I'd Kill You First: when bad meets bad

Chap. 59

SODA:

I couldn't breathe. 

They were here again. The men is masks, they had me. I couldn't see them, or anything at all. It was my worst nightmare. Ever since that night at the Pierre, I was ashamed to admit I was afraid of the dark. Now I was surrounded by it with an unseeable enemy lurking somewhere nearby.

A hand grabbed for me and I screamed, but only because another grabbed a handful of my hair at the same time. The hand on my shoulder tried to pull me to it, but the hand in my hair yanked harder. I flew back with a shriek and fell into something hard, wincing at the impact.

A palm clamped over my mouth, preventing me from calling Jonathan's name. If I lived through this, I was so going to kill him for making me do this.

Lashing out with everything in me, my foot connected with the person behind me as they tried to haul me further into the darkness. I was dropped on my face just as Jonathan stumbled into me and fell down across my back. By then I was gasping for air, heart racing and lungs burning, positive I was dying.

"I got you," someone said in my ear before I was lifted off the ground.

My instincts were about to kick in and attack when I recognized Jonathan's minty yet smokey sent, and I clung to him for dear life. I knew he was safe, and if that man was still out in the darkness trying to get me, I didn't want to be anywhere else but in Jonathan's big arms.

I had my eyes shut so tight that I didn't even notice we had left the tent and were sitting on a little wooden bench off to the side.

"Soda, please breathe," he tried to say calmly, but he was holding me too firmly to his chest for me to believe he wasn't freaked out.

I tried to breathe, I did, but it felt like I was just choking on the air I sucked in. My skin burned like fire, but I pushed deeper into the warmth of Jonathan's chest.

His hand began to stroke my hair, fingers running through it, and somehow that helped. "It's a panic attack," he said softly. "I've seen them before. You have to breathe, baby."

Then his body went rigid beneath me, hand paused mid-stroke in my tangled locks, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Someone was close, too close, and I could almost feel the danger radiating off them.

Then it was too late and a hand sank into the flesh on my neck, yanking me off Jonathan's lap and pressing what felt like the barrel of a gun to my back, just under my kidney.

In half a second, my panic attack seemed to fade away as instinct took control and I turned rapidly to my left just as the gun went off, wrapping my leg around the back of my captor's knee and pulling while I slammed my left hand down on the gun and wrenched it free. Two bullets to their head left them crumpled lifelessly at my feet.

I was shocked to see the tallest girl from the group of friends who had hit on Jonathan at the benches, a hole in her forehead and cheek. She was undercover? She was sent to kill us? My mind began to spin crazily. How close had this girl gotten to us earlier, an armed killer, and we didn't even know it! How many more people had we come in contact with that were here to kill us?

"Uh... Soda?"

I whirled around with a raised gun to see Jonathan looking down at his right shoulder where a dark spot was beginning to grow bigger. I closed my eyes with gritted teeth. He got the bullet that was meant for me. Damn it!

I checked our surroundings before kneeling before him, yanking up his shirt to see how deep the bullet had gone. "It's still in there," I muttered, heart still pounding. "I'll have to get it out later, but right now we need to move."