Page 100 of Code Name: Harbor

My gun bucks and my round goes low and wide. His blows the headboard apart a foot from my hip, goose-down and wood exploding into the air.

I aim for another shot but Mikhail is somehow there, charging at me like an enraged bull. Two hundred pounds of muscle and male ego driving into my chest. We slam into the wall with a force that empties my lungs and I realize, my gun is gone and I have no idea where it went.

It doesn’t matter, though, because Mikhail’s forearm is across my throat now and his weight is on it. The air is gone, just gone, like a door slammed on my windpipe.

I claw at his arm, but it’s futile.

The edges of the room go soft, and I wonder vaguely why he doesn’t just shoot me. The house alarm is dulling, getting farther away. Some calm terrible voice in the back of my head says, “This is how you die, Josie.”

No.

No! something in my head screams.

Not like this. Not when Finn needs help. Not when he crawled across broken glass to grab a killer’s ankle for me. Not when he threw himself in front of a bullet. Not when there’s a white fence and a dog and a lawn I haven’t gotten to mow yet.

I stop clawing at Mikhail’s arm and instead find his face with both hands. I drive my thumb into his eye, the soft, vulnerable socket, and I push with all my might. I do not let myself feel anything about it. I ignore his inhuman scream and the mushy way his eyeball gives way with a soft pop. His arm drops from my throat and I suck in a breath.

Just one that gives me the strength to bring my knee up hard into his balls.

Mikhail grunts and sags, and I’m out from under his arm completely. I scramble backward, sucking air into a throat that feels crushed flat. He’s on his hands and knees with one hand pressed to his face, roaring, and somewhere between us in the dark are two guns. We both know it… know it’s the only way to finish this.

I see the shape of his weapon, closer to him, by the foot of the bed.

I don’t see mine, so I go for his.

I throw myself across the floor and my hand closes on warm metal at the same instant his does, his bloody fingers over mine on the slide. We wrench at it, both of us, and it’s pure animal instinct now. There’s no technique left in either of us, just two people who want the same six ounces of steel more than they’ve ever wanted anything in their lives.

Mikhail’s stronger by far, but he’s half blinded and sick with fury. He’s so much stronger and the muzzle is inching my way, right at my face. But my thumb is on the trigger and I push down on it.

The gun roars, bucks, and it’s enough to startle Mikhail and his grip loosens.

Not all the way, but enough that I’m able to make a last Herculean effort and rip the gun free. It comes loose from his blood-slicked fingers, and I roll away from him, smoothly coming up on one knee. I lift the gun in both shaking hands and point it at his chest.

Mikhail starts to rise, glaring at me from one bleary eye, the other swollen shut with a mangled eyeball behind his lid.

“Don’t.” My voice is a ruin, barely audible. “Don’t move. Don’t you move.”

He hears me and goes still, arms splayed out slightly. I can see he’s calculating another rush, but he’s a mess. Covered in blood, only one good eye, which stares at me over the barrel. There’s no fear there, but I can see he’s not stupid.

I have the gun and he’ll never reach me before I put a bullet in him. I don’t want to kill him because we need the man to put Voronin away, but I will if he so much as breathes funny.

“You won’t shoot,” he says, words thick with pain and blood. “You point it very nice. But you won’t. I have seen the ones who will, and you are not one.”

My finger is on the trigger. The gun is shaking. He shot Finn through the chest. His people put Finn’s boat at the bottom of the strait tonight and a woman with it. He came here to kill me and he doubts whether I’ll pull the trigger?

I want to shoot him just for posterity’s sake, but then the most blessed sound I could ever imagine filters up the staircase.

“POLICE!”

“Up here,” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Up here! Private security contracted with the FBI… I have the shooter contained, upstairs bedroom! The man down is the homeowner, he’s a friendly, he’s shot in the chest, get to him, PLEASE GET TO HIM—”

Mikhail flinches, looks like he’s going to lunge at me, and I snarl, “I dare you, asshole.”

He freezes.

Feet pound up the stairs, three uniformed officers swarming into the room with guns drawn. “Drop the weapon,” they yell at me.

I assess the officers and two of them have guns pointed at Mikhail.