He kisses me hard, and I know, with this one, simple kiss, that Aksel is different. Dangerous.
Not to me. To them.
We are in this together.
He fires twice.
Two down.
Running low, we dart back into the great room.
A sound from the foyer causes both of us to turn our aim.
I catch Aksel’s eye and pivot, going back-to-back with him.
Facing the windows in the great room, I halt—for one everlasting second, I watch four figures, silhouetted in the moonlight against the snowy meadow, approach the deck.
One of them throws a grenade. It arcs toward us—
“Aksel, get down!”
Crash!
The floor-to-ceiling glass windows shatter. The trim erupts in bright flames, splintering shards of wood across the room.
We throw ourselves to the floor. Aksel turns midair, landing on top of me, shielding my body.
Boom! There is a deafening gunshot to my left, another shot to my right.
A sharp piece of glass strikes my leg like shrapnel. I push my hand to the wound.
Through the shattered glass and flames engulfing the woodwork, I see shadowy figures, blurry and smudged in the smoke, moving in.
Aksel props his rifle against his shoulder. He slides the barrel around the sofa. Angling the weapon, he fires twice.
Both bullets hit a man’s chest. His knees buckle and he drops. Aksel moves the rifle 15 degrees and hits a second man in the thigh. Aksel curses below his breath, adjusts his angle, and pulls the trigger again. This time he punctures the man’s neck. A geyser of blood sprays across the foyer.
Four down.
Together, we crawl across the glass-strewn floor. It smells like aluminum and burning cedar. A shot whistles past my ear. A bullet lodges into the pillar behind the fireplace, narrowly missing Aksel.
We take cover behind an antique marble-top dresser.
My dress is slick with blood.
Aksel hovers over me, firing his rifle.
A man cries out in pain.
I swipe Aksel’s loose tie from his neck and knot it around my thigh.
Shadows move among the billowing smoke, surrounding us.
One figure is getting bigger. Closer.
Aksel switches his rifle to his right hand and reloads.
I lean around Aksel and shoot.
Five down,
Suddenly, the mudroom door opens—Bang!
Direct gunfire bombards us. Behind me, an oil painting drops to the floor, breaking the frame; the flat-screen TV mounted above the fireplace crashes onto the flagstone hearth.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Covering our heads, we dart from the room.
We are back where we started, in the entrance to the library. A blast hits the woodwork millimeters from Aksel’s shoulder.
Above us, an antler chandelier plummets.
Behind us, books tumble off the shelves in a cascading wave as gunfire ricochets around the room.
Another grenade rolls in. It explodes as we dive from the library.
“Stun grenades,” I murmur, rolling onto my stomach. Between my thigh and the explosion, I’ve lost my SIG.
Scanning the rubble, I get to my feet.
Aksel fires back from behind the wood pillar in the hall.
Another blast hits the front door, blocking our exit.
“To the kitchen!” Aksel yells.
Aksel covers us with his Remington as we maneuver through the great room and into the kitchen.
Because of the house’s elevation, the kitchen windows are two stories high—inaccessible from the deck.
A man wearing a black mask turns the corner. Aksel takes him out point-blank.
Aksel plows through the kitchen, tossing aside barstools. He slides the doors shut, jamming the lock into place.
Footsteps beat down the hall to the other entrance. Aksel races to seal it off too.
There is no way in. Or out. The locked doors will give us only seconds.
Aksel glances around the room. Rather than looking scared, he seems invigorated.
His eyes catch mine. “We’ve got this,” he says, half smiling. Because we don’t have this. We are outnumbered, outgunned, and cornered.
But I see in his eyes the confident, soothing calm I saw when we were trapped in the avalanche. He is unequivocally fearless, assertive, and willing to do anything to save us.
Boom! In a flash of bright light, the doors burst open. The force of the explosion thrusts me across the room. I land hard on my bleeding leg. A man charges forward through the smoke.
Aksel shouts at me, his words muffled in the echo of the blast.
The man lunges for Aksel’s neck. Aksel spins hard around, hitting the butt of his rifle into the man’s face with a bone-crunching sound.
A second man comes at Aksel from behind. Aksel wrestles him to the ground and connects his knuckles to the man’s jaw. He shouts at me again, “Get out of here, Sophia! Now!”