Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,93
to stand up to a proper car chase. I flung myself off it, wobbling as I caught my balance with the weight of my cargo and wincing when the edge of the computer jabbed me harder. This machine had better contain what we needed, or I was going to shove it up its owner’s ass. Assuming I got the chance to find out what it contained in the first place.
As I righted myself, my own ass bumped into a display of dark-cloaked action figures at the head of the aisle. “Intruder detected!” a host of them cried out in their tinny digital voices. “Fire when ready!”
For the love of gravy, the whole store was out to get me. But as I sprinted down the aisle, it occurred to me that their suggestion wasn’t such a bad one. With my free hand, I snatched a dart blaster toy off the shelves. Already loaded with five foam darts—my lucky day.
A guard had reached the end of the aisle. I glanced back just long enough to take a couple of shots behind me. One of the foam bolts bounced off his shoulder, but the other hit the edge of his glasses, knocking them askew. Score!
I was almost in good spirits again when a second set of footsteps rounded the corner. I didn’t look back, firing blind as I ran on, but the click of a safety releasing reached my ears clear as anything.
These guys were taking the whole “fire when ready” idea to a much more serious level.
With a lurch of my gut, I threw myself forward even faster. My feet slammed against the tiles, the impact radiating through the soles with an expanding ache. My arm holding the computer was outright throbbing now.
“Stop right there!” one of the guards yelled as they pelted after me—as if I were going to play nice now. I veered back and forth in an attempt to make myself a more difficult target, and I’d like to think that inspired maneuver was what saved me.
A bang split the air, and an instant later, a deeper agony than anything I’d experienced so far seared through my shoulder. On my right side, thank fluffy puppies, because if it’d been the left, I’d have dropped my sole reason for being here. As it was, my arm jerked with the impact, my fingers spasming with the rush of pain, and the toy gun tumbled to the floor.
Gritting my teeth, I tore onward. The door was in sight. I could make it—but I wasn’t sure any more that simply leaving the building was going to guarantee my freedom.
I forced my fingers around the knob and yanked, a cry I couldn’t contain breaking from my throat at the fiery sensation that stabbed through my shoulder at the effort. My head reeled, but I managed to stumble into the stockroom just as another shot rang out. The door vibrated with it.
Shit, shit, shit. My shoulder was on fire, tears prickling at my eyes. I dashed across the room for the outer door. The guards barged after me with a volley of shouts.
As I heaved the outer door open with a smack of my good shoulder that echoed into the wounded one with another flare of pain, a sharp little impulse shot up inside me.
Burn them. Burn the two of them down, right to the fucking ground. I didn’t have my lighter in my hand, but the heat that pulsed through me with the frantic thrum of my heartbeat felt potent enough to leap straight from my fingers in a burst of flame.
The thought gripped me for a moment, and then I recoiled from it with a jolt of horror and the wash of the outside air over my face. Even if I could have done it—which obviously I couldn’t have; how crazy would that have been?—burning people alive was a little beyond what I could stomach, even if they seemed intent on murdering me.
I choked down a sob at the pain now splintering right through my chest and raced into the parking lot with all the speed my legs could produce.
I could run pretty fast, even lugging heavy computer equipment under one arm, even in a haze of agony. But it was a big parking lot with no cover at all except for the Clothes for the Recently Deceased donation box way too far across that open stretch of asphalt. As the guards barreled out after me, it was only a matter of seconds