Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan Page 0,9

been shot and she was alone here with at least one or maybe two men with guns coming for her.

She shifted her body so she was out from under the weight of him and reached for his gun. She hadn’t had more than training at the range, though she’d put in enough hours there to know how to handle the weapon.

But she’d sure as hell never fired a gun at another human being. Still she’d be damned if she was going to sit and wait to die.

Or watch them kill this man who’d saved her, who had put his life on the line for her security. The man she’d once loved with all her heart.

She lifted the weapon and trained her aim on the window while she tried shaking Heath awake with her other hand. She needed him. They were in a seedy part of town in a city she’d only ever driven through as a passenger before. She didn’t have a clue where to go from here. She had no idea how to reach his team. She didn’t know where to go if she got them off this fire escape.

And that was a huge if. How the hell did she think she was going to be able to lift this man? She couldn’t. And she sure as hell couldn’t climb down a ladder with him.

Sirens sounded in the distance and she was reminded of the sirens she’d heard at the airport. They were too far away to help her now, just as they had been then.

And something told her this time, there would be no shouts from a Delta team coming in the nick of time to save her. She took a steadying breath, resisting the urge to try to wake up Heath. She needed to be ready when their attackers came through that window.

The window filled with the dark shape of a man and time seemed to slow as she saw the weapon in his hand. Saw him raise it and point it at her and she was frozen in fear for the briefest second. She only hoped that wasn’t enough to cost her. To cost Heath.

She squeezed the trigger, aiming for center body mass as she’d been taught during all those sessions her stepdad had paid for when she joined the foreign service.

The gun was a lot bigger than she was used to so it was no surprise when it sent her body jerking back. She didn’t stop firing, though. Two, three, four times. Until the man slumped over the window.

Her heart beat a wild rhythm in her chest and she didn’t let herself think about the fact she probably just killed this man. She couldn’t face that right now. Not on top of everything else.

Heath groaned and shifted and she shook him again.

“Heath! Open your eyes, Heath! Please!”

He groaned once more and then he was sitting, taking in the scene around them and assessing things as though he wasn’t bleeding from the head and arm. That’s apparently what special forces training would do for you.

He pulled another gun from somewhere on his body and crouched in front of her, waiting. His response when the next man came to the window was so fast, she didn’t see him move. He fired off two shots and the man fell, disappearing beneath the window.

“Let’s go,” Heath said, taking both guns and pushing her in front of him again, toward the ladder that led to the ground.

And then they were moving through alleys and in and out of buildings. Eleanor thought he was being overly cautious. She’d seen four men come into the apartment and all of those men were dead now. There were sirens telling her the police were coming in response to the gunfire. Surely, no one else would come after them now.

She was wrong. She heard the shouts of two men behind them and looked back to see them at the end of the busy street. They were clearly looking for someone and she had a feeling it was Heath and her.

Heath took them through a market and into a small internet café where no one even bothered to look up from their screens when they entered. No one seemed to care when they slipped out the back door either. He kept them moving, not looking back.

By the time he pulled her into a dark bar, Eleanor’s head was spinning. It took her a minute to realize they were in some kind of strip club. The women