Chapter 7 - Crossfire
The sound was apocalyptic.
Automatic gunfire ripped through the gallery, raining shards of heavy architectural glass down like a crystalline storm.
Soren didn't hesitate. Before Blythe could even register the sound, his arm clamped around her waist, lifting her off her feet as he tackled her behind a massive, solid marble display console.
They hit the carpeted floor hard. Soren’s broad frame completely covered hers, shielding her head and torso with his own body as high-caliber rounds chewed into the marble, sending plumes of pulverized dust and stone spraying over them.
Screams erupted from the main ballroom behind them—a chaotic stampede of socialites diving for cover.
“Stay down!” Soren barked against her ear.
He rolled smoothly onto his side, his right hand already drawing a customized matte-black semi-automatic pistol from a concealed holster beneath his tuxedo jacket.
From the service corridors, Lucian and three other security operatives emerged, their weapons barking in synchronized, disciplined double-taps toward the catwalks above the shattered skylight.
Two dark-clad gunmen plummeted from the catwalks, crashing through the glass tables below.
“Suppressing fire!” Lucian roared, his weapon blazing. “Move the principal! West stairwell, now!”
Soren grabbed Blythe’s hand, hauling her to her feet. “Run!”
The emerald silk dress was a liability. Without thinking, Blythe grabbed the fabric at the slit and ripped it upward with a sharp tearing sound, freeing her legs to sprint.
They tore down the private corridor toward the reinforced west stairwell. Behind them, bullets punched holes through priceless oil paintings and shattered mahogany doorframes.
A gunman stepped out from a service alcove ahead of them, raising a submachine gun.
Soren fired twice while on the run. The rounds took the shooter in the chest, dropping him instantly.
They burst through the heavy steel door into the stairwell.
Lucian slammed the door shut behind them, throwing the heavy deadbolts into place. Sparks instantly flew from the steel as rounds impacted the exterior from the corridor.
“The elevators are compromised,” Lucian gasped, blood running down the side of his neck from a flying glass laceration. “Vehicles are idling at the basement loading dock. Three floors down!”
They pounded down the concrete stairs. Blythe’s heart was hammering so hard she could taste copper in the back of her throat.
Halfway down the second flight, Lucian stumbled.
He caught the handrail, his face turning an ashen shade of gray. A dark, rapidly expanding stain of arterial crimson was soaking through the left side of his tactical vest, spreading across his ribs.
“Lucian!” Blythe yelled, dropping to her knees beside him on the landing.
“Keep moving…” Lucian grunted, coughing up a fleck of blood. “Mr. Vanek, take her… I’ll hold the landing…”
“Shut up,” Blythe commanded, her ER instincts instantly overriding every ounce of panic.
She ripped the heavy silk sash from the waist of her gown. “Soren, hold his shoulder! Keep him upright!”
Soren, his gun still raised toward the stairs above, dropped to one knee without question, bracing his security chief’s upper torso.
Blythe sliced open Lucian’s torn shirt with her bare fingernails and a sharp pull. A jagged piece of shrapnel was embedded between his fourth and fifth ribs. Air was hissing from the wound—a sucking chest wound.
“Tension pneumothorax,” Blythe muttered under her breath. “His lung is collapsing.”
She looked around the bare concrete landing. No medical kit. No sterile needles.
“Do you have a pocketknife?” she demanded, looking up at Soren.
Soren instantly produced a sleek, titanium folding blade from his pocket, flicking it open in one smooth motion.
“And plastic,” she said, her hands already covered in Lucian’s blood. “Anything plastic!”
Soren reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the heavy plastic laminate of his gala security pass, and tore off the outer cellophane wrapping with his teeth, handing both to her.
Blythe didn't hesitate. She pressed the plastic wrap over the hissing wound, taping three sides down with the heavy adhesive from the security pass, leaving one corner open to act as a flutter valve—allowing trapped air and blood to escape while preventing outside air from collapsing the lung completely.
Lucian let out a long, ragged gasp of air. The cyanotic blue tint fading from his lips as oxygen began returning to his bloodstream.
“He needs a trauma center within twenty minutes,” Blythe said, looking directly into Soren’s eyes. “If we don't move him now, he dies of internal hemorrhaging.”
Soren stared at her.
In the dim emergency lighting of the concrete stairwell, covered in dust, glass, and blood, with her ripped emerald dress and her dark hair wild around her shoulders, she looked like an avenging angel.
There was no fear in her eyes. Only the cold, unyielding resolve of a healer who refused to surrender a life.
A heavy crash sounded against the steel door above them.
Soren hauled Lucian to his feet, draping the larger man’s arm over his broad shoulders with deceptive ease.
“Basement,” Soren said, his voice ringing with absolute authority. “Now.”
They reached the loading dock doors thirty seconds later.
The heavy bay door was rolling open. Two black armored Suburbans were already idling, their back doors swinging wide as Soren’s perimeter team covered the alleyway with assault rifles.
They threw Lucian into the back of the first vehicle. Blythe scrambled in right behind him, her hands immediately going back to the makeshift chest seal to monitor his breathing.
Soren climbed in last, slamming the reinforced door shut.
“Drive!” he roared through the partition.
The heavy vehicle lurched forward, tires smoking as it blasted out of the Carlyle’s underground docks into the rain-slicked Manhattan night.
Behind them, the sound of sirens began to wail across the Upper East Side.
In the backseat, Blythe knelt on the carpeted floor, holding pressure against Lucian’s side. Her hands were shaking now, the adrenaline crash beginning to set in.
Soren sat beside her. He reached down, took a clean white handkerchief from his pocket, and gently took her trembling, blood-stained wrist.
Without a word, he began wiping the crimson from her skin, his touch astonishingly gentle.
“You saved his life,” Soren whispered, his voice rough.
Blythe looked down at her hands, then up into his slate-gray eyes.
“Who were they?” she asked, her voice cracking beneath the exhaustion. “Was it Volkov?”
Soren’s jaw clenched so tight the muscle twitched beneath his skin.
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“No,” he said, looking out the tinted window into the dark rain. “Volkov doesn't have the discipline for an ambush like that. That was military grade. That was someone inside my own organization.”
***
