Page 104 of The Wolves Come at Night

She took her first full breath in minutes and gestured with the gun.

“You’re Joseph Game, aren’t you?”

“Fuck you.” Blood started frothing on his lips as he spoke.

“No, thank you. You’re an idiot—why would you shoot the pilot?”

“Was trying to…hit the bitch. Plane…jerked. She should… be dead.”

“Looks like you’re the one who’s going to die today. That’s a nasty wound.”

“You kill Angelie… instead. I’ll pay.”

It all came into focus.

“So this was just a setup all along? You lured Angelie here to steal the painting, but you were just planning to murder her?”

His lips moved in what might, in other circumstances, pass for a smile. His teeth were rimed in red.

Taylor went down in a crouch. “Well, you blew it, buddy. Looks like you’re in a bind. Bleeding out, paralyzed? Can you move? Anything but your mouth, that is?”

She lifted his arm and it flopped to the floor. She’d definitely clipped his spinal cord.

“She will…hurt you.”

“Doubt it.”

“When you…are no longer…of…use. Discard…you. Kill…” He shut his eyes. He was going gray, the blood oozing now instead of pumping. He was not going to survive without immediate medical intervention, this she knew. She could help him along and save them all a lot of trouble. But that was Angelie’s style. Taylor was still Taylor. If there was a chance for him to live, to see justice, she was willing to risk it.

She fished her handcuffs out of her back pocket, slapped one around Game’s limp wrist, and almost carefully, rolled him and cuffed the other. At least on his stomach he wouldn’t drown in his own blood before Angelie could talk to him. And he wasn’t going anywhere under his own steam.

“I’ll be back.”

Up the winding staircase, carefully, in case there was something else waiting to jump out at her. The lights were on now. She didn’t see the girl, kept her weapon up and steady, just in case. At the cockpit door, she banged her fist three times, hard.

“It’s Jackson. Game is neutralized. Let me in.”

The latch released. Angelie was sitting at the copilot controls, more relaxed but wary enough. They were above the clouds, the sky a deep purple, spreading out like a blanket of night ahead of them.

“Tell me.”

“First, can you fly this thing?”

“Obviously,” Angelie drawled, gesturing to the controls.

“Okay. Game had Carson downstairs, she’s somewhere on the plane. I need to go find her. I shot him, he’s down, but he’s not dead. Paralyzed, I think. Do you want to talk to him?”

To say the look Angelie gave Taylor was one of surprise was a misnomer. Shock, actually, quickly covered by her usual sneer, but shock, nonetheless.

“He claims he was shooting at you, not the pilot. Accident.”

Angelie glanced at the dead man next to her. “Can you move Jean-Paul? I…liked him.”

“Of course.”

Taylor unlatched the harness, got the man under the arms, and pulled him from his seat. He was heavy in death, and it took all her leverage to get him out of the seat and into the main cabin. She laid him on the floor by the sofa.

“You want a shot at Game?”