Page 120 of Ruin
The sobs that come are the kind that shake a person's entire frame, the kind that come from somewhere deeper thanthe chest, and Selene catches her, holds her and wraps herself around that small, broken body like she can absorb the damage.
"I knew," Emilia chokes out between sobs. "I knew you'd come. I kept telling myself Selene will come, Selene will find me?—"
"I'm here. I found you. It's over."
But Emilia pulls back. Just enough to see.
And what she sees is Selene in tactical gear with a knife in her hand, blood on her boots, and a diamond collar at her throat glinting above the neckline of a ballistic vest.
What she sees is not the Selene she knows.
"What is this?" Emilia whispers. The terror in her voice has shifted. It's not pointed at the room anymore, or the men on the floor, or the memory of what she's endured since she's been here. It's pointed at Selene. "What are you—who are these?—"
"Not now." Selene's voice cracks on the second word, just barely, a fissure so small that only someone who knows her the way I know her would catch it. "We need to move, Em. Can you walk?"
"They told me things." Emilia's eyes are wide, wet, and searching Selene's face for something she's not finding. "The men who took me. They said you were with someone. A crime lord. They said he killed people. They said he killed your?—"
"Not. Now." Selene cups Emilia's face in both hands, forces eye contact, and the expression she's wearing is one I recognize because I've worn it myself. The expression of a person holding a situation together by refusing to let it be anything other than what they need it to be right now. "Can you walk?"
Emilia nods. Barely.
Selene pulls her to her feet, wraps Emilia's arm over her shoulder, and takes most of her weight.
She looks at me over Emilia's head and her eyes are wet but her jaw is set and the message is clear:Get us out of here.
"Lionel. Point. Same route, reverse." I move to the door, check the hallway. It's empty. The radio is still playing from the first room, the dead man's music filling the silence he left behind. "Move."
We're halfway down the corridor when the stairwell door at the far end swings open.
Two men. Armed. They don't stand at the door and assess.
They come through it moving, advancing down the hall toward us with their weapons raised, and the distance between us shrinks fast.
Lionel fires. He hits the first man in the shoulder. The man spins but doesn't drop, braces against the wall, brings his weapon back up with his good arm.
I raise my gun but the angle is wrong—Selene and Emilia are directly in front of me, filling the narrow corridor, and I can't get a clean shot without risking them.
I shift left, trying to find a line around them, and in that half-second the second man closes another five feet.
He's not aiming at me. Not at Lionel. He's aiming at the easiest target—Selene, weighed down by Emilia, unable to move, unable to dodge, a stationary body in a straight corridor.
I open my mouth to shout and the word doesn't make it out before Selene moves.
She shoves Emilia sideways, hard, into the wall, out of the line of fire.
The shot cracks through the space where they were standing a half-second ago, punching into the concrete behind them.
I try to reacquire the target but Selene is already between me and him, already moving toward the man instead of away, and I can't fire without hitting her.
She doesn't close the distance like a fighter.
She closes it like a woman running at something that's trying to kill the person she loves most in the world.
Graceless. Desperate.
The knife comes out of the thigh sheath and she swings it at him—not a trained strike, not the precise upward thrust of someone who knows anatomy and targeting.
A wild, lunging stab with her whole body behind it, the way you'd swing at someone in a parking lot, all force and terror and no technique.
