Gemini168

He grabbed the girl as she lurched to her feet, her attempts at speech being stopped by blood gurgling into her vocal chords.

Easton flashed past me, his eyes bulging. His right index finger pointed at an outhouse to our left. I turned to look in that direction, my legs still paralysed by what had just happened, and saw a man in a suit, about 15 metres away, pointing a gun at me. Movement returned to my legs, and I sprang up and ran towards him. Dad had always told us– run away from anyone with a gun, but instinct had taken over, and I knew that Easton was in front of me.

The man cocked his head. He was going to fire… “Easton, get down!” I bellowed. Easton turned to look at me, and then seemed to be swatted over by a giant invisible hand. “Easton, you okay? Easton!” I gasped, and sprinted to where my brother had crashed to the ground. Blood streaked his blonde mane, and his hand was splotched with crimson as he ran it around his head.

He was talking. “I’m okay man, you get him! I’m okay,” He pushed my hand away as he spoke. “The girl, how’s the girl?” I tried to co-ordinate my out-of-control senses, and glanced back to the monument where we had been sitting.

Anderson was on his knees, holding Hasar’s prostrate body across his legs. He looked up, shaking his head as he did. “She’s gone Bailey.”

I looked back to see the gunman still standing there, apparently unconcerned that many people were looking at him, imprinting his sallow features on their brains. No fear, no panic. Jesus what sort of guy was this!? I stood up slowly, and started to walk towards the smirking killer. I saw that the gun was a Beretta, fitted with a silencer, and that he was pointing it straight at me. I carried on walking, adrenalin blotting out fear and common sense, oblivious to the shouts and screams of the scattering crowds. He was going to kill me, and I was walking straight towards him. I heard at last the seemingly-muffled, but recognisable, shouts of warning from my brothers.

The gunman laughed out loud, and pulled the trigger. I froze. Nothing happened. The gunman’s face contorted as he wrestled with the cocking mechanism. He turned and ran down the slope to the walkway that ran along the river, and I, taking a deep gulp of oxygen, sprinted after him. Anderson’s voice penetrated my bubble of madness. I looked back to see Easton sitting on the sidewalk, with Anderson holding his shoulders. He was waving me back, but there was no chance of me going back now, and I turned and resumed my pursuit. The gunman had an untidy stride, I gained on him by the second. He looked back constantly, his previous arrogance seemingly gone, still grappling with the cocking mechanism as he tried to put distance between us.

Shocked pedestrians and street artists recoiled as we surged past, knocking over tables and signs as we went, unaware of the shouts and insults of outraged waiters and impervious to the douches of foamy cappuccino as takeaway cups flew onto the pavement. Police sirens sounded in the distance as we reached the underpass at the Pont de L’Archeveche. The crowds had thinned to zero, and I was alone with Hasar’s killer. He pulled up, wrenched at his gun again, and smiled grimly as he pointed it once again at my rapidly approaching body. I suddenly realised that I was going to die that grey afternoon on the Seine, and as my legs lost all traction the distance between us narrowed to barely 20 metres.

An instant sweat soaked my shirt and dripped down from my temples filming my glasses as it did. Idiotically, I took them off , but I could still see my man clearly now, a dark, stubbled face framed by cropped black hair, two brown eyes burning malevolently into mine down the barrel of his gun. I put my hands up instinctively - Dad would be pissed at my sheer stupidity, my brothers would never see me alive again. I thought fleetingly of mum…of Hasar…and that I had no real idea as to why I was going to die.

He spoke in a heavily accented English. “Stay there boy, you are next!”

I felt all fear dissipate. “Why are you going to kill me? What have I done? What do I know that is so important?” I was scrambling for reason and, after all, this was my last moments alive. He smiled thinly. “It does not matter to me, and it will not matter to you. Time to die!”

I saw him raise the gun, and vowed not to blink. Just then, a tall, athletic man with cropped greying hair and a prominent jaw emerged from an opening behind the gunman, and tapped him shoulder. The killer turned jerkily, unable to react as the stranger clamped his left hand on the gun, and coiled his right arm round his assailant’s neck. In one clean movement, the stranger’s knee came up into the small of the gunman’s back at the same time as the right arm wrenched his neck back. A dry snapping noise broke the silence, and the gunman’s eyes bulged as his body slid down the leg of his attacker to the ground.

Stunned by what was unfolding, I was planted to the spot as the stranger took the gun from a lifeless hand and emptied the magazine, the cartridges bouncing randomly across the paved walkway. He then reached a gloved hand into the lifeless man’s jacket and pulled out a leather wallet. I watched, spellbound, as he pulled some cards from it and stashed them in his lapel pocket before throwing it onto the chest of the man he had just killed.