Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

pull this off. For all our sakes.’

Slater didn’t want to tell the guy that it made no difference whether he knew the stakes. If Slater caught a bullet in the brain, that’d be that, and he wouldn’t be around to understand what his failure had led to.

Every time he put his life on the line, it encompassed the whole world.

Because the whole world falls away when you die…

He shook himself out of the stupor and said, ‘I’m ready. Can you tell your men?’

Riordan nodded and hunched deeper behind cover, pulling his radio scanner close. He mumbled into it, relaying instructions, conveying the importance of the situation. Static crackled and short replies came in fast. It might have taken time for Riordan to amass enough men to help, but when they were together, they worked fluidly.

Slater could admire any facet of law enforcement. He wasn’t elitist.

Riordan looked at him. ‘On your call.’

Slater nodded. He adjusted his grip on the carbine, then tensed his quadriceps and glutes, one by one, feeling the raw power in them. He’d have to sprint like a madman, and he knew it.

His vision narrowed.

His pulse rose.

The rest of the world fell away.

Then something penetrated the fog of war. Not for long, but a brief flash was enough. It was the face of the woman he’d met thirty minutes earlier, a woman he hardly knew, the result of a chance encounter that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

But that’s the funny thing about chance encounters.

Sometimes they mean everything.

He asked himself, Do you really want to die here? Sure, it was a long shot, but he might have just met someone — someone to pull him out of the hedonistic, PTSD-riddled cloud he’d been floating along since Ruby Nazarian had died. He didn’t know Alexis, he’d hardly interacted with her, but sometimes there was an underlying feeling you couldn’t shake.

It was there now.

Slater had slept with more women than he could ever hope to keep track of. But he didn’t just want to take Alexis to bed.

He wanted to get to know her.

And he couldn’t do that if he was riddled with bullets, sprawled across a sidewalk in the Bowery in a pool of his own arterial blood.

So he froze.

Then Riordan said, ‘Now,’ into his radio mike.

And all Slater’s thinking fell away.

His instincts took over, and he vaulted over the sedan as gunfire poured at the bank building from multiple locations on the street. It was a whirlwind of unsuppressed shots, fired from semi-automatic pistols and submachine guns and a couple of fully automatic assault rifles that Slater guessed belonged to SWAT. He knew whoever was positioned at the windows, or anywhere along the façades bordering the street, was currently ducking away from the sills, taking temporary cover, to regroup and wait for a lull.

Slater couldn’t wait for a lull.

If they came up to return fire, he was a sitting duck.

He worked his way up to a full sprint. His cadence hit maximum, and then he ran like a man possessed across the asphalt, weaving between cars, almost losing his balance in the process. He breathed like he was punching the air out of his body, sucking in oxygen in giant gulps.

Then he ran faster.

He veered up onto the sidewalk, moments away from plunging into the intersection. There was no cover out there, just a sea of cars spreading in every direction. No walls to cower behind, and no cars large enough to shield his mass. It was simply too close to the building — the men on the top floors could aim down and shoot him through the top of the head if he tried to take cover.

No man’s land.

Do or die.

He went for it.

Took three bounding steps and went to leap off the sidewalk and into the middle of the intersection, but before he could commit a looming silhouette came out of the shadows to his right, sprinting just as fast as he was. A large man, who came bounding in to intercept Slater, and before Slater could bring his rifle up to neutralise the target the guy seized Slater in a giant bear hug and wrenched him off his feet and spun him around and threw him into the shadows between two residential façades.

Slater stumbled, and tried to keep his balance, and failed.

He sprawled to the hard ground of an alleyway, gashing his shoulder, crushing half his face against the concrete, nearly breaking his own nose. He rolled with it and came to his feet, ignoring the pain, and spun to put a bullet in the head of whoever had tackled him.

But Jason King was there in his face, wide-eyed, shaking his head.

Slater dropped his guard, and lowered the carbine.

King said, ‘Couldn’t let you go in alone.’

55

Slater’s pulse came down, and something close to calm settled over him.

Close.

But not quite.

Given the circumstances, anything other than total panic was admirable.

The gunfire outside the alleyway suddenly became two-sided, only seconds after King had tackled him. With his blood running cold, Slater realised the man had just saved his life. There wouldn’t have been enough time to reach the bank building before its occupants returned fire. They would have shredded him to pieces before he reached the opposite sidewalk, let alone scaled one of the granite faces to reach a first-floor window.

With harrowing clarity, he said, ‘Thank you.’

King nodded. ‘Saw you making a run for it. Knew you wouldn’t make it.’

‘You could have got killed yourself.’

‘That’s the job.’

‘I didn’t have another choice,’ Slater said.

King nodded. ‘I know. But you do now.’

‘All we’ve got is a Hail Mary. I don’t see another way inside.’

‘He does,’ King said, jerking his thumb into the shadows only a few feet away.

Slater let his eyes adjust, and made out the shape of a semi-conscious man slumped next to a dumpster. The kid couldn’t have been far over twenty, with a lanky frame and a gaunt face made worse by two sizeable black eyes. His nose was swollen and misshapen, and