Word and Breath (25 page)

Mikel would be able to take them easily.

“Wait until I say,” he murmured, holding up his hands to put the men off their guard.

“If you move, we’ll kill you,” Ghent said, in an obvious attempt to sound threatening.

“Why are you doing this, Ghent?” Riana asked. It was worth a try, but something in the young man’s eyes made Mikel certain her attempt at connection was useless. “I thought we were friends.”

“I’m not a friend to a Reader,” Ghent said, distaste evident in his voice. “Especially not one whose grandfather was a traitor and who’s whored herself out to a dirty Soul-Breather.”

Riana gasped, looking horrified and shocked. Then her eyes shifted to Mikel’s, and he saw that she’d realized the same thing he had with Ghent’s offensive words.

Ghent must be a Zealot. Part of one of the fringe groups who supported only the most narrow of Union values—perhaps even the same group that tried to kill Riana in Canning Square.

Anti-reading. Anti-Breathers. The hallmarks of extremist ideology.

Mikel was biding his time, waiting for at least two of the men to get close enough for him to stun unconscious.

The red-haired man reached Riana first, and he grabbed her roughly by one of the arms.

She reacted instinctively, pulling away and lashing out at him.

Mikel could hardly blame her. It was gut-instinct to fight at such a moment. He was about to himself, when the moment opened itself up.

But the man didn’t respond well to Riana’s struggles. He backhanded her across the face in an ugly slap.

Riana grunted and stumbled backward, and Mikel took an automatic step forward, rage erupting inside him at seeing her struck that way.

Ghent and the third man—tall, skinny and plain—both had their guns aimed at Mikel, and they menaced them more purposefully as his stance turned aggressive.

Mikel stopped at the threat from their guns, but he was now almost within arm’s reach.

“Are you all right?” he asked, taking just a moment to scan Riana and check her condition.

Riana’s eyes as they focused on the red-haired brute were more furious and disgusted than pained. “Yes.”

Just as he’d been waiting for, the skinny man took a step closer to Mikel.

Mikel still had his hands extended in a show of peace. He began to edge closer, closing the last few inches between his hand and the other man’s skin.

“Watch out!” Ghent cried, “Don’t let him touch you! He might be the Breather!”

The skinny man jerked away, just as Mikel had almost reached him.

Then all three guns were leveled at him, with three matching looks of absolute hatred.

No doubt at all about what brand of radical these three were. Zealots to the core.

“Surely we can kill the Breather,” the red-haired man said. He was perhaps the nastiest of the group. “Why bother taking them if we’re just trying to kill them anyway?”

“We follow orders,” Ghent said tersely. “And watch the girl, Thom.”

Riana had inched away from the men in their distraction with Mikel, but at Ghent’s warning Thom reached out and grabbed her roughly by the hair. “Little bitch,” he muttered. He twisted his fistful of hair, causing Riana to whimper and stop struggling.

Mikel couldn’t suppress the guttural sound in his throat as he saw someone hurting Riana, even as he tried to control his reaction, knowing he couldn’t give too much away.

Too late, he bit off the sound.

“He cares for her,” Thom said with malicious glee. “The creature cares for his filthy whore.” Focusing on Mikel, he added, “You try anything, and I’ll kill her.”

Mikel didn’t doubt it for a second. Thom despised Riana and everything she stood for, almost as much as he despised Mikel for being a Soul-Breather.

Mikel had just handicapped himself significantly by letting his feelings for Riana show.

He was usually better than this, but he’d never dealt with an attachment like this before.

“You two cover him, but don’t get close enough for him to touch you. I’ll go first with the girl.” With these directions, Thom led the little party, heading toward the emergency exit at the end of the hall.

Mikel walked obediently, all the while hoping someone would enter the hallway from the lobby or from one of the numerous rooms and sound the alarm. Or at least provide a distraction he could use.

As was always the case when one needed it, no one interrupted the quiet trek toward the emergency exit. Thom even knew the code to disarm the alarm, so they could leave the building unnoticed.

It had started to pour, so they all walked out into a back alley in the rain. To his relief, Mikel saw there was no car waiting for them there. They must have arranged for a car to pick them up eventually, but they’d have a better chance of escape on a busy street than in this alley.

With traffic and other pedestrians—not to mention stores and businesses to duck into—there would be any number of ways to get away.

So Mikel walked without struggle down the alley, his hands extended in front of him in a show of submission. He was drenched before he’d taken a dozen steps.

If he could manage to get Thom’s hands off Riana, he’d have no trouble handling the others. But Mikel knew Thom’s type. The man would kill or mutilate Riana without a second thought.

He couldn’t risk taking on the others until he’d managed to get to Thom.

The rain grew even heavier as they neared the end of the alley, the rain drops pelting Mikel’s face and obscuring the weapons the other men held. Mikel was so wet now that his hair was becoming a distraction, plastered to the back of his neck and the sides of his face. Water streamed down his skin, into his eyes, and he kept shaking his head to clear his vision—making sure not to move his hands in what might be considered a threatening gesture.

Riana looked worse off than he did. She didn’t even have a coat. Her fitted jacket and skirt clung to her chest and thighs, showing off her figure in a way he knew would make her self-conscious.

If these men had been more experienced at abduction or even at basic strategy, they would have positioned Riana behind Mikel, where he couldn’t see her. They were clearly amateurs, though, and this was probably the first time they’d ever done something like this. They were determined, but not entirely competent. Mikel had a clear view of Riana and fairly easy access to Thom, as soon as he decided to make a move.

