Chapter 357: Last Man on the Stairs

The remaining Saints came down the stairs in a tight, careful line.

Three men. Guns up. Rechelle locked between the first two, the biggest one’s thick arm clamped across her waist like an iron bar. Her feet barely touched the steps. Every time she twisted or kicked, the grip only crushed harder until a thin, broken sound slipped from her throat.

They took their time on purpose.

Boots tested each stair. Eyes swept the open parlor below. The earlier gunshots had stopped cold. That silence sat heavier than the noise. Something down there had put three of their own on the floor in less time than it took to finish a phone call.

Halfway down, they saw the bodies.

One man sprawled near a shattered chair, phone still lying a few feet away. Another face-down closer to the wall. The third was half through the kitchen doorway, blood already dark on the tile under him. Furniture lay wrecked. Glass glittered across the polished floor like scattered ice. The air conditioning kept humming, soft and useless, as if the house had not noticed the dead.

Then they saw him.

Lucas stood in the middle of the ruined parlor, blood on his knuckles and the front of his shirt, breathing steady. He was not hiding. He was not talking. He simply watched them come, eyes flat and locked on the stairs.

The huge muscular Saint tightened his arm around Rechelle until she choked on a gasp. He kept moving, using her body as cover, gun already angling for a clean shot the moment the angle opened.

The man beside him looked past her and took in the three corpses properly for the first time.

Something in his face changed.

No one needed to tell him the man standing below was dangerous. The proof was already cooling on the floor.

He snapped.

The Mac-10 came up and opened full auto.

BRRRRT~

The burst tore across the parlor in a raw, continuous roar. Bullets chewed plaster from the walls in white bursts. A hanging frame exploded into splinters and glass. Rounds skipped off the floor, stitched across a cabinet, and shattered the remaining ornaments on a side shelf. The noise filled every corner of the high room at once.

The second gunman joined a half-second later.

His pistol cracked in rapid pairs~bang bang, bang bang~adding sharper notes under the Mac-10’s continuous scream. Muzzle flashes lit the staircase in hard white strobes. Hot brass bounced and rolled down the steps. The air filled with the sharp bite of cordite and powdered drywall.

They were not aiming clean.

They were trying to erase the space Lucas stood in.

Lucas was already gone from the first burst’s path.

He dropped and cut hard to the side as the first wave of rounds ripped through the air where his chest had been. Plaster dust exploded behind him. A bullet punched through the back of a chair and kept going. Another tore a long gouge across the floorboards near his boot. He stayed low, moving in short, violent angles while the Mac-10 walked fire across the room in wild arcs.

Glass kept falling.

Wood split.

The AC vent above took a round and started rattling.

Rechelle screamed once as the huge man jerked her sideways to keep his cover, the gunfire so loud it drowned the sound almost immediately. Spent casings bounced off the stairs around her feet. The whole upper half of the parlor wall was being chewed open in real time.

Lucas used the wreckage.

He crossed behind an overturned table as another burst stitched the air above it, then came out the other side already closing distance toward the base of the stairs. The Mac-10 swung to track him. Another long roar followed~BRRRRT~rounds hammering the floor and wall in a climbing line that just missed his path.

The pistol kept cracking behind it, less controlled now, the shooter firing as much from panic as intent.

Lucas did not hesitate.

Anger had already burned every other option off the table. He moved while the last casings were still bouncing down the stairs, cutting hard under the fading spray of gunfire. Rounds chewed plaster and wood behind him. None of them found him.

He hit the staircase at speed.

One hard jump carried him up the first section of steps. His body turned in the air, and his leg drove forward like a piston. The kick landed square across the second gunman’s face.

The impact was ugly and final.

The man’s head snapped back and smashed into the wall behind him with a wet, heavy crack. Blood burst across the plaster in a dark fan. His body slid down the wall, leaving a smear, gun falling from nerveless fingers. He never even finished the turn he had started.

The remaining shooter barely registered what passed him.

All he saw was a blur and a leg.

He tried to bring his weapon around anyway, finger already tightening, ready to dump the rest of the magazine into anything that moved ~ Lucas, the big man, Rechelle, it no longer mattered. Survival had narrowed to pure noise and lead.

Lucas reached him first.

He caught the gun arm, ripped it offline, and used the man’s own momentum against him. In one continuous motion he hauled the Saint forward and over, throwing both of them back down the stairs in a controlled, violent flip. The staircase was split into two short runs; they went over the first landing hard.

The gun flew free and clattered into the dark below.

They hit the lower floor with Lucas driving the man under him. The landing was all weight and angle. A sharp, sickening pop-crack rolled up the stairwell as the Saint’s back gave way beneath the force. The sound was loud enough to carry clean through the house. The body under Lucas went slack at once.

Lucas rose off him without looking down.

Only one man left.

The third Saint had not moved from the upper steps.

He was the biggest of the three by a wide margin ~ a heavy, thick-built man who had probably never needed to be fast in his life. Nothing before tonight had ever required it. His fist was buried in Rechelle’s hair, dragging her back against his chest. His other arm locked hard across her throat. The gun came up, not toward Lucas, but tight against the side of her head.

His hand shook once.

Breath tore through his nose.

"Don’t," he said, voice rough. "Don’t you fucking move. I’ll do it. I’ll do it right here."

He had already watched two men die in front of him in seconds. He knew a straight fight was a losing bet. The only leverage left in the house was the woman choking against his arm.