The gunshot made my heart stop.
My legs nearly gave out beneath me. A bullet had torn through the man's right arm the one holding the gun and standing as close as I was, I couldn't avoid the blood that hit my face. He hadn't expected Jeffrey to pull the trigger that fast or that cleanly. The gun slipped from his fingers, and whatever focus he'd had on me vanished as his attention snapped fully to Jeffrey.
Which left me directly in front of a man who had probably climbed out of more dangerous situations than I could imagine.
His fist came at me massive, fast, aimed at my face and one absurd thought cut through the panic: Am I about to look like a cartoon character? That's when it really hit me how useless a few days of self-defense classes were when the person swinging at you had spent years doing things that left calluses on their knuckles.
Then a figure came through the door like a storm.
