Just as her boots cleared the window frame, a stray, tumbling bullet punched directly through her left calf muscle. The kinetic shock destroyed her controlled descent.
Fallon twisted violently in mid-air, missed the center of the pile, and crashed brutally hard against the solid inner steel wall of the dumpster.
Agony flared up her leg. Her black jeans soaked instantly with warm blood.
Gritting her teeth, she dragged herself over the rusted metal rim and dropped heavily onto the wet asphalt.
Thirty feet away, a black sedan sat idling near the loading dock. A panicked valet stood paralyzed next to the open driver's door. He just stared at her in total shock.
Fallon shoved him firmly aside and dropped into the leather seat. Warm blood from her calf instantly soaked the upholstery. She slammed the heavy shifter into drive. Her wet boot stamped the gas pedal against the floorboards. The sedan tore out of the alley, its rear tires shrieking against the rain-slicked asphalt.
Behind her, twin engines roared. A pair of matte-black SUVs swerved violently out of the underground parking garage, chewing up the concrete curb.
Fallon reached forward and flicked the dashboard scanner on.
---
Meanwhile, the local security frequencies instantly crackled with harsh static.
"Target is mobile. Black sedan, heading west on 4th," a cold voice snapped over the speaker. "Box her in before she hits the highway grid. Do not let her get clear of the sector."
"Copy that. Team Two moving up the left flank to intercept."
Rain hammered the cracked windshield. Through the rearview mirror, Fallon tracked the heavy headlights rapidly closing the distance. The SUVs were massive. Built for ramming.
She had a standard civilian V6 engine and a bleeding left leg. If they pinned her against a concrete divider, the heavy armor of the pursuit vehicles would crush her inside the cabin.
The passenger side of the lead SUV cracked open. A mercenary leaned out into the freezing storm, bracing a short-barrel rifle over the side mirror.
Muzzle flashes lit up the dark street.
High-caliber rounds shredded the trunk of the sedan. The back window exploded inward. A terrifying storm of jagged glass rained over the rear seats, slicing into the leather headrests and bouncing off the dashboard.
Fallon jerked the steering wheel hard right. The sedan violently snapped across two lanes of traffic and swerved blindly around a slow-moving garbage truck.
Horns blared from oncoming traffic. Tires smoked against the wet road as she fought to keep the chassis straight. She did not look back to check the damage. Her eyes remained locked on the rapidly approaching intersection of 9th and Elm.
"She's funneling into the Elm intersection," the radio crackled again. "Light is red. Cross traffic is heavy. Run her straight into the barricade."
Four hundred yards to the red light.
Three hundred. Two hundred.
The intersection ahead was a solid wall of moving metal. A city bus crawled across the northbound lane, perfectly blocking the only safe exit.
Fallon did not hit the brakes. Her right foot stayed pinned to the floorboards. The lead SUV surged aggressively forward, its engine whining. The driver was ready to crush her rear bumper the second she slowed down for the cross traffic.
At fifty yards, she moved.
Fallon yanked the emergency brake lever straight up with her right hand. Simultaneously, she twisted the steering wheel sharply to the left and stomped the foot brake.
The sedan broke traction completely. Two tons of metal spun sideways and slid at eighty miles an hour across the flooded asphalt. The world outside the broken windows blurred into streaks of neon light and falling rain.
She was gliding completely backward now. Her eyes mapped the exact distance between the heavy grill of the pursuing SUV and the slow crawl of the city bus.
The mercenary driver panicked. He slammed his foot down on his heavy brake pedal, entirely locking his front tires. The big SUV hydroplaned instantly. It lost all steering control and skidded straight forward like a two-ton brick on black ice.
Metal shrieked.
The lead SUV plowed directly into the side of the city bus. The deafening roar of crumpling steel echoed off the high-rise buildings. Glass shattered across the entire intersection as the heavy truck folded inward.
Fallon released the emergency brake and grabbed the top of the steering wheel, kicked the gas, and snapped the sliding sedan back into a straight line. The car launched cleanly through a tiny three-foot gap behind the ruined bus, leaving the carnage entirely behind her.
The second SUV swerved blindly to avoid the massive wreck. Its right tires jumped the high concrete curb. The heavy vehicle plowed straight into a row of parked cars outside a diner, deploying its airbags with a loud, muffled pop.
