Beautiful Sacrifice

never let him forget it either. I called him ‘boy wonder.’ Now he calls me ‘old man.’”
    Smiling, Lina wondered what it would be like to have a friend like that. Close. Lifetime close.
    “Anything else you want to do here?” Hunter asked. “I’m hungry.”
    “I’d rather cook something for us at home than eat at Shandy’s.”
    Hunter paused an instant before he opened the gallery door for her, a courtesy she appreciated rather than resented.
    “Shandy’s doesn’t take reservations,” Lina explained. “It’s loud, you wait for a table at the bar, and the service is slow because they want you to buy overpriced drinks. I’d rather be able to talk in a normal tone of voice and not starve to death waiting for food. Okay?”
    When she looked up at him, Hunter’s smile was the kind that melted ice.
    “Need to shop before we cook?” he asked.
    “We?”
    “My parents both worked and they both shared the home jobs. I’m not a chef, but I can clean a kitchen good enough for a health inspection.”
    “I’ve got food,” she said. Then, carefully, “As long as food is all you’re expecting…”
    “Food is always good. Dessert is your call, Lina.”
    She studied his face and knew he meant it. “I like a man who doesn’t think with his package.”
    Hunter laughed. “Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart. My package is real interested.”
    “But you can still think and talk like a civilized being.”
    “My mother did her best.”
    Lina’s laughter made Hunter grin. He took her hand as they walked into the parking garage. Across the garage he saw Jase’s van backing out of a parking slot. An SUV idled down toward the exit, passing them as they reached the Jeep. Hunter had just handed Lina into the Jeep when he heard vehicle doors open hard. Footsteps smacked and scuffed on the textured concrete, people walking fast, nearly running.
    Lina’s eyes widened as she looked over Hunter’s shoulder. One hand dove into her purse, fingers searching frantically.
    Hunter spun around in time to take the first man down with a kick to his gut. The momentum of Hunter’s spin carried though as a punch to a second man’s throat. The man tucked his chin in time to save his trachea, but took a solid hit to his nose. Blood sprayed as the man staggered back. Voices shouted in a language Hunter didn’t understand. He went down beneath the third man and heard Lina scream. The second man piled on.
    Lina kept on screaming, telling anyone with ears that something was wrong in the garage. At the side of her vision she saw strangers scrambling away from the area, running for the exits. One of the women was shouting into a cell phone.
    A broad, powerful hand wrapped around Lina’s arm, yanking her out of the seat and onto her knees on the concrete. She looked up into the sweating face of the man Hunter had kicked. The attacker was cursing nonstop in a mixture of Mayan and Spanish as he yanked her up to her feet.
    Adrenaline sleeted through her as she aimed the pepper spray, turned her head aside, and pressed hard. The man went down, clawing at his eyes with one hand and yanking her back onto her knees with his other. Her teeth sank into his wrist and her elbow into his diaphragm.
    With a desperate lunge she wrenched free of the groaning man in time to see Hunter buck off one attacker and grapple for the gun the other had drawn from beneath his jacket. She still had some pepper spray left. She rushed forward.
    “No, Lina!” Hunter shouted, wrenching at the gun with all his strength. “Run to the gallery! Now, NOW!”
    The driver of the SUV kept yelling the same Spanish words over and over again while two more men leaped out. The dull flash of gun barrels told Lina that her pepper spray was about as much use as spit. But Hunter was down and it was all she had.
    One of the men from the van barked something. The man with the gun leaped away as his friend took aim at Hunter.
    A shot exploded, echoing in the parking garage. The man who had been drawing down on Hunter staggered back and dropped bonelessly to the ground.
    Jase drove the white minivan with one hand and shot through the open windows with the other. He braked hard between Hunter and the attackers, who were scrambling to use their dark SUV as a shield from the unexpected gunfire pouring from the white van.
    “Get her out of here!” Jase yelled as he slapped in a new magazine.
    He aimed at the SUV, firing to keep the shooters from hitting Hunter or Lina. Bullets