more. He caught her under her arms and hauled her upright. “Come on!”
She wasn’t sure she could have spoken if she’d wanted to. There was no need. Not if she wanted to survive. Hiking up her skirt, she ran with him into the alley.
The van accelerated behind them, the engine whining with the strain. Mortar and fragments of brick sprayed the air as bullets struck the wall of the buildings on either side of them. The stranger grasped her wrist, spinning her to his chest. With one arm clamped around her waist, he lifted her from her feet and backed her behind the garbage bin at the alley’s entrance, using its bulk and his body to shield her from the bullets and the ricocheting debris. “Hang on,” he said.
She struggled in his embrace. Why was he stopping here? They weren’t safe yet. The alley wasn’t that narrow. The van could squeeze past the bin and they would be caught. “No. We have to keep going.”
He tensed, as if he were gathering his strength. A tremor went through his body, but otherwise he remained motionless.
Tires screeched again, so close, Melina drew in the smell of exhaust and burnt rubber. The van’s headlights swung into the alley. She shoved at the man’s chest. “We can’t stop. They’ll—”
Her words were drowned out by an explosion overhead. Melina stretched on her toes to peer past the stranger’s shoulder. Sparks showered downward from a transformer atop the utility pole she had almost run into when she’d chased Fredo. The air sizzled as something long and thin flicked through the alley above them, weaving like the end of a whip. It was a power line, Melina realized. It must have been severed by a stray bullet. It crackled in a smoking trail where the tip danced across the ground—and it cut off their only escape route.
Metal screeched as the side of the van scraped along the garbage bin.
The stranger scooped Melina into his arms and ran straight for the live wire.
She screamed, clutching the front of his jacket, her fingers digging into the leather.
The wire coiled, snakelike, hissing and spitting. It came so close, Melina felt a prickle of energy shoot through her nerves. She shuddered at the sensation and clung to the stranger. At the last possible second, he veered to the side, ducked safely past and set her back on her feet.
The wire swung directly into the front grille of the van that followed them. Bolts of blue-white brilliance arced along the metal. The engine died, along with the headlights. The van coasted forward a few feet but didn’t clear the steel bin. It stopped, caught between the bin on one side and the building on the other, the doors wedged shut. Sparks shot out from beneath the hood as the current passed through it and found a direct route to the ground. The sparks were followed by flames.
The stranger grabbed her elbow, wrenching her around. He tugged her forward. “Run! It’s going to blow!”
Melina didn’t need any more encouragement. She sprinted with him toward the other end of the alley. For a suspended moment, all she could hear was their pounding footsteps, the noise of their breathing and the hammering of her own pulse. One beat. Two. There was a crackling whoosh. She glanced over her shoulder. The van erupted in flames. One more heartbeat and the gas tank exploded. The alley was engulfed in a fireball.
The shockwave caught them before they could reach the street. The man lunged for her, wrapping his arms around her as they were lifted into the air. He twisted so that he took their combined weight on his back when they hit the ground, then quickly reversed their positions, sheltering her beneath him as embers and pieces of burning wreckage bounced from the walls and the pavement around them.
It seemed to go on forever. Melina tucked her face against his neck and squeezed her eyes shut. Her retinas burned with an afterimage of the fireball. Her ears rang. Her knees stung.
And her nerves were humming as if she were still too close to that live wire.
She struggled to draw air into her lungs. She tasted smoke and ozone…and warm male skin. Her lips tingled where she touched the stranger’s throat. A shiver shook her body. The hair at the nape of her neck stirred.
He rolled off her. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head and opened her eyes. He was kneeling at her hip, a large, dark silhouette against the fire that crackled behind him. She could see the outline of his square jaw and caught a glint of gold at his ear but she couldn’t see his face. The fire was the only illumination—the streetlights beyond the alley had gone black.
He leaned over to run his hands along her arms and down her legs. He lingered at her knees. “I don’t think that’s your blood on your skirt.”
“No. It’s Fredo’s. I just was talking to him. I can’t believe—”
“I saw what happened. I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”
“I didn’t even know his last name. Oh, God, he—” Her voice broke.
He slipped one arm under her back to help her sit up. “Can you walk?”
She swallowed hard before she could speak again. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just…winded. What you did back there…” She sounded scared. Well, she was scared, and she felt sick. But at least she was alive. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Sorry if I hurt you when I grabbed you.”
“We both could have been shot. And that wire—”
“We got lucky.”
“I have to call an ambulance. For Fredo.” She groped for her purse. The strap had twisted around her neck but it hadn’t broken. She pulled the purse to her lap, undid the clasp and shoved her hand inside. “I need my phone.”
“No, you don’t.” He got to his feet and held out his palm. “There’s nothing anyone can do for him now. Or for his killers.”
In her heart, she knew he was right. She had been at enough accident and crime scenes to recognize death when she saw it. Fredo was gone. She squinted at the burning wreckage of the van. Unless they had escaped out the back doors, the people who had killed him were dead, too.
Could she have saved the people in the van if she had gone back to help them? Probably not—everything had happened too fast. If she had tried, she would be dead now, either from electrocution, the explosion or from one of their bullets.
She fought back a wave of nausea. God, this was a nightmare.
“Come on, Miss Becker.” The man leaned over, caught her hand and tugged it out of her purse. “Time to leave before we have more company.”
The slide of his skin against hers sent a strange tickle up her arm, distracting her. She had started to rise before she realized what he had said. She tried to yank her hand free. “How do you know my name?”
He firmed his grasp and pulled her the rest of the way to her feet. “I’ll explain later. You need to get somewhere safe.”
“What’s going on? Who are you?”
“My name’s Anthony Caldwell.”
She tried to kick her brain into gear. The name wasn’t familiar—she was sure she had never met him—so how did he know her?
