He spun and fired into a darkened window on his right, the same building Zoya had just escaped into. He reached over the Volvo again, this time with the handgun, and fired a dozen or so rounds, hoping to get these assholes to look for some temporary cover.
He rose to his feet and ran for the broken windowpane, diving through it, chased along by gunfire. He landed hard and awkwardly on a school desk, flipping it and himself over several times before coming to a stop.
He rose in the darkened room and fired back through the two windows into the alley, emptying his weapon into a man who appeared there with a submachine gun.
Court reloaded his last mag and fired another eight rounds through all the windows in the room, back towards the alleyway, trying to buy himself some time.
With only a half magazine in his hot pistol, he spun around and began running.
Looking at the layout and the size of the desks in the classroom, Court could tell he was running through a primary school. He bounded out into the hall, his gun ahead of him. He had no idea if the men from the alley would pursue him in here, but he wanted to get as much space as possible between himself and them as quickly as possible.
He slowed to listen for the sounds of other footfalls, hoping to track Zoya, but his ears were shot for the time being and he heard nothing. He started running again, searching for some sort of an exit on the far side of the building.
Within moments, however, he heard the shouted voices of men behind him. The surviving goons from the alley were clearly pouring through the windows. He had a few seconds on them, no more, so he decided this large and dark school might afford him a decent place to hide if he just looked for one.
Turning down a narrow corridor darker than the main halls of the school, he found a door, barely visible until he was just feet away. He turned the latch and was pleased to find it unlocked, so he entered the perfectly darkened room, shut and locked the door, and listened till the racing footsteps of at least four men passed by up the main hall.
* * *
• • •
Jon Hines virtually never left his boss’s side, but as Fox watched his surviving men climb through the windows in pursuit of Zoya and her unknown accomplice, he turned to his big bodyguard. “I want you in there, too.”
“Sir, I watch over you.”
Fox snapped now, “If one of our guys hurts or kills Zoya, Mars will have me killed. Believe me, you preventing that will be the best protection you’ve ever given me.”
Hines zipped up his light leather jacket to obscure his white shirt, then walked over to one of the broken windows. He stepped easily inside and began moving through a series of dark rooms and hallways.
He could hear the other men running and banging their way through doors, and he could tell almost immediately they weren’t clearing every room of this building; instead they seemed to assume the fleeing pair had just shot out an exit onto the street. But Hines himself took his time, moved with silent footfalls, and thought about what he might do if half a dozen gunmen were on his heels as he ran through this building.
He stopped suddenly. What would he do? He’d find a place in this darkened warren to wait for the danger to pass.
He stepped over to a stairwell, moved into complete blackness there, then leaned back against the wall. He was one man; he could not search the multistory school alone, but he could listen for the moment Zoya and her friend decided the coast was clear, and that was when he would pounce.
Hines had a pistol, but he left it in its shoulder holster. Hand-to-hand fighting was more than just his forte; it was his singular passion, so he was determined to get close enough to the male rescuer of Mars’s crazy daughter to snap the man in two. His senses were acute due to some adrenaline, but he wasn’t amped up about the thrill and the danger. Hines had killed many times, yet he’d never been seriously hurt in a hand-to-hand fight, and since his confidence was born out of success, he had no doubts about his prospects tonight.
He’d kill the man with Zoya, and he’d scoop up that little Russian bitch