Page 96 of Break For Me
The patrol advances. Twenty yards. Fifteen. Their flashlights sweep the hedgerow, the path, the magnolia. The beam passes over the trunk—the light catching the bark, the bare branches, the shadow of our bodies compressed against the far side.
The rifle cracks.
The sound comes from above—sharp, clean. A single, high-velocity round fired from an elevated position. The echo rolls across the garden and off the compound wall.
One of the patrol drops. The flashlight hits the grass and rolls, the beam spinning, painting a circle of light on the frozen ground.
The second man reacts—fast, trained. His rifle swings toward the window where the muzzle flash originated. He fires. Therounds hit the limestone around the window frame, chips flying. Killian pulls back from the sill.
Rocco steps out from behind the magnolia. He fires twice. The Glock’s reports are flat, unsuppressed.
The second patrol man staggers. Falls. His rifle clatters on the stone path.
Silence. The echo dies. The flashlight on the grass continues its slow, dying spin.
"Go," Rocco says. "Now."
We run.
The east wing window is a ground-floor casement—double-paned, locked from the inside. Rocco wraps his fist in his henley sleeve and punches through the lower pane. The glass breaks inward, a contained collapse. He reaches through the gap, turns the latch, and the window swings open. The compound’s heated air meets the February cold in a visible plume.
He goes through first. I follow. The room is a sitting room—unused, the furniture under dust covers. We move through it to the door. Rocco presses his ear to the wood. He listens. He opens it an inch.
The corridor stretches ahead. Dim lighting. Elena’s room is at the end. Forty feet. The two men from the surveillance feed—Russo and Vendetti—are visible. They’re no longer at ease. Russo is at the corridor’s T-junction, his rifle up. Vendetti is at Elena’s door, his hand on the knob.
If Vendetti opens that door, he has Elena. The calculus changes. Connecticut all over again. The knife at her throat, the impossible shot, the choice between her life and mine.
I cannot allow that door to open.
"Russo first," Rocco whispers. "Then Vendetti. I’ll take Russo. You keep Vendetti off that door."
He doesn't wait for confirmation. He opens the door and steps out. He fires.
The hallway detonates. Rocco’s first shot hits the wall beside Russo—a deliberate miss, a suppression shot. Russo dives behind a decorative console table. His rifle fires—the burst chewing into the doorframe above Rocco’s head.
I step into the corridor. The Sig is in my hands. Vendetti is turning. His hand leaves Elena’s door knob. His weapon comes up. He sees me. Twenty feet. The corridor is narrow. The engagement distance is the length of a hospital ward.
I fire. The suppressed Sig coughs. The round hits Vendetti’s shoulder—the left deltoid. The bullet enters the muscle belly and exits through the posterior aspect. The trajectory misses the subclavian artery by centimeters. He spins. His rifle drops. He grabs his shoulder and hits the wall, sliding.
He’s not down. His right hand is reaching for the sidearm on his hip—the backup weapon.
I fire again. The round hits the wall beside his head. A miss. My hands are not Rocco’s hands. Steady under clinical conditions, less so when the target is a man and the corridor is full of noise.
Vendetti draws the sidearm. He brings it up. He aims at me.
Elena’s door opens.
My sister stands in the doorway in pajamas, her hair wild, her eyes enormous. She sees Vendetti on the floor with a gun rising toward her brother. She sees me in the corridor with a weapon she has never seen me hold.
"Get down!" I scream.
Vendetti’s gun fires. The round passes through the space Elena occupied a half-second before she drops. The bullet punches into the doorframe above her head.
The second round doesn’t miss.
The sound is different—sharper, closer. A rifle fired from the T-junction where Russo has repositioned. The round enters the corridor at an angle. It ricochets off the limestone wall. Thefragment—a jacket shard, a piece of copper and lead—catches Elena in the left forearm as she drops.
She screams. The sound is high, pure. The sound of a young woman who has never been cut by anything more serious than a kitchen knife.
