Chapter 10: Gauze
(Sydney)
"They're coming," he gasped between tortured breaths. We were running for our lives, feet pounding on pavement. I turn briefly and fire off another round. I think I hear a scream, the sound of a body falling. More likely it is wishful thinking. I don't reply to Sark. There is nothing to add. We are running. They are running. Bullets hit the pavement at our feet.
We round the corner of the warehouse and practically run into the second security detail. The detail that according to all our intel was not supposed to exist. There are four of them. I down one with a bullet to the head, and knock another unconscious with the butt of my gun. But there are still two left, forcing an engagement, the other men with guns no doubt approaching.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Sark disarm the taller man. Mine is shorter but dense and well-trained in hand to hand. A brutal kick to the ribs sends me to the ground clutching by side and gasping for air. A second kick to the stomach. All I can do is try to roll away from his steel-toed boots, try to gather breath to stand. He pulls out a knife.
Sark comes out of nowhere and knocks him off balance. The knife aimed for my neck merely glances a bicep. The guard is down. Permanently. And I feel only relief watching Sark kill the man with his bare hands.
"Come on!"
He jerks me up by my injured arm, sends a spray of bullets behind us as we run, pain shooting down my arm and through my side.
(Sark)
She's favoring her right arm. I don't realize she was stabbed until we run under a flickering light and I see the blood seeping through her shirt. But there's nothing I can do about it now.
"Faster!" I scream at her. Her face is grim. "There's nothing wrong with your legs!" Her only response is a crude gesture that doesn't bear repeating.
The gap is getting bigger. The bullets are hitting the ground behind us: we're almost out of range. A three-minute push should have us at the car. Three-minutes of bone-jarring, leg burning agony, even more so for Sydney, I'm sure. And we're there. I jump in the driver's seat and have the car in gear before she's even shut the door.
(Sydney)
The safehouse is in a poor neighborhood in Paris: a grungy apartment with a broken kitchen table and threadbare sheets on the bed. Perhaps it wouldn't seem so shabby if our operation had gone according to plan.
"We failed, didn't we?" I ask him. He's sitting at the kitchen table breaking down his gun, meticulously cleaning the action.
"I got one of his bodyguards, but not Vuilleumier."
"You don't seem concerned about it."
"Are you?"
"Someone must have known we were coming."
"No, they would have changed the meet if they had known. Our intel was faulty. That's it. Or he stepped up security after we killed Milner. They were friends."
I walked to the bathroom and found gauze in the medicine cabinet. The sleeve of my shirt was stiff with blood. I tried to peel it off over my head, but when I started to lift my arm the pain was so intense I let it fall back to my side, and retched into the sink. Nothing came up. I was caught between waves of nausea and shooting pain now that the adrenaline of the chase had worn off.
Sark stood in the doorframe, something close to concern on his face. Only now did I notice his lip was split and bloody and he had the beginning of a black eye.
(Sark)
"Let me help you with that."
She nodded, and sat down on the toilet seat. I cut the sleeve off her shirt above the wound, and then down the length of her arm. I peel the fabric away as carefully as I can. It was three inches long, and perhaps half an inch deep. She winced as I cleaned it with alcohol. And watched coolly as I wrapped it in gauze until the blood stopped seeping through.
"Any others?" I asked. She lifted the hem of her shirt with her good arm in response, exposing two fist-sized bruises on her stomach and over the bottom of her rib cage.
"I think he may have cracked a rib."
"There's not much we can do about that."
"I know."
"Are you hungry? There's canned soup in the kitchen."
"I don't really feel like food."
"Neither do I."
"Let's just sleep."
And we did. She curled on her good side, her head tucked against my chest. I ran my fingers through her hair, again and again. It was greasy and tangled from crawling through the ducts and running for her life. Her face was dull with dust and the dried salt of sweat. She was beautiful.
A/N: We are now caught up to Ch 1. They went to Detroit after the disaster in Paris. No more flashback chapters.