Wolf Untamed (SWAT - Special Wolf Alpha Team #11) - Paige Tyler Page 0,4
the women talking. The smart thing to do would be to stay here and protect the women until backup arrived, but he knew if he did that, Tina would be dead.
Holstering his weapon, he handed the flashlight to the girl with the pink streaks in her hair, then leaned forward to scoop up Tina in his arms.
“Shh,” he whispered when she groaned in pain. “I know this hurts like hell, but I have to get you out of here. You just have to hold on. Can you do that for me, Tina?”
She murmured something that might have been agreement, but he wasn’t sure. Regardless, he headed back the way he’d come, the other two women close behind. He stopped at each doorway, poking his head out to make sure the coast was clear. After more than a few times of doing that, he started thinking maybe the girls were right about those guys bailing.
He was halfway across a store that must have once carried ladies’ fashions—at least judging by all the female mannequins eerily watching them—when he heard a crunching sound. He snapped his head around to see a man standing in the shadows.
Diego had a fraction of a second to shove the two women with him aside and twist his body around in an attempt to protect the girl in his arms before the sound of a large caliber handgun going off shattered the darkness. A bullet hit him in the back, and his vision went dark as pain engulfed him.
“Run!” he shouted even as another gunshot rang out and a red-hot lance of agony sliced across the top of his right shoulder inches from his spine. “Go…go…go!”
He was forced to stay behind the two women running and losing their collective minds in front of him. Tina screamed in his arms, the jostling too much for her, but there was nothing he could do to avoid it. They had to run, or they’d all die.
When the shadow of a man emerged out of the darkness ahead of him, Diego didn’t pause to think. He simply tucked Tina closer to his body and lowered his shoulder, slamming into the guy at full speed. There was a grunt followed by a weapon going off, then all three girls were screaming.
Diego felt something stab through his stomach above his left hip, right below his tactical vest. When the pain showed up this time, there was no doubt in his mind that he was screwed.
He went down hard, Tina slipping from his arms to tumble across the floor. The fact that she didn’t make a sound as she skidded across the linoleum and thudded into a pile of boxes worried him, but then the man he’d crashed into—a big, burly guy matching the bartender’s description—pointed his gun in Diego’s direction, and that situation sort of required all his attention. He had to stay alive long enough to get the women out of here.
Diego lunged forward, landing on the man and shoving the pistol in his hand aside as it went off again. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the two women whose names he still didn’t know scramble to their feet and run. He only prayed they didn’t run straight into the second guy.
A punch came his way and he ducked, letting the blow graze the side of his head instead of taking it straight in the face. The move was purely instinctive on his part. Just like it was instinct that had him throwing a punch of his own. Something crunched under his fist and the man let out a grunt of pain. Hoping that meant the guy was at least temporarily stunned, Diego reached for his own gun.
The flash of a blade glinted in the dim light coming from the street, and he twisted to the side, his weapon forgotten. The knife plunged deep into his right shoulder, bringing with it a whole hell of a lot of agony. Diego had never been shot before tonight—or stabbed—but he’d take a bullet over a blade any day. His shoulder was on frigging fire.
Diego rolled one way and then the other, managing to get the weapon dislodged from his shoulder and punching the man in the face again. He was able to keep the man’s pistol away from him, but the knife came close to his throat more than once before he was able to get in a punch to the man’s temple that took the fight right out of him.