If the men had been more experienced, they also would have searched Mikel before they’d done anything else.

He still had a gun in the pocket of his jacket.

He was dying to reach for it but—however unprofessional his captors—there were three of them, all with guns, and one of them had his gun pressed up against Riana’s back.

As they reached the corner, Mikel wondered what their plan was. It would look rather odd for them to have Mikel and Riana at gunpoint on a city street in the middle of the day. Not unheard of, but it would probably make an impression on witnesses.

As he expected, a car waited for them on the street at the end of the alley. The black sedan was parked next to the sidewalk in a handicapped designated spot. Three more men in raincoats waited beside it.

His first glance told Mikel that these new men weren’t amateurs. Whoever was in charge of this assignment had called in some professionals for backup.

So Mikel didn’t hesitate.

He lunged forward at Thom, his hand landing on the back of his neck. One of the other men fired at him from behind, but it was a sloppy shot and didn’t come close to hitting him.

Opening a quick, brutal connection, Mikel sucked in enough of Thom’s consciousness to knock him out, nearly spitting at the bitter aftertaste. Thom slumped to the pavement, releasing his hold on Riana’s hair.

“Run!” Mikel gritted out, giving Riana a push in the direction opposite the waiting car before he reached for the gun in his pocket.

He whirled around and fired at the skinny man, hitting him efficiently in the leg to disable him without risking the consequences of killing a Union employee. He fired then at Ghent, only to realize that the man wasn’t where he’d been the second before.

Gent was evidently no hero and no dummy. He’d flattened himself on the ground as soon as he realized Mikel was armed.

So Mikel ran.

He caught up with Riana after four strides, grabbed her arm, and pulled her with him as he ran. She kept stumbling in her wet clothes and hair, but she managed to keep up with him.

The other three men, the ones waiting at the car, were already in pursuit. Mikel could hear them behind him, and it gave his adrenalin another boost of urgency.

They fled in clumsy haste, pushing through pedestrians and splashing through puddles. The people immediately surrounding the gun shots had stopped and gaped or ran away. But the block hadn’t yet erupted into panic, and Mikel had to maneuver through the slower walkers on the sidewalk, for good measure toppling over a hot dog cart as he passed it and feeling an unexpected pang of guilt at the owner’s wail of distress.

It was still pouring, although Mikel had filtered out the wetness and discomfort completely. Noticing the amount of spray coming up from the traffic on the street, he hauled Riana into the road, darting in front of an approaching bus.

They gained a few seconds from the move, as their pursuers had to wait for the bus to pass and then lost them temporarily in the traffic and the violent spray from the road.

Mikel used the spare seconds to duck into a busy coffee shop across the street.

The shop was packed, filled with mingling crowds waiting in line for coffee or chatting as they doctored their drink. Mikel dragged Riana to the far corner, where they were shielded by the hoards of coffee-drinkers.

Without hesitating, he took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders, helping her get her arms into the sleeves. It was way too long for her, coming down to her ankles, so he secured it by tying her scarf around her waist. “Your suit is too distinctive,” he explained.

She just nodded, her face pale and tense. She twisted her long, wet hair off her back and tucked it in under the coat collar.

“We need to split up,” Mikel said, holding her eyes. He’d known what they’d have to do from the beginning. “You run out the back door there. I’ll go out the front and try to distract them.”

Riana opened her mouth to argue, but Mikel didn’t let her.

He took the gun out of his pocket and forced it into one of her hands. “Take this. And run.”

“Mikel—” She didn’t look as frightened as she did horrified.

He gave her a little shake. “You’re the important one here. Remember that.” He tilted his head down to give her a quick, hard kiss, breathing in a taste of her pure panic. And her fear. For
him
. “Now run.” He shoved her, not gently, toward the back exit, just as he saw their pursuers at the entrance to the coffee shop.

He didn’t wait any longer, moving as fast as he could through the crowds toward the men at the entrance.

He risked one glance over his shoulder to see that Riana had left through the back, and that was enough of a relief to give him new momentum as he barreled into the three men who were looking for him.

He surprised them enough to get past safely, and he even managed to knock one of them out with a hand on the wrist.

The other two jumped into pursuit. They weren’t playing around. They opened fire, despite the public setting and the other pedestrians.

Fortunately, the shots missed him, since both he and the other men were running through the pouring rain and it was difficult to aim precisely in such circumstances. But the bystanders started to scream, some hitting the ground in terror and some trying to jump into convenient businesses to hide.

The panic would only help Mikel, who instinctively ducked his head as he sprinted down the sidewalk at a dead run. He felt a bullet whiz by his hair.

If he hadn’t been already ducking his head, the bullet would have planted itself in his skull.

He didn’t waste any time dwelling on that detail, however. He had a good chance of outrunning his pursuers.

And he would have too, except he was running in the direction of the Archives. Directly toward Ghent, he was now approaching slowly with a drawn and leveled gun.

Gent didn’t look like the slightly inept young man he’d been before. His face was twisted with fury and disgust, and Mikel wasn’t fool enough to doubt his ability to kill him.

With two behind him and Ghent in front of him, Mikel stopped.

There was a chance he could have gotten past Ghent, somehow distracting him enough to avoid getting a bullet in his chest, but it would have been a long shot. If he was killed or disabled, the men would turn right around and go after Riana.