do what they could see I was doing, and a bullet pierced the silence.
And then I felt a burning pain in my leg.
My face hit the dirt before I even realized I was falling. The coast was about ten feet in front of me, but I could feel blood pouring down my shin and the stinging searing my skin. The gunshot wound I’d taken to the stomach courtesy of Connor still throbbed in the middle of the night sometimes. Now I was back to point zero.
But I refused to go back.
I crawled up to my feet and continued to charge towards the coast and out onto the dock that was hanging over the water.
“Deon, don’t!”
I held up my hand with my middle finger stabbed up, and rushed right off the front of the dock and crashed into the waves below. The forceful tide was attempting to suck me out to sea, but I fought against it to swim backwards, underneath the dock instead. A few pieces of cord were hanging from the dock, so I grabbed onto one and twisted it several times around my arm, and then let my body flow with the rush of the waves, hopefully keeping me from sticking out of the water too much. My leg was screaming in pain and I knew that the chances my fresh wound would end up infected were high, but that was a concern for later.
Above me, the man and woman who were