True Colors (45 page)

BOOK: True Colors

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Sam resisted the instinct to try to break Zoe’s grip on her wrist. They were both battle trained, both knew the moves and countermoves for incapacitating an attacker. But this was her friend. She knew Zoe had no intention of hurting her.

Sam relaxed her muscles and waited until the taller woman’s shoulders sagged. Regret added to the emotional chaos of her expression as Zoe dropped Sam’s wrist and took a step back. “God, I’m so sor—”

Her brows arched sharply, and shock wiped the despair from her eyes.

The splat of something against the front of Sam’s shirt had her flinching back and glancing down to see a spray pattern of red against the white backdrop of cotton. It took a second to register.

Blood.

Sam lunged toward her friend. Pain burned through her left shoulder as she tackled Zoe to the floor. Too late. Her training had failed her. She’d let the enemy take her by surprise.

She scrambled to her knees and pressed shaking fingers to Zoe’s neck. That was when she realized trying to find her friend’s pulse was pointless: Her eyes were open and empty.

Sam fought down the nausea and grief that crowded into her thickening throat and forced herself to remember her training. The sniper who just killed Zoe no doubt waited for Sam to come into view so he could kill her, too.

She had to
do
something. Move.

A ticklish feather-stroke down her arm drew her gaze, and she watched the thin stream of blood tracking over her forearm. Numbness spread from her shoulder into the hand resting palm up on her thigh.

The sound of breaking glass snapped her out of her paralysis, and she slithered across the slippery hardwood floor toward her bag, toward her gun. With cold, hard—comforting—metal pressed to her palm, she flipped over onto her back and fired one shot into the chest of the intruder tearing toward her.

He dropped about a yard from her feet, crumpling into a heap, and she kept her SIG trained on him, waiting for a twitch to tell her he wasn’t dead. She didn’t so much as breathe until she saw his fingers go lax on the trigger of his weapon.

Heart slamming against her ribs, she crawled to him and shoved him over onto his back with both hands. She studied him as she aimed her gun at his head. In head-to-toe black, he looked like any other assassin, but something about the shape of his body seemed familiar.

She yanked off the black balaclava obscuring his features and sat back on her heels with a startled gasp.

She knew him.

He wasn’t a fellow N3 operative, but he was part of the team, one of three men Flinn called “the muscle.” This man was a sniper.

And Flinn had sent him to kill Zoe, to kill Sam.

Disbelief lightened her head. Betrayal tightened her lungs.

She had to run.