One of the office windows shatters inward. Glass sprays across the hallway floor and the runner drops mid-stride. Asher, one shot through the window.
"Thank Frost later," Xander says, rising from the knee and stepping over the glass.
My left arm burns. I glance down, sleeve dark and wet from the elbow down, doesn't matter when. Through the meat of my forearm, in and out.
Mira sees it. "You're hit."
"Graze. I've got grip." I flex my left hand to prove it. "Keep clearing."
She looks at me one second longer than she needs to but doesn't argue.
Full-auto erupts from the north end of the hallway. Jax's end. He must have come up the fire escape and run into someone waiting. Not suppressed, not controlled, just the hammering roar of someone holding down the trigger, rounds chewing through drywall and ringing off the metal ceiling, casings bouncing on the grated floor somewhere I can't see. Vega grunts behind me and drops against the wall, hand clamping his thigh. Shrapnel from a ricochet, blood running between his fingers before he even gets pressure on it. Park takes a piece through his right forearm, hisses through his teeth, and starts wrapping it one-handed without breaking stride.
Then the full-auto stops.
My breathing stops with it. One beat, two, and I force my lungs to work again.
Mira goes still beside me. Her eyes too wide for one second, too much white showing around the iris. I've worked with her for months and I have never seen that look. Then she locks down.
Xander is already heading north, moving fast down the hallway toward where the gunfire cut off. I hear his boots on thegrating, then his voice, low, talking to someone on the ground. He comes back at a jog, breathing hard. Blood on his gloves.
"Nitro's down." Flat, report voice. "Breathing. Two to the plate, close range. Barely conscious, blood from his nose." He looks at Mira. "Shooter's dead."
My grip tightens on the SIG until my knuckles ache. I make myself ease off.
"How close?" Mira asks. Her voice is level. Her knuckles aren't.
"Under ten feet. Full auto. Burned the whole magazine trying to kill one person." Xander swallows. "He told me to stop hovering."
That's Jax, broken ribs and all.
File it. Keep clearing. He'd say the same.
"Doc's in the van outside," I say. "No comms to reach him. Once we secure this floor, someone goes down."
"I'll go," Xander says. "Need the air anyway."
"Good?" I ask Park. He's got the bandage wrapped tight on his forearm, weapon transferred to his left hand.
He flexes his left hand on the grip. "Good enough."
"Vega?"
"I'm up." Through his teeth, hand still pressed to his thigh. "Don't pull me."
The office door is open. Walsh is inside. Expensive suit, silk tie, sitting at a desk feeding pages into a shredder with the unhurried pace of a man finishing paperwork before a meeting. He looks up at me the way you'd look at someone who walked into the wrong room.
Not scared, just annoyed.
"I want credentials. Right now. Do you have any idea—"
His hand drifts toward the desk drawer.
I holster the SIG, cross the room in three steps, and slam the drawer shut on his fingers. My left forearm screams and I letit. The sound Walsh makes is high and sharp and worth it. Mira zip-ties his wrists to the arms of his rolling desk chair before he stops screaming.
"You can't do this. I know people. I know—"
"You do," I tell him. "You keep people. In chains. Down the hall."