Chapter 10 - The Last Stand
A flash-bang grenade detonated in the front room. The world became a blinding white flash and a deafening, high-pitched screech. Shrapnel peppered Adrian’s back, tearing open his surgical incision completely. Blood soaked through his clothes, warm and thick, running down his trousers.
He fell to one knee, the taste of copper flooding his mouth.
Through the smoke, the second mercenary appeared, leveling a weapon directly at Adrian’s head.
Adrian didn't flinch. In that split-second between life and oblivion, he didn't see the gunman. He saw Mia’s big hazel eyes looking up at him from the hospital bed. He saw Julian’s dying smile.
Not today.
Adrian lunged forward beneath the barrel line, tackling the gunman into the burning remnants of the woodstove. The stove overturned, spilling glowing embers across the timber floor. Flame caught instantly on the dry cedar boards.
They grappled in the smoke and fire. Adrian, driven by pure primal willpower, disarmed the operative and threw him backward through the shattered glass of the side window.
Coughing blood, his vision swimming in shades of red and black, Adrian dragged himself back out onto the porch. Flames were devouring the cabin behind him, throwing thick black smoke into the mountain sky—a smoke signal visible for thirty miles across the county.
Sterling stood near his remaining vehicle, his eyes wide with disbelief as he watched the charred, bleeding colossus emerge from the inferno.
"What are you?" Sterling whispered, raising his own pistol with a trembling hand. "You're supposed to be dead!"
"I am dead," Adrian rasped, taking one agonizing step down the porch stairs, then another. "I died fifteen years ago. You’re just dealing with the ghost."
Sterling fired two shots. One punched through Adrian’s left thigh, the other tore through his side. Adrian stumbled, his knee hitting the gravel, but his gaze never left Sterling's face. He raised the captured sidearm.
Before Adrian could pull the trigger, the scream of distant sirens cut through the mountain air. Not one. Not two. Dozens. State police, federal vehicles, and county sheriffs, drawn by the massive pillar of smoke and Martha Vance’s emergency broadcast to the Charlotte field office.
May you like
Sterling froze, his face draining of color as the red and blue emergency lights began flashing through the trees at the bottom of the ridge.
Adrian smiled through bloody teeth. He lowered the gun. "Checkmate, counselor."
