Shatter by Joan Swan

about who had her. What Abernathy was or where he’d been. Mitch just had to get her back.
    The streets of downtown Olympia were empty at nearly four a.m., the limping vehicle easy to locate. Mitch closed in on the SUV quickly, but when he was still half a mile behind, the Chevy jerked to a stop.
    He gunned the BMW even while Abernathy climbed out of the vehicle, pulled Halina over his shoulder, and ran into a parking lot bordering the harbor.
    “No, no, no .”
    The BMW’s wheels squealed into the turn and bumped over a curb on the way into the lot. Mitch scanned for Halina’s white robe, the one thing giving him any hope of finding her.
    He spotted Abernathy sprinting through a place called Port Park, Halina’s limp form jerking on his shoulder. Mitch sped up, plowed over a grass separator in the lot, and nearly clipped the bastard. But he evaded with moves from an obstacle course and disappeared behind a building.
    “That fucking Army Ranger’s going down, ” he growled through clenched teeth.
    He jumped from the car, gun in hand, and stopped. Breath held, he listened for footsteps. The plunk-plunk-plunk of running feet on wood turned Mitch toward the dock.
    Fear burned a streak down the middle of his body. If Abernathy got her on a boat, Mitch would lose her. And he couldn’t lose her.
    He sprinted toward the building, adrenaline making his head light. But he had the advantage. Abernathy was injured. Carrying a hundred and something pounds of deadweight. Mitch pushed himself, his strides eating up the planks.
    He caught up with them just as Abernathy leaned toward a small aluminum fishing boat. Mitch couldn’t shoot the guy without risking Halina, so he did the next best thing—he nailed the metal dinghy with half a dozen shots.
    “You’re not going anywhere, Abernathy,” Mitch rasped between heavy breaths. “Put her down— on the dock —and I won’t shoot you.”
    “You won’t shoot me while I’m holding her. And you’re not the only one with a gun.” He moved into a pool of light from an overhead fixture to show Mitch the semiauto against Halina’s head. “Back off.”
    “You won’t shoot her,” he said, praying the shake in his body didn’t transfer to his voice. The sight of that gun at Halina’s head flipped something rabid inside him. “She’s the key to everything you want.”
    “I only want her research. I could get that without her; this is just the fastest way. But it’s also becoming the most trouble.”
    “You don’t have any other choice,” Mitch said, slowly advancing as he spoke. “She destroyed it. She’s the only person who can re-create the information. If you kill her, you kill any chance of getting that research. You start over at square one.”
    Halina moaned. Her arm made a languid arc toward Abernathy’s head, but it didn’t get anywhere near him before it fell away.
    “If you believe she destroyed her research,” Abernathy said, “you’re a bigger sucker than I thought. Now, move .”
    “Not going to happen. You’re going to have to let her go and take a run at her another time.”
    Halina was waking up, or trying to. She wasn’t a threat to the man holding her, but if she could just move out of the way enough . . . Mitch was a damn good shot, but the first two that had missed the SUV’s tire kept him from pulling the trigger now.
    Abernathy backed along the dock.
    Mitch’s heart accelerated. He squinted into the dark behind the guy. There was no freaking place for him to go. Information kept rolling through his head—Army Ranger, Military Intelligence, missions with Quaid . . .
    A vision of Abernathy falling into the water, holding Halina like a rescue swimmer to block his body while dragging her to another shore flashed in Mitch’s mind as just about the guy’s only alternative play. And Mitch would be screwed. He couldn’t shoot, couldn’t go after them in a boat he didn’t have. And going into the water after someone with Abernathy’s