CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SIX – A LIFE ALMOST FORFEIT

Time seemed to slow to a viscous crawl as the firefight erupted anew, the deafening roar of gunfire echoing off the confined walls in a disorienting cacophony. Joan felt herself knocked from her feet by the sheer concussive force of it all, the world tilting violently as she crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Somewhere in the maelstrom, she heard Marco bellow her name, the sound raw and feral. Then he was there, hauling her upright with one hand as he laid down a withering curtain of covering fire with the other. "Run!" he roared, his face a mask of fury and desperation. "Get those documents out of here, no matter what!" Joan's mind rebelled against the order even as her body responded on pure, muscle-deep instinct. She broke into a dead sprint, hunched low against the maelstrom of flying lead, the documents clutched like a lifeline against her heaving chest. Chaos reigned in her wake, the air thick with the screams of the dying and the stench of cordite and spilled blood.