Serve ‘N’ Protect by Tee O’Fallon
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cassidy cried out as the hit man jerked the zip tie around her wrists.
Crash!Glass shattered, echoing in the room like a crack of thunder.
Shards pelted the top of her head. She held up her bound hands to protect her face then threw herself onto the sofa.
More glass broke, and she twisted her neck to see a man leap through the broken window, followed by a huge flying white dog. Ghost!
The hit man rose to his feet, cursing. She could just make out his arm extending and the dark outline of the gun aiming at Ghost as the dog leaped again, this time at the hit man.
“No!” She kicked out, contacting the backs of his legs.
Pop pop.
Oh, dear God. He’d fired his gun. But she hadn’t heard Markus cry out or Ghost whimper.
Ghost snarled, latching on to the guy’s leg and sending him off balance. Markus hurtled through the air, tackling the guy and sending them both crashing on top of the coffee table. Wood cracked as the table broke.
Cassidy rolled up and over the back of the sofa. Growling and snarling grew louder. Grunting and punching sounds came from the men as they grappled on the floor amidst the broken pieces of wood.
She had to do something to help, but she couldn’t see well enough in the dim light. She ran to the nearest light switch at the base of the stairs and flipped it on.
Ghost had his teeth clamped around the man’s ankle, shaking his head back and forth and pulling backward. As if immune to the pain Ghost’s teeth must be inflicting, he managed to roll on top of Markus, punching him in the jaw.
Where was the gun? Either of them.
Frantically, she searched until she glimpsed the black handle of Markus’s gun sticking out from under the sofa. She grabbed it, trying to hold it with both hands the way he’d shown her, but with her wrists still bound by the zip tie, her grip wasn’t what it should be.
The guy got in another solid punch to Markus’s jaw. She aimed in, putting her finger through the trigger guard and squeeezing the trigger.
The gunshot blasted, the gun kicking in her hands. A flurry of movement and the men changed positions, with Markus straddling the other man’s chest.
Her heart thumped faster than she thought possible. God. If she’d been any slower pulling the trigger…
She would have shot Markus.
Somehow, the hit man disengaged his ankle from Ghost’s teeth, kicking him in the head then pummeling Markus’s rib cage in the general area of the knife wound.
Again, she aimed. Markus gritted his teeth, grunting. Just as she was about to squeeze off another round, they flipped positions, with Markus now on the bottom and the hit man’s hands wrapped around his throat.
She pulled her finger from the trigger. This wouldn’t work. She wasn’t good enough with a gun and the risk of hitting Markus or Ghost was too great. But she had to do something.
Markus’s face began turning red as he struggled to breathe.
Ghost clamped on the man’s calf. He cursed loudly but didn’t release his hands from Markus’s throat.
Spotting her cane on the floor, she hurled the gun to the other side of the room then ran to her cane and picked it up. This weapon she was extremely competent using.
“Batter up, asshole.”
She raised her arm and swung, whacking the hit man in the back of his head and forcing him to momentarily disengage.
Markus reared back and smashed his fist in the guy’s face, knocking him to the floor, then straddled his chest and landed blow after blow. He landed one final crashing punch. Blood squirted from the man’s nose. His eyes shut and he went still. Markus slid off the man’s chest and slumped against the wall, holding his hand to his side as he sucked in heavy breaths.
Spotting a discarded zip tie on the floor, he made quick work of binding the man’s wrists. “Release,” he said to Ghost, who unclamped his jaw but remained on guard, the hair along his spine standing completely on edge.
Only then did Markus look at her. His chest heaved as he continued sucking in air. “You okay?”
She nodded, willing her heart to stop racing.
He reached under the armchair, pulled out the man’s gun, then stood and tucked it behind his back.
Sirens wailed, quickly getting louder. Markus tugged a black wallet from his back pocket and pulled the badge from the case. Attached to the badge was a beaded silver lanyard that he slipped over his head so the badge hung squarely in the middle of his chest.
Red-and-blue lights flashed through the windows. Multiple sets of booted feet pounded up the porch steps, followed by someone hammering on the door.
Markus reached for the knob then pointed to the middle of her living room. “Sorry about your window.”
Hysterical laughter threatened to escape her lips. Amidst the shattered glass was the metal support pipe from her broken railing.
It was the exact same pipe he’d used to break the window the first time.