"Team One is down!" the scanner screamed. "Team Two, do you have eyes on the target?"
"Negative. Lost visual in the crash."
In the dark cabin of the sedan, a harsh warning chime pinged. Steam hissed violently from the crumpled hood. One of the stray rifle bullets had pierced the radiator blocks ago. The temperature gauge was already pinned deep in the red zone, and the engine knocked with a heavy, sickening clatter.
She coaxed the dying vehicle for three more blocks. Pulling into a pitch-black alley behind a closed strip mall, she killed the headlights and cut the engine entirely. The silence felt aggressively loud.
Fallon kicked the driver's side door open.
Cold rain instantly soaked her torn clothes. She dragged herself out of the smoking car and leaned heavily against the wet brick wall. Her left boot was completely slick with dark blood.
Panting hard, she ripped a long, thick strip of fabric from the bottom of her grey shirt. She tied it tightly around her bleeding calf. She knotted the makeshift tourniquet, twisting the fabric until the brutal pressure made her vision swim.
She grabbed a rusted metal pipe leaning against the nearby brick to help herself stand. The bleeding slowed to a steady trickle.
"Walk," she muttered to herself. "Just keep moving."
She limped down the narrow passage and forced all her body weight onto her right leg to spare the torn muscle in her left.
A hundred meters away, the 12th precinct was dead quiet.
Detective Garret Cole leaned against his messy wooden desk. He was twenty-five years old, but the dark circles under his eyes made him look ten years older. He held a cold cup of stale coffee, staring blankly at a stack of unsolved homicide files. He was a man who lived entirely inside the bureaucratic machine of the police force.
The heavy police scanner on his desk suddenly crackled to life.
"All units in the downtown grid. Code three. Shots fired at the Kincaid Spire Tower. Governor Croft is confirmed dead. Suspect is heavily armed and on foot, heading north on Fifth Avenue."
Garret dropped the coffee cup directly into the small trash can. He grabbed his silver badge from the desk and clipped it firmly to his leather belt. He didn't wait to brief his senior partner. He sprinted out of the bullpen and pushed through the heavy glass doors of the station.
The cold night air hit his face. His unmarked police cruiser was parked halfway down the block.
Garret jogged down the cracked sidewalk and reached deep into his jacket pocket for his car keys.
A patrol cruiser tore past the intersection. Its high-intensity spotlight swept aggressively over the dark storefronts, turning the wet concrete blindingly white.
Around the corner of a closed bakery, a shadow moved.
Fallon was hugging the brick wall. The sudden, sweeping glare of the police spotlight forced her to adjust. She cut the corner violently tight to stay in the shadows and threw all her forward momentum into a sharp, tactical pivot.
Her right boot planted perfectly on the wet pavement. As her weight shifted for the next stride, the torn muscle in her left calf completely failed.
Her leg buckled. The collapse destroyed her balance, sending her pitching forward into the blind spot of the intersection just as Garret stepped past the bakery.
She slammed hard into Garret's chest.
The blunt impact knocked the air entirely out of his lungs. His car keys clattered into a deep puddle.
Fallon did not bounce off him like a clumsy pedestrian. She used the collision to absorb her forward momentum, twisting her shoulders mid-air to take the brunt of the concrete on her back rather than her ruined leg.
She hit the ground and instantly rolled.
"Hey, watch it," Garret coughed, reaching a hand down.
Before Garret fingers even got close, the woman was already up. Pushing off the wet pavement with her bare hands, she snapped into a low, coiled crouch. Her messy chestnut hair plastered to her wet face. She brushed it away with a sharp, rigid flick of her wrist.
Under the flickering yellow light of a broken streetlamp, their eyes met.
Garret froze.
He noticed the brutal, controlled efficiency of her recovery. He saw the absolute, dead calm in her stare. A panicked civilian running from a mugging would have scrambled or apologized.
The girl crouching in front of him was not acting like a victim. Her eyes dropped immediately to his waistline, silently checking for a badge or a gun. She was calculating the exact amount of force needed to drop him if he made a sudden move to stop her.
Garret did not notice the dark stain spreading across her black jeans. He only saw her face.
Fallon slowly lowered her hands. Her chest stopped heaving and dropped into a completely silent, rhythmic tempo.
Neither of them moved. They stood under the freezing rain, staring at each other.