Men with red bandanas around their arms poured out of their vehicles to charge down the alley toward us. I backpedaled. Wylder grabbed my elbow to spin me around, and we all raced back into the shelter of the restaurant.
Kaige slammed the deadbolt into place. I ran for the front of the building to make sure the other entrance was secure, but before I’d even made it halfway, the wide front window shattered with the bash of a baseball bat. I skidded to a halt with the guys behind me.
Cars and jeeps filled the street outside. A swarm of men had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. I gripped my gun tightly, my palm sweating against the metal. They hadn’t taken us by surprise, but we were still in an awful situation.
Wylder and Kaige fired a few shots through the window, and the men there fell back to the sides or behind the cars, but they didn’t look all that scared. Someone was already battering the back door. How long would those hinges hold?
Then a familiar figure stepped out of the shadows. The light from the streetlamps glanced off Colt’s golden hair. He held a semi-automatic in one hand, and its muzzle was pointed at the forehead of the Claws member who’d warned us. He shivered in Colt’s grasp, his eyes wide and panicked, as the asshole used him as a human shield.
“Too late,” he sneered at us. “Your stupid little trick failed, and now it’s all over.”
“Get out of here before you regret it,” Wylder said, as if he were in any position to make threats. “This is Noble territory.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Mr. Noble. If my friend is right that there are only the five of you working this operation, I have twenty men for each of you. You’re at my mercy.”
His friend?
Before I could wonder more about that, Colt’s gaze fixed on me. “Speaking of which—did you miss me, Mercy? This time there won’t be any crazy stunts and quick escapes. Every avenue is cut off to you. And soon I’ll be cutting you down.”
“Not if I get to you first.” I spat on the ground in front of me.
A couple of the Steel Knights laughed. Colt simply wrenched back the head of the guy he was clutching. “Why don’t you all come out peacefully, and at least a few of you can survive. I’ll even promise that Mercy and the Noble heir will get much less painful deaths than if I have to send my men in there after you.”
“I’d rather shoot myself in the head,” Wylder said.
Colt’s face turned grim. “You chose this.”
He made a motion with his hand, and a hail of gunfire shattered the last chunks of glass clinging to the window frame. Kaige and I dove behind the hostess podium, the other guys ducking behind overturned tables. The furnishings rattled with the impact of the bullets, but at least they were solid enough to catch them.
When the men outside moved toward the window again, we all shot at them. My wounded shoulder was already aching from the tension in my stance. Wylder managed to hit one guy in the forehead, Rowan one in the chest.
They pulled back again, but two out of a hundred hardly evened the odds. And the back door was still thumping and groaning. We couldn’t defend ourselves from both sides.
“What now?” Gideon asked in a low voice from where he was hunched over his laptop. “We could put a call out for back-up.”
“It’ll take anyone we can reach too long to get here to really help. And then my dad will curse my memory even more than he will anyway.” Wylder reloaded his gun and cocked it. He caught my eye across the shadowy space. “No, we’re doing this ourselves, and we’re going to take down as many of those fuckers as we possibly can. We won’t let Bryant win. Forget clever plans. It’s time to go at them guns blazing, just like he came at Mercy’s family.”