Jacob’s former life brought him from one near-death experience to another, and the experience of living in full survival mode for days at a time stayed with him. But time had softened him a bit and the flow of adrenaline had him more tired than alert. Malle’s presence, her arms around his waist, dropped his guard easier than he wanted.
Her hands wandered and confusion took over, but he realized what she was searching for. If only there was a place to hide a knife where it would not have been found by their captors. He said nothing, hands resting on her arms, hoping no one had noticed that his very pregnant wife tried to find a weapon on him. Smart. She’d always been smart.
When Jacob looked up, his heart began to race again. Malle was here, and she should have been somewhere safer, not with him. He looked over her shoulder at Hale with a glare as the man looked back up at him.
“What’s the meaning of all this?” he asked.
“Well,” Hale began, but in the distance outside the stairwell the staccato rap of gunfire interrupted.
The door above to the roof was opened by the guard there, whose yelling was lost into the wind. Gunfire continued, from more than one location. Jacob needed a gun, so he took the stairs two at a time and grabbed the muzzle of the guard’s rifle while punching in his knee as hard as he could. “Malle! Get–down–”
A gun went off in the stairwell and Jacob’s ears rang, just as he wrestled the guard to the ground and knocked him in the head with the butt of the rifle. Was he shot? Was Malle–
Hale stood with his gun aimed down the stairs, his body between Malle and the now-shot guard reeling in pain down below.
When Hale looked up, Jacob had the rifle trained on his head. “Get away from her. Now.”
Get down. Had her heart not been in her throat, crouched as low as her body would let her, Malle would have scoffed. She knew well enough what to do when there was gunfire.
She was the youngest, the smallest, the least-likely of her siblings to make something of herself. Their parents made it clear her entire life. And yet -- Malle alone wore the crown. She knew only a little about what that meant, but she knew exactly how to survive. Jacob’s voice ricocheted off the narrow stairwell, and she felt him brush past her. That was, after all, how they had met.
It took a moment to stand. Everything was swollen, all of the time, like she’d eaten six packs of crisps and an equivalent number of lagers. Malle’s knees creaked as she straightened, her spine flexing to support her stomach. Her vision crystalized on the sunburn peeking out of Jacob’s collar. She had such high hopes for France.
“If he was going to kill me,” Malle’s lilt was soft, like the edge of cream on a sharp tea. Her voice held endless patience. “I expect he would have done so already.”
An exhale, like steam releasing into the air.
“And if you’d like to kill him, it seems likely we’ll start a blood bath.” Malle kept her attention trained on Jacob, reading the lines of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw. She wanted to go to him, pull him back and catch his focus, create the soft, warm space that only existed when they were hip-to-hip. Instead, her hand fitted against the railing. “And you only have the one gun.”
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