“There’s no way out, Sergeant.”
“I’m taking the fire stairs down.”
“Not with the kid, not with the detonator.”
The boy stopped fighting, stopped crying. His eyes went wide and blank as a thin dribble of blood slid down his neck.
“I’ll slice the kid, blow up the other two. Or I take him down with me. He lives, they live. I go.”
Riot gear, neck to boots. Even with full stream, she wouldn’t take him down with one, maybe not two. And if she tried, the kid was done. She could see that in Silverman’s eyes.
“Is this what Captain Iler stood for?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
She eased closer, eyes locked. “Is this what he died for?”
“He died for nothing! I served, I damn near died, and what did I get for it? Thanks for your service, you’re finished. Do you want to see him bleed out?” he demanded as she took another step.
Once, she’d been too late to save a child from the knife. Not this time. Goddamn it, not this time.
She heard the sirens—backup coming in hot—and so did he. When his grip shifted on the knife, she aimed there.
The stream caught the kid—just the outer edge of it. His body jerked. As Silverman fought to control it and his shaking knife hand, Eve charged.
He dropped the boy, turned into the attack, tossing the knife to his left hand, slashing. When the knife skidded off the coat, she tried for a headshot, took a hard left jab in the face. He followed through, knife and fist, taking them both down in a bone-rattling heap.
She lost her grip on her weapon, rolled to clamp both hands around the wrist of his knife hand before he stabbed the toothed blade into her face. Breath whistling, she got a knee into his gut, used momentum to roll him off. As he sliced down again, she got a kick into his shoulder, sprang up, leaped over his sweeping leg as he did the same.
The boy lay in a trembling heap as they circled each other. She judged her weapon somewhere to the left, and her clutch piece useless. If she tried for it, he’d be all over her.
She danced back as he crouched, passing the knife from hand to hand. Danced back, away from the kid with Silverman’s eyes gleeful on hers.
“You should’ve let me go. Now I’m going to stick this knife in your guts, rip it through, and spill them out.”
She swung into a back kick, vaulted over a raised bed that smelled of earth and green. As she landed, she grabbed a pot with something spearing up hopefully through the dirt, flung it at him. Though he danced aside, it caught his cheek on the fly, left a raw scrape before it hit the painted concrete and shattered to shards.
The sirens screamed closer. Did he hear them? she wondered. She didn’t think so. He was in the zone now. The killing zone.
She leaped onto another bed, pushed off, leading with her feet. Both landed, a human battering ram, center mass. The force sent him staggering back, the knife clattered away across the concrete, balancing the odds. Still he shook off the blow, came at her.
He had her by maybe seventy pounds, a combat-trained vet. He aimed a fist at her throat; she dodged, took it on the shoulder. Pain rang down her arm in clambering bells.
She stopped feeling the blows—the ones delivered, the ones suffered. As she blocked, punched, she tasted her own blood, smelled his. Then he threw her back, slammed her into the trunk of one the trees. Her vision grayed for just an instant, and she saw him yank the detonator out of his pocket.
He grinned as she leaped up, as she gathered to charge. And pressed the button.
Eve, already in motion saw the shock on his face as nothing happened. She rammed him like a bull, grappled with him, then flipped herself back.
Now, she thought, blood in her throat. Fucking now.
She balanced on one leg, shot up with the lifted one to slam two rapid kicks into his jaw. As he stumbled back, she leaped up with the other, plowed it into his midsection.
Mouth bloody, he came at her, and with her muscles relaxed, she whipped kicks at his shins, knees. She heard feet pounding up the stairs, ignored them as she used stiffened fingers, clenched fists to punish soft tissue—ears, eyes, throat.
It rushed through her, the power, the pain, the punishment.
“Get the kid,” she called out to whoever rushed up behind her. “I’ve got this.”