I drop my bag, and she lets go of my arm, wanting me with eyes wide and brows upturned.
“This will have to wait.” I turn around and say to the elders, who are definitely shocked by my putting our meeting off. They’re well-seasoned, though. Surely, they understand the graveness of a job like this. I reach down, grab a belt fastened by our tech, and hand her one of the stun guns we’ve been perfecting. I take the other, and her eyes quickly toggle between mine.
“Are you scared?” I whisper.
“With you here?” She raises her brows for a moment before pressing her lips into a small grin. “They don’t stand a chance.”
I cock my gun in response, and she follows suit as we walk side-by-side out of the cathedral.
I’m surprised by the size of the group, ready and armed. And the very center, a woman with a snarling look on her face is holding a bomb like a water balloon. Clearly prepared to throw it at any moment.
The bullets begin to fly straight for us. Screams from pedestrians and people in the park begin as feet flee in every direction. Another bullet zooms past me, right towards Scout, and instinct takes over. I move her out of the way as I raise my taser gun, shooting at no particular target because we’ve made it so that it finds exactly where to land. The bullets splinter into shards, spanning out towards everyone pointing a weapon at us.
Scout regains her footing and shoots hers, too, getting the woman in the center, who falls to the ground, the bomb in hand. I sprint to it, watching everything happen in slow motion, knowing that if I don’t grab it, there could be more lives on our hands than before. Scout sees what I’m doing, and she grabs my arm, forcing me not to go.
Everything happens in slow motions, and then she flicks her hand towards the sky, and I don’t have time to look at what she’s pointing at because the bomb touches the ground. It doesn’t burst, doesn’t even loosen the clip on it because one of our drones has caught it just before it hit the cement at full force.
Two men are still up, shooting at us and nearly missing every time. I deploy a drone of my own, and both of them work double time, standing in the way of the bullets. They ping off the drones for a round, but I know they won’t last much longer. They might be bulletproof, but the hardware inside them can only take so many blows before that’s it.
“We have to figure out another solution!” Scout yells over the noise, and I nod.
“Any suggestions?”
“Shot aid attachment.”
“Scout, I don’t shoot, even if I know it won’t miss.”
“They’re not going to stop.” She’s scared, I can tell, desperate to find a fix because the moment these drones drop to the ground, we’re open targets. Just as I’m pulling out my gun, more agents come around the corner, guns pointed at us, and now we really are trapped if I do this. I quickly load the gun as she watches, and I grab her with my left arm, pulling her behind me as I cock it towards the impossible number of armed men.
One of our drones drops to the ground, and she pulls out a gun, beginning to shoot at them with terrible form.
“I’ve got it. It’s okay!” I shout over the noise, but she doesn’t listen. I point my gun, and the eyepiece tells me where the vital kill shots are and where to only wound them. So, I take my first shot, a wound shot to the calf of the man who is closest to us. He falls to the ground with the others, and the second drone drops to the ground.
“Shit!” Scout and I yell simultaneously. Just before we can get in another shot, a loud chopping sound swirls through the air. Trees begin to sway back and forth, and leaves pick up as everyone’s eyes pivot to the sky. A black helicopter is coming into view, and Jack Beys is looking down at us at the open door.
“Fuck, yes!” I scream at him, and agents begin to drop from the ladder dangling off the side of it, grabbing every conscious disgusting Russian and FBI rat in sight.
Jack's other operatives get out of large prison trucks that begin to pull up to the church. They line the street, five in total, and it’s a swarm of orderly chaos. Jack makes his way down the ladder and to us, reaching out to shake our hands.
“Thank you for your help.” He pulls his glasses off to take a look at Scout. “We’ll have to take you in too.” She looks at me nervously, and I shake my head.
“Everything she did was because she didn’t have a choice. And she fought back. She’s the reason this arrest was possible.”
Vince steps up behind Jack with handcuffs, a look in his eyes that is not going to accept anything less than justice for our family. I step in front of Scout the second I decipher this, and he stops a foot away from me.
“Move,” he lifts his chin at me.
“No.” I shake my head.
“Tito, she betrayed our family. How the hell could you even begin to trust her.”
“Because I know her. She only did what she had to, to protect us.”
“Bullshit. She stole from us and lied to us. Who do you think was curious about her mysteriously disappearing the other night? Who do you think reached out to the FBI?”
“You turned Scout in?”
“No, Tito. I did what was necessary